New Mexico Central

John Weckerle: Racist? Race-Baiter? Racist-Baiter? False Accuser? Who Is This Guy?

by John Weckerle

It can be amazing how the same thing can mean different things to different people, and how easy it can be to get drawn into discussions of issues that one considers perhaps less than earth-shaking.  Your editor has recently been in a discussion at Gadabout-Blogalot.com (thread here) regarding certain aspects of incidents in front of the Capitol Building leading up to the passage of the health care reform bill.  The conversation begins with discussion of whether or not racial epithets are hurled, and sort of takes off from there.  Unfortunately, there appears to be some disagreement as to the meaning of your editor’s writings, and Gadabout-Blogalot.com editor Chuck Ring has taken the position that it was my intent to “paint” him as a racist despite statements to the contrary.  Mr. Ring declares himself the final authority on the meaning of my words in this regard – an assertion with which I might be expected to disagree.

Part of the disagreement here comes from my statement of opinion that accusations made by biggovernment.com founder Andrew Breitbart that several African American members of Congress and their staff were “race-baiting” were racist.  Let’s be clear on this: I consider Breitbart’s comments to be racist in nature.   It is perhaps necessary to clarify that this is an opinion on the comments, and not Mr. Breitbart; I have no idea whether he is a racist or not.  Let’s get something else straight: regardless of Mr. Ring’s proclamation and whether or not he defends Mr. Breitbart’s comments, I’m not calling him a racist, either – even if I find that defense a little disappointing. I’m not calling anybody anything, through “innuendo” or otherwise, and taking this all into the realm of perceived personal offense has the effect of distracting attention from the issue at hand.

During the discussion, Mr. Ring evolves a position that the Democrats in question went out looking for a confrontation by walking through a crowd that vehemently disagreed with their position on the health care bill.  This has nothing to do with Mr. Breitbart’s accusation, which made a specific accusation of race-baiting, not idea-baiting.

My attempt at satire on the egg-throwing incident apparently was not as obvious as I thought.  The egg-throwing was justified.  Those buses, by driving past a crowd of protesters who were not themselves mass-transit vehicles, were egg-baiting.

I will reiterate the other major points I attempted to make.  First, and perhaps least importantly, none of the video evidence proves anything one way or the other.  Second, what it does demonstrate is that if the alleged behavior did occur, it was not widespread, and therefore does not necessarily represent racism on the part of the entire crowd of protesters or the tea party movement as a whole.  Third, and most importantly, the alleged inappropriate actions of a few have once again been handed center stage, to the detriment of real discussion of the central issues. Sure enough, there are even people calling the incident “Spitgate.”  Controversy-wise, we’ve come a long way from the Nixon-era break-ins.

I watched the passage of the health care bill on CNN, and heard the shout of “baby killer” directed at Representative Stupak during the last of the debate.  One of the CNN panelists – a Conservative – made what I thought was a very relevant statement.  In essence, he said that while he disagreed with the contents of the bill, it was clear in his mind that this was a historic moment, and that it would be unfortunate to allow the significance of that moment to be eclipsed by one person’s inflammatory statement.  I agree: if we focus on idiocy, then that’s what we’ll see, and we will remain distracted from and divided upon the central issues – not because we cannot find common ground, but because we were never looking for it.

Friday, April 9th, 2010, by John Weckerle and is filed under "National Affairs, Tea Party-gate ". You can leave a response here. Pinging is currently not allowed.