Sunday, May 30, 2010

Old Atlantic Lighthouse: Obama, Time to Declare War on Oil Well Leaks


[It’s time for a little humor break, amid all the blood, gore, and hate. This excerpt comes from essayist Old Atlantic Lighthouse, who at one point had me laughing out loud.]

Obama, Time to Declare War on Oil Well Leaks
May 28, 2010

Obama has showed his lack of leadership by not declaring war on oil well leaks. The first step in the war on oil well leaks is to search Al Gore at the airport. That would show we were really serious.

But before Obama can declare war on oil leaks, he must first praise the Oil Wells of Peace. Otherwise the war would be divisive. Some might think a war on oil well leaks was a war on oil wells.

This is why it was so important that initially he didn’t stop drilling permits. That is just giving into hate. Just as stopping the oil production at sea would show the same thing. Obama is the Plumber of hate first and of oil well leaks second. So it is written….

A Reader Writes about an Inflammatory T-Shirt He Saw Today in Suburban Plano, Texas


Had gone to Borders Books in Plano this afternoon. Am currently looking for a job so I wanted to research resume writing books.

The store was full of Third World nationals. Most were from India or China. There were only a handful of native born in the store.

I purchased a guide and left the store.

I had not walked more than 10 steps in the parking lot when I encountered a young, South Asian female. She had a pre-schooler with her. She was walking towards the store. She was wearing a T-shirt that said: "Brown Is The New Black."

I shot her a snotty look and continued walking until I reached my car.

This country has problems. Big ones.

[For what should be obvious reasons, my reader wishes to remain anonymous.]

Saturday, May 29, 2010

“Kill the Gringo”; Arizona Reconquista Ethnic Studies = Racist Violence 101

By Nicholas Stix

The back story to HB 2281, the law passed by Arizona state legislators banning Reconquista “ethnic studies” is that the inquiry into “ethnic studies” was provoked by pervasive racist violence that Hispanic kids were committing against white and black kids, and that parents discovered that the “expert,” “Raza [Race] Studies” educators were teaching Hispanic students to kill whites, except that the educators used a term that is the equivalent to “nigger” or “honkey” to describe whites: “gringo.” As in, “Kill the gringo.”

[Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by communist Paulo Freire] is required reading in “Raza Studies” or Mexican-American courses in the high schools in Tucson, Arizona, where students have been protesting Arizona’s new immigration law. Other required books are Occupied America by Rodolfo Acuña, a professor emeritus of Chicano studies at California State University in Northridge (CSUN), and Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist.

Occupied America, the fifth edition, includes an image of Fidel Castro on the front cover, and Castro and Che Guevara on the back cover. It refers to white people as “gringos” and actually includes a quotation on page 323 from Jose Angel Gutierrez of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), who was angry over the cancellation of a government program. He declared:

“We are fed up. We are going to move to do away with the injustice to the Chicano and if the ‘gringo’ doesn’t get out of our way, we will stampede over him.”
The book goes on:

“Gutierrez attacked the gringo establishment angrily at a press conference and called upon Chicanos to ‘Kill the gringo,’ which meant to end white control over Mexicans.”

Reviewing this material for the National Association of Scholars, Ashley Thorne commented that, “Actually, ‘kill the gringo’ meant ‘kill the gringo.’ But admitting that makes Mexicans look radical, infuriated, revolutionary, Acuña sidestepped that image and substituted it with one of browbeaten Latinos rising to overthrow injustice.”

The Arizona citizens upset about this kind of material said that they initiated an investigation into the problem back in 2007 and found it difficult to get access to the books. One activist said the concern began when parents came to be aware of violence in the schools directed against white and black children. “This investigation was undertaken to find the roots of this hate,” she told me. Another person, in turn, “told me the books in their Mexican-American classes are kept under ‘lock and key’ and the kids can’t even take them home. She said she asked to see them but they were very secretive about them and she was prohibited.”

However, the citizen activists persisted, demanding access to the books under a state open records law. The courses, after all, are taxpayer-funded. Eventually, a list of books was produced, and a controversy ensued.


“Arizona Ethnic Studies Exposed,” by Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, May 24, 2010.

Ashley Thorne writes of La Raza [The Race] studies,

This revolutionary fervor is even more pronounced in Occupied America, which tells the story of the Southwestern United States from the perspective of Mexican Americans and has been called “the Chicano bible.” The book is sympathetic to Mexico in a reference to the battle at the Alamo….

In another place, Acuña wrote:
Gutiérrez attacked the gringo establishment angrily at a press conference and called upon Chicanos to ‘kill the gringo,’ which meant to end white control over Mexicans.

Actually, “kill the gringo” means “kill the gringo.” Jose Angel Gutiérrez, who is referenced here, is the co-founder of the Raza Unida Party, a U.S. political third party. At a 1995 conference Gutiérrez declared, “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.” Today Gutiérrez is a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington.

The Raza studies program housed its revolutionary aims in terms of “transformation” and social justice.” Among its goals were to “Advocate for and provide curriculum that is centered within the pursuit of social justice,” “Work towards the invoking of a critical consciousness within each and every student,” and “Promote and advocate for social and educational transformation.”

While such aims and books do not explicitly call for the overthrow of the U.S. government, they do seek to stir up in students a racial consciousness that perceives white Americans as the enemy and oppressor. Freire invites minority students to identify themselves as victims and to fight back [read: violently assault whites]. Acuña invokes an America where ‘gringos’ are power-thirsty imperialists whom Chicanos must overthrow.


“Arizona Ends Divisive Chicano Studies in Schools” by Ashley Thorne, The National Association of Scholars, May 13, 2010.

“Transformation”=“Kill the gringo.”

“Social justice”=“Kill the gringo.”

Any questions?

The MSM routinely refuse to report the pervasive racist violence in “diverse” schools. And when they do, they refuse to report on the role of “diverse,” diversity-promoting “educators,” for whom promoting diversity is inseparable from promoting anti-white violence.

Whenever an educator says “I celebrate diversity,” he is really saying, “I celebrate racist violence.”

For more on the true face of educational diversity, I suggest that readers peruse my chapter on education: “Pseudo-Pedagogy, Real Hatred,” in NPI report, The State of White America-2007, which I edited and co-wrote with economist and VDARE.com contributor Edwin P. Rubenstein and historian Robert J. Stove.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Mets Complete Shutout Sweep of Phillies for First Time in 41 Years!

By Nicholas Stix

Mets closer Frankie Rodriguez just struck out Phillies slugger Jason Werth to close out a 3-0 win, for a shutout sweep of their bitter division rivals, following 8-0 and 5-0 victories on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

It was the first time since 2004 (the Twins over the Royals) that one team had swept another via shutouts, and the first time that the Mets had done so since September 26-28, 1969. The previous shutout sweep was also against the Phillies, but this is a much better Phillies team.

The Mets had started the series in last place in the National League East Division, and ended it 25-23, tied for second place with the Atlanta Braves, just two games behind the 26-20, first-place Phillies. Mike Pelfrey (7-1) got the win; Cole Hamels (5-3) got the loss; Frankie Rodriguez earned his ninth save in 11 chances. The win was the Mets’ fifth in a row.

P.S. The guys at SNY later said that the last time the Mets had previously pulled off a shutout sweep had been in 1988, with Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, and Bobby Ojeda pitching. I didn’t catch who the opposing team was.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Mets Stretch Scoreless Streak Against Phillies to 26

By Nicholas Stix

Lefty Mets reliever Pedro Feliciano used to be a one-hitter specialist. No more. Feliciano pitched the whole eighth inning for the Mets tonight, and with Igarashi warming up, just in case, Feliciano ended the inning in style, by catching right-handed-hitting Placido Polanco looking on a backdoor slider.

In the bottom of the eighth at Citifield, the Mets are still hanging on to a three-run lead.

Mets Go Ahead 3-0 in 7th, Knock Hamels Out of Game

By Nicholas Stix

With one out, and aided by a double-play grounder that Phillies third baseman Placido Polanco booted, Mets leadoff man Jose Reyes hit an inside cut fastball into the left field corner for a double, knocking in Henry Blanco and pinch-hitter Fernando Tatis. Phillies manager Charlie Manuel then yanked Cole Hamels, and replaced him with Chad Durban.

Jason Bay just got looking, and there are now two outs in the seventh. Charlie Manuel is now bringing in the lefthander, Bastardo (hey, that's his name), to pitch to the lefty-hitting Davis. Never mind that Davis beats lefties like a drum, at least when Andy Fletcher isn't behind the disk.

Mets pitchers have thrown 25 striaght scoreless innings and counting against the Phillies.

What Does Andy Fletcher Have Against Ike Davis?

By Nicholas Stix

Well, it’s official. Ump Andy Fletcher is not a Mets fan.

Fletcher, who is calling balls and strikes in the Mets-Phillies game in progress, has been tampering with the game. That’s good news, if you’re a Phils’ fan, but not so good for Mets fans.

In the first inning, Fletcher punched Mets rookie Ike Davis out on a Cole Hamels pitch that was at least two inches outside.

In the third inning, on a 1-1 count with Davis up and two men on base, Fletcher called a strike on a Hamels pitch that was at least six inches outside. And on the next pitch, which according to Mets announcer Keith Hernandez, was in the same spot, Fletcher twitched, before calling it a ball, as if he had been about to call strike three, but decided to do Davis “a favor.” Because of Fletcher’s mischief, Davis, who (unlike Fletcher) has a very good sense of the strike zone, felt forced to make a defensive swing on a ball, and made an out. (I think he grounded out.)

Keith Hernandez said that that was the sort of thing that umps did “thirty years ago” to rookies, to see if they’d snap. In 1980 or earlier.

In the top of sixth, on a 2-0 count on the Phillies’ Chase Utley, Mets starter Mike Pelfrey threw a thigh-high fastball right over the middle of the plate—if that isn’t a strike, what is?—yet Fletcher called it a ball. One of the Mets announcers said, “If that’s Davis, it’s a strike,” and of Pelfrey, “He’s hot.” Mets skipper Jerry Manuel shouted something from the dugout to Fletcher, which one of the announcers said, “That’s probably, ‘Call ‘em both ways!’”

Due to Fletcher’s squeezing him, Pelfrey (like Davis) then felt forced to serve up a ball right down the middle of the plate to Utley, which usually means a home run to right field. However, Utley is in a terrible slump, and flied out.

In the bottom of the inning with one out, Davis didn’t wait around for Fletcher to cheat him, and hit a fastball on Hamel’s first pitch to right field for a single.

And so, in the top of the eighth, after seven scoreless innings by Mike Pelfrey, and on the strength of a first-inning, run-scoring double by Jason Bay, the Mets are winning, 1-0… no thanks to Andy Fletcher.

Report From Occupied America: Free The Mizzou Two!

 
The Mizzou Two Desperados: Sean D. Fitzgerald and Zachary E. Tucker

By Nicholas Stix

[My VDARE exclusive frontpager on the “Mizzou Two” case was just published: “Report from Occupied America: Free the Mizzou Two!” (That’s VDARE’s front page link, which is only good for about 24 hours; thereafter, hit this permalink.) The article's opening follows.]

On April 29, the dangerous Mizzou Two—white ROTC students at University of Missouri Columbia ("Mizzou"), freshman Sean D. Fitzgerald, 19, and senior Zachary E. Tucker, 21—pleaded guilty to littering. They were sentenced to two years of probation, 80 hours of community service, and had to surrender their drivers’ licenses for 60 days.

The foregoing were not typos.

On February 26, numerous cotton balls were found strewn on the ground outside Mizzou’s Black Culture Center. Fitzgerald and Tucker were arrested on felony "tampering" charges. That, too, is not a typo.

"University police say it's too early to say if the incident qualifies as a hate crime, but say they’re looking at surveillance video to find more clues," is also not a typo. [“Mizzou discusses racist display on campus,” KRCG (CBS) 13, March 2, 2010.]

The Cotton Balls of Hate


In a statement to the press, University of Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton denounced the atrocity as "a disheartening and inexcusable act."

"Those guilty of this despicable action have not yet been identified, but MUPD became involved immediately and is conducting an investigation. This university is fully committed to tolerance and respect for every one of its members, and this kind of conduct will not be tolerated at MU."

[This is not a satire. Read the rest here.]

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Auster on “Obama’s” Expression of a Black Despot: Wrong Pic, Right Judgment?

By Nicholas Stix

In “Obama’s True Self?,” Lawrence Auster writes, “Obama is half white, and grew up among whites, but he has a facial expression never seen before in a U.S. president: the classic facial expression of the black despot:”

Auster then re-publishes the following picture, which he believes supports his claim.



Larry Auster is a brilliant man, but like most sluggers in baseball, this intellectual slugger hits a lot of home runs, but also strikes out a lot. A particular “hole in his swing” is his tendency to over-interpret photographic portraits. E.g., see his analysis of a publicity picture of a young Sophia Loren.



If you want a photographic portrait that expresses the beliefs of the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama”, the one you want to use follows:



In the above picture, “Obama” is imitating the preachers of the racially genocidal Nation of Islam, whom he had clearly studied during his many years in Chicago. All that’s missing is the bowtie. However, considering that “Obama” is an over 20-year-long devotee of genocidally racist Black Liberation Theology, his status as a black despot is a given, and requires no interpretations of photographs.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

ICE Director John Morton: ICE Will Conspire to Obstruct Justice, in Order to Subvert Arizona’s SB 1070

By Nicholas Stix

ICE Panel on Fox News, on Arizona’s SB 1070



I have only one serious beef with this presentation: Neither moderator Brett Baier nor any of the panelists noted that SB 1070 is simply a watered-down version of federal law which has been on the books for 70 years. Thus, the poll Baier read, stating that 84 percent of the public supports a law that would require that immigrants carry identification showing that they are in the country legally at all time, is imbecilic, since the law already exists. Either Baier or one of the panelists should have pointed that out… if he knew.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

KNS Reporter Jamie Satterfield to Discuss Vanessa Coleman Knoxville Horror Trial 2 PM today on KNOX Talk Radio

 
Vanessa Coleman


By Nicholas Stix

Yesterday my reader-researcher, David in Tennessee, passed along the following note, which should be of interest to anyone who has been following the Knoxville Horror saga:

Knox News Sentinel reporter Jamie Satterfield will be on WNOX radio on Sunday at 2 PM ET. She will be taking questions on the Coleman trial. This station streams on the internet.

Hit this link for the Internet hook-up.

P.S. Call 656-8255, or toll-free 1-800-951-8255

Here is what David wrote on May 8:

"I've had one hell of an adventure"
I got back from Knoxville a few hours ago. I saw 3 hours of trial on Wednesday and all day Thursday and Friday. Here is an account from the Knoxville ABC station. The video shows the entry. Coleman wrote [in her journal],

"I've had one hell of an adventure in the big TN," and "Ha Ha."

[NS: Coleman’s “adventure in the big TN” consisted, in its entirety, of her participation in the gang rape, torture, and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. So much for Coleman, her attorneys,’ and her family’s disgusting contention that she was a prisoner, and as much a victim as Channon Christian.]

We in the courtroom audience felt it blew apart the defense that Theodore Lavitt had put up through cross examination the last two days. Lavitt made only a brief cross on the journal even though he knew of it for months. He looked beaten to me, though I suppose he'll think of something over the weekend. The jury, which by previous questions, seems to have some pro-defense jurors, asked no questions, perhaps out of shock. Being there in person, I could see the jury. I've read that most juries are half of what each side wants. This jury certainly looked half and half to me.

The last 3 days I saw and heard a lot.

Ultimately, the jury ignored the case that the tenacious, brilliant black lead prosecutor Takisha Fitzgerald and her competent, white co-prosecutor, Leland Price had put together, and acquitted Coleman of first-degree murder, and convicted her only of the lesser charges of “facilitating the first degree murder, kidnapping, rape and theft of Channon Christian.”

Coleman was the first and only one of the four KH murder defendants to be acquitted of murder. Previously, her boyfriend, Letalvis Cobbins, was convicted on all major charges and sentenced to life without parole, as was George Thomas, while Cobbins’ half-brother and the gang’s ringleader, Lemaricus Davidson, was sentenced to death.
Coleman will likely get a negligible sentence.

Hit this link for a tally of the cases so far.

When do you ever hear of a black female criminal getting her just deserts?

Victims' families upset by verdict

Chris Newsom's mother, Mary, said she felt the jury didn't pay any attention to criminal responsibility or the evidence presented by the prosecution in this case.
Hugh Newsom, Chris' father, said Coleman needs to spend a lot more time than her possible prison sentence. He also said he felt the jury had a "vendetta" not to give Coleman the maximum sentences.

The Newsoms said they'll never have any closure or any peace.

"We've never had a good outcome with a jury from Nashville. We don't have any place to go. We've been cheated," Hugh Newsom said. He added that he felt the jurors were "incompetent."

Mary Newsom said when Coleman smiled after the verdicts, she looked like "she got away with something."

Channon Christian's mother, Deena, said she thought the verdicts showed, "It's easy to get away with murder in Nashville," but she admitted she was "shocked" by the decision.

Gary Christian, Channon's father, said the verdicts were "a joke."

When asked if they thought the jurors being from Davidson County instead of Knox County got Coleman convicted on lesser charges, Deena said, "I agree wholeheartedly.
They didn't care."


Coleman acquitted on 1st degree murder, convicted on lesser charges, WATE, Updated: May 14, 2010 9:41 AM EDT.

Jamie Satterfield is the only journalist who has written more on the Knoxville Horror than I have. She leans liberal, though she is not quite as shameless as her boss, Jack McElroy, who is completely dishonest, and in spite of occasional talking points eruptions, she is a legitimate reporter. She was also helpful to me in the early going.

If you can reach the station (I don’t have the number, but they will hopefully be providing a toll-free number), you’ll want to ask Satterfield what, besides racism, could have motivated jurors to refuse to convict Coleman of Channon Christian’s murder. If you do ask her that, be prepared for her to counter, “But the white jurors voted to acquit her of murder, as well.”

If she says that or something like it, and you can get in another comment, nudge her on what she heard about the jury deliberations. My hunch is that the four black jurors held out for a deal, whereby the entire jury would convict Coleman only on the minor charges, or the blacks would hang the jury on all the charges.

The Vanessa Coleman Trial: Day 1

The Knoxville Horror
David in Tennessee’s Vanessa Coleman Trial Journal, Part XII
5/3/2010 7:06:24 P.M. EDT

Today the defense attorney, Ted Lavitt, said that Vanessa Coleman was a victim. She was held against her will, just like Channon Christian.

The trials have gone like this: Cobbins blamed Davidson. Davidson blamed Cobbins. Thomas admitted to being present but saw and heard nothing. Now, Coleman was being threatened with death.

It seems everybody was afraid of everybody else.

[N.S., 5/15/10: What did Freud say? “We are all victims of victims”?]

Is a Tax Strike the Solution to Obamism?

By Nicholas Stix

Often, contemplating the current regime’s machinations and plans gets me feeling down and out. What can you do? Criticizing the John Doe calling himself Barack Obama and his politics can get you called a “racist,” fired from your job, arrested, and worse. Is resistance futile?

And then, of all places, in the New York Times, I found a very practical suggestion. The poster, “Dr. Paul,” clearly a Ron Pal supporter, was commenting on one of the Times’ lie-filled editorials on Arizona’s SB 1070.

187.
DrPaul
Los Angeles
April 30th, 2010
5:00 pm

The NYT, Democrats in general, and other open borders extremists tell us that it's impossible for us to deport 12 million or more illegals. That our legal system cannot handle that size task. So, we're told, accept open borders and learn to live with it. Well, perhaps American citizens can take advantage of the 'too big illegality to stop' by engaging in massive tax protest. What if 100 million or so American citizens declare 10, 30, or even 100 dependents on their tax forms, whatever is necessary to cause zero dollars to be withheld each month from their salaries. This would remove so much money from the Federal Government, it would shake it to its core, just like illegal immigration is shaking America to its core. But of course, just like the 'too many to deport' meme, the tax refusers would be 'too many to prosecute', right? America is rapidly approaching the point where ordinary Americans are going to refuse to cooperate with a system that lavishes rights on everybody but the law abiding.

Now, I do not recommend to anyone that he break the law, but … given that the suggestion is already on the table… let us ponder it.

I think that the commenter’s suggestion is impractical, in that listing so many dependents would cause the revenuers to come kicking his door down, but that listing between five and nine dependents would be less likely to draw a response.

But at the end of the year, he who wishes to engage in civil disobedience (two can play that game!) via the IRS can just go to one of the many “creative” tax preparers that exist in every neighborhood, and those guys’ll fix you right up, so that you can go from owing thousands of dollars in federal, state, and local taxes to paying no taxes, or even getting a few thousand in refunds.

(Yes, I realize that this would help my class enemies.)

The Boss used to tell me how her West Indian and Filipino girlfriends at work were all getting back much more money each year than us, in spite of the fact that they were all in a higher tax bracket. So, I went to one of those guys, who set me up so sweetly, that when The Boss saw the results, she made me go back and pay him to re-do our taxes, so that we didn’t come out quite so well! She was afraid that the IRS would make inquiries, and she’d end up deported!

Either her girlfriends were exaggerating about their tax refunds, or they and their husbands were likely filing individual returns, and each naming their kids as dependents, as well as listing all of their household expenses and deductions (e.g., the mortgage interest tax deduction, etc.) twice.

(Unrelated to taxes but also of interest to students of diversity, although none of The Boss’ West Indian and Filipino girlfriends qualify for free school breakfasts and lunches, they all lie about their income, so that their kids get them.)

To paraphrase Justice Jackson, citizenship is not a suicide pact.

Friday, May 21, 2010

A Savage Pack Beating in Rockville, Maryland: An Exchange with Nivius Vir



The great crime blogger, Nivius Vir, posted the above video yesterday. We then had the following exchange at his blog.

Stix: What do you make of the vic, Niv? White non-Hisp, white Hisp, non-white Hisp?

And how about the pc Hispanic guy interviewed who, instead of expressing shock and indignation, like a healthy human being, insists that the place is wonderful. It takes a certain level of education, to be so full of shit, and in that particular style.

Finally, note that the vic didn’t even bother calling the cops. Is that because he’s an illegal, or because he figures the cops are worthless? Last year, in small towns that had had thousands of African refugees dumped on them, and the Africans were targeting whites for beatdowns and robberies, and filming their own crimes, when police got their hands on the video phones, none of the whites had reported the crimes.

To make a short story long, I think that, in addition to the police tactic of “disappearing” crime, whites all over the country, including in formerly crime-free small towns, have given up on the police, as well as their fellow whites, to protect them, and as a result, the massive, nationwide violent crime problem simply bears no relation to the fictional stats we are constantly getting from the Bill Bratton types.

[See my VDARE report, “‘Disappearing’ Urban Crime,” for the deal on the phony “crime-fighting revolution” introduced by Bratton and his ilk.]

Nivius Vir’s response:

Nicholas, this was well put, “It takes a certain level of education, to be so full of shit, and in that particular style.”, along with the rest of your comment.

I myself was trying to determine the identity of the victim as well. I also surmised he might have been Hispanic (possibly illegal) and thus did not contact the police.
What truly makes me shudder, is that as you well know, we are only seeing a glimpse of the real horror show that is playing out daily, on American streets.

I feel you are right about the loss of faith in law enforcement.

I have a great respect for good police officers that try to serve and protect, but I feel they are in many cases, the ones that have been handcuffed: they are being told to pay less or no attention to the habitual criminal behavior of the absurdly disproportionate number of Negros responsible for it.

Racial sensitivity classes will not protect the lives of decent people.

Thanks for the thoughts.


* * *


For anyone who is a student of crime, Nivius Vir is an indispensable blog, whose publisher constantly updates it. I should visit it daily, as a professional necessity, but must confess that some days the casualty list just gets to be too much for me, and I need to escape with a Hollywood classic. (I was initially going to add, “or a ballgame,” but the way my beloved Mets have been playing of late, I expect indictments from Queens DA Richard Brown any day now.)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Banality of Bias: AP Reporter Injects Anti-White Racism, Corruption, into Miss. Election Story

By Nicholas Stix
February 9, 2004

During 2003, the seemingly constant journalistic scandals at the New York Times caused reporters and editors who were busy corrupting the news at less notorious outlets to be overlooked. And in addition to the Jayson Blair scandal (here, here, and here), there were the newspaper of record’s l’affaires Rick Bragg, Lynette Holloway and Maureen Dowd; the resuscitation of the Sally Hemings Hoax; the matter of the non-existent terrorist attack in Iraq reported by “Pfc. Jose Belen”; the newspaper’s postmortem castration of photographer Marvin Smith; its premature burial of dancer Katharine Sergava; and editorialist and Jefferson-hoaxer Brent Staples’ baseless smear, claiming that Strom Thurmond had raped Carrie Butler, the black mother of Thurmond’s biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams.

In the face of such a deluge of localized corruption, Associated Press reporter Shelia Hardwell Byrd was a casualty—a diligent yet neglected racial propagandist.

Byrd would surely be outraged to be called a racist. After all, “racists” are people who oppress black folks; Byrd does whatever she can to help black folks … and hurt whites. According to the current journalistic dispensation, you couldn’t possibly call her a “racist” for that!

Byrd opened her November 5 story, “Race Seen as Factor in Miss. Elections,” by emphasizing the importance to her of race in the just-concluded, Mississippi state elections, focusing on the lieutenant governor and treasurer’s races:

They had all the ingredients to become Mississippi’s first black politicians elected to a statewide office since Reconstruction: strong resumes, party backing and money to lure voters.

But in the next sentence/paragraph, Byrd acted as if she had done nothing of the sort, when she suggested that white racism cost Barbara Blackmon and Gary Anderson the election:

But state Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a lieutenant governor candidate, and Gary Anderson, a candidate for state treasurer, both lost Tuesday, and some observers say their skin color was at least part of the reason.

Byrd clearly thought that Blackmon and Anderson’s skin color should have gotten them elected; why else celebrate their chances as black politicians?

And yet, somehow I doubt that, had they won, Byrd would have written, “State Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a lieutenant governor candidate, and Gary Anderson, a candidate for state treasurer, both won Tuesday, and some observers say their skin color was at least part of the reason.”

Byrd is “passing.” She is an editorialist who calls herself a reporter.

And like most mainstream, socialist editorialists who pass as news reporters, Byrd takes for granted that it is righteous for black voters to be as racist as they wanna be, in voting for candidates based on the color of their skin, but suggests that whites who refuse to support black racism are automatically guilty of racism. If Byrd had any sense of logic or moral (not to mention, journalistic) integrity, she would realize that if it is not racist for black voters to support black candidates based on the color of the candidates’ skin, then it also cannot be racist for white voters to support white candidates for the same reason.

(For an example of an “out” editorialist writing on the same topic, see Paul Krugman’s rant, “[Confederate] Flags Versus Dollars,” in the November 7 New York Times. Krugman, whose columns are a running digest of Democratic National Committee talking points, argues that since Democrat candidates are more supportive of welfare programs, poor and working-class white Southerners are so stupid and racist, that they vote against their own pocketbooks, when they pull the level for Republican candidates.)

The rest of Byrd’s disguised editorial race-baited Mississippi Republican politicians and voters, while burying one GOP leader’s defense against the race-baiting in a quickie sentence, to give Byrd cover against charges of one-sidedness. She repeatedly quoted race-baiting, Mississippi Democratic Party chairman Rickey Cole.

Rickey Cole, chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, said the GOP’s tactics in this election season hearkened back to “Nixon’s Southern Republican strategy to make subtle winks and nods to white racism in the South.”

You’d never know, to read Byrd, that anti-white race-baiting has been a staple of Democrat politics since the 1960s.

In following the Democrat party line, Byrd used the NAACP-inspired racial code of invoking Republican Governor-elect Haley Barbour’s support of the Mississippi state flag, which includes the Confederate battle flag, to tar Barbour and his supporters as racists.

To give herself the appearance of serious, scholarly support, Byrd quoted Leslie B. McLemore, a political science professor at Jackson State University, who mouthed the Democrat/NAACP line: According to Byrd, McLemore said,

“[T]here is no excuse for this to happen in 2003.” He said Tuck and Barbour used race in a blatant manner.

But there’s a story within the story. Byrd failed to note that McLemore is a professor at a racist institution. Jackson State University is a publicly funded, black, excuse me, “historically black” university, whose students are taught “A knowledge and recognition of the value of both one’s own ethnic and cultural heritage and of the similarities and difference inherent in a multi-cultural society.” Translated into English, Jackson State students are taught to value blackness. In English, that’s called publicly subsidized, institutionalized, educational racism.

Founded in 1877 as the private Natchez Seminary, the since renamed Jackson College was taken over by the State of Mississippi during Jim Crow, in 1950, and in 1956 renamed Jackson State College. In 1974, the school was elevated to university status. And “In 1979, Jackson State was officially designated the Urban University of the State of Mississippi,” a euphemism for “the pre-eminent black university in the State of Mississippi.”

According to the school’s latest data, Jackson State’s student body is 95.3 percent black (7296 out of 7655 students whose race could be determined; the race/ethnicity of 128 “aliens” is not provided by the school). Jackson State was founded, as part of Southern segregation, as a racially segregated, black institution. And yet, to borrow from Leslie B. McLemore, with the destruction of white-imposed segregation, there is no excuse for this to happen in 2004.

Jackson State is one of some 120 “historic black colleges and universities” (HBCUs). Every one of them receives federal funds, and every one of them engages in racial discrimination in its hiring decisions, which means that every one of them is in violation of Title VI, which bars any institution receiving federal funds from engaging in any form of racial discrimination. Unless private HBCUs are willing to forfeit federal funding, there is no legal excuse for this to happen in 2004.

Note that although only 3 per cent of American Ph.D.s are black, Jackson State’s faculty is 64.3 per cent black (218 out of 339 faculty members, according to the school’s latest figures). It is impossible for an American university to have a minority white faculty, without engaging in egregious racial discrimination in hiring decisions. Were Jackson State a segregated, white institution, teaching the value of whiteness, and discriminating against white job applicants, the feds would cite it for violating the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, and either shut it down, or forcibly integrate it, and would certainly remove JSU officials and language promoting white supremacy. The rules cannot be different, because in Jackson State’s case, the segregation is imposed and supported by blacks such as Leslie B. McLemore.

And there is yet another layer to the story that Shelia Hardwell Byrd refused to tell. Byrd failed to report that Leslie B. McLemore is a local politician who has lived off the race card, who is currently a Democrat Jackson city councilman, and whose term does not expire until June 30, 2005.

Now, most universities have conflict-of-interest rules which prohibit one from serving as a professor, at the same time that one is serving as an elected official. (Since the man teaches political science, he must talk about politics all the time. But since he is a Democrat politician, his teachings are virtually guaranteed to be corrupted by his party loyalty. And the commingling of roles as his students’ teacher and some of their councilman is also rife with conflicts of interest.)

Regardless of how the rules may be at Jackson State University, Shelia Hardwell Byrd, whose beat is Jackson politics, knew that she was committing an unpardonable journalistic sin, by not citing McLemore’s office in quoting him. But then, had she done so, it would have blown McLemore’s credibility out of the water. Readers would have seen that, far from being a disinterested scholar (if you’ll pardon the anachronism), McLemore was merely a politician, speaking on behalf of his party.

Oddly enough, in Byrd’s spinning of the defeats of Blackmon and Anderson, she contradicted her own pre-election appraisal of the candidates’ chances of winning.

On August 29, in “Black woman seeks statewide office in Miss.,” Byrd wrote of Blackmon, “To succeed, the Democrat will have to energize black voters—blacks make up 37 of Mississippi’s population—and win substantial white support Nov. 4, when she faces Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck.”

In contrast, on November 5, Byrd flipped the script, in reversing her earlier appraisal: “The two candidates lost despite the fact that Mississippi has a black population of nearly 37 percent and nearly 900 black elected officials on the county and local levels.” (Byrd neglected to tell her readers that she was contradicting her earlier analysis.) If black voters were in need of being energized to vote for black candidates, whites cannot be blamed for black voters’ refusal to “vote black.” You’ve heard of 20-20 hindsight; Shelia Hardwell Byrd would have you believe that she suffers from retrospective blindness.

And so, Shelia Hardwell Byrd: 1. Ignored a huge story on her own, Jackson beat—the institutionalized racism that has created power bases for the likes of Leslie B. McLemore, and which McLemore uses to racially harass whites; 2. Misrepresented McLemore; 3. And rather than tell the story of institutionalized, black racism on her beat, chose to write a stealth editorial on a non-story (white racism, for which she had no evidence), which she used to perpetuate anti-white racism.

As egregious as Shelia Hardwell Byrd’s racism is, it is also so common as to be banal. As exposes such as William McGowan’s Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism have shown, Byrd’s brand of racism thrives in every major print and network TV newsroom in America.

But the fact that such racism is pervasive does not excuse it, anymore than anti-black racism in the Jim Crow South was excused by its pervasiveness.

Before Jayson Blair: Race, Corruption, and the New York Times

By Nicholas Stix
 

Send in the Clowns

The Jayson Blair story is over. As New York cops might say to crime-scene spectators, ‘Move along, there’s nothing to see.’ I know this, because Times columnist Frank Rich told me so.

On June 15 (six-and-a-half weeks after Blair’s resignation), in an essay entitled “15 Minutes Became 5 Weeks,” Rich described the Blair scandal as a “mediathon,” not unlike the coverage of Martha Stewart, for whom Rich suddenly had great sympathy. Rich defined a mediathon as "a relentless hybrid of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism we have come to think of as All Calamity All the Time." The implications were clear: The coverage of the greatest scandal in the history of the nation’s most powerful newspaper, was itself a trashy, Jerry Springer-style, media-engineered spectacle, born of envy, and serving a titillation-addicted mob. The mediathon washed over the Times like the social equivalent of a storm that, having passed, would now move on to some new, luckless target.

Thus does a writer at what is arguably the most corrupt newspaper in America, have the unmitigated gall to use the phrase “tabloid journalism,” as if he were in a morally superior position to say, The National Enquirer.

In Rich’s desire to bury the Blair story and the bigger story of the systemic political corruption that made a Jayson Blair possible, he buried his lede, not even obliquely mentioning the scandal until the 38th line, not citing Blair until the 50th line, and barely touching on the scandal thereafter. Rich credited the story only with carrying “a whiff of race.” And so, when he cited “internal newsroom failings that allowed [Blair] to thrive,” and acknowledged that Blair’s “transgressions exposed festering issues throughout the newsroom,” he was most certainly not referring to black racial privilege – but would not specify to what he was referring. (The Times’ cover story was that deposed Executive Editor Howell Raines had a “star system.”)

As if to underscore his own obtuseness, Rich took a cheap shot at Rupert Murdoch’s mild, neocon media properties: “Much of that coverage was accurate, fair and balanced (except, predictably, from the Murdoch empire).”

But Rich gave no examples of unfair coverage from Fox’ cable or broadcast stations, or from the New York Post or the Weekly Standard. Such are the standards, or lack thereof, at the so-called newspaper of record.

But it wasn’t just the Times that wanted the story to go away. Much of the mainstream media, which slavishly follows the Times’ lead in matters of “diversity,” engaged in damage control on behalf of their presumed rival, denigrating or denying outright the role of race in the Blair scandal. Indeed, what I saw on Fox was no better, with carefully balanced panels (including socialists such as American University journalism professor Ann Hall) tiptoeing around the 800-pound gorilla in the living room. (Hall noted that her students take discredited “documentary” film maker Michael Moore’s statements as gospel.)

As Rich made abundantly clear, folks at the Times have no shame. In an age in which the guilty routinely blame their predicament on “the media,” even the media now blame the media, when they get caught in flagrante. But it was recently deposed Times Executive Editor Howell Raines himself, who imposed the practice of “flooding the zone” of a hot story with relentless coverage. As is typical of the powerful and corrupt, the rule at the Times is, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ (E.g., Times editors’ penchant for stealing story ideas from freelancers, and passing them along to staff writers.) And it was the same Howell Raines, who at a closed-door, May 14 meeting of all reporting staff (excepting media reporter Jacques Steinberg), admitted that Jayson Blair got so many chances, due to the color of his skin.
 

People Who Won’t Take "Yes" for an Answer

No journalist denied the race angle more aggressively than one of the Times’ own relentless race-baiters, columnist Bob Herbert. Five days AFTER Raines confessed to the scandal’s racial basis, the black Herbert took the offensive.

"Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting.

"But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story …

"And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks.

"There's a real shortage of black reporters, editors and columnists at The Times. But the few who are here are doing fine and serious work day in and day out and don't deserve to be stigmatized by people who can see them only through the prism of a stereotype.

"The problem with American newsrooms is too little diversity, not too much. Blacks have always faced discrimination and maddening double standards in the newsroom, and they continue to do so. So do women, Latinos and many other groups that are not part of the traditional newsroom in-crowd. [In other words, you’d better see ALL those groups “through the prism of a stereotype” – or else!]

"So let's be real. Discrimination in the newsroom - in hiring, in the quality of assignments and in promotions - is a much more pervasive problem than Jayson Blair's aberrant behavior….

"And the correct response is not to grow fainthearted, or to internalize the views of those who wish you ill. The correct response is to strike back - as hard and as often as it takes."

For Herbert, criticism of incompetent blacks who were hired based on the color of their skin, is “proof” that the critic is a white supremacist (or a non-white Uncle Tom), and should properly be addressed by even more aggressive race-baiting. (On May 21, the Times broke with its usual policy of protecting affirmative action hires and leftist columnists from unflattering letters to the editor. It published a brief letter responding to Herbert, by quoting Raines’ admission that race was the cause of the scandal. However, when the Times’ editors later archived the Blair scandal, including links to letters to the editor, they declined to link to said letter.)

Note that Herbert is following the modus operandi established by race hustlers in one hoax after another: Once it has been determined that the black “victim” was in fact a perpetrator, the race-mongers who made the original extortionary demands (jobs, cash payoffs, political advantages, etc.) purportedly as compensation for a racial offense, shamelessly repeat the same demands! (See my 3 June column for a discussion of the, ahem, “journalism” of Bob Herbert.)

 
Censoring the News

Those of us who are journalists, or who follow the media with the requisite jaundiced eye, were shocked, but not surprised, by the Blair case. The Times had for years been hiring racist hacks based solely on the color of their skin, and permitting them to pervert news coverage. It was just a matter of time, before a scandal would break out.

The most systematic chronicle of affirmative action’s racist consequences for news coverage in general, and specifically at the Times, was provided in 2001 by William McGowan’s book, Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.

McGowan cited Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who "has repeatedly stressed that diversity is 'the single most important issue' facing his paper.” Not truth, but “diversity.” But then, what do you expect from a man who, during the War in Vietnam, cheered on the communist North Vietnamese to kill American G.I.s?

The Times’ editors responded to Coloring the News, by attempting to kill it with silence. They refused to review (as a critic recently noted, when the Times’ editors want a book to succeed, they will assign as many as three separate reviewers to write on it – one for the Sunday book section, and two more for different weekday editions) or even mention the book.

Under Sulzberger, who in 1992 took over the newspaper from his father, the daily, which had always leaned left – at its nadir letting Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty cover up Stalin’s mass murder – is penning yet another dark chapter in the annals of American newspapering.

The Times, notes McGowan, has under the regime of the junior Sulzberger, refused to identify the race of brutal black rapists who were still at large, and has romanticized violent, misogynistic rap stars.

McGowan observes that in 1993 -- at least four years after the phenomenon of “political correctness” (which was established years before the initially positive phrase was coined) had been reported across the country -- black Times editorial writer Brent Staples informed his readers that “there was no such thing as ‘political correctness.’”

McGowan recalls the 1994 publication of a book by photographer Eugene Richards and reporter Edward Barnes, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue, which was dominated by stark photographs of crack addicts in East New York and Red Hook, Brooklyn, and North Philadelphia. In Staples’ review of the book in the New York Times Book Review, he demanded to know “why nearly all the people in these photographs are black?” Staples went so far as to insinuate that Richards had staged a particularly powerful photo of a black woman who, with a baby strapped to her back, was apparently servicing a john, as pictures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X hung on the wall behind them.

McGowan reports, “When I asked Staples if he had any evidence to support this serious charge – alleging a breach of ethics that New York Times photo editors I spoke with said would cost a photographer on their staff his or her job [the Times had published a carefully culled spread of Richards’ photos in its Sunday magazine months before, with proportionate representation of whites, blacks, and Hispanics] -- he huffed, ‘You mean did I do any reporting, go out there and talk to people? No I did not.”

Had a white Times writer so impugned -- without a scintilla of evidence -- the honesty of a black photographer, the charge would never have made it into print, and the white writer might well have been cashiered.

That would be the same Brent Staples who, as Dinesh D’Souza observes in The End of Racism, bragged in his celebrated autobiography, Parallel Time, of stalking white folks in the subway, for the sheer fun of terrifying them, and then accused his victims of racism, for seeking to avoid him. In his book, Staples, who at the time of the stalking was a graduate student, remarked wistfully, with neither regret nor irony, “If I’d been younger, with less to lose, I’d have robbed them, and it would have been easy.”

He also likely would have ended up in prison, if not dead.

The stories McGowan cites in which the Times racially skewed reportage, whether through sins of omission or commission, run the gamut, and are too numerous to cite, beyond a few examples. (See also my columns, NY Times Uses “Big Lie” Technique to Advance Opposition to the Death Penalty, Barry Bonds, Race, and the New York Times' Mr. Subliminal, and In the New York Times' Bizarro Universe of Race Relations, the Truth Always Blinks.)

In March, 2000, when six-year-old, white Kayla Rolland was shot to death in Flint, Michigan by a black first-grade classmate, the Times refused to report that the boy who killed her was black. (Even McGowan shies away from examining possible racial aspects to the case, or from noting that the young sociopath knew to run away from the scene of the crime, and hide the murder weapon.)

McGowan: “And instead of raising questions about the failure of the child welfare system that had led to the boy’s access to guns in his uncle’s crack house, the Times established the official liberal media ‘storyline’ on the case by spotlighting President Clinton’s reaction: the case showed the necessity for gun control legislation, especially handgun locks.

McGowan reports that in 2001, when the Times finally reported -- after being scooped by the National Enquirer -- on Jesse Jackson’s illegitimate child, and the support payments Jackson had been making to his mistress, the Times buried the story on page 21, “a position much less prominent than what a conservative political activist of equal stature to Jackson would earn if he or she had produced an illegitimate child and was supporting it with a nonprofit corporation’s funds.”

Meanwhile, the Times’ writers and editors have steadfastly sought to deny both the reality and the evil of black racism, while inventing white and Asian racism, where none exists.

McGowan quotes white Times columnist Anna Quindlen, then a star at the paper (she has since left), who once bragged of being the first explicit affirmative action hire to win a Pulitzer Prize. “Hatred by the powerful, the majority, has a different weight and very often different effects than hatred by the powerless, the minority. Being called a honky is not in the same league as being called a nigger.”

In reporting on the racist, yearlong, 1990 black “boycott” of two Korean grocery stores in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the Times refused to cite the racial epithets or violence being employed by the henchmen of black gang leader Sonny Carson. (The “boycott” was only broken, after a second judge forced black Mayor David Dinkins to honor the court order an earlier judge had issued – and which Dinkins had ordered police to disobey -- ordering the “demonstrators” to stay at least 100 feet away from the stores.) Indeed, about two years after the “boycott” ended, with one grocer forced to sell his store, and later murdered in his new store in another black, Brooklyn neighborhood, a Times reporter obscenely re-wrote history, portraying the case as having arisen out of Korean racial insensitivity.

In reporting on the 1991 black race riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, during which orthodox Jew Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death, dozens of other Jews were assaulted, and Jews’ property was destroyed by racist blacks, the Times misrepresented the riot as a clash between two mutually hostile groups, rather than as an unprovoked, mass, anti-Semitic attack.

As McGowan notes, even when black criminals have confessed to singling out whites for assaults and robbery, the Times has refused to report this.

Perhaps the low point of the Times’ dishonesty in matters of race, was when a reporter writing on the December 8, 1995 “Harlem Massacre,” referred to mass murderer Roland Smith Jr. aka Abubunde Mulocko, as a man of “principle.” McGowan quotes the unnamed reporter, and I remember how shocked I was in reading the article when it originally appeared.

Roland Smith Jr., a follower of rabid racist “activist” Morris Powell, who had been leading a “boycott” full of threats of violence (“demonstrators” had threatened to burn the store down) against a Jewish-owned store, murdered seven workers, shot several others, and did in fact, burn the store down.

