Reactions to story from MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

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  Post Racial: Rightbloggers Shade Helms' Civil Rights History (Plus a WALL-E Update!)

  http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/07/...
  60 days ago in Runnin' Scared - Village Voice · Authority: 635

  [Editor's note: After penning the popular "The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere," Roy Edroso has made dissecting those blogs into a weekly feature that appears here every Monday.] POST-RACIAL: RIGHTBLOGGERS SHADE HELMS' CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY (PLUS A WALL-E UPDATE!) In 2002, when blogs were young, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said former Senator and racist icon Strom Thurmond should have been President of the United States. Some rightbloggers denounced Lott's comments, and congratulated themselves for it. Lott's subsequent fall, said John Podhoretz at National Review Online, showed that "the party of personal responsibility... has just cleaned its own house with record speed." This remains a rightblogger point of pride: as recently as last May, Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic cited the Lott/Thurmond affair as proof of "the rejection of racism by mainstream conservatives." Last week former Senator and racist icon Jesse Helms died. Six years after Lott/Thurmond, housecleaning is apparently less of a concern for rightbloggers. A very few acknowledged in their eulogies that the late Senator held noxious racial views, at least at one time ("Even though he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he abided by the law and 'got with the times,' as they say"). But most didn't see the need to mention them, and those that mentioned them did so favorably, or blamed them on someone else. "He 'opposed civil rights'?" said National Review's John J. Miller in reaction to an obituary of Helms. "Uh, no. He opposed a particular vision of them." "Helms wasn't always my cup of tea, but it can hardly be said that he opposed civil rights," said Say Anything. "He opposed things like affirmative action... and I hardly think that government programs which mandate preferential treatment based on skin color have anything to do with 'civil rights.'" (Presumably that was what Helms was trying communicate to Carol Moseley-Braun in that elevator.) "I just never paid much attention to him," The American Mind sheepishly admitted. "I probably bought into the idea that he was a white Southern racist and anti-gay." Well, as long as he's sorry... The VDARE Blog did mention Helms' opposition to actual civil rights, and quite cheerfully, adding, "Of course, the evolution of scientific research — as opposed to political correctness — has, in recent years given Helms' reservations a solid foundation in scientific fact." If Helms did have some problems with race, other rightbloggers argued, that was the Democrats' fault. At AOL's Political Machine, "Dave" said Helms "was a racist bigot in his years as a Southern Democrat... So the problem with Jesse Helms can't be his segregationist past, or else the Democrats would be craven hypocrites on this issue." The Conservative Voice credited Democrats with electing Helms in the first place: "The thing you must remember is democrats elected Jesse Helms and kept Jesse in office until HE decided to step down. There are simply not enough registered conservative republicans in the state to do that." (Actually, The Conservative Voice believed Helms' appeal went beyond Democrats and Republicans, and indeed beyond the technical electorate: "Contraray [sic] to many reports you will hear over the next few days, Jesse represented the huge majority of North Carolinians, even those who never voted in their lives.") Still, Helms said and did some questionable things even after changing party affiliation, so these had to be explained away. Power Line admitted that Helms' famous "quota" campaign ad — in which a white worker crushed paper in frustration that the job for which he was better qualified went "to a minority because of a racial quota" — was perhaps misrepresentative: "Certainly, nothing in the proposed legislation (which was enacted in substantially modified form as the Civil Rights Act of 1991) expressly called for racial quotas." But, Power Line added, "there are substantial arguments in favor of viewing the bill as paving the way for quotas." Oh, well then. After a few paragraphs of slippery-slope arguments, Power Line concluded that "For better or for worse, inflammatory ads are the norm in tough political contests" and "conservatives should pull no punches when they think they detect 'reverse discrimination.'" (Bama Pachyderm took an earthier approach to the ad: "Oh, the libs had coronaries over that one.... Can you imagine the pansies that make up our current crop of republicans having that attitude?") In the spirit of fairness, we must mention that prominent rightblogger Debbie Schlussel did criticize Helms on human rights: "Unfortunately, like many politicians who worry about their legacies and how history will remember them when they near the end of their careers, Helms fell prey to criticisms of him by the gay and AIDS funding communities," wrote Schlussel. "And he decided to get on board Bono's tax-funded gravy train of forgiving billions in debt owed by mostly AIDS-stricken African countries..." By far the most popular rightblogger defense of Helms was that liberal bloggers were mean to him after he died. "I firmly believe 'TBogg' wouldn't be this happy if the dead man were Osama bin Laden, instead of Jesse Helms," wrote Patterico's Pontifications. "I wasn't planning on a post memorializing Jesse Helms," said American Power," but I thought better of it after seeing the left's hatred of late North Carolina Senator." "Show a little decorum and compassion, nutjobs!" said Pirate's Cove. Etc. etc. etc. These are perhaps the most appropriate rightblogger tributes to Helms, as they show once again that their own policies and politicians don't animate them nearly as much as outrage at their enemies. UPDATE. Last week we noted rightblogger rage at the eco-treason of the cartoon Wall-E. $128 million in ticket sales later, some of them are coming to the film's defense — not on aesthetic grounds (they don't know what those are) but because they perceive a conservative message in the Disney blockbuster. Apparently it's not environmentalist propaganda after all — it's an indictment of the nanny state! Wizbang claimed the infantilism of the film's humans supports "the argument that conservatives have been making against more government control and womb to the tomb governmental care." Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher said Wall-E "argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom." (Amazingly, this convinced some of his commenters to see the film.) Crosswalk hailed "WALL-E's Indictment of Liberalism," and called it "an attack on the government's co-opting of the entrepreneurial initiative of its citizens, micromanaging it through mandated outcomes and compulsory taxes to the point that there is no longer an incentive for individuals themselves to produce." We hope Disney has the good sense to use these as pull-quotes and place them at conservative websites. Even political obsessives have to get out of the house sometimes.
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  Jesse Helms

  http://curmudgeonlyskeptical.blogspot.com/2008/07/jesse-helm...
  62 days ago in Curmudgeonly & Skeptical² · Authority: 95

  R.I.P. Jesse Helms How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Found Inner Peace July 4th Chris at VRWC marks Jesse's passing with the best kind of tribute, relating how he was pivotal in moving her from the dark side of politics into the light of the vast right wing conspiracy. Oddly, my fist thought upon learning of his death was this. During the 1991 Senate Ethics Committee's trial of the "Keating Five," Alan Cranston, who was ultimately deemed the worst of the lot, announced a sudden case of prostate cancer would keep him from appearing. Cranston lived another 10 years, dying not of cancer, which had been "cured," but of old age at 86. Only after the hearings was it revealed that Sen. Helms, who served on the Committee throughout, was being treated for real cancer with daily chemotherapy, and without a peep. If the measure of a man is the degree of hatred, slander and lies heaped upon him by the very worst elements of society, then Helms was a great man. R.I.P., indeed. http://feeds.feedburner.com/ CurmudgeonlySkeptical

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