By NOAH FELDMAN
Published: June 22, 2008
No country is wholly free of anti-white prejudice, whether it is the United States, where whites suffer systematic discrimination by illegal and unconstitutional practices, and are racially targeted by racist black and Hispanic criminals, or post-apartheid South Africa, where they currently endure a campaign of dispossession and genocide. But in many Western European countries today, something new and insidious seems to be happening. The familiar old arguments against whites—that their race is a cancer on humanity, and that everything they have is from stealing from non-whites—are mutating into a pro-Islamic bias that is becoming institutionalized in the continent’s otherwise ordinary politics, in terms of the racial and ethnic privileging of Moslems, and the systematic gang-rape of white, Christian girls by Moslem gangs.
Update and correction, 2:23 p.m., June 26, 2008
Editor’s note: Upon reading about this story at VDARE.com in a blog by Steve Sailer, we at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored (NSU) decided to excerpt it. Accordingly, an NSU staffer copied the story’s first paragraph, and put it through our translating machine, in order to turn Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman’s lies into the truth. However, the staffer then accidentally posted the true words, without warning readers that this was not what the New York Times had in fact published, or what Tenured, Full Professor Feldman had written. Accordingly, we at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored wish to apologize to our readers, Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School and the New York Times for accidentally publishing the truth.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
“Hispanic Culture Sucks!”
By Nicholas Stix
Those are the three little words that Heather Mac Donald should have said.
Heather Mac was recently in what had been scheduled as a debate on immigration with open borders zealot Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal on Michael Medved’s radio program. As Gerald Martin reports, in a letter to VDARE,
But it gets worse. The so-called American citizen—so-called, because they are not citizens—children of illegals commit the sorts of crimes that Riley counts as such, at much higher rates than real American citizens. And things never improve with Hispanics. The longer they are here, the more crime they engage in. And I haven’t even gotten started on illegitimacy, educational failure, and refusal to learn English.
When debating Open Borders shills, one must always keep in mind that these are ruthless ideologues with no conscience. That they are going to play the race card is a given, so you’d better get ready to be hit and hit back. If you’re not willing to go toe to toe with them, and shake off being charged with “racism” and “xenophobia,” don’t get in the ring in the first place. As Harry Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Another philosopher named Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan, until they get hit.” But champs shake off the blows, and get back on plan.
Those are the three little words that Heather Mac Donald should have said.
Heather Mac was recently in what had been scheduled as a debate on immigration with open borders zealot Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal on Michael Medved’s radio program. As Gerald Martin reports, in a letter to VDARE,
Of course, Medved [email him] (whom I used to like, but who has morphed into one of the most vicious and arrogant neocon pundits) made no pretense of objectivity, but ganged up with Riley to attack and belittle virtually everything Mac Donald said. When Mac Donald stated that Hispanics in general displayed certain social pathologies (crime, out-of-wedlock births, multi-generational poverty) Riley claimed the opposite, citing statistics (apparently a major theme in his book) to show that illegals were incarcerated at lower rates than native born citizens and that 85% of Hispanic children are in two-parent homes. Mac Donald was unable to counter these points (as I believe she could have, with a more nuanced and careful analysis of the relevant stats and categories). Medved also jumped in—in a very insinuating "if you say yes it means you’re a racist" way—by demanding Mac Donald answer his questions, "Are you [actually] saying there is something wrong with Hispanic culture? And are you [Oh, the horror!] against legal Hispanic immigration?"First of all, it is not true that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans; every day that one lives and works in America, constitutes additional crime counts; every time one drives without a license, is another count of crime; every time one works using stolen identification constitutes additional counts of crimes, etc. The trick of Riley and his allies is to not count any of those crimes as crimes; they only count things like murder, rape, etc. Since illegals benefit from sanctuary policies that are themselves illegal, thus are not arrested for all of their crimes, and the crimes don’t get counted by the FBI, Riley can act as though the illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans, which is nonsense on stilts.
After a long, pregnant silence, Mac Donald crumpled, and choked out a pathetic, defeated, "No...but statistics suggest...," and was quickly cut off by Medved. I could tell she wanted to make the ethno/cultural argument against mass Hispanic immigration, both legal and illegal, but she lost her nerve or didn’t have it in the first place.
But it gets worse. The so-called American citizen—so-called, because they are not citizens—children of illegals commit the sorts of crimes that Riley counts as such, at much higher rates than real American citizens. And things never improve with Hispanics. The longer they are here, the more crime they engage in. And I haven’t even gotten started on illegitimacy, educational failure, and refusal to learn English.
When debating Open Borders shills, one must always keep in mind that these are ruthless ideologues with no conscience. That they are going to play the race card is a given, so you’d better get ready to be hit and hit back. If you’re not willing to go toe to toe with them, and shake off being charged with “racism” and “xenophobia,” don’t get in the ring in the first place. As Harry Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Another philosopher named Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan, until they get hit.” But champs shake off the blows, and get back on plan.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Major Wikipedia Exposé Just Published in American Renaissance
Wikipedia on Race
Nicholas Stix, Special to American Renaissance, June 24, 2008
With almost 2.4 million on-line entries, and more than 1 million volunteer editors, the English-language version of Wikipedia.com is the world’s biggest encyclopedia, and according to the rating service Alexa it is the world’s ninth-most frequently visited Internet site. “The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” promises to deliver “the sum of all human knowledge.”
The theory is that since anyone and everyone contributes, Wikipedia can become an essentially unlimited storehouse of information. With the help of enough contributors, articles will be accurate and comprehensive—and in some cases, it almost works that way. If you want to know how to tie a monkey’s fist or what goes on at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Wikipedia will tell you.
However, when it comes to controversial questions—race in particular—the everyone-is-an-editor model breaks down. Wikipedia suffers from the same liberal biases as any mainstream publisher, but exercises them even more ruthlessly. This is because many contributors offer factual but subversive information—which forces many Wikipedia administrators to spend their time actively rooting it out….
Read the complete report here.
Nicholas Stix, Special to American Renaissance, June 24, 2008
With almost 2.4 million on-line entries, and more than 1 million volunteer editors, the English-language version of Wikipedia.com is the world’s biggest encyclopedia, and according to the rating service Alexa it is the world’s ninth-most frequently visited Internet site. “The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” promises to deliver “the sum of all human knowledge.”
The theory is that since anyone and everyone contributes, Wikipedia can become an essentially unlimited storehouse of information. With the help of enough contributors, articles will be accurate and comprehensive—and in some cases, it almost works that way. If you want to know how to tie a monkey’s fist or what goes on at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Wikipedia will tell you.
However, when it comes to controversial questions—race in particular—the everyone-is-an-editor model breaks down. Wikipedia suffers from the same liberal biases as any mainstream publisher, but exercises them even more ruthlessly. This is because many contributors offer factual but subversive information—which forces many Wikipedia administrators to spend their time actively rooting it out….
Read the complete report here.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
A Team of Their Own? Latin Baseball Players
By Nicholas Stix
August, 2003.
Middle American News.
(Original title: Sammy Sosa, Victim?)
On June 3, Chicago Cubs superstar Sammy Sosa hit a routine ground-out that had extraordinary consequences. His bat broke, exposing an illegal, cork-filled center. "Corking" makes a bat lighter, so that a hitter can swing it faster. Bat speed generates power, and Sosa, with 505 career home runs and a record three seasons with 60 or more homers, was assumed to be a premier power hitter.
When previous sluggers were caught doctoring their bats, they were publicly humiliated and suspended. In the most recent incident, in 1994, Cleveland Indian Albert Belle was suspended for eight games.
But things have gone differently for Sosa. He refused to admit to what he'd done, instead concocting a ludicrous story, whereby he'd never before used a corked bat, and had accidentally taken to the plate a bat he only used to "entertain" fans during batting practice. Instead of taking his punishment - an eight game suspension - like a man, Sosa appealed it, eventually getting a reduction to seven games. And other Latin players have aggressively defended Sosa, who is from the Dominican Republic, insisting that he was a victim of "racism," who would not have been criticized, were he a white superstar.
Tell that to relief pitcher John Rocker, who was never caught cheating, yet whom minority groups sought to run out of baseball, when he made politically incorrect remarks about immigrants and welfare mothers in New York, in 1999.
Ever smiling when the camera is rolling, Sammy Sosa has for years been protected from public scrutiny. However, San Jose Mercury News sportswriter Skip Bayless describes Sosa as "surly" when the camera is off. The blatant racism of so many Latin fans has similarly been ignored by the media.
In 1998, when Sosa and Mark McGwire were both chasing Roger Maris' single-season home-run record of 61*, newspapers published vitriolic letters from Latin fans, who insisted, with undisguised racial hatred, that McGwire (who bested Sosa, in setting a new record with 70 homers), was getting easy pitches to hit, as if pitchers were trying to help him beat the dark-brown Sosa. But in contrast to the response to racist letter writers that dogged Hank Aaron during his mid-1970s pursuit of Babe Ruth's career home run record, no journalists or politicians drew any lessons regarding racial intolerance from the letters attacking McGwire.
Indeed, sportswriters jumped on the anti-white bandwagon, celebrating Sosa, as if he, and not McGwire, were the home run king, and casting aspersions on McGwire's accomplishments. McGwire had used a legal dietary supplement, androstenedione, that was permitted by Major League Baseball. Besides, McGwire had always been Bunyanesque. He entered the league at 6'5" and 215 pounds, hit a record 49 home runs as a rookie, and weighed 250-255 pounds when he broke Maris' home run record. By contrast, the 6'0" Sosa had begun his major league career a lithe 165 pounds, and hit only 37 home runs his first four seasons combined. In recent years, Sosa has played at 225 pounds, and has long been suspected of using illegal, anabolic steroids, but has largely been given a pass by the media.