(As McGowan notes, “boycott” leader Morris Powell has made a career of leading demonstrations outside of white and Asian businesses, until the owners paid him extortion money. In one case, Powell fractured the skull of a Korean shop owner, when she touched one of the boycott signs. And after Smith had committed his mayhem, Powell referred to Smith as the victim of a “white setup.” But instead of honest reporting, the Times described Powell as an “elder statesman” who spoke “softly” and in “in measured tones.”)

McGowan examines the 1998 essay and eventual book, “It’s the Little Things,” by Lena Williams, a black alleged reporter at the Times. The essay “ostensibly examined ‘the looks, stares, offhand remarks and other facts of everyday life’ that blacks find offensive and irritating about whites’ behavior toward them. But it was really an apology for anti-white anger, framing uncivil and racist actions by blacks as a variety of historical reparation. In Williams’ eyes, a black man violently pushing his way through a crowd of whites was not simply loutish, he was “a brother fed up with eating crow, as in Jim.’”
 

Wearing Blinders

The funny thing is, in reality, it is New York blacks who routinely treat whites and Asians to ugly looks, stares, and offhanded racist remarks. That is, when blacks of all socioeconomic backgrounds aren’t casually assaulting whites and Asians.

Around 1978, a college classmate from Brooklyn told me the unwritten rule that whites in New York City (Asians, too, as I later found) followed in dealing with blacks: To always avoid looking them in the eye. (Years later, I would discover that middle and upper-class blacks feared the stares of angry black men just as much as other groups did, but the blacks refused to admit it to whites.) Meanwhile, as I learned almost immediately after moving to New York in 1985, for an ever increasing proportion of black New Yorkers, staring down whites is a sport, which often precedes an assault. Failure to stare back could cost you your life. I always stare back.

But then, already joked in the early 1970s, as children in Long Beach, Long Island, my sister and I had joked about the racist black girls on the school bus, who would stare at Jewish girls who were already avoiding looking at them, demanding, “What you lookin’ at, gir-r-r-l?!” (The black girls didn’t dare pull the same stunt on Irish girls, because the latter, unlike the Jews, had been raised to be unafraid of fighting blacks.)

During the early 1990s, in one of the first editions of the Sunday Times’ new “City” section, the cover essay was devoted to the phenomena of staredowns and stereotypes. The writer depicted a towering, scary, young Chinese man, who appeared to be staring down frightened subway riders. The writer then “explained” that the young man was actually mentally retarded, his stare a function of mental blankness, not menace.

The Times writer was engaged in the construction of a fictional, parallel universe. In New York, no one feared the stares of young Asian men, no matter how big! But the Times is such a compulsively dishonest publication, that its editors decided to create a non-existent “situation” for the writer to “explain.” One wonders how future historians and anthropologists will approach the New York Times’ contemporary dishonesty about race.

(During the same period, well-to-do, white socialist political operatives would commonly engage in obscene dinner table conversations about Korean grocers, in which they charged that the Koreans’ stores were all financed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, largely through “drug money.” The hard-working Koreans were a safe target for the sort of hatred the socialists would never vent against even the most vicious blacks.)
 

The Go-Fer

To understand the corruption of the mainstream media, and the hatred so many of its members feel towards anyone exposing that corruption, read Seth Mnookin’s review of Coloring the News in the January/February, 2002 Washington Monthly, where McGowan had earlier been an editor. Mnookin was so obsessed with discrediting McGowan, that he insinuated that McGowan had lied about the aforementioned Times reporter’s characterization of Roland Smith Jr. as a man of “principle.” Mnookin also told blatant lies, as McGowan pointed out in his rebuttal, such as Mnookin’s insistence that “… McGowan seems to have done little research since the mid-'90s, when he initially signed on to write his book….” and “(A humorous example of how out-of-date this book is: Anna Quindlen is the most frequently cited New York Times columnist, and she hasn't worked for the paper since 1994.)”

McGowan’s book is full of cases from the late 1990s, and as he notes in his rebuttal to Mnookin, the Times columnist he cited most frequently, seven times, was Bob Herbert, who is still at the paper.

Mnookin called McGowan’s (for me) restrained book, a “polemic” and an “outdated tome.” Had Mnookin not been such a politically corrupt hack, he could have simply said that he disagreed with McGowan. The problem, however, is that McGowan’s book is full of facts. Since Mnookin couldn’t disprove the facts, he had to discredit McGowan via cowardly insinuations and outright lies.
Mnookin now works for Newsweek. In writing on the Jayson Blair scandal, true to form, he engaged in sycophantic damage control, in burying the racial nature of the story. Can a Pulitzer Prize and/or a job at the Times be far off for Mnookin?
Unfortunately, as McGowan has amply documented, the corruption in reporting on race in which the Times led the way, has spread throughout the mainstream media.
Veteran Chicago journalist and essayist Jim Bowman, wrote the following “confession” in his e-journal, Blithe Spirit, the other day. (Jim is as wont to riff on the Church, Chesterton or poetry, as on the Chicago media or urban crime.)
 

All the News That´s Fit to Print

“CONDIGN PENANCE . . . I sought out my correctness confessor the other day. ‘Forgive me, Father, I have sinned. It's been 15 minutes since my last confession.’

‘Fifteen minutes?!’

‘Yes, and I thank your ilk for being so accessible, ready at a moment's notice.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have sinned against correctness.’

‘Go on.’

‘Affirmative action.’

‘Alone or with somebody?’

‘Alone. It was a sin of thought.’

‘Go on.’

‘Bank One got my account fouled up. I gave them information they never recorded. I blamed it on affirmative action.’

‘Again?’

‘I said -- to myself -- they were hiring the minimally equipped.’

‘That again.’

‘For these and all the other sins of my past life I am heartily sorry.’

‘For your penance say “All the news that's fit to print” 25 times. Now go and sin no more.’”

Monday, May 17, 2010

It’s Official—America is an African Kleptocracy: Immigration Grants Amnesty to “Obama’s” Fugitive Criminal Alien Auntie Zeituni; “She’s a regal woman”

By Nicholas Stix
Revised on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, at 3:12 a.m.
 
"Barack Obama's" Auntie Swindler


US immigration court grants asylum to President Barack Obama’s African aunt
By MEGHAN BARR , Associated Press
Last update: May 17, 2010 - 5:13 PM

CLEVELAND - A U.S. immigration court has granted asylum to President Barack Obama’s African aunt, allowing her to stay in the country and setting her on the road to citizenship after years of legal wrangling, her attorneys announced Monday.

The decision was made by a judge in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston and mailed out Friday. It comes three months after Kenya native Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, testified at a closed hearing in Boston.

People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

The basis for Onyango’s asylum request was never made public, but her lawyer Margaret Wong said last year that Onyango first applied for asylum “due to violence in Kenya.” The East African nation is fractured by cycles of electoral violence every five years.

Medical issues also could have played a role. In a November interview with The Associated Press, Onyango said she was disabled and was learning to walk again after being paralyzed from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder. At her hearing in Boston earlier this year, she arrived in a wheelchair and two doctors testified in support of her case.

Her lawyers would not comment on Onyango’s medical troubles.

“She doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her,” [the hell, she doesn’t!] said Scott Bratton, another of her attorneys.

Onyango’s efforts to win asylum have lasted more than a decade, Wong said.

“She was ecstatic,” Wong said at a news conference in Cleveland on Monday, describing Onyango’s reaction to the news. “She was very, very happy.”

Wong said the White House was not informed [lie] of the ruling. Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro [lie] said Monday that the White House had no involvement in the case at any point in the process.

Onyango didn’t immediately respond to telephone messages left by The Associated Press and didn’t answer her door in Boston. Two police cars were stationed outside her apartment building trying to keep reporters away.

“She really does give [criminals] people hope,” Wong said. “Because if [a criminal] someone like her who was [exposed] in the spotlight, in the limelight — and it was all negative — could [make a mockery of America’s laws] make it in our land of the law, I think other [criminals] people could, too.”

Onyango will now apply for a work permit, which would provide some documentation that she is permitted to stay in the country and allow her to travel again [a lack of “documents” never stopped her from traveling before; besides, what about her crippling illness?; get your lies straight, counselor], Wong said. A year from now, she will be eligible to apply for a green card, which is given to people who are granted legal permanent residency in the U.S., Wong said. Five years after receving [sic] her green card, she can apply to become a U.S. citizen.

“There are hundreds and thousands of [criminals] people like her who really need help to stay here,” Wong said. “When they first come to this country, they don’t know what they are doing.” [She knew exactly what she was doing.]

The media’s portrayal of Onyango in recent years has [been insufficiently sycophantic] not been entirely fair, Wong said.

“She may not be photogenic [huh? No one talked about her looks], but she’s very much a smart, thoughtful, regal woman,” Wong said.

Onyango initially came to the U.S. in 2000 just for a visit [lie], Wong said. Her first request for political asylum in 2002 was rejected, and she was ordered deported in 2004. But she [flouted the court] didn’t leave the country and continued to [criminally] live in public housing in Boston.

Onyango’s status as an illegal [alien] immigrant was revealed just days before Obama was elected in November 2008. Obama said he did not know his aunt was living here illegally [lie] and believes laws covering the situation should be followed [hahaha!]. To escape the media attention, Onyango came to Cleveland for a couple of months in 2008 [to lay low], where she has many friends in the city’s [criminal alien and fraudulent refugee] Kenyan community, Wong said. At that time, a family member in Cleveland contacted Wong.

