Comment of the Day: the inelegance of Cliven Bundy’s racism

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the problems with Cliven Bundy’s racism:

The problem with Cliven Bundy isn’t that he is a racist but that he is an oafish racist. He invokes the crudest stereotypes, like cotton picking. This makes white people feel bad. The elegant racist knows how to injure non-white people while never summoning the specter of white guilt. Elegant racism requires plausible deniability, as when Reagan just happened to stumble into the Neshoba County fair and mention state’s rights. Oafish racism leaves no escape hatch, as when Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond’s singularly segregationist candidacy.

Comment of the Christmas: Ron Paul v cats

Amanda Marcotte on why cats are better than Ron Paul (or any Republican candidate really):

Cats get delusional ideas all the time, but what’s nice is that their ambitions are small. Instead of trying to destroy the Fed, they climb trees they can’t get out of. Or, instead of having an irrational fear of black people, they have an irrational fear of vacuum cleaners. Given the choice to vote for Paul or for cats, you should take cats every time.

CotD: The wingnut personality

John Pike pepperspraying Disney characters

Gin & Tacos neatly sums up the existential contradiction inherent in the wingnut personality:

I can’t say it surprised me that people defended the cop. There are always people who will defend the cop. Believe it or not, I was taken aback by just how stupid their arguments were even though such things should not surprise me anymore. Most of all, though, it’s amazing the extent to which these people who believe that government is pure evil will argue that A) the role of the citizen relative to the police is one of absolute, unquestioning obedience, B) the police are to be taken at their word at all times, and C) whatever type and amount of force the police choose to use is inherently right.

It’s the same sort of person who has no problem with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan but who thinks having state obligated health insurance is the thin edge of fascism.

CotD: the benefit of the doubt fallacy

In a Crooked Timber thread on a dumber than usual Russ Douthat column, one commentor calls bullshit on Douthat’s defenders:

It is sweet, though, that virtually every mendacious reactionary hack** given an elevated media platform to spew sophistry all over us lesser folks has a cadre of online defenders. They usually embrace some common themes: suggesting that the blogger in question is engaging in behavior beneath ver by pointing out the latest episode of bullshittery; pulling out scattershot quotations that purport to completely negate the plain reading of everything else in the article; and above all, implicitly or explicity demanding that we evaluate every work sui generis, with no consideration whatsoever of the track record of the author or vis peers. I wonder if someone has made a benefit-of-the-doubt bingo card.

You don’t just see this sort of behaviour in defence of rightwing hacks against their own hackery, but much more dangerously, also is something you see a lot of in the socalled mainstream media. Take the War on Libya for example, which when proposed was quite obviously a clusterfuck waiting to happen for those of us allowed to remember the Wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, but which for some reason few serious commentators were able to discuss in this context.