Actually, It Is About Race, Brooksie

Be forewarned that this is one of those pieces where I vehemently rebut every single thing Brooksie says in his column; he had actually compiled a pretty good streak of pieces I actually agree with most entirely, but this most recent one makes up for all the others.

Here’s the general storyline: Brooksie goes out for his Saturday run - conveniently from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol and back. On the way he sees ‘tea party’ protesters carrying signs (mostly say hooray for our side) that read “‘Don’t Tread On Me’ (i.e. I recently watched the John Adams miniseries and therefore think I know what I’m talking about), ‘End the Fed’ (if asked why they would no doubt be unable to provide anywhere near a cogent response) and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions.”

Gee, Mr. Brooks, perhaps you might expand on said signs. Why, they didn’t read anything like ‘the zoo has an African Lion and the White House has a lyin’ African’ did they? Or what about ‘bury Obamacare with Kennedy’ (courtesy of a supposedly Catholic organization)? Or ‘we came unarmed (this time)’. Do tell us more about the fraternizing that took place between the Black Family Reunion Celebration and the aforementioned tea-baggers. Undoubtedly they were the same ones that also had the signs with Obama in white-face made to look like the joker. It is highly disingenuous hyperbole, at best, to say that ‘some people see every conflict through the prism of race’. Regardless of what Mr. Brooks might intonate, it is most important to continue attempting to have an honest discussion without the conversation being hampered by those who refuse to acknowledge the obvious.

We are then taken on a wild non sequitur of a history ride where the competing virtues of Jefferson and Hamilton and their disciples are espoused with seemingly no end in sight. He finally gets around to asserting that the tea baggers are somehow actually populists and this brand of protest was inevitable as a result of Obama’s agenda, whatever he thinks that might entail.

I simply cannot fathom why someone as seemingly intelligent as Brooksie would be so deliberately ignorant and dismissive of what is so plainly true. He rails against ‘the progressive (read liberal) news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout…’ For some odd reason he fails to mention the not so progressive (read Fox News) ‘news’ media and just how manipulative and instrumental it has been in the aforementioned 9/12 rally. Obviously, like so many other Republicans, he has either deliberately or unknowingly lost touch with reality to such a degree that it is only what he makes of it. That is, these demonstrations can’t be racist because he does not see them as being so.

At the end of the piece he bemoans the notion that ‘the progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate and vice versa.’ Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the progressive elite, but regardless of one’s race and geographical location I guess I do tend to see people not at all grounded in reality as illegitimate. So sue me.