This is the key point here. It’s not just a matter of shock value. This is a direct understanding of the thought processes of southerners at the time. “I may not have it good, but at least the negroes had it worse”. It’s not tactless to say it like that.
Frankly, that makes it worse. Someone from the whitest state, with poor understanding of racial issues, shouldn’t be using the word as a prop for his class struggle arguments. It’s super fucking cringey.
It may be slightly off-topic here, but socialist supporters of Bernie Sanders may be happy the hear that the Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is not fond of post-rational American capitalism.
Yes, the publisher is RT … but their news is better than most of the U.S.A. media with its focus on nonsense and gibberish.
Of course presidents delegate – both information-gathering, and minor decisions.
But the job at this point is so large that there are a lot of decisions related to it that aren’t minor. While any remotely sensible president of course has teams of advisors to do the research and explore and explain the various options, the POTUS is supposed to be the one who decides among those options, and isn’t supposed to delegate the actual decisions on major matters. The classic line “the buck stops here” is classic for a reason.
He used it also to make a point: that those of his characters who were using it were ignorant and prejudiced.
And he makes very specifically the point being discussed in this thread: he puts the word in the mouth of Huck’s father, who is a child abuser, a drunk, broke, out of work and unwilling to work, and is portrayed in general as a useless and actively harmful character; but who explicitly prides himself on being far better than anyone who’s black.
Whether it was politic for Biden to use the word’s another question. The point being made is reasonable and accurate, and the use of the word hammers home the point; but it may also hammer other impacts Biden presumably didn’t intend.
Yes, the idea that the President can just “phone it in” from the golf course is absurd. (Of course when the President behaves like a petulant six-year old, we should be grateful for any time wasted at golf.)
A book I highly recommend for a look at Presidential work is The Price of Loyalty. Pres. Ford, not an expert at economics by any stretch, asked his two top economics advisers into the Oval Office and invited them to debate each other! Occasionally Ford would ask a question.
The book’s author contrasts this with G.W. Bush, whose eyes would glaze over if Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil let his briefing go over ten minutes. (Of course, Bush was almost a literate intellectual compared with the present incumbent.)
Sure it does- on a person by person basis. Some people are sharp until well until their 90’s. Bernie by no means is my fave, but he looks and sounds quite sharp.
OTOH, I have met many 20 yo where their “mental acuity” is very doubtful.
Note that no Republican is attacking trump on that basis, only the dems attack each other, giving trump a clear shot at winning.
Not Biden- *Sanders.
*
A Russian propaganda outlet with a segment on “the coming collapse of the American Economic System” is being compared to what, exactly, and coming out favorably? Is this cage match of reliability pitting RT against TMZ?
Forget the scary caption. The content is interesting; and I thought Bernie supporters might want to watch it.
Yes RT is full of propaganda, but so are Fox and MSNBC. CNN is full of nothing. Right now the stock market is near its all-time high, yet every time there’s a down-tick day the main-stream media goes into overdrive prattling as though a crash were in progress. Et cetera.
So … No apology for the link.
We can disagree there. But while it is an analysis of how white “haves” mollified white “have-nots” by putting an other as lesser entities, and is not about the the Black perspective of that experience at all, it must be noted how timely that is. It is of course the same exact play that Trumpism does to win the support of non-college educated whites today, with a variety of others filling that blank.
I can agree there. But how many of them are previously unexpected problems that need to be decided upon on a moment’s notice? Which was the specific skill you posited declines with age.
Again Sanders may not have either skill … but I don’t think he did at any age.
Marxist economist goes on RT! Drop everything and watch, Jill Stein voters!
NM
I once heard that quoted with “out-segged” substituted for “out-niggered.” Don’t know which is authentic, but I tend toward the latter.
What does that have to do with Sanders? There are plenty of lefty academics, we knew that.
Indeed.
Ha, exactly.
I agree with your last sentence, but 1997? Really? I became a teenager in the 1980s and would not have dreamed of saying or writing that word then. His analysis isn’t wrong, but he should have reworded it, perhaps using the phrase “crude, dehumanizing racial epithets” or something like that.
This. Similarly cringey whenever he tries to address racial issues in front of black audiences. It’s not that he’s a virulent racist, he just has spent his whole life around white people and it shows.
But Spike Lee loves him, so it’s OK.
Whoops, sorry! Thanks for correction.
For one, while previously unexpected problems that need to be decided on a moment’s notice are rare and a particular presidency may not even have any, if and when they do come up they’re massively important.
For another, that’s not the only skill I said declines with age. I also said:
The fact that Sanders puts the N-word in quotation marks in that passage, I think, is what’s important. There is a big difference between N-word and “N-Word.” People being upset about this makes as little sense as being upset at the movie ***42 ***(about Jackie Robinson) for featuring countless N-words.
Here’sa good article from 2016 debunking the criticism that Sanders has been an “ineffective” or “gadfly” legislator.
Juicy bits:
Dubbed the ‘amendment king,’ Mr. Sanders passed more amendments than any other member of Congress during his 16 years in the House of Representatives—despite Republicans holding a majority between 1994 and 2006. He kicked off his political career with an amendment to start a National Program of Cancer registries, which is now maintained by all 50 states. In 2001, he successfully passed an amendment to the general appropriations bill which banned the importation of goods made with child labor, and passed an amendment to increase funding by $100 million for community health centers.
Amid years of partisan politics where each party has obstructed the other from passing meaningful legislation, Mr. Sanders worked across the aisle with his conservative counterparts—with Ron Paul to audit the Federal Reserve for the first time in 2010 and with John McCain in 2014 to co-write the bill to reform the Veterans Affairs Administration.
You can’t be bothered to use quote tags? :dubious: