Beran Brings The Whine To The Clarence Thomas Pity Party
Michael Knox Beran is still sort of a B-List wingnut, notwithstanding some truly wingnutterific things he’s written. Like his book “The Last Patrician” where he claimed that Bobby Kennedy would have become a Reagan conservative if only he hadn’t been shot. Not surprisingly, most of the footnotes to that scholarly tome referenced sessions that Beran had with a certain Madame Olga Glyzewskaia who channeled Bobby Kennedy using a Magic Eight Ball and a pinochle deck.
But I think Beran has outdone himself with a recent short article titled “Clarence Thomas, Created Equal: Liberal elites use the stigma of affirmative action to belittle a great justice.” After a lot of hoohah about l’ancien regime, caste, paternalism and the welfare state, Beran lets loose this little jaw dropper:
Liberals portray Justice Thomas as a beneficiary of affirmative action. He is in fact its victim.
For that line alone, Beran deserves to be an inductee into the Kaye Grogan Hall of Fame. Thomas is a victim of affirmative action, you see, because if it hadn’t been for affirmative action he wouldn’t be just a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States but probably a member of the Holy Trinity, hell, maybe even the Holy Trinity itself, ruling the universe, forgiving sins and casting errant liberals into the fiery lakes of Hell.
Thomas rose from a poverty all but incomprehensible to most Americans today. He studied for the priesthood, went to college at Holy Cross and law school at Yale, and became a distinguished lawyer and jurist. Yet the liberal mandarins have made these triumphs bitter by continually disparaging Thomas as a token appointee.
Just like those liberal mandarins did for Justice Thurgood Marshall. A sad but little known footnote to Supreme Court history is that Justice William O. Douglas used to burst into Justice Marshall’s chambers shouting “Neener, Neener! Token, token!” and then run back laughing to his own chambers as fast as he could.
Though his rebellion against liberal paternalism was punished with what he aptly called a “high-tech lynching,” Thomas is in spirit unbowed. Yet his career remains a poignant reminder of the tragedy that results whenever the country strays from its faith that all men are created equal.
Yes, it is a tragedy. Tenure for life. Chauffeur-driven limos to and from work. An army of clerks to write opinions for you. Nice long naps on the bench. Nice tragedy, if you can get it.
I’ll admit it, I confess! I confess! If Thomas were white, I would have no problem whatsoever with his ridiculous ultraconservative views. Damn you, Beran, for so cleverly finding the racism so deep in my heart I didn’t even know it was there!
Thomas rose from a poverty all but incomprehensible to most Americans today. He studied for the priesthood, went to college at Holy Cross and law school at Yale, and became a distinguished lawyer and jurist.
And all he got was this lousy T-shirt.
please feel free to illustrate this with any of these images, though i think the one most illustrative of such as beran is:
http://www.clampart.com/artists/greenberg/image27.html
that said, i’m having a pity party for my right wing friends in the wingnutosphere. can someone bring the world’s tiniest violin?
When are they going to overturn Roe v. Wade, 4 3/5 to 4?
(Well, he is a strict constitutionalist, isn’t he?)
How could we think that Clarence Thomas was appointed strictly because he was a black Republican? After all Thurgood Marshall hadn’t set the bar very high:
Thurgood Marshall just had 29 victories in front of the Supreme Court as a litigator for the NAACP including the most important civil rights cases of the 20th century, served as a Federal circuit court judge and had no decisions overturned on appeal, and had another 14 victories in front of the Supreme Court as Solicitor General before his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Clearly Mashall hadn’t earned his seat, quite unlike “Coke Can” Clarence
the Sadly, No! Editorial Board must have ate it’s Wheaties…y’all have been awesome today.
Actually, I don’t like Clarence Thomas because his writing and reasoning suck, and because he never asks questions of the parties arguing before the Court. At least Scalia acts like he’s awake and has some command of the issues before him. Thomas is simply intellectually lazy, incurious, and totally uninterested in how ideology actually affects individuals.
Sweet! Finally, a wingnut admits in public that affirmative action works!
The problem intelligent people have with Thomas is that he’s not merely a crappy jurist, he’s an unqualified partisan hack who disgraces his office (like most conservatives these days). That and the whole chauvinist pig/sexual harrasser/scumbag thing he’s got going on.
The only “affirmative action” he’s a victim of is Wingnut Affirmative Action. The GOP picked him because he’s black, just so they could try to use the race card against liberals to try to prevent a well-justified Borking.
“…channeled Bobby Kennedy using a Magic Eight Ball and a pinochle deck….
“…if it hadn’t been for affirmative action he wouldn’t be just a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States but probably a member of the Holy Trinity…”
You’re getting very good at this. It’s like Mystery Science Theatre with wingnuts.
Hoosier X–
X-cellently said, sir. Or Madame. Whatever.
Justice Thomas is living proof that there is an upside to being the victim of a “hi-tech-lynching.” Victims of saldyno.com’s caustic mockery can thus take heart. Someday, perhaps, even the Confederate Yankee may find himself being sworn in as a sacred member of the highest court in the land.
Hoosier X is my hero.
He’s no Marie Jon, but he has potential.
Agreed with MrWonderful.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/03/iranian-university-invites-bush-to-speak/ Also, Bush is a chickenshit. But we already knew that.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/03/iranian-university-invites-bush-to-speak/
I would pray that he doesn’t go. If the president of Ferdowsi gives Bush the same business that Ahmedinejad got at Columbia expect the bombing to commence once Bush clears the grounds.
“Bobby Kennedy would have become a Reagan conservative if only he hadn’t been shot.”
And Reagan was a closet Kos-ite.
I love shit like this. All you have to do is imagine that all the fundamental facts are the same, but Clarence’s legal and political worldview is closer to Breyer’s than Alito’s, and then imagine what these very same wingnut pundits would be saying about the liberal black person who took advantage of the rigged game of affirmative action to become the least competent justice in the history of the supreme court.
They have no values, no internal compass, no critical judgement. If they agree with you, they are venerated as saints. If, however, they have the temerity to disagree with your most radical positions, they are the worst kind of traitorous scum.
I wonder if they have some kind of brain disease that actually makes it hurt to think?
mikey
“high tech lynching”. Because sitting in front of a committee answering tough questions is, no doubt, equivalent to being hung from a tree by an angry white mob…
Yes, in much the same way as getting all hot and sweaty blogging about 300 is the same as valiant hand-to-hand combat.
Wingnut equivalencies.
The funny thing is, liberals do sometimes apply the particular form of window dressing affirmative action that is at work here, and are brutalized for it.
It doesn’t just slip by that John Kerry is a war veteran, or that Wesley Clarke is a general, or that John Edwards and Bill Clinton are southerners. I am not saying that these are their only qualifications, but we do notice the chance to fight a perceived weakness.
So why is it ok for conservatives to attack the “authenticity” of a liberal soldier, or a liberal southerner, or a liberal Christian? Isn’t that just as offensive?
No education is complete until it includes people who hate education:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/03/free-poster-with-a-d.html
I’ve done my best work when 8-balls were involved…
I don’t like the man because he can’t even be bothered to ask a question during cases. That, and he doesn’t even believe his own branch of government should be equal to the executive. Not to mention that he seems to outright hate the Bill of Rights, voting to expand government power over the citizens whenever he can.
So why is it ok for conservatives to attack the “authenticity” of a liberal soldier, or a liberal southerner, or a liberal Christian? Isn’t that just as offensive?
You just don’t understand. Conservatives have no real consistent or logical ideology, no way of really inspiring people with authentic heartfelt speeches, no policy successes, nothing that you or I or any other honest, decent person would embrace or find passion for.
So they need their double standards, their inconsistencies, their logical fallacies, their lame rationalizations, their vague and repetitive sophistries, their wedge issues and their insipid triumphalism.
Without them, they have nothing.
Imagine how much less exciting debate would be if they acknowledged the flimsy nature of their rhetoric and just gave up at the beginning of every debate?
You wouldn’t want that, would you?
Imagine how much less exciting debate would be if they acknowledged the flimsy nature of their rhetoric and just gave up at the beginning of every debate?
You wouldn’t want that, would you?
Yes, please. And failing that, an honest fourth estate that called them on their b.s., like they are supposed to.
P.S. Put the whine in the coconut.
O yes I would!
I so loathe these people that I’ll settle for any legal means of removing them from power. Unlike the wingnuttosphere, which is currently starting the drumbeat for Lynch a librul” week.
Roy Edroso wrote:
That’s not only a good description of what Sadly, No does, it’s also a good description – at least for me – of what observing American public life has become.
Does anybody remember that piece by Hunter S. Thompson that was in Rolling Stone close to 15 years ago where he talked about meeting Justice Thomas in the desert, just after Thomas had driven his car through a flock of sheep that were in the road? Everybody called him The Judge.