A judge later agreed to suspend her deportation order and reopen her asylum case.

Wong has said that Obama wasn’t involved in the Boston hearing [lie]. The White House also said it was not helping Onyango with legal fees [yeah, right].

In his [ghostwritten] memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” Obama affectionately referred to Onyango as “Auntie Zeituni” and described meeting her during his 1988 trip to Kenya.

Onyango helped care for the president’s half brothers and sister while living with Barack Obama Sr. in Kenya.

Associated Press writer Rodrique Ngowi in Boston contributed to this report.

‘It's the once-every-five-year violence in Kenya; It’s her boo-boo; It’s her regalness. Pick a story, any story. If you don't like those, we'll come up with more!’

This woman should have been imprisoned and fined for defrauding all manner of public agencies (housing, Medicare and/or state medical programs, food stamps, Social Security disability, etc.), and then deported. Instead, she hit the jackpot, thanks to her criminal nephew.

A couple of Obamaton dead-enders tried to rationalize this travesty of justice in the comments section, but otherwise the sentiment was overwhelmingly contemptuous of the court’s decision.

Juan Mann, where are you, when we need you!

Margaret Wong: “She really does give people hope. Because if someone like her who was in the spotlight, in the limelight — and it was all negative — could make it in our land of the law, I think other people could, too.”

Translated into morality: Wong is lauding a criminal’s success, with Wong’s considerable help, at making a mockery of, and chipping away at our legal system, and encouraging other criminals to do likewise. Some people will counter that everyone has a right to legal representation, and that Wong was merely serving that right. But that’s not true; not everyone has such a right. Zeituni Onyango had already been ordered deported in 2004, and was a criminal fugitive until George W. Bush’s ICE ordered, in a corrupt and unlawful decision, out of deference to Onyango’s nephew, her deportation put on hold. And this criminal was permitted to flaunt the law, by attending her nephew’s inauguration.

And so, Margaret Wong was not serving any legal ideal, but rather undermining the rule of law, and in her statement sowed confusion, and supported lawlessness. Like so many liars, er lawyers, Wong is not content to get criminals off, and just say, “We’re happy with the decision.” Like them, Wong insists on giving her client-criminals ideological cover, as well, which makes her a Princess of Darkness. Remember her name.

Remember, too, the name “Meghan Barr,” AP’s political operative on this case. This “news report” sounds like a press release from Auntie Swindler’s liars.

But we don’t know the names of Onyango and Wong’s accomplices on that immigration court. Those culprits must be exposed and thrown off of the court, and there must be public protests of this corruption. A real press would be exposing them, and hunting down those who have been supporting Auntie Zeituni, running interference for her, and paying for her lawyers. Don’t look to Meghan Barr or other AP operatives such as Tom “Boosgate” Hays, Shelia (Hardwell) Byrd, Holbrook Mohr, et al., to do the job.

Send Auntie Swindler back!

A tip ‘o the hat to ALIPAC.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

“‘Feliz Cinco De Mayo’ NO, I wish you a terrible Cinco De Mayo.”

By Nicholas Stix

One of my trusty reader-researchers sent me this one on May 5th, but I didn’t get around to it, partly because he and other readers have me drowning in riches from all the great material they have been sending me of late—but don’t stop sending me stuff!—and partly because I was put off by his subject line: “Mad Jewess blogger goes off on Cinco de Mayo.”

Although the reader in question has always been a perfect and decent gentleman, some of my otherwise well-mannered readers do not share or even know about my concern that my fellow Jews survive and thrive. These readers have periodic swastika eruptions, and write me notes saying things like (to mildly paraphrase),
‘Thank God that you are standing up to the Jewish-owned media that is running the world. The d----d Jews will destroy us all.’

Then I respond, to their shock, that I am The Head Jew, the sinister master of ZOG, whose hands hold the puppet strings that manipulate the world.

I have to admit, however, that some of those readers have taken the news pretty well. The others have been a mixed bag. Could be a lot worse.

Well, as it turns out, when my reader spoke of the “Mad Jewess blogger,” he was simply calling her by her chosen moniker. And her choice of words and images is in keeping with that moniker, which is why I have decided against also publishing this blog at VDARE, where the mere submission would cause the otherwise strong men who are my editors to blush, and to kill it.

The Mad Jewess’ title is “BTW: Take ‘Cinco De Mayo’ & Shove It Up Your ASS, TOO!

”O-M-G, Mad Jewess, you are so mean, hateful & RACIST!- Says Miss Dipshit-Feminazi… Marxist-Mike, Or Joe-Liberal Jerk Off…

NO, I am NOT. Italians have their days in NYC, Irish have St. Pattys Day. The Portuguese in Cali have their day, and the Greeks their day, the Jews have Israeli day in NYC. But they are NICE people that do these things, unless they are Kommies and do it on purpose to make political points. My best friend is full blooded Mexican, and even SHE refuses to celebrate “Cinco De Mayo” – Why would ANY American that is patriotic want to celebrate some stupid ass holiday that is run by OPPRESSORS of America? People that MURDER on our borders? Kidnap little children for slave trade? That is what these ILLEGALS and their allies do.

And she was just warming up.

And take a gander at the t-shirt she showed (that is, if Google hasn’t shut down pics, as well as videos).



My reader remarked, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!”

When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along, Once and Again, and thirtysomething

By Nicholas Stix

The Critical Critic
January 30, 2009

[I just can’t return to the grim business of racism, murder, and miscarriages of justice, without yet another entertainment break.]

[Sorry, folks, but the videos whose embeds I coded into this article are not showing up at all. Various video problems are plaguing Blogger, have plagued my blogs for a few months (though only new publications), and have now gone from skewing video images to the right of the screen, to not publishing videos at all. Fortunately, until Blogger's techies solve this problem, you can still view the original article, complete with videos, at The Critical Critic.]



I don’t understand how youtube turns a profit, but I’m sure glad it’s around. I just came across a performance of the song, “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along,” from an episode of the brilliant show, Once and Again which, I believe, had a grand total of two viewers—me and my wife.

Once and Again was produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who had previously produced thirtysomething, both of which number among my favorite TV series.

Both shows were domestic dramas about extended families. thirtysomething centers on two families with small children in the eponymous age group, the Steadmans and the Westins, whose husbands are longtime best friends and business partners, Michael Steadman (Ken Olin) and Elliott Westin (Timothy Busfield).

Once and Again centered on Rick Sammler and Lily Manning, each of whom is hitting 40, has recently divorced, has two not-so-young children, and who meet and fall in love. On Once and Again, the “extended family” aspect concerns the protagonists’ exes.

“When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along” is performed in the episode at the end of the second season, in which Lily and Rick finally get married, one of my three favorite episodes from the series. The others were when Rick, an architect, has to give the performance of his life, in making a presentation to some shopping mall developers, in order to win a contract; and when Lily and her family visit her schizophrenic kid brother (played by Patrick Dempsey), who is living with his schizophrenic girlfriend, the two of whom are hopelessly in love.

And that was the theme of the series: All you need is love—domestic love, fraternal love, mad love.

The lyrical “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along” is, for my money, one of the greatest songs ever written, and Evan Rachel Wood’s performance of it on the show is the best I’ve ever heard. Harry M. Woods’ 1926 standard, as traditionally performed—whether at a medium tempo by Al Jolson, or by Doris Day on speed—is thoroughly upbeat.


And yet, when Wood slows it down, the upbeat lyrics collide with a heartbreaking melancholy that comes out of the melody, and the melancholy wins. On top of that melancholy, however, comes a second collision, with the happiness of the occasion: After surmounting many obstacles, protagonists Rick (Bill Campbell) and Lily (Sela Ward) have finally married, and Rick’s daughter, Jessie (Wood), is singing at their wedding. And so, there are tears of happiness, as befits the occasion.

Herskovits and Zwick had used a wedding episode in a similar fashion on thirtysomething.


In one of the series’ last episodes, “A Wedding,” when characters “Billy Sidel” (Erich Anderson) and “Ellyn Warren” (Polly Draper) get hitched, director Scott Winant uses a montage of wedding revelers dancing to the soundtrack of Ray Charles singing Arlen and Mercer’s, “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

I’m gonna love you,
Like no one’s loved you,
Come rain or come shine.

High as a mountain,
Deep as a river,
Come rain or come shine.

I guess when you met me,
It was just … one of those things,
But don’t ever bet me,
‘Cause I’m gonna be true,
If you let me.

You’re gonna love me,
Like no one’s loved me,
Come rain or come shine.

Happy together,
Unhappy together,
And won’t it be fine.

Days may be cloudy or sunny,
We’re in, or we’re out of the money,
But I’ll love you always,
I’ll love you rain … or shine.
In the episode “The Second Time Around” on Once and Again, the wedding scene directed by Dan Lerner is more powerful, because the couple has lost their original wedding reservation, and been forced to hold the wedding in a circus tent; because the vocal performance is by one of the characters, and thus organic to the scene, rather than being externally imposed on the soundtrack; and most of all, because while on thirtysomething, Billy and Ellyn are secondary characters, on Once and Again, Rick and Lily are the show.