And yet, Sosa is a welcome contrast to many other Latin players, such as pitcher "El Duque" (Orlando Hernandez), who come to America to make millions of dollars, yet who -- not unlike millions of Hispanic immigrants, and increasingly American-born Hispanics -- increasingly refuse to learn the language of the land to which they owe everything, which also means separating themselves from most of their teammates.
At least, Sosa learned English.
Sammy Sosa's two most vociferous defenders have been retired, Cuban-born slugger Jose Canseco, and Dominican superstar pitcher Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox. Imitating the style of black race hustlers, Canseco and Martinez have attacked American whites as "racist" for criticizing Sosa's cheating.
Canseco is engaging in a form of racial demagoguery that is increasingly common among white Hispanics, who are notorious for priding themselves -- among other Hispanics, in Spanish -- on their whiteness. However, in public, the same proudly white Hispanics declare themselves "persons of color," and shamelessly race-bait non-Hispanic whites.
Martinez, who is brown, has been Sosa's most aggressive defender, suggesting that he would assault a writer critical of Sosa, and demanding that baseball apologize to Sosa.
Pedro Martinez was once a team-oriented player. At the end of the 2002 season, however, he announced unilaterally that he would skip his last scheduled start. He thereby hurt his team, showered contempt on manager Grady Little, and may even have cost himself his fourth Cy Young Award as the American League's best pitcher. Indeed, some observers have argued that Martinez' racist outbursts regarding Sosa expressed nothing but his bitterness over not winning the 2002 Cy Young Award.
Latin major league baseball players and Latin fans seem increasingly to see themselves as representing a separate team of their own.
August, 2003.
Middle American News.
(Original title: Sammy Sosa, Victim?)
On June 3, Chicago Cubs superstar Sammy Sosa hit a routine ground-out that had extraordinary consequences. His bat broke, exposing an illegal, cork-filled center. "Corking" makes a bat lighter, so that a hitter can swing it faster. Bat speed generates power, and Sosa, with 505 career home runs and a record three seasons with 60 or more homers, was assumed to be a premier power hitter.
When previous sluggers were caught doctoring their bats, they were publicly humiliated and suspended. In the most recent incident, in 1994, Cleveland Indian Albert Belle was suspended for eight games.
But things have gone differently for Sosa. He refused to admit to what he'd done, instead concocting a ludicrous story, whereby he'd never before used a corked bat, and had accidentally taken to the plate a bat he only used to "entertain" fans during batting practice. Instead of taking his punishment - an eight game suspension - like a man, Sosa appealed it, eventually getting a reduction to seven games. And other Latin players have aggressively defended Sosa, who is from the Dominican Republic, insisting that he was a victim of "racism," who would not have been criticized, were he a white superstar.
Tell that to relief pitcher John Rocker, who was never caught cheating, yet whom minority groups sought to run out of baseball, when he made politically incorrect remarks about immigrants and welfare mothers in New York, in 1999.
Ever smiling when the camera is rolling, Sammy Sosa has for years been protected from public scrutiny. However, San Jose Mercury News sportswriter Skip Bayless describes Sosa as "surly" when the camera is off. The blatant racism of so many Latin fans has similarly been ignored by the media.
In 1998, when Sosa and Mark McGwire were both chasing Roger Maris' single-season home-run record of 61*, newspapers published vitriolic letters from Latin fans, who insisted, with undisguised racial hatred, that McGwire (who bested Sosa, in setting a new record with 70 homers), was getting easy pitches to hit, as if pitchers were trying to help him beat the dark-brown Sosa. But in contrast to the response to racist letter writers that dogged Hank Aaron during his mid-1970s pursuit of Babe Ruth's career home run record, no journalists or politicians drew any lessons regarding racial intolerance from the letters attacking McGwire.
Indeed, sportswriters jumped on the anti-white bandwagon, celebrating Sosa, as if he, and not McGwire, were the home run king, and casting aspersions on McGwire's accomplishments. McGwire had used a legal dietary supplement, androstenedione, that was permitted by Major League Baseball. Besides, McGwire had always been Bunyanesque. He entered the league at 6'5" and 215 pounds, hit a record 49 home runs as a rookie, and weighed 250-255 pounds when he broke Maris' home run record. By contrast, the 6'0" Sosa had begun his major league career a lithe 165 pounds, and hit only 37 home runs his first four seasons combined. In recent years, Sosa has played at 225 pounds, and has long been suspected of using illegal, anabolic steroids, but has largely been given a pass by the media.
And yet, Sosa is a welcome contrast to many other Latin players, such as pitcher "El Duque" (Orlando Hernandez), who come to America to make millions of dollars, yet who -- not unlike millions of Hispanic immigrants, and increasingly American-born Hispanics -- increasingly refuse to learn the language of the land to which they owe everything, which also means separating themselves from most of their teammates.
At least, Sosa learned English.
Sammy Sosa's two most vociferous defenders have been retired, Cuban-born slugger Jose Canseco, and Dominican superstar pitcher Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox. Imitating the style of black race hustlers, Canseco and Martinez have attacked American whites as "racist" for criticizing Sosa's cheating.
Canseco is engaging in a form of racial demagoguery that is increasingly common among white Hispanics, who are notorious for priding themselves -- among other Hispanics, in Spanish -- on their whiteness. However, in public, the same proudly white Hispanics declare themselves "persons of color," and shamelessly race-bait non-Hispanic whites.
Martinez, who is brown, has been Sosa's most aggressive defender, suggesting that he would assault a writer critical of Sosa, and demanding that baseball apologize to Sosa.
Pedro Martinez was once a team-oriented player. At the end of the 2002 season, however, he announced unilaterally that he would skip his last scheduled start. He thereby hurt his team, showered contempt on manager Grady Little, and may even have cost himself his fourth Cy Young Award as the American League's best pitcher. Indeed, some observers have argued that Martinez' racist outbursts regarding Sosa expressed nothing but his bitterness over not winning the 2002 Cy Young Award.
Latin major league baseball players and Latin fans seem increasingly to see themselves as representing a separate team of their own.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Barack Obama, “Killer” Pfleger, and Post-Racial Ethics: A Reader Writes
Last night the following letter arrived, in response to my June 19 VDARE.com blog, “Suspension Over for Obama Adviser Pfleger, Anti-White RC Priest,” from Prof. William E. Garland, of Newark, New Jersey’s Seton Hall Law School.
It galls me to no end that the media portray a man as racist, ruthless (also here and here; hell, I could add 100 “here’s”), corrupt and transparently phony (and here) as Obama as some sort of bloody saint.
You accurately report Pfleger's call for violence against a legally licensed firearms dealer which happened at a rally outside the dealer's business in an effort to shut it down. Just as in Wright's case, Pfleger, another long term associate of Obama, was featured on Obama's website despite his having publically encouraged criminal conduct, being removed only after insulting Ms. Clinton. Apparently in Obama's value system insulting a fellow politician is a more serious matter than trying to incite a mob to kill an ordinary citizen.I couldn't have put it better myself. The list of wonderful things about Sen. Obama is seemingly endless.
It galls me to no end that the media portray a man as racist, ruthless (also here and here; hell, I could add 100 “here’s”), corrupt and transparently phony (and here) as Obama as some sort of bloody saint.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Test
By Nicholas Stix
In January 1994, I went on a date with a biracial social worker (a field I had also worked in) who was 27, if memory serves. Her late Korean mother had met her black American father in Korea, where he was stationed in the Army.
We had a wonderful time. I know it was mutual, because not only did she act like she was enjoying herself, but she stayed out with me for 11 hours on a first date. This lady was no pushover; had she not been enjoying herself, she would have called it quits early. We saw a Chinese-American chick flick with an ensemble cast called The Joy Luck Club, had dinner, and hung out in the Union Square area of Downtown Manhattan.
She was attractive, intelligent, and except for one thing, personable. Although she was estranged from her father, whom she made no bones about disliking, she racially identified entirely with him.
At some point during the afternoon, she gave me an obvious loyalty test. Had I decided to pass it, I likely would have had a pretty good shot at earning her affections. She told a story about a young black man being pulled over by the police just because he was black, and insisted that it was an instance of a universal experience of all young black men.
The problem is, she was lying.
I had the choice between assenting to a lie and possibly getting involved with a very desirable woman—as long as I compartmentalized her racial dishonesty and bullying—and losing out.
The “choice” is an after-the-fact consideration; there was nothing to think about. In eight years in New York City, I’d experienced enough of black racism, black racial privilege, and black racial lies to last a lifetime.
Most men have to make a lot of compromises with the opposite sex, if they don’t want to spend their nights sitting alone in saloons or Dunkin’ Donutses, but lying about race to a race-obsessed woman was too much for me.
A day or two later, when I called her, and she said she didn’t want to go out with me again, she admitted it was because of the test.
She was an “honest dialogue” kind of person; they had a zero tolerance policy towards truthfulness in racial matters then, and have only gotten worse since. As far as my date was concerned, I might as well have used the “N”-word.
(The foregoing is a passage from a much longer essay, “Racial Dialogue in America: The “Racist Rant” That Almost Everyone is Condemning, but Won't Link to”.)
In January 1994, I went on a date with a biracial social worker (a field I had also worked in) who was 27, if memory serves. Her late Korean mother had met her black American father in Korea, where he was stationed in the Army.
We had a wonderful time. I know it was mutual, because not only did she act like she was enjoying herself, but she stayed out with me for 11 hours on a first date. This lady was no pushover; had she not been enjoying herself, she would have called it quits early. We saw a Chinese-American chick flick with an ensemble cast called The Joy Luck Club, had dinner, and hung out in the Union Square area of Downtown Manhattan.
She was attractive, intelligent, and except for one thing, personable. Although she was estranged from her father, whom she made no bones about disliking, she racially identified entirely with him.
At some point during the afternoon, she gave me an obvious loyalty test. Had I decided to pass it, I likely would have had a pretty good shot at earning her affections. She told a story about a young black man being pulled over by the police just because he was black, and insisted that it was an instance of a universal experience of all young black men.
The problem is, she was lying.
I had the choice between assenting to a lie and possibly getting involved with a very desirable woman—as long as I compartmentalized her racial dishonesty and bullying—and losing out.
The “choice” is an after-the-fact consideration; there was nothing to think about. In eight years in New York City, I’d experienced enough of black racism, black racial privilege, and black racial lies to last a lifetime.
Most men have to make a lot of compromises with the opposite sex, if they don’t want to spend their nights sitting alone in saloons or Dunkin’ Donutses, but lying about race to a race-obsessed woman was too much for me.
A day or two later, when I called her, and she said she didn’t want to go out with me again, she admitted it was because of the test.
She was an “honest dialogue” kind of person; they had a zero tolerance policy towards truthfulness in racial matters then, and have only gotten worse since. As far as my date was concerned, I might as well have used the “N”-word.
(The foregoing is a passage from a much longer essay, “Racial Dialogue in America: The “Racist Rant” That Almost Everyone is Condemning, but Won't Link to”.)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wikipedia: Openness through Lock-Down
By Nicholas Stix
(Check out my American Renaissance exposé, “Wikipedia on Race”!)
The Pretend Encyclopedia’s (TPE) entry for Wikipedia contains passages like the following, in the section “Reliability and bias”:
Alright, now hit the “edit this page” link at the top, and let’s go! Oops! I can’t find an “edit this page” link. I do, however, find a little lock symbol in the page’s upper right-hand corner. Passing my cursor over the lock flashes the legend, “Semi-protected.” It’s not “semi-protected,” it’s in lock-down.
In wikispeak, “semi-protected” means you can only edit a page if you are a “registered,” as opposed to an “anonymous” user. If you start editing at TPE without registering, you will receive a personal-sounding message (at your talk page, I guess; I can’t remember any more) from a (ro)“bot,” suggesting you register, and noting that there are advantages to registering. Wikipedians claim that registering affords an “editor” (at TPE, everyone’s an editor) “more privacy” than anonymous editing, whereby your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) number will be recorded on the entry’s “revision history” page. If you are using a work computer, people may be able to track you down, but if you are using a personal computer that is not part of a business, whether your Internet service provider (ISP) has given you a stable IP number or you float within a range, your name will likely not be listed by any “whois” service.
A Wikipedian will respond, “When we say that registering confers benefits, we mean such as greater privacy and being able to edit more articles.”
But registering only gives you added privacy, if you are editing TPE from a work computer; otherwise, it offers no privacy at all. And if you register, the characters running Wikipedia, aka “The Cabal,” will know who you are. So much for privacy. “But we’re the good guys,” they will protest, adding “Nobody wanting to edit Wikipedia has any business hiding her or his or its identity from its administrators.” Oh, yes, she/he/it—s/h/it for short—does. The administrators running TPE are its biggest problem.
As for registering giving you access to edit more articles, that’s true, but only because of The Cabal’s lies and misconduct. Lie: That TPE’s vandalism problems are chiefly due to “anon users”; no, they’re chiefly, or at least equally due to registered users—wikithugs. The cabalists, who are wikithugs, and their helpers, the would-be cabalists among of wikithugdom, use this lie as cover for their abuse of non-registered users, routine “insertion of spurious information” into entries, and routine censoring of true information from them. Indeed, just about any rationale any cabalist or would-be cabalist gives for any action, is nothing but a cover story rationalizing abusive behavior. (Not all administrators are wikithugs or even cabalists, but they’re not the problem, and they are not going to stand up to the cabalists, because they would then lose their “adminships.”)
After months of observing and trying to counter such abuse, I found Web sites and blogs by Wikipedia critics, many of whom had had the exact same sort of experiences, and made the exact same observations, though typically in saltier language than I’m using.
And that’s when I decided to turn the tables on the wikithugs, and give them a taste of real encyclopedic research. I devoted close to two years to the research, including studying work by others, who had in turn devoted thousands of man hours to researching TPE. I even warned the wikithugs early on, that they were making fools of themselves for the whole world to see, but on their turf, with its zero tolerance policy towards criticism, they felt invulnerable. (When they libeled someone I know and respect, but whom they hate, and I told them what they were guilty of, informed them that such behavior was actionable, and that I hoped their victim would sue them, they banned me for an “infinite” duration. But they also finally removed the libels from the entry in question, something they otherwise would never have done.) That research culminated in my first Wikipedia expose, “Wikipedia on Race,” which just appeared in the July issue of American Renaissance.
After reading my introduction to TPE, the best places to learn more about it are antisocialmedia.net, All’s Wool that Ends Wool, Conservapedia, the wikipedia review, Nonbovine Ruminations, Slashdot, Wikitruth, Wikipedia Watch and The Register.
The best way for dealing with the registered/non-registered user issue is to register, but give false information. The wikithugs do not (yet) require verification of one’s identity. But that still won’t protect you from being censored, blocked, and ultimately banned, if you get caught smuggling the truth into TPE. Of course, you could always re-register, under a new false identity, but why bother? The important thing is to study outlets that publish true information, and support said undertakings, whether through working for them, subsidizing their operations, or promoting them, or start your own, and let the world know about both the honest publishers and the frauds.
(Check out my American Renaissance exposé, “Wikipedia on Race”!)
The Pretend Encyclopedia’s (TPE) entry for Wikipedia contains passages like the following, in the section “Reliability and bias”:
Concerns have also been raised regarding the lack of accountability that results from users' anonymity,[68] and that it is vulnerable to vandalism, the insertion of spurious information and similar problems. In one particularly well-publicized incident, false information was introduced into the biography of John Seigenthaler, Sr. and remained undetected for four months.[67] Some critics claim that Wikipedia's open structure makes it an easy target for Internet trolls, advertisers, and those with an agenda to push.[69]Seeing as the passage comes from a parallel, fictional universe, and Wikipedia/TPE advertises itself as “the free encyclopedia anyone can edit,” one might want to add a modest passage from the real universe we live in, say:
Others make the opposite argument: they say that Wikipedia only appears to have an open structure, but is in fact dominated by politically biased cliques of editors and administrators who push a leftwing agenda, at the expense of the truth, and who hound those contributors who fail to toe the line.I’d write a much fuller passage, but I want it to blend in, stylistically, with the pretend paragraph, and what with the constant censorship, there’s no point putting a lot of time into a correction.
Alright, now hit the “edit this page” link at the top, and let’s go! Oops! I can’t find an “edit this page” link. I do, however, find a little lock symbol in the page’s upper right-hand corner. Passing my cursor over the lock flashes the legend, “Semi-protected.” It’s not “semi-protected,” it’s in lock-down.
In wikispeak, “semi-protected” means you can only edit a page if you are a “registered,” as opposed to an “anonymous” user. If you start editing at TPE without registering, you will receive a personal-sounding message (at your talk page, I guess; I can’t remember any more) from a (ro)“bot,” suggesting you register, and noting that there are advantages to registering. Wikipedians claim that registering affords an “editor” (at TPE, everyone’s an editor) “more privacy” than anonymous editing, whereby your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) number will be recorded on the entry’s “revision history” page. If you are using a work computer, people may be able to track you down, but if you are using a personal computer that is not part of a business, whether your Internet service provider (ISP) has given you a stable IP number or you float within a range, your name will likely not be listed by any “whois” service.
A Wikipedian will respond, “When we say that registering confers benefits, we mean such as greater privacy and being able to edit more articles.”
But registering only gives you added privacy, if you are editing TPE from a work computer; otherwise, it offers no privacy at all. And if you register, the characters running Wikipedia, aka “The Cabal,” will know who you are. So much for privacy. “But we’re the good guys,” they will protest, adding “Nobody wanting to edit Wikipedia has any business hiding her or his or its identity from its administrators.” Oh, yes, she/he/it—s/h/it for short—does. The administrators running TPE are its biggest problem.
As for registering giving you access to edit more articles, that’s true, but only because of The Cabal’s lies and misconduct. Lie: That TPE’s vandalism problems are chiefly due to “anon users”; no, they’re chiefly, or at least equally due to registered users—wikithugs. The cabalists, who are wikithugs, and their helpers, the would-be cabalists among of wikithugdom, use this lie as cover for their abuse of non-registered users, routine “insertion of spurious information” into entries, and routine censoring of true information from them. Indeed, just about any rationale any cabalist or would-be cabalist gives for any action, is nothing but a cover story rationalizing abusive behavior. (Not all administrators are wikithugs or even cabalists, but they’re not the problem, and they are not going to stand up to the cabalists, because they would then lose their “adminships.”)
After months of observing and trying to counter such abuse, I found Web sites and blogs by Wikipedia critics, many of whom had had the exact same sort of experiences, and made the exact same observations, though typically in saltier language than I’m using.
And that’s when I decided to turn the tables on the wikithugs, and give them a taste of real encyclopedic research. I devoted close to two years to the research, including studying work by others, who had in turn devoted thousands of man hours to researching TPE. I even warned the wikithugs early on, that they were making fools of themselves for the whole world to see, but on their turf, with its zero tolerance policy towards criticism, they felt invulnerable. (When they libeled someone I know and respect, but whom they hate, and I told them what they were guilty of, informed them that such behavior was actionable, and that I hoped their victim would sue them, they banned me for an “infinite” duration. But they also finally removed the libels from the entry in question, something they otherwise would never have done.) That research culminated in my first Wikipedia expose, “Wikipedia on Race,” which just appeared in the July issue of American Renaissance.
