Thank you for the nice post and for the interesting background information on yourself. And thanks also for the apology, which is happily accepted.
There is a reason that it is forbidden to call other posters “troll” outside The BBQ Pit.
It is not appropriate even as a joke, (even if one sort of apologizes).
Do not do this again.
[ /Moderating ]
The last Republican to advance policies that could arguably benefit minority voters was Jack Kemp and he’s been dead a good half decade.
Don’t all voters matter?
Starving Artist, whatever your true beliefs are, your posts drip with contempt towards most black Americans. From your posts, you don’t believe they are good Americans or good people unless they dress the way you have decided is appropriate, or speak in the way you’ve decided is appropriate, or live in a way that appears to be confined to prominent black Republicans. There are millions and millions of hard-working, peaceful and family-loving black Americans, who may have tattoos, and may dress and speak in ways that you don’t like, and who might truly believe that the Democratic party best represents their interests, and that Barack Obama is a hard-working and decent patriotic American… these black people are good Americans and good people. There are millions of great, peaceful, and hard-working Americans who dress in hip-hop fashion, and speak in African-American vernacular, and go to work every day and support their families, and think about politics and choose to support the Democratic party.
Maybe you don’t actually, personally, hold them in contempt, but the words in your posts drip with such contempt.
It’s absolutely hilarious, right?
First, there’s the guy who overcame his Kenyan birth, his Muslim family, and his Madrassa schooling to get a degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard, where he edited the Law Review. Then, rather than applying himself and living by correct values, he chose to simply rest on the fact that he had won society’s lottery by teaching at the University of Chicago Law School and working as a civil rights attorney, as well as serving on the boards of multiple foundations and non-profit organizations. He was then elected to the Illinois State Senate, followed by the US Senate, and then became the first black President of the United States.
Then there’s Henry Louis Gates. His first win in society’s lottery was to be born in West Virginia, to a father who worked in a paper mill and had a second job as a janitor, and a mother who worked as a house cleaner. I mean, who wouldn’t succeed when they had a start like that? I don’t know how young Gates managed to get through life with that massive silver spoon stuck in his mouth. And those parents? They clearly had no work ethic or American values at all. But i digress.
Gates managed, by dint of sheer bad values and lack of application, to graduate summa from Yale, get a PhD from Cambridge, and to be accepted to Yale Law School. He demonstrated his laziness and lack of drive by withdrawing from the law program and accepting a position in the Yale Afro-American Studies department, where he rose to the rank of Associate Professor before Cornell noticed his ineptitude and hired him away. He was so bad that Duke and then Harvard, in succession, offered him jobs. He’s still at Harvard, completely stinking up the place, and his mediocrity has been recognized by a MacArthur Fellowship (often referred to, ironically in Gates’ case, as a Genius Grant) and a National Humanities Medal. He’s also produced a couple of unaccountably well-received TV series about race and the history of African Americans, one of which earned a Peabody Award.
I can only imagine how well these two might have done if they had lived by correct values and applied themselves.
I could write equally damning indictments of the widely-acclaimed rap artist, entrepreneur, record industry producer and executive who is worth half a billion dollars, or the actress and entertainer who is still making chart-topping music. I could write about the really crappy careers of the other two black actors, who have benefited from the fact that Hollywood has traditionally fallen all over itself to create a wide range of strong leading roles for African American actors. I just stuck with Obama and Gates because those are the two people mentioned by Starving Artist whose mediocrity and good luck i am most familiar with.
(golf clap) for mhendo
When black liberals succeed, it sounds like this: [SFX: lottery balls coming out of the hopper]
When black conservatives succeed, it sounds like this: [SFX: golf ball hitting bottom of the cup, polite clapping]
To be honest, Henry Louis Gates would indeed fit with the other people I listed, except for the fact that he very likely supports the same sort of government programs that I feel have done more harm than good, and probably gets his back up when anyone critisizes rap music or hip hop because of their lyrics or suggests blacks would benefit (i.e., become “haves” themselves) if they followed the suggestions of people like Bill Cosby, Charles Barkley and my own humble self. The same applies to Obama.
