[lbo-talk] Are Conservatives Racist?

Dissenting Wren dissentingwren at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 19 10:16:14 PDT 2011

OK, basic fact time.  Obama got into politics the same way anyone does.  When Alice Palmer was retiring from her Illinois State Senate seat, he got the local power brokers (in Chicago, chiefly committeemen and aldermen, all of them black in this district) to slate him as their preferred candidate for the 13th District.  When Alice Palmer lost her bid for higher office, she decided to return to her Illinois Senate seat, and the same power brokers delivered the bad news to Obama that he would have to wait a bit longer.  In fine Chicago tradition, he fought back by successfully challenging Palmer's petition signatures, thereby knocking her off the ballot.  He therefore breezed through the Democratic primary as the sole candidate, and in this part of Chicago winning that primary is tantamount to winning the election.  When a mostly white coalition (dominated by liberal Hyde Parkers) tried to use him to replace Bobby Rush (former Black Panther Minister

of Defense, now wholly-owned subsidiary of AT&T and Verizon) in Chicago's 1st Congressional District, he lost.  So the whole notion that there was some equivalent of the "dedazo" by which Obama was anointed from on high to perform an essential function for the white ruling class is simply not borne out by the facts.  Sorry.  Obama is smarter than most politicians (as we agree), and the only thing that "slated" him for a political career rather than corporate is the direction in which his own ambitions lay.

Why is it that when any white hack has a successful political career one chalks it up to the low standard of politicians in general, but when a black politician is found to be a tad short of brilliant, one looks for white string-pullers behind the scenes?  

________________________________ From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 11:31 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Are Conservatives Racist?

On Aug 19, 2011, at 12:15 PM, Dissenting Wren wrote:

> This is just dumb.  Do you seriously think that the white members of the Illinois legislature are paragons of intellectual achievement, in comparison with whom Barack Obama was a "demonstrable intellectual mediocrity"?

His "credentialed* nonachievement would have slated him for the corporate, not political, had he not been able to pass as "black."

>  For that matter, which recent presidents, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, would you rank as intellectually superior to Obama?

Not Clinton, Carter.  But you're right insofar as Obama is better able to parse a meaningless English-language sentence than any of his immediate predecessors.

> As for the vast corporate scheme to keep the black masses down through the cooptation of "moderately talented but thoroughly docile 'blacks'" (why the scare quotes, btw?) - our corporate masters really just aren't that subtle.

Do you know who invented Affirmative Action? clue: he was a real dick.

Shane Mage

"scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention to"


More information about the lbo-talk mailing list