After reading my introduction to TPE, the best places to learn more about it are antisocialmedia.net, All’s Wool that Ends Wool, Conservapedia, the wikipedia review, Nonbovine Ruminations, Slashdot, Wikitruth, Wikipedia Watch and The Register.
The best way for dealing with the registered/non-registered user issue is to register, but give false information. The wikithugs do not (yet) require verification of one’s identity. But that still won’t protect you from being censored, blocked, and ultimately banned, if you get caught smuggling the truth into TPE. Of course, you could always re-register, under a new false identity, but why bother? The important thing is to study outlets that publish true information, and support said undertakings, whether through working for them, subsidizing their operations, or promoting them, or start your own, and let the world know about both the honest publishers and the frauds.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Chicago Priest "Killer" Pfleger Stalks the Pews Once More
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
By Nicholas Stix
Yesterday, at his blog, Blithe Spirit, my Oak Park, IL journalist friend, Jim Bowman, wrote “From the streets a message,” about white Catholic Chicago priest, Fr. Michael Pfleger, who had been suspended by Francis Cardinal George from his parish, St. Sabina, for two weeks, following a racist rant Fr. Pfleger had delivered against Hillary Clinton as a guest preacher at black supremacist Trinity United Church of Christ, until recently the church of Our Savior, Barack Christ.
Bowman was responding to a Chicago Tribune story by Margaret Ramirez and Rex W. Huppke, which quoted Chicago activist Tio Hardiman as saying, “Father Pfleger has always been a community activist first and a Catholic priest second.”
Bowman wrote, in part, “Fr. P. ain’t nothin’ without holy mother church as his sponsor, and with all his fulmination and histrionics he knows it.”
Bowman was mocking Fr. Pfleger’s habit of trying to sound like a black man.
My own take was,
You’re right, of course. He doesn’t serve the Church; he uses it.Jim Bowman has been devoting several blogs per day to Obama. His newest piece on Fr. Pfleger, whose suspension just ended, “St. Sabina, pray for us,” reports that he “is saying he won’t change, now that he’s back in his St. Sabina pulpit.”
I have more respect for Church teachings than that man does. About a month ago, I checked St. Sabina’s Web site. Of its scheduled guest speakers, not a single one was Catholic.
And he has no grasp of his own racism. He thinks he can hate whites all he wants, without being a racist. And he has taken on some of the worst vices of the black Protestant clerical tradition: Exploiting Christianity for political gain, fomenting racial hatred, and acting as an unelected political demagogue. The only vice from that tradition he isn’t, to my knowledge, guilty of, is seducing the parish’s prettiest women.
The good father, a practitioner of Black Liberation Theology (no, that is not Catholic order; in fact, it’s not Christianity but straight-up, simple black supremacy) who worships a black God, and who calls his parish church a “faith community,” is back to his old habit of organizing local blacks to protest in behalf of the confiscation of all legal guns, which he fantasizes will solve the problem of criminals killing people with illegal guns.
One year ago, Fr. Pfleger threatened to murder (“snuff”) a legal gun dealer and any Illinois legislators who failed to go along with his illegal, unconstitutional crusade. Illegal, because his political agitating violated his Church’s non-profit status, and unconstitutional, because he sought to violate citizens’ Second Amendment rights. I guess, since Fr. Pfleger fantasizes that he’s a black man, and black preachers violate the tax laws with impunity, he too can tread the laws under foot.
He later insisted that he had no idea that “snuff” means to murder. So, honesty isn’t his strong suit, either.
Wikipedia on Race
By Nicholas Stix
My first exposé on Wikipedia, or as I call it, The Pretend Encyclopedia, appears today in the pages of American Renaissance (AmRen), whose archives comprise the closest thing existing to a real encyclopedia of race.
Those who are not yet AmRen subscribers would do well to support this fine magazine, which published my exposé on the Knoxville Horror in its July 2007 issue. A free download of the entire issue is available here, as a one-time, introductory offer.
“Wikipedia on Race”:
• Is the most exhaustive survey of Wikipedia ever undertaken, taking over 18 months; the study of thousands of Wikipedia pages (articles and their “talk” pages; editors’ “user” and talk pages; rules and rules talk pages; administrative action pages; and revision history pages for all of the foregoing); comparing Wikipedia articles to top scholarship; and studying the huge literature about Wikipedia and Wikipedians;
• Is the first study of Wikipedia’s treatment of race;
• Discusses or mentions 26 different Wikipedia articles; profiles of many more articles were written but could not be included for reasons of space;
• Is the first study connecting the propaganda of the articles, including their revision histories, to the politics of the “talk” pages and the practices of Wikipedia’s ideological enforcers;
• The first extended study showing the editing tricks (in addition to good, old-fashioned prevarications) that Wikipedia’s ideological enforcers use to misrepresent racial reality, while concealing their mendacity from readers and other editors alike (e.g., fake citations);
• Cites some of Wikipedia’s most politically corrupt editors;
• Explains the true meaning of Wikipedia’s “non-negotiable” principles; and
• Contains unintended humor through quotes of Wikipedians.
My first exposé on Wikipedia, or as I call it, The Pretend Encyclopedia, appears today in the pages of American Renaissance (AmRen), whose archives comprise the closest thing existing to a real encyclopedia of race.
Those who are not yet AmRen subscribers would do well to support this fine magazine, which published my exposé on the Knoxville Horror in its July 2007 issue. A free download of the entire issue is available here, as a one-time, introductory offer.
“Wikipedia on Race”:
• Is the most exhaustive survey of Wikipedia ever undertaken, taking over 18 months; the study of thousands of Wikipedia pages (articles and their “talk” pages; editors’ “user” and talk pages; rules and rules talk pages; administrative action pages; and revision history pages for all of the foregoing); comparing Wikipedia articles to top scholarship; and studying the huge literature about Wikipedia and Wikipedians;
• Is the first study of Wikipedia’s treatment of race;
• Discusses or mentions 26 different Wikipedia articles; profiles of many more articles were written but could not be included for reasons of space;
• Is the first study connecting the propaganda of the articles, including their revision histories, to the politics of the “talk” pages and the practices of Wikipedia’s ideological enforcers;
• The first extended study showing the editing tricks (in addition to good, old-fashioned prevarications) that Wikipedia’s ideological enforcers use to misrepresent racial reality, while concealing their mendacity from readers and other editors alike (e.g., fake citations);
• Cites some of Wikipedia’s most politically corrupt editors;
• Explains the true meaning of Wikipedia’s “non-negotiable” principles; and
• Contains unintended humor through quotes of Wikipedians.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work
By Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein
Russell Sage Foundation, March 1997
$22.00, ISBN: 087154234X
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
Reviewed by Nicholas Stix
During the early 1980s, social scientists noticed that welfare mothers were spending three to six times their official incomes. In his exquisitely written foreword, Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks argues persuasively that in a “conspiracy of silence,” conservatives didn’t want to admit that mothers could not survive on welfare checks alone, while “liberals” didn’t want to admit that clients had unreported resources. Jencks and his colleagues asked where the additional money was coming from. Making Ends Meet provides some answers.
Aided by over thirty research associates, sociologist Kathryn Edin and anthropologist Laura Lein interviewed 379 single welfare AND poor working mothers in Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, Charleston and rural Minnesota. The authors compared the groups, with the purpose of undermining welfare reform.
Virtually all of the mothers studied derived income from their children’s fathers, from boyfriends, relatives, off-the-books jobs (e.g., babysitting), selling stolen goods, prostitution or dealing drugs. Despite unreported income, uneducated, unskilled women working at "dead-end" jobs were barely treading water.
The authors report that single, working mothers have more cash, yet suffer greater hardships than their non-working counterparts.
Working mothers must pay for additional transportation, and for services such as medical and child care that welfare mothers get free. Edin and Lein thus conclude that poor women are usually worse off working than being on welfare.
The authors tend to exaggerate the difficulty of finding affordable child care. Although a respondent told of getting babysitting services from a welfare mother for a bag or two of groceries per month, the authors speak of “market-rate” (read: exorbitant, state-licensed) child care. As NYU political scientist Lawrence Mead noted in The New Politics of Poverty (1992), as Jencks corroborates, and as I know from direct experience, poor working mothers are able to negotiate affordable, unlicensed child care without “service-providers” from inflationary, government programs. The supposed lack of child care is a rehearsed response that welfare mothers know to give to credulous, “Suzy the social worker” (a term a foster-care caseworker colleague taught me) types and socialist/radical multicultural academic researchers: “I really want to work, but ...”
Edin and Lein alternate between the role of “Suzies” and that of dogged interviewers. They re-interview respondents who initially gave unrealistic budgets, or ambiguous or misleading answers on whether they were receiving child support, or engaging in casual prostitution. The pervasiveness of casual prostitution matched my own observations in New York’s slums; that of informal child support surprised me. However, when it comes to the mothers’ rationalizations for not working, it’s “Suzy time” again. The conflicted authors emphasize mothers’ concern with avoiding criminal activity, despite chronicling their involvement in prostitution, and in contracting with shoplifters to steal clothing for their children.
Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and the Democrats’ ensuing Northern Strategy’s revolutionary anti-morality put dunce caps on millennia-old moral teachings prohibiting premarital sex. Armies of sexual “educators” and “helping” professionals and their university and media apologists told girls they had a right to “non-marital births,” and demanded that hardworking, married folks support those children. Implicitly re-defining a family as an unwed mother and child(ren), the authors are shocked, shocked, that this results in a poor, unskilled girl raising her fatherless child(ren) in poverty.
(As liberal Democratic historian Fred Siegel (The Future Once Happened Here) has chronicled, the Marxist National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) sought to bankrupt New York City, and precipitate a revolution. From 1966-73, liberal Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay’s social services commissioner, Mitchell “Come and Get It” Ginsberg, more than doubled the welfare rolls, from 538,000 to 1.165 million. At the same time, the NWRO pursued a politics of racial polarization, which it later projected on to Republicans. Instead of a revolution, the NWRO precipitated the moral collapse of urban black society.)
In seeing life in “some of the country’s most dangerous neighborhoods” as driving concerned mothers onto the dole, rather than leave their children unsupervised while they work, the authors confuse cause and effect. It is the spread of illegitimacy and welfare, and their accompanying vices, that has made such areas so dangerous.
In Why Nothing Works (1987), “liberal” anthropologist Marvin Harris “explained” that welfare clients raised their sons to be violent, the better to protect the mothers (from other women’s sons). Hence, to the degree that poor young blacks and Hispanics embrace crime, they do so not in response to (white) racism, or lack of opportunity, but to their rearing.
Millions of American couples avoid poverty through pooling modest paychecks, one spouse working extra hours, sharing responsibilities, relying on relatives for child care and limiting their wants. The authors have unwittingly made a compelling case for demolishing the welfare state and its “alternative” family models. The solution is marriage.
When I was a foster-care caseworker, one of my clients almost always missed agency visits to see her seven children. “I didn’t want to leave the house, ‘cause it was rainin,’” gradually became “It looked like it MIGHT rain.” Edin and Lein deny the morality of work and responsible living, yet portray welfare clients as always a government program away from employability. But government will never be able to stop the rain, just as it will never be able to guarantee uneducated, unskilled women “good jobs.”
I doubt that Making Ends Meet will cause an uncommitted reader to suddenly empathize with welfare clients. In a New York Times puff piece, Edin inadvertently clarified the book’s (for me) peculiar sensibility. Reporter Jason DeParle related that while Edin, who is white, found black children beautiful, “white children at times began to look ‘homely’” to her. Rather than caring about ALL poor kids, Kathryn Edin apparently feels a blind loyalty to poor black women and their children, and a corresponding obligation to be repelled by children of her own race. How sad.
Originally published in the February, 1998 Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
By Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein
Russell Sage Foundation, March 1997
$22.00, ISBN: 087154234X
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
Reviewed by Nicholas Stix
During the early 1980s, social scientists noticed that welfare mothers were spending three to six times their official incomes. In his exquisitely written foreword, Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks argues persuasively that in a “conspiracy of silence,” conservatives didn’t want to admit that mothers could not survive on welfare checks alone, while “liberals” didn’t want to admit that clients had unreported resources. Jencks and his colleagues asked where the additional money was coming from. Making Ends Meet provides some answers.
Aided by over thirty research associates, sociologist Kathryn Edin and anthropologist Laura Lein interviewed 379 single welfare AND poor working mothers in Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, Charleston and rural Minnesota. The authors compared the groups, with the purpose of undermining welfare reform.
Virtually all of the mothers studied derived income from their children’s fathers, from boyfriends, relatives, off-the-books jobs (e.g., babysitting), selling stolen goods, prostitution or dealing drugs. Despite unreported income, uneducated, unskilled women working at "dead-end" jobs were barely treading water.
The authors report that single, working mothers have more cash, yet suffer greater hardships than their non-working counterparts.
Working mothers must pay for additional transportation, and for services such as medical and child care that welfare mothers get free. Edin and Lein thus conclude that poor women are usually worse off working than being on welfare.
The authors tend to exaggerate the difficulty of finding affordable child care. Although a respondent told of getting babysitting services from a welfare mother for a bag or two of groceries per month, the authors speak of “market-rate” (read: exorbitant, state-licensed) child care. As NYU political scientist Lawrence Mead noted in The New Politics of Poverty (1992), as Jencks corroborates, and as I know from direct experience, poor working mothers are able to negotiate affordable, unlicensed child care without “service-providers” from inflationary, government programs. The supposed lack of child care is a rehearsed response that welfare mothers know to give to credulous, “Suzy the social worker” (a term a foster-care caseworker colleague taught me) types and socialist/radical multicultural academic researchers: “I really want to work, but ...”
Edin and Lein alternate between the role of “Suzies” and that of dogged interviewers. They re-interview respondents who initially gave unrealistic budgets, or ambiguous or misleading answers on whether they were receiving child support, or engaging in casual prostitution. The pervasiveness of casual prostitution matched my own observations in New York’s slums; that of informal child support surprised me. However, when it comes to the mothers’ rationalizations for not working, it’s “Suzy time” again. The conflicted authors emphasize mothers’ concern with avoiding criminal activity, despite chronicling their involvement in prostitution, and in contracting with shoplifters to steal clothing for their children.
Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and the Democrats’ ensuing Northern Strategy’s revolutionary anti-morality put dunce caps on millennia-old moral teachings prohibiting premarital sex. Armies of sexual “educators” and “helping” professionals and their university and media apologists told girls they had a right to “non-marital births,” and demanded that hardworking, married folks support those children. Implicitly re-defining a family as an unwed mother and child(ren), the authors are shocked, shocked, that this results in a poor, unskilled girl raising her fatherless child(ren) in poverty.
(As liberal Democratic historian Fred Siegel (The Future Once Happened Here) has chronicled, the Marxist National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) sought to bankrupt New York City, and precipitate a revolution. From 1966-73, liberal Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay’s social services commissioner, Mitchell “Come and Get It” Ginsberg, more than doubled the welfare rolls, from 538,000 to 1.165 million. At the same time, the NWRO pursued a politics of racial polarization, which it later projected on to Republicans. Instead of a revolution, the NWRO precipitated the moral collapse of urban black society.)
In seeing life in “some of the country’s most dangerous neighborhoods” as driving concerned mothers onto the dole, rather than leave their children unsupervised while they work, the authors confuse cause and effect. It is the spread of illegitimacy and welfare, and their accompanying vices, that has made such areas so dangerous.
In Why Nothing Works (1987), “liberal” anthropologist Marvin Harris “explained” that welfare clients raised their sons to be violent, the better to protect the mothers (from other women’s sons). Hence, to the degree that poor young blacks and Hispanics embrace crime, they do so not in response to (white) racism, or lack of opportunity, but to their rearing.
Millions of American couples avoid poverty through pooling modest paychecks, one spouse working extra hours, sharing responsibilities, relying on relatives for child care and limiting their wants. The authors have unwittingly made a compelling case for demolishing the welfare state and its “alternative” family models. The solution is marriage.
When I was a foster-care caseworker, one of my clients almost always missed agency visits to see her seven children. “I didn’t want to leave the house, ‘cause it was rainin,’” gradually became “It looked like it MIGHT rain.” Edin and Lein deny the morality of work and responsible living, yet portray welfare clients as always a government program away from employability. But government will never be able to stop the rain, just as it will never be able to guarantee uneducated, unskilled women “good jobs.”
I doubt that Making Ends Meet will cause an uncommitted reader to suddenly empathize with welfare clients. In a New York Times puff piece, Edin inadvertently clarified the book’s (for me) peculiar sensibility. Reporter Jason DeParle related that while Edin, who is white, found black children beautiful, “white children at times began to look ‘homely’” to her. Rather than caring about ALL poor kids, Kathryn Edin apparently feels a blind loyalty to poor black women and their children, and a corresponding obligation to be repelled by children of her own race. How sad.
Originally published in the February, 1998 Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Requiem for a Heavyweight: Herman Badillo
By Nicholas Stix
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
September 11, 2001
Toogood Reports
In a press conference last May, which should have been his farewell from public life, 72-year-old Herman Badillo instead announced his candidacy for the New York City mayoralty. On Tuesday, September 11, Badillo is expected to be slaughtered in the Republican Primary by media billionaire and political novice, Michael Bloomberg. Both men are longtime liberal Democrats who only recently switched political parties.
[The primary was cancelled, on account of the terrorist attack on New York City that morning, and rescheduled for two weeks later.]
A man used to being the “first Hispanic everything” (Bronx borough president, congressman, housing commissioner, deputy mayor, president of the City University of New York Board of Trustees) will not fulfill his dream of becoming the city’s first Hispanic mayor. Once a New York political heavyweight, Herman Badillo threatens to become its version of Harold Stassen. Badillo is a walking embodiment of the rule that in New York City, where talk of high-minded ideals is often no more than a front for ethnic and racial loyalty, politics is driven by ethnicity.
Like so much of the Badillo legend, it’s not even clear how many times he has run for mayor: Depending on who’s reporting, it’s the fourth or the sixth time. In fact, it is at least the sixth go-round for Badillo: 1969, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1985, and now. And if you count an abortive, 1993 campaign, this is Badillo’s seventh shot at the brass ring. And yet, the New York Times editorial board has announced that this is Badillo’s fourth mayoral campaign, and who am I to argue with the Times?
(Such sloppiness can be seen on the same newscast: On the September 8, late night newscast on “The WB’s” New York station, Channel 11, two reporters said that it was Badillo’s “fourth” and “sixth” campaign, respectively.)
The legend begins when Herman was 9 ... or 11 ... or 12—again, depending on who’s doing the telling—and arrived on the mainland from Puerto Rico, an orphan who didn’t speak a word of English. But he learned fast. Indeed, Herman Badillo became a classic, New York success story, graduating magna cum laude in 1951 with a degree in accounting, from what was then the most exclusive undergraduate school in America, the public City College of New York. And despite having to go to school nights, while working full time as an accountant, Badillo graduated first in his class from private Brooklyn Law School, in 1954.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Badillo’s drive was nearly unstoppable. He won the Bronx Borough presidency in 1965, and won a congressional election in 1970, giving up his seat in 1978, to be deputy mayor.
Like so many young, New York dynamos, Herman Badillo sought the mayoralty, and for him, as for so many others, that prize proved an impossible dream.
In 1969, liberal Republican mayor John V. Lindsay (1921-2000; mayor, 1966 through 1973), who fancied himself a racial healer, had in four years brought the city to the brink of a race war. Lindsay was beloved by New York’s blacks and upper-middle-class, white socialists and communists, and hated by everyone else.
On the Democratic side, Badillo competed against Robert Wagner (1910-1991) and Mario Procaccino (1912-1995) for the Democrat mayoral nomination.
Wagner, the aristocratic yet accessible liberal (1954 through 1965), was with liberal Republican Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947; mayor, 1934 through 1945) one of the two most popular mayors the city has had since its 1898 incorporation of Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. (Both men served three complete terms as mayor.) In part due to the death of his first wife, Wagner had tired of being mayor. However, he soon found that not being mayor bored him even more. The Italian-born Procaccino, was the working-class, law-and-order, conservative Democratic city comptroller. To stave off charges of racism, Procaccino insisted he was “a moderate, progressive Democrat.” Of the three, Badillo was the farthest to the left. Badillo and Wagner split the liberal vote, and Procaccino won the nomination.
John Lindsay, whose radical policies had lost him the support even of his own party, ran on the Liberal Party line. He could easily have been beaten by one solid opponent, but was blessed with two semi-solid types, the crude Procaccino and the relatively patrician, conservative Republican state senator, John Marchi. Procaccino and Marchi split the anti-Lindsay vote, and despite getting only 42 percent of all votes, Lindsay — who had outspent both his opponents combined — won another four years, which he used to bankrupt the city.
If any year was Badillo’s, it was 1973. There was no incumbent mayor, no dominant figure in the Democratic Party, and Congressman Badillo was at the height of his political powers. But you might say that Herman Badillo went to bed too early that year.
Badillo was gunning for the endorsement of the socialist, New Democratic Coalition (NDC), with which he was closely associated. As Chris McNickle tells the story in To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City,
Although the NDC was pro-minority, it was run primarily by Jewish leftists, who chose one of their own. Upper West Side state assemblyman, Albert Blumenthal, who had assiduously courted the group’s delegates, prevailed. Badillo cried racism, saying “We can’t have a coalition that says a fellow can’t be mayor because he’s Puerto Rican.”
That year, Comptroller Abe Beame (1906-2001), a reliable, regular Democrat, took nothing for granted. Beame organized support within the party organization, and used the resources of his office. In the primary, Beame barely edged Badillo, 34 percent to 29 percent. In the run-off, however, Beame trounced Badillo, 61 percent to 39 percent, before going on to victory in the general election.
Already at the time, Badillo cried racism over Beame’s tactics. Beame’s campaign had taken out advertisements in Jewish newspapers saying, “Vote as if your life depends upon it, because it does.” In a televised debate, condemning all such appeals to ethnic solidarity, Badillo confronted Beame about the ads, which Beame repudiated. Beame then turned the tables on Badillo, accusing him of making exactly the same appeals to Puerto Rican voters. Beame added, “Now if I said Jewish people should only support Jews, I would be ridden out of politics.”
As chronicled by Chris McNickle, “Badillo finally lost his composure during the last television debate ... when he called his diminutive opponent a racist, and ‘a vicious little man.’”
In a feature in the August 31 Daily News, veteran political reporter and former City Hall bureau chief Joel Siegel (not to be confused with ABC’s Joel Siegel) supports Badillo’s contention, though the new story is that Beame’s “racism” was responsible for Badillo’s primary defeat in 1973:
In 1977, most Democratic strategists agreed that, due to the city’s demographics, the party’s candidate was bound to be a Jew. Based on the city’s financial insolvency, which had been caused by the cooking of the books and lies to which then-Mayor Lindsay and then-Comptroller Beame had become addicted, incumbent Mayor Abe Beame was the most unpopular man in town. Flamboyant, radical feminist/socialist Bella Abzug, who in a city obsessed with an explosion of violent crime and arson, supported the right of policemen and firemen to strike, proved equally adept at hogging the spotlight and shooting herself in the foot. That left reform socialist Greenwich Village congressman, Ed Koch. In a brilliantly cynical campaign, Koch remade himself into the law-and-order candidate. On the street, the candidate greeted potential voters with, “Hi. I’m for capital punishment. Are you?”
Even more than the present election, the 1977 Democratic primary was a campaign of closely bunched candidates. The results, which broke down largely along ethnic lines, were: Koch, 20 percent; New York State Secretary of State Mario M. Cuomo, 19 percent; Mayor Beame, 18 percent; Bella Abzug, 17 percent; black Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, 14 percent; and Badillo, at 11 percent.
Badillo had the greatest success at siphoning black votes away from Percy Sutton, who was enraged (but at whom?) that he was able to win only 55 percent of the black vote, but aside from some wealthy white socialists, Badillo had fallen back into the minority political ghetto.
Koch beat Cuomo in the Democratic run-off, 55 to 45 percent, and then again in the general election, 50 to 42 percent, with Cuomo heading the Liberal Party ticket.
In hindsight, after 1977, Herman Badillo would have done well to give up on his dream of citywide office. But it wouldn’t have been like him to do that.
In 1978, newly-elected mayor Ed Koch (1978 through 1989) made Badillo deputy mayor. In Koch’s first term, he was the most popular mayor the city ever had. In 1981, Badillo made rumblings about running for about five minutes.
In 1985, a still very popular Mayor Koch was running for his third term of office. A coalition of minority black and Hispanic Democratic politicians decided to try and unseat the incumbent for no other reason than the color of his skin. (Having just returned to New York after five years spent in West Germany, I heard white socialist political operatives, some of them Jews, speak passionately about trying to unseat Koch, presumably with a minority candidate, without yet feeling the anti-Semitic, racist undercurrent of such talk.)
The group, Coalition for a Just New York, was supposedly black and Hispanic, but was dominated by black pols who used Hispanics, but had no intention of giving them parity, let alone leadership. The group was run by Congressman Charles Rangel, City Clerk David Dinkins, state assemblyman and Manhattan Democratic Party chief Herman “Denny” Farrell and Brooklyn assemblyman Al Vann. Badillo managed to gain the support of the majority of the coalition, including many black votes, but the group’s black leaders were so racist, that as much as they wanted to defeat Ed Koch, they would rather lose with a black man, than win with a Hispanic. And so, Denny Farrell stabbed Herman Badillo in the back, taking the nomination himself.
Farrell’s primary campaign was a model of ineptitude, and failed even to attract black voters. Because this was New York, the racism of Farrell, et al. did not cause them to suffer at all with their political peers or with the media.
Note that nowhere in Joel Siegel’s lengthy profile of Badillo in the August 31 Daily News, does he mention that Badillo even ran for mayor in 1985. The racially opportunistic Siegel exaggerates the “racism” of Jewish mayor Abe Beame that supposedly cost Badillo the Democratic nomination, and thus, the mayoralty, in 1973, without at all mentioning the virulent black racism that destroyed Badillo’s 1985 campaign.
The 1985 campaign showed that time had passed Badillo by. Perhaps it had passed New York by, as well.
After his 1985 debacle, Herman Badillo should have retired from public life. But at 56, he was still in the prime of life, the age when executives customarily are driving at full throttle. And besides, he had a fever for becoming mayor. He couldn’t help himself.
Badillo devoted himself to the East Side law firm he co-founded, Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, Harding, which specializes in lobbying power brokers. (Co-founder Ray Harding is the head of the New York Liberal Party, an organization with no clear political posture, which has deteriorated into nothing more than a patronage operation.) A member of the City University Board of Trustees, he would give talks at the neo-conservative Manhattan Institute and CUNY Association of Scholars on education reform. The small, wealthy circles of listeners at those soirees surely encouraged Badillo to run, as did his old lobbying cronies. However, for all the money and the influence their members had, those groups were so small and insular, that they could not help someone get elected dog catcher, let alone mayor.
I have no doubt that Badillo’s neo-conservative turn was the result of the political knife Denny Farrell & Co. put in his back in 1985. But New York’s political reality and Herman Badillo had only begun to separate. After Badillo’s second wife, Irma, died after a lengthy period of Alzheimer’s, during which Badillo nursed her, black supremacist police officer Eric Adams, the founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, argued that Badillo should have “married one of his own.” (Irma Badillo was a Jew.) Adams suffered no repercussions, and indeed, is constantly sought out by the city’s mainstream media outlets, who either ignored the remark, or quickly developed amnesia.
The centerpiece of Badillo’s 2001 campaign is “standards” in education, but even this is a double-edged sword.
In 1997, Rudy Giuliani got his new political ally, a longtime member of the City University of New York Board of Trustees, named vice-president of that body; in 1999, Giuliani got Gov. George Pataki to name Badillo CUNY Board president. Badillo set about restoring standards to CUNY’s system of 19 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools.
Badillo was in for some rough sledding. In the $4.5 billion patronage mill that CUNY had become, entrenched interests among faculty, administration, staff, and even student politicians would fight reform to the death. Even though he is Hispanic, Badillo was vilified by leaders of all of the above groups as a “racist.” And yet, he did succeed at ramming through a reform plan, whereby students who required remediation could not attend four-year CUNY colleges without first passing the necessary classes at community colleges, and community college students could not graduate, without first passing proficiency exams.
Badillo’s supporters give him all of the credit for saving CUNY, except that he hasn’t earned such praise. As the Daily News showed in late 1999, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has been smuggling community college students who cannot do college-level work into classes on four-year campuses. Despite the exposé, Chancellor Goldstein did not halt the practice, and Badillo and Mayor Giuliani did not force him to cease and desist. And so, like so much recent “reform” in New York, CUNY has only been reformed in the realm of press releases.
And Badillo’s recent pronouncements notwithstanding, he bears much of the responsibility for the destruction of education in New York. It was Badillo, as Bronx Borough president, who did much of the heavy lifting that brought about “bilingual” (read: English-free) Hostos Community College (“established in 1968 and opened in 1970,” according to its website). Hostos’ present state is not a corruption of noble ends; Hostos was conceived as an anti-educational bastion of Puerto Rican corruption and patronage. Similarly, Badillo was the greatest local champion of bilingual education. As a congressman, he wrote the 1974 Bilingual Education Bill. And even now, in his incarnation as a Republican, he has not spoken of dismantling bilingual education in the city’s schools.
Republican Gov. George Pataki has sought since May to talk Badillo out of running against Mike Bloomberg, and Badillo’s “ally,” Mayor Giuliani, has gone “neutral” in the primary race, fueling the familiar refrain of “betrayal” among Badillo’s supporters. Badillo has complained long and hard of the injustice of Bloomberg getting around campaign finance rules, by financing his own campaign. And yet, coming from a seasoned political veteran and lawyer-lobbyist, who never remained loyal long to any political ally, such talk smacks of political “secondary virginity.”
The truth is, Rudy Giuliani gave Herman Badillo every chance to turn his CUNY Board of Trustees presidency into a power base, but Badillo blew it. His political muscles had atrophied.
In the July 31 Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz opined of Badillo, “He is an imposing figure, no doubt about it, and a well known one in New York, his lack of campaign ads notwithstanding. In the elevator all eyes are on him, and on the street people swivel around to look at him.”
And yet, one month later, Joel Siegel would write in the Daily News, that on the street, most people DO NOT recognize Badillo. Was one writer lying?
No; they were simply talking about different streets. Siegel was writing of Badillo’s old power base, on The Bronx’ Sheridan Avenue, teeming with Hispanic Democrats; Rabinowitz was writing of his current one, on Manhattan’s tony East Side, where his law office is, and where the streets teem with lawyers and financial consultants. The problem is, for an Hispanic politician, in 2001 as in 1971, the votes are in The Bronx. Herman Badillo is an ethnic politician without an ethnic constituency. The “green people” provide no substitute.
Five years ago, I saw Badillo’s strengths and weaknesses simultaneously on display. At the invitation of the CUNY Association of Scholars, he spoke at CUNY’s John Jay College on the need to reform CUNY. Badillo observed that someone who is a weak reader, will listen attentively in class, take copious, detailed notes, and avoid majors with the heaviest reading loads.
That was more sense than I ever heard in five years as a CUNY adjunct instructor, teaching students who were poor readers.
At the same time, when someone asked Badillo if reforming CUNY wouldn’t necessarily bring with it a reduction of enrollment, he ducked the question.
There were all of nine people present, including Badillo, the organizers, and myself, at least three of whom were registered Democrats. Politically, Badillo’s future hinged on his willingness to give the same talk to a working-class, Hispanic audience, and convince its members that CUNY reform was in their interest. But Badillo avoided such audiences like the plague. He had traded the street he needed, for the one he could use.
Herman Badillo was not sold out; he simply fizzled out. A longtime contender among the heavyweights of New York ethnic politics, on May 11 he will be carried out of the ring on his shield.
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
September 11, 2001
Toogood Reports
In a press conference last May, which should have been his farewell from public life, 72-year-old Herman Badillo instead announced his candidacy for the New York City mayoralty. On Tuesday, September 11, Badillo is expected to be slaughtered in the Republican Primary by media billionaire and political novice, Michael Bloomberg. Both men are longtime liberal Democrats who only recently switched political parties.
[The primary was cancelled, on account of the terrorist attack on New York City that morning, and rescheduled for two weeks later.]
A man used to being the “first Hispanic everything” (Bronx borough president, congressman, housing commissioner, deputy mayor, president of the City University of New York Board of Trustees) will not fulfill his dream of becoming the city’s first Hispanic mayor. Once a New York political heavyweight, Herman Badillo threatens to become its version of Harold Stassen. Badillo is a walking embodiment of the rule that in New York City, where talk of high-minded ideals is often no more than a front for ethnic and racial loyalty, politics is driven by ethnicity.
Like so much of the Badillo legend, it’s not even clear how many times he has run for mayor: Depending on who’s reporting, it’s the fourth or the sixth time. In fact, it is at least the sixth go-round for Badillo: 1969, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1985, and now. And if you count an abortive, 1993 campaign, this is Badillo’s seventh shot at the brass ring. And yet, the New York Times editorial board has announced that this is Badillo’s fourth mayoral campaign, and who am I to argue with the Times?
(Such sloppiness can be seen on the same newscast: On the September 8, late night newscast on “The WB’s” New York station, Channel 11, two reporters said that it was Badillo’s “fourth” and “sixth” campaign, respectively.)
The legend begins when Herman was 9 ... or 11 ... or 12—again, depending on who’s doing the telling—and arrived on the mainland from Puerto Rico, an orphan who didn’t speak a word of English. But he learned fast. Indeed, Herman Badillo became a classic, New York success story, graduating magna cum laude in 1951 with a degree in accounting, from what was then the most exclusive undergraduate school in America, the public City College of New York. And despite having to go to school nights, while working full time as an accountant, Badillo graduated first in his class from private Brooklyn Law School, in 1954.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Badillo’s drive was nearly unstoppable. He won the Bronx Borough presidency in 1965, and won a congressional election in 1970, giving up his seat in 1978, to be deputy mayor.
Like so many young, New York dynamos, Herman Badillo sought the mayoralty, and for him, as for so many others, that prize proved an impossible dream.
In 1969, liberal Republican mayor John V. Lindsay (1921-2000; mayor, 1966 through 1973), who fancied himself a racial healer, had in four years brought the city to the brink of a race war. Lindsay was beloved by New York’s blacks and upper-middle-class, white socialists and communists, and hated by everyone else.
On the Democratic side, Badillo competed against Robert Wagner (1910-1991) and Mario Procaccino (1912-1995) for the Democrat mayoral nomination.
Wagner, the aristocratic yet accessible liberal (1954 through 1965), was with liberal Republican Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947; mayor, 1934 through 1945) one of the two most popular mayors the city has had since its 1898 incorporation of Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. (Both men served three complete terms as mayor.) In part due to the death of his first wife, Wagner had tired of being mayor. However, he soon found that not being mayor bored him even more. The Italian-born Procaccino, was the working-class, law-and-order, conservative Democratic city comptroller. To stave off charges of racism, Procaccino insisted he was “a moderate, progressive Democrat.” Of the three, Badillo was the farthest to the left. Badillo and Wagner split the liberal vote, and Procaccino won the nomination.
John Lindsay, whose radical policies had lost him the support even of his own party, ran on the Liberal Party line. He could easily have been beaten by one solid opponent, but was blessed with two semi-solid types, the crude Procaccino and the relatively patrician, conservative Republican state senator, John Marchi. Procaccino and Marchi split the anti-Lindsay vote, and despite getting only 42 percent of all votes, Lindsay — who had outspent both his opponents combined — won another four years, which he used to bankrupt the city.
If any year was Badillo’s, it was 1973. There was no incumbent mayor, no dominant figure in the Democratic Party, and Congressman Badillo was at the height of his political powers. But you might say that Herman Badillo went to bed too early that year.
Badillo was gunning for the endorsement of the socialist, New Democratic Coalition (NDC), with which he was closely associated. As Chris McNickle tells the story in To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City,
His candidacy offered a chance to marry minority supporters to liberal Jewish voters with more strength than the other contenders. The combination seemed so attractive that Badillo simply assumed he would win. He appeared so certain of himself that many delegates found his bearing arrogant. They felt that he acted as if their endorsement belonged to him by “divine right,” one journalist reported.
Although the NDC was pro-minority, it was run primarily by Jewish leftists, who chose one of their own. Upper West Side state assemblyman, Albert Blumenthal, who had assiduously courted the group’s delegates, prevailed. Badillo cried racism, saying “We can’t have a coalition that says a fellow can’t be mayor because he’s Puerto Rican.”
That year, Comptroller Abe Beame (1906-2001), a reliable, regular Democrat, took nothing for granted. Beame organized support within the party organization, and used the resources of his office. In the primary, Beame barely edged Badillo, 34 percent to 29 percent. In the run-off, however, Beame trounced Badillo, 61 percent to 39 percent, before going on to victory in the general election.
Already at the time, Badillo cried racism over Beame’s tactics. Beame’s campaign had taken out advertisements in Jewish newspapers saying, “Vote as if your life depends upon it, because it does.” In a televised debate, condemning all such appeals to ethnic solidarity, Badillo confronted Beame about the ads, which Beame repudiated. Beame then turned the tables on Badillo, accusing him of making exactly the same appeals to Puerto Rican voters. Beame added, “Now if I said Jewish people should only support Jews, I would be ridden out of politics.”
As chronicled by Chris McNickle, “Badillo finally lost his composure during the last television debate ... when he called his diminutive opponent a racist, and ‘a vicious little man.’”
