Given that Sean Spicer is the head of communications for the RNC it makes perfect sense that he’s upset that his party is being tied to the terribly and almost comical racist remarks of renegade rancher Cliven Bundy and his band of armed freedom fighters standing their ground in the Nevada outback. (And yes, I’ve spent a decent amount of time in the area.) These positions on “negroes” and their being against “we the people” and possibly better off in slavery are not part of any Republican platform or literature or position papers.
But as the Simpsons once cartoonicly opined about Fox News: The GOP is not racist. But it sure is popular with racists. In fact, I think this is one of those cases where the story is best understood through the prism of the seminal 2005 oped in The Onion entitled “Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?”
Why indeed? Why does this keeping happening?
It’s sort of like a really bad run of luck in which people spring up who espouse a lot of Republican positions, quickly get endorsed and trumpeted by a lot of Republican politicians and then suddenly turn out to be, well … really racist.
Indeed, why do all these homosexuals …
Now, let me be clear: this isn’t the GOP isn’t racist but … hell, wink, wink, yeah it’s pretty racist. It’s not. But a substantial number of its core supporters have views that are most generously described as retrograde on racial matters and simply not remotely suitable for public airing. And like any political party that seriously constrains its freedom of action on a whole variety of issues which touch on race – which is to say, about half of everything.
Now there’s another thread of this which I believe Ed Kilgore recently discussed which is that you don’t need be racist to be racist. Or to put it less double-takingly you don’t need to have any animus or prejudice against non-whites to exploit racial divisions and fears or passively benefit from them. Indeed, not only is it possible, I would say it approaches the norm.
In any case, when the bed is delivered and the the sheets put on and and the comforter and the special chocolate on the pillow set just right, it’s hard not to sleep on it. And if you don’t and you have to say who keeps delivering and spiffing up these beds it is kind of like that epic plaint: Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?
