Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, October 27, 2008 4:10:42 PM
Brilliant, cutting satire or earnest policy suggestion? The Philadelphia Inquirer runs Jonathan Valania’s column
proposing a moratorium on Caucasian votes in Pennsylvania as a response
to bald assertions of Keystone State racism from John Murtha and Ed
Rendell. Valania says whites in the hinterlands can’t be trusted with
the franchise:
As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the
time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people,
at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don’t think we
can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore.
I give you Exhibit A: The last eight years.
In 2000, Bush-Cheney stole the election, got us attacked, and then
got us into two no-exit wars. Four years later, white people reelected
them. Is not the repetition of the same behavior over and over again
with the expectation of a different outcome the very definition of
insanity? (It is, I looked it up.)
Exhibit B is any given Sarah Palin rally.
Exhibit C would be Ed Rendell and John Murtha, who in separate
moments of on-the-record candor they would come to regret, pointing out
that there are plenty of people in Pennsylvania who just cannot bring
themselves to pull the lever for a black man - no matter what they tell
pollsters.
“Got us attacked” — you have to love the world-began-in-2001
mentality behind that statement. Jonathan, we got attacked in 1993
(World Trade Center I), 1996 (Khobar Towers), 1998 (embassy bombings in
Tanzania and Kenya) and 2000 (USS Cole). The result of 9/11, which
apparently Valania thinks we somehow provoked (by using the phrase “got
us attacked”), was at least one war both presidential candidates have
pledged to fight harder. The other, Iraq, is about to wind down
completely in victory, no thanks to Barack Obama, who demanded that we
flee Iraq when the going got tough.
That’s why I tend to lean away from the “satire” explanation of the
column, and lean more towards “earnest and mild hyperbole”. Even if
Valania isn’t serious about stripping white people of the franchise,
which I’ll assume, it’s clear that he thinks the only reason left to
oppose Barack Obama is racism. Apparently the editors of the Inquirer
also think the same thing, or at least that the allegation is credible
enough to publish a column that suggests a color barrier to voting as a
solution to it. He picks up where Obama left off in describing his
white neighbors as basically paranoid bigots who cling to guns and
religion in fear of the Coming Black Menace.
In other words, Valania is nothing more than a liberal bigot who
sees the entire world in terms of race. According to this column,
Obama’s positions on abortion, taxes, federal spending, national
security, and diplomacy are so noncontroversial that the only reason to
oppose them is the color of Obama’s skin.