It was pretty damn funny. I don’t know if it ever turned up in one of Hunter’s books or no.
Those sheep were out to get me!!!
Hoosier X:
Would this be it?
RCP:
Yup!
That’s it.
That Rolling Stone piece by HST is the closest The Judge will ever get to greatness. And somehwere, deep in that empty hole where his soul should be, he knows it.
And that is why he is so cranky.
Hey, are you guys gonna say anything about this travesty of an opinion piece by Max Boot where he defends Blackwater?
Part of his argument is that bad things happen in war.
Because, like, he apparently thinks that all the consarned extremist leftists who are against the war have previously missed the hundreds of times this argument was used by conservative commentators trying to find cover in the wake of thier disastrous adventure.
As a weird foreigner with a peculiar love for America, I don’t think you give enough attention to Louis Brandeis. There was a time when the Supreme Court wasn’t a cynical exercise in justificatory wingnutism.
Perhaps I’m naive and don’t understand your situation, but that guy seems like precisely the man you need at a time like this.
Hoosier, the frustrating part about this is that these nutjobs is that, they cheer on for “victory”, yet seem completely unaware that for that to even begin to take hold, the “bad things” need to STOP happening.
It’s like, if you take your car in for an oil change an an emissions inspection, and when you get it back, the windshield is smashed, the driver’s seat is missing, and there’s a dead possum in the trunk, and the mechanic is like, “yeah, well, you have to expect these things to happen, sometimes.”
Leaving aside the obvious rationale for using the word “lynching,” what exactly was “high-tech” about Anita Hill saying, “hey, this guy is a real asshole”?
[…] Louis Brandeis […] Perhaps I’m naive and don’t understand your situation, but that guy seems like precisely the man you need at a time like this.
I’m drunk and I have a shovel!
Does anyone else love the term “liberal Mandarins?” Say what you will about Mike Knox, he can make a crazy turn of phrase
Liberal Mandarin.
Well, duh!
Only an evil liberal would want to pick a fight with Iron Man, who is secretly the hyper-capitalist financier/inventor/businessman/playboy Tony Stark.
Help, I’m being oppressed by affirmative action!
OK, not exactly affirmative action, but people saying that affirmative action is working. Which makes me look bad. Or something.
“what exactly was “high-tech” about Anita Hill saying, “hey, this guy is a real asshole”?”
Because it was conducted via the media instead of the traditional rope and tree.
At least in Thomas’ mind.
Conservatives have no real consistent or logical ideology, no way of really inspiring people with authentic heartfelt speeches, no policy successes, nothing that you or I or any other honest, decent person would embrace or find passion for.
So they need their double standards, their inconsistencies, their logical fallacies, their lame rationalizations, their vague and repetitive sophistries, their wedge issues and their insipid triumphalism.
Without them, they have nothing.
Actually, all that applies to liberals.
New York Times this morning
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
Scathing rebuttal, Mr. Ruppert. Not since the debate over Caesar’s body, or the Lincoln-Douglas debates, or even the very pages of the classic American literary work, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has then been an oratory so great, so profound, so simply unconventional and mold-breaking that it defies all comprehension of lower men. And/or schoolchildren who have not yet mastered the “Rubber v Glue” theorem.
Also, I have heard word that your biological mother is so morbidly obese that she encompass your dwelling when she is relaxing and enjoying restful leisure time. Stupid head.
Shorter Gary: “I would come up with a scathing, insightful put-down of all you libs, but I can’t think of one right now because, well, erm, I’m a witless dumbass. So please apply your own well-written put-downs to yourself. Victory is mine!!1!”
(Does it even matter if it’s real or fake Gary any more? He’s become like kind of a glyph or cypher for “proto-fascist retard”.)
“Liberal Mandarins”? I guess this is a way to make us all Chinese, or something?
Shorter Gary:
“Nuh-uh!”
Shorter Shorter Gary:
Nuh.
Oh, those terrible lynchings, where towns would grab a poor negro and force him to go through a press conference!
Oh, come on folks! Ease up on Gary. He just got fired from his gig writing jokes for Millard Fillmore because he wasn’t being funny enough. Man, that’s gotta be HARD!
So, be nice, and laugh WITH him, not AT him. Give him the confidence he needs to try out for that gag-writing job at Prickly City.
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fallmore would fit in with the drinky-drinky angle.