Yet another pleasure that Once and Again affords fans who have seen thirtysomething, is in the way the former is a reincarnation of the spirit of the latter, and episodes like the wedding allude to their predecessors. And while the character of sinister businessman Miles Drentell (David Clennon) is the explicit tie that binds the two series, the theme of the trials and tribulations of the struggling small businessman is an implicit yet much stronger tie. thirtysomething drew much pathos from Michael and Elliott’s losing battle to maintain their two-man advertising agency, and after its failure, to survive on “Madison Avenue.” Once and Again, for its part, features not one but three struggling small businesses: Rick and his best friend, David Casilli’s (Todd Field, who is better known as a movie director), architecture agency; Lily and her sister, Judy’s (the winsome yet alluring Marin Hinkle) bookstore/cafe; and the restaurant founded by the sisters’ father, Phil, and presently owned by Lily’s ex, the tragically boyish Jake (Jeffrey Nordling).

Already during thirtysomething’s run I became convinced that Herskovitz and/or Zwick had been raised by a struggling small businessman. They were hardly the first producers to depict a small business, but they had achieved a standard of dramatic excellence in portraying a small business that would only be met when they produced Once and Again.

The decision to transform a famously upbeat standard into a slow weepie was surely inspired by the young Barbra Streisand’s brilliant decision, almost 40 years earlier, to work a similar magic on “Happy Days are Here Again.”

When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along
Words and music by Harry M. Woods (1926)

When the red, red robin
Comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along,
There’ll be no more sobbin’
When he comes throbbin’ his ol’ sweet song.

Wake up! Wake up, you sleepy head,
Get up! Get up, get out of bed,
Cheer up! Cheer up, the sun is red,
Live, love, laugh and be happy!

What if I’ve been blue,
Now I’m walking through fields of flowers.
Rain may glisten,
But still I listen for hours and hours.

I’m just a kid again,
Doin’ what I did again,
Singin’ a song,
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.
Many thanks to cafevideos and MisterCanning for posting the above videos.

Pants on the Ground: General Larry Platt on American Idol



 

I realize that this made the rounds a few months—it seems like a year; I suppose net time is to real time as dog years are to human years, except that Networld has no generational memory—ago, but it’s still a riot, and we at WEJB/NSU need an entertainment break (from the mayhem wreaked by people who wear their pants on the ground).

During Platt’s audition, Simon Cowell said, “I have a horrible feeling that song could be a hit,” and indeed, it was! Well, a virtual hit, anyway.

By the way, Larry Platt hails from Atlanta, and says he’s 62, though he sure doesn’t move like it.

A tip ‘o the hat to The Mad Jewess.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Mets Need to Make Some Changes

By Nicholas Stix

The Lineup:

1. Jose Reyes (thus ending the disastrous experiment with him in the three slot);
2. Luis Castillo (stand pat);
3. Angel Pagan (down from leadoff; he entered last night’s game hitting .389 with runners in scoring position, best on the team);
4. David Wright (up from fifth);
5. Jason Bay (down from cleanup, where he has been ineffective);
6. Ike Davis (stand pat);
7. Rod Barrajas (up from eight, where he sees two few runners in scoring position, which over the past month has for him included runners on first base); and
8. Jeff Francoeur (down from seventh, where he has been ice cold for weeks).


Carlos Beltran

If Beltran does make it back this year, it is not likely to be before the All-Star break. The team mishandled his injury so badly last year that it’s not a sure bet that he’ll ever play in the big leagues again. If he does make it back, and can find his stroke after a year on the shelf, he would be a perfect three or four hitter, as in the past. By then, Barrajas will likely have cooled off (and be sent back to the eighth spot), but hopefully Reyes, Wright, Bay and Francoeur will have come out of their respective funks, giving the team one of the league’s most potent lineups. (If by then, Barrajas’ mounting injuries keep him out of the lineup, his replacement, ……. Thole, a Punch-and-Judy hitter, will mean a decrease in power, but an increase in average.) If by June Bay still hasn’t started knocking in runs, however, and Davis still is, the two should be flip-flopped in the fifth and sixth slots.


Oliver Perez

Oliver Perez has only two problems: He’s lost velocity on his fastball (from 93-94 to 91-92), and he’s wild both in and out of the strike zone. Thus, at $12 million per season, he is baseball’s most expensive batting practice pitcher. Bye-bye, Ollie. Give his spot on the rotation to Hisanori Takahashi or Fernando Nieve (who for about three weeks last season, before his season-ending hamstring injury, was the club’s best starter, but who has been less effective this season out of the bullpen), or bring up Pat Misch, and give it to him. The $20 million the team still owes Perez is on Minaya’s head.

It was foreseeable that Oliver Perez + John Maine = one starter, if that, because last season each was at most a five-inning pitcher, and both have been injury-prone. Perez has been healthy this season, but has been only a three-inning batting practice pitcher.

Maine has lost even more velocity on his fastball (from 94 MPH in 2007 to about 87-88) than Perez, yet relies more than ever on his fastball, rarely throwing the slider that was once one of the best in baseball. Facing the possible end of his career, Maine made a conscious decision: To go down in a blaze of fastballs. If his career was over, it wouldn’t end with junk.

And Maine has gone from requiring 100 pitches, in order to make it through the fifth inning, to sometimes needing 100 get through the fourth. And yet, with a higher pitch count, Maine has been a revelation. Maine is a gamer; Perez isn’t.

A cornucopia of talented free agent pitchers was available during the offseason, some healthy, and some who were reclamation projects coming off of major injuries (e.g., John Lackey, Jason Marquis, Jon Garland, Randy Wolf, Joel Pineiro, Doug Davis, Jarrod Washburn, Mark Mulder, Eric Bedard, Ben Sheets, Chien Ming Wang, et al.). Mets GM Omar Minaya made no serious plays for any of them, nor did he last season, when Brad Penny was available for about … a penny. And that’s just one more reason Minaya is the poster child for executive diversity.


Jerry Manuel

I never thought that Manuel would get an honest shot at managing the team, as long as Minaya remained GM. After all, Minaya and his Latin Mafia crony Tony Bernazard did everything in their considerable power to sabotage Willie Randolph’s managerial tenure, and did so with Manuel, as well, through last season.

However, prior to this season, Mets son-in-chief Jeff Wilpon neutralized Minaya by making him a figurehead, and the real GM, though without the title, may be assistant John Ricco.

The good news is that the team is playing its heart out for Manuel. The bad news is it is losing—three in a row, as of this writing. And just as Manuel gets much for the credit for the team hustling, he bears much of the blame for its slump, particularly through his ingenious idea to put Jose Reyes in the three-slot, and his misuse of the relief corps. It was bad enough that in one game he ran Nieve out in relief for the third straight night, and he promptly blew the game, but the very next night, as if to emphasize his inability to understand his mistake with Nieve, he ran Pedro Feliciano out for the fourth straight night, and Feliciano gave up a dinger to blow the game on his first pitch!

Nieve had told Manuel that he was ready and able to pitch every night. That sort of pride is nice to hear, but a sensible manager is obliged to ignore it. The pitcher is simply saying that he’s a gamer, just like the starter who’s at the end his tether when you visit him on the mound in the seventh inning, yet who insists, “I can get through this inning, Skipper!”

You smile, take the ball, give him a whack on the butt, and send him off to a nice ovation. Otherwise, you leave him in too long, and you and him both end up being serenaded with boos, and your judgment being questioned.


With Feliciano, things are somewhat different. Two years ago, he made a new record for appearances by a Mets pitcher, with 86, and broke his own record last year, with 88, but that was back when he was a specialist. He’d get brought in to pitch to one left-handed batter, and then be replaced with a righty specialist.

Last season, however, Feliciano showed increasing success in getting right-handed hitters out, and so this season, Manuel has been using him for entire innings, and in at least one instance, for one and two-thirds innings. When a man is pitching to so many more hitters in each appearance, he cannot make nearly as many appearances. Manuel doesn’t seem to have gotten that point. If he doesn’t get it soon, he’ll ruin Feliciano for the season, and maybe for his career. And if that happens, Feliciano, with his big mouth, will never let anyone forget that it was Jerry Manuel who ruined him.

* * *


A sane businessman who hires an executive who does everything imaginable to destroy the firm, fires him. Not so under the racist insanity that is diversity. Under diversity, you instead re-hire him to a new, even fatter contract, cut his power, and surround him with non-diverse non-fuck-ups who will do his job for him, but without their getting the credit or the big bucks.

Of course, no real business could do this. They can’t afford to pay three people to do one job. But under the regime of diversity, big businesses are successful based not on their ability to provide goods and services of better quality and lower price than their competitors, but due to the existence of monopolies and cartels, whose owners and managers wield political power that make the need for quality, efficiency, and competitive prices unnecessary (think bailouts, stadiums financed through confiscating the taxpayers’ money, TV contracts, and Congress’ protection of the big leagues from the antitrust laws). Meanwhile, the majority of smaller businesses offering quality, efficiency, and price but lacking political pull routinely fail.