Don’t know why I skipped over them unless perhaps I was so gobsmacked that anyone would hold the likes of Jay-Z and Beyonce up as role models for proper lifestyle values that I was stunned into overlooking them. As for Morgan Freeman and Oprah Winfrey, what laudable lifestyle values are they known for? Maybe they’re good ones, I don’t know. But what I do know is that people who follow the examples of people like the ones I cited are much more likely to live good lives and become “haves” in the real world than are the ones who try to follow the examples set by movie stars, talk show hosts and drug dealers turned rap moguls and their increasingly skanky wives.
As far as Gates getting hassled by the police (which foolsguinea mentioned), I can assure you that any white person seen breaking into his house because he didn’t have his key could have had the police called on him just as quickly if the person who observed it didn’t recognize him as the owner. The entire Gates brouhaha could have been avoided if Gates had simply realized he wasn’t being accused of breaking in while black but rather breaking in period, laughed and told the officers in a pleasant manner that he was he was the owner and had just returned from a trip out of town and forgot his keys, and offered either to show personal ID along with bills to prove he lived there or suggested they knock on a neighbor’s door to verify that it was his house. Then once his identity was confirmed they all could have laughed, Gates could have thanked them for protecting his property, they could have wished each other a good night and that would have been the end of it. But no, Gates had to fly into instant high dudgeon over having been seen breaking-in-while-black and go ballistic with the cops and found himself getting in deeper and deeper with the whole thing getting blown out of proportion. Somehow I suspect the Thomases, the Carsons and the Cains of the world would have assessed the situation correctly since they don’t seem to go through life with a chip on their shoulder and would most likely have seen the situation for what it was rather than instantly and incorrectly thinking they were being picked on for being black, and the situation would have been resolved more in line with the manner I described than the way Gates handled it.
It would be interesting to know also how Gates, Thomas, Carson, etc., managed to achieve the educations they have while being criticized the whole time for “acting white” by many of their fellow blacks. I’ve seen this phenomenon occur not only before my very eyes at a company I worked for in the early eighties when one of my co-workers who was black apparently began acting too friendly and polite like us white folk and got called down for it by the other black guys who worked there, but I’ve also heard about it whenever the subject has come up from every black person I’ve ever talked to who’s managed to get into college and who speaks standard English.
It’s also worthy of note that mhendo, who frequently alleges that I’m dishonest yet when challenged has come up empty every time, is attempting (typically, it seems, from those of his ilk) to characterize my comments as implying that I’ve said blacks are lazy and unmotivated. I’d very much like to see him point to where I said or implied any such thing.
I’ve made it very clear that everything I’ve said has been motivated by a strong and genuine desire that both I and many conservatives share, which is to see blacks join in and become “haves” in our society too, and the things I’ve said about how this can be accomplished are nothing new. Nor are they limited to blacks. They’re the very same things that white parents tell their kids about how to get ahead in the world too…study hard, do well in school, dress and behave in ways that speak well of you and so forth. This isn’t rocket science. If you want to get ahead in the world and live prosperous lives you need to prepare yourself for it and do things in ways that further that end. Deliberately behaving in an opposite way because you want to disassociate yourself with people who are the descendants of the people who instituted the conditions that are keeping you down, while understandable, is self-defeating and works only to keep you from becoming one of the “haves” yourself. Most of the workplace issues that have traditionally kept blacks down no longer exist and blacks have more of an ability now to get ahead and live prosperous and successful lives than ever before, but the more they listen to people on the left who defend and effectively encourage negative behaviors that stand in the way of it, the more likely it is that a prosperous and successful life is not going to be the result.
So, Starving, what do you think about Your Donald’s latest statements? His campaign* is* the subject of this thread.
A haircut, a bath, and a job, then. Sounds familiar.
So, lets pretend that we can implement the StarvArt Initiative, with wild success! Vast numbers of freshly scrubbed candidates, clean, pressed, and sporting vocal patterns with no particular ethnic or social stigma. Peachy. All of these previously “useless mouths” report for duty.
To the local job market. How many, do you think, given the wild success of the StarvArt Initiative? What Free Market solution (Blessings and peace, etc…) do you envisage? The kind of jobs that encourage people to remain clean, pressed and happy? Since we are not going the be hearing any of this government make-work stuff, right?
Now, of course, if those people already had money, they would be spending it, they would be fueling the consumer economy. Which is pretty much all we got. And there would be more jobs to absorb the newly minted shiny, happy people at the Mall. Enough? Dunno. Better is not always good enough.
Your plan reeks of Calvinistic self-esteem, but there’s something worse: it won’t work.