Michelle Malkin is a big girl [I know, she is a grown woman, not a girl, but I am willing to risk being non-PC to maintain some consistency] and fully capable of defending herself, but since I am old enough to be her father, I thought it not inappropriate to take a mildly paternal attitude toward her and take exception to the charge of racism leveled at her by Margaret Cho and amplified by Dan Gross in the Philadelphia Inquirer on-line today:
COMEDIAN Margaret Cho says she loves playing Philadelphia because "everybody's so mad at Rick Santorum."
Cho doesn't care for the U.S. senator or his politics, and in her new book, "I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight," also takes on Philly native Michelle Malkin, a syndicated conservative columnist who appears in the People Paper's pages.
Cho says there aren't that many people of color who are racist but that Malkin, who like Cho is an Asian- American, is.
Since we have been told repeatedly that a "person of color" cannot be a racist, the charge is nonsensical on its face. Nonetheless, this is worth addressing because the "racist" epithet has become the standard accusation thrown by the left/PC adherents when they are unable to argue based on facts.
When I am engaged in an argument, political or otherwise, and I find myself using an ad hominem attack, I realize I have lost the argument, and try to find a gracious manner of abdicating. Sadly, this is not a habit one finds in the precincts of the Politically Correct.
I am not a fan of Margaret Cho's humor; I find that a comic who feels the need to resort to the liberal use of the varieties of foul language that are so much in vogue these days, is primarily displaying the limitations of their vocabulary rather than the particular facility with ideas and language that surprises and delights. But that is just one man's humble opinion.
PC-thought, as I have written about many times, destroys the ability to reason and think clearly. Presumably Cho considers Michelle Malkin a racist because she writes and speaks eloquently and persuasively about ideas that Cho objects to; since there is nothing in the article (and I very much doubt there is anything specific cited in Cho's book) to support the charge of "racism" it is impossible to refute it directly on its merits; however, since Cho felt free to speculate about Michelle's racism, I feel free to speculate about Cho's thinly disguised, liberal racism.
Racism attributes most problems experienced by "people of color" (and isn't that a lovely, racist construction; is there a hierarchy of color, are some more colorful than others; such questions are never asked, let alone answered) to the oppression of the "victim class" by the "white, male ruling class." Anyone who has the temerity to suggest that some of the problems suffered by the class of people that is described as "people of color" may stem from cultural and/or individual shortcomings of the "victims", is therefore defined as a racist. The problem is compounded when the critic is a member of the victim class herself. The racist cartoons depicting Condaleeza Rice as a "Mammy" which were published earlier in the year would be prime examples. Cho apparently feels that any person of color who strays from the party line is a traitor and/or apostate. This sounds like a description of a narrow minded, bigoted individual, who elevates the importance of one's tribal affiliation above the importance of the individual, which, under most definitions, would make her (Cho) a racist.
The goal of people like Cho is always to prevent the offending person from speaking and writing heretical thoughts; there is minimal effort expended refuting the ideas directly and often there is insufficient data to support either position because Political Correctness has so chilled discourse that the important questions can not even be asked. When there is a growing body of data, the effort is directed toward suppression of the discussion so that the dangerous ideas can receive minimal exposure. William Raspberry, in a discussion of the recent William Bennett racism imbroglio, wrote a piece today that directly addresses important questions that have been traditionally ignored by the social scientists and are only now beginning to be examined. (I wait with bated breath for Margaret Cho's reaction.)
Fjordman, writing from Sweden, which is under the sway of a crushing PC culture and consequently further along the road to dhimmitude, describes how the charge of "racism" is used to attack thought:
Malmö is, as my regular readers will know, probably the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim immigration, and the urban district of Rosengård perhaps the worst ghetto in northern Europe. Buses are cancelled because of stone throwing, the municipality spends millions of dollars just on replacing broken windows at local schools, ambulances and the fire brigades hardly enter without police escort. Crime is endemic throughout parts of the city. A local police officer knows this all too well, of course, and grows angry when he sees the inaction by the authorities and the money wasted on welfare programs for people only creating trouble. But he's not allowed to say this, because that would be "racism."
Notice that the content of the email was indeed illegal by Swedish law. He was in fact prosecuted for a "though crime" stated in a private email, but was freed for the sole reason that he didn't intend his writings to be made public. If he had written this on a small blog, he would have been sentenced and thus dismissed from the police force by now. This law is intended to protect "ethnic minorities." Malmö will in a few years become the first major Scandinavian city with a Muslim majority, which means that Swedes will be an ethnic minority. Will the courts then ban hate speech against native Swedes? Somehow, I suspect not.
Contrast with this:
At the same time in Sweden, Muslims openly flaunt their support for terror attacks against their own country, and Radio Islam has put Nazi literature such as Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" online in several languages. They also say Jews are evil and should be "crushed".
"Racism", as a subset of tribalistic hatred, is an ugly thing; it should be fought assiduously wherever it is found. When people like Cho toss the term around loosely, they devalue its meaning; when members of the LSM irresponsibly print such attacks, they should be, but rarely are, ashamed of themselves.
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