In a feature in the August 31 Daily News, veteran political reporter and former City Hall bureau chief Joel Siegel (not to be confused with ABC’s Joel Siegel) supports Badillo’s contention, though the new story is that Beame’s “racism” was responsible for Badillo’s primary defeat in 1973:
In his 1973 bid, he lost a runoff to Abe Beame after anti-Badillo forces sent trucks blaring Latin music into white districts, urging a vote for Badillo. The lanky Badillo did not help himself by calling the 5-foot-2 Beame a "malicious little man."That was Badillo’s last realistic shot at the mayoralty.
Said Badillo: "They stole an election, using racist techniques.”
In 1977, most Democratic strategists agreed that, due to the city’s demographics, the party’s candidate was bound to be a Jew. Based on the city’s financial insolvency, which had been caused by the cooking of the books and lies to which then-Mayor Lindsay and then-Comptroller Beame had become addicted, incumbent Mayor Abe Beame was the most unpopular man in town. Flamboyant, radical feminist/socialist Bella Abzug, who in a city obsessed with an explosion of violent crime and arson, supported the right of policemen and firemen to strike, proved equally adept at hogging the spotlight and shooting herself in the foot. That left reform socialist Greenwich Village congressman, Ed Koch. In a brilliantly cynical campaign, Koch remade himself into the law-and-order candidate. On the street, the candidate greeted potential voters with, “Hi. I’m for capital punishment. Are you?”
Even more than the present election, the 1977 Democratic primary was a campaign of closely bunched candidates. The results, which broke down largely along ethnic lines, were: Koch, 20 percent; New York State Secretary of State Mario M. Cuomo, 19 percent; Mayor Beame, 18 percent; Bella Abzug, 17 percent; black Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, 14 percent; and Badillo, at 11 percent.
Badillo had the greatest success at siphoning black votes away from Percy Sutton, who was enraged (but at whom?) that he was able to win only 55 percent of the black vote, but aside from some wealthy white socialists, Badillo had fallen back into the minority political ghetto.
Koch beat Cuomo in the Democratic run-off, 55 to 45 percent, and then again in the general election, 50 to 42 percent, with Cuomo heading the Liberal Party ticket.
In hindsight, after 1977, Herman Badillo would have done well to give up on his dream of citywide office. But it wouldn’t have been like him to do that.
In 1978, newly-elected mayor Ed Koch (1978 through 1989) made Badillo deputy mayor. In Koch’s first term, he was the most popular mayor the city ever had. In 1981, Badillo made rumblings about running for about five minutes.
In 1985, a still very popular Mayor Koch was running for his third term of office. A coalition of minority black and Hispanic Democratic politicians decided to try and unseat the incumbent for no other reason than the color of his skin. (Having just returned to New York after five years spent in West Germany, I heard white socialist political operatives, some of them Jews, speak passionately about trying to unseat Koch, presumably with a minority candidate, without yet feeling the anti-Semitic, racist undercurrent of such talk.)
The group, Coalition for a Just New York, was supposedly black and Hispanic, but was dominated by black pols who used Hispanics, but had no intention of giving them parity, let alone leadership. The group was run by Congressman Charles Rangel, City Clerk David Dinkins, state assemblyman and Manhattan Democratic Party chief Herman “Denny” Farrell and Brooklyn assemblyman Al Vann. Badillo managed to gain the support of the majority of the coalition, including many black votes, but the group’s black leaders were so racist, that as much as they wanted to defeat Ed Koch, they would rather lose with a black man, than win with a Hispanic. And so, Denny Farrell stabbed Herman Badillo in the back, taking the nomination himself.
Farrell’s primary campaign was a model of ineptitude, and failed even to attract black voters. Because this was New York, the racism of Farrell, et al. did not cause them to suffer at all with their political peers or with the media.
Note that nowhere in Joel Siegel’s lengthy profile of Badillo in the August 31 Daily News, does he mention that Badillo even ran for mayor in 1985. The racially opportunistic Siegel exaggerates the “racism” of Jewish mayor Abe Beame that supposedly cost Badillo the Democratic nomination, and thus, the mayoralty, in 1973, without at all mentioning the virulent black racism that destroyed Badillo’s 1985 campaign.
The 1985 campaign showed that time had passed Badillo by. Perhaps it had passed New York by, as well.
After his 1985 debacle, Herman Badillo should have retired from public life. But at 56, he was still in the prime of life, the age when executives customarily are driving at full throttle. And besides, he had a fever for becoming mayor. He couldn’t help himself.
Badillo devoted himself to the East Side law firm he co-founded, Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, Harding, which specializes in lobbying power brokers. (Co-founder Ray Harding is the head of the New York Liberal Party, an organization with no clear political posture, which has deteriorated into nothing more than a patronage operation.) A member of the City University Board of Trustees, he would give talks at the neo-conservative Manhattan Institute and CUNY Association of Scholars on education reform. The small, wealthy circles of listeners at those soirees surely encouraged Badillo to run, as did his old lobbying cronies. However, for all the money and the influence their members had, those groups were so small and insular, that they could not help someone get elected dog catcher, let alone mayor.
I have no doubt that Badillo’s neo-conservative turn was the result of the political knife Denny Farrell & Co. put in his back in 1985. But New York’s political reality and Herman Badillo had only begun to separate. After Badillo’s second wife, Irma, died after a lengthy period of Alzheimer’s, during which Badillo nursed her, black supremacist police officer Eric Adams, the founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, argued that Badillo should have “married one of his own.” (Irma Badillo was a Jew.) Adams suffered no repercussions, and indeed, is constantly sought out by the city’s mainstream media outlets, who either ignored the remark, or quickly developed amnesia.
The centerpiece of Badillo’s 2001 campaign is “standards” in education, but even this is a double-edged sword.
In 1997, Rudy Giuliani got his new political ally, a longtime member of the City University of New York Board of Trustees, named vice-president of that body; in 1999, Giuliani got Gov. George Pataki to name Badillo CUNY Board president. Badillo set about restoring standards to CUNY’s system of 19 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools.
Badillo was in for some rough sledding. In the $4.5 billion patronage mill that CUNY had become, entrenched interests among faculty, administration, staff, and even student politicians would fight reform to the death. Even though he is Hispanic, Badillo was vilified by leaders of all of the above groups as a “racist.” And yet, he did succeed at ramming through a reform plan, whereby students who required remediation could not attend four-year CUNY colleges without first passing the necessary classes at community colleges, and community college students could not graduate, without first passing proficiency exams.
Badillo’s supporters give him all of the credit for saving CUNY, except that he hasn’t earned such praise. As the Daily News showed in late 1999, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has been smuggling community college students who cannot do college-level work into classes on four-year campuses. Despite the exposé, Chancellor Goldstein did not halt the practice, and Badillo and Mayor Giuliani did not force him to cease and desist. And so, like so much recent “reform” in New York, CUNY has only been reformed in the realm of press releases.
And Badillo’s recent pronouncements notwithstanding, he bears much of the responsibility for the destruction of education in New York. It was Badillo, as Bronx Borough president, who did much of the heavy lifting that brought about “bilingual” (read: English-free) Hostos Community College (“established in 1968 and opened in 1970,” according to its website). Hostos’ present state is not a corruption of noble ends; Hostos was conceived as an anti-educational bastion of Puerto Rican corruption and patronage. Similarly, Badillo was the greatest local champion of bilingual education. As a congressman, he wrote the 1974 Bilingual Education Bill. And even now, in his incarnation as a Republican, he has not spoken of dismantling bilingual education in the city’s schools.
Republican Gov. George Pataki has sought since May to talk Badillo out of running against Mike Bloomberg, and Badillo’s “ally,” Mayor Giuliani, has gone “neutral” in the primary race, fueling the familiar refrain of “betrayal” among Badillo’s supporters. Badillo has complained long and hard of the injustice of Bloomberg getting around campaign finance rules, by financing his own campaign. And yet, coming from a seasoned political veteran and lawyer-lobbyist, who never remained loyal long to any political ally, such talk smacks of political “secondary virginity.”
The truth is, Rudy Giuliani gave Herman Badillo every chance to turn his CUNY Board of Trustees presidency into a power base, but Badillo blew it. His political muscles had atrophied.
In the July 31 Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz opined of Badillo, “He is an imposing figure, no doubt about it, and a well known one in New York, his lack of campaign ads notwithstanding. In the elevator all eyes are on him, and on the street people swivel around to look at him.”
And yet, one month later, Joel Siegel would write in the Daily News, that on the street, most people DO NOT recognize Badillo. Was one writer lying?
No; they were simply talking about different streets. Siegel was writing of Badillo’s old power base, on The Bronx’ Sheridan Avenue, teeming with Hispanic Democrats; Rabinowitz was writing of his current one, on Manhattan’s tony East Side, where his law office is, and where the streets teem with lawyers and financial consultants. The problem is, for an Hispanic politician, in 2001 as in 1971, the votes are in The Bronx. Herman Badillo is an ethnic politician without an ethnic constituency. The “green people” provide no substitute.
Five years ago, I saw Badillo’s strengths and weaknesses simultaneously on display. At the invitation of the CUNY Association of Scholars, he spoke at CUNY’s John Jay College on the need to reform CUNY. Badillo observed that someone who is a weak reader, will listen attentively in class, take copious, detailed notes, and avoid majors with the heaviest reading loads.
That was more sense than I ever heard in five years as a CUNY adjunct instructor, teaching students who were poor readers.
At the same time, when someone asked Badillo if reforming CUNY wouldn’t necessarily bring with it a reduction of enrollment, he ducked the question.
There were all of nine people present, including Badillo, the organizers, and myself, at least three of whom were registered Democrats. Politically, Badillo’s future hinged on his willingness to give the same talk to a working-class, Hispanic audience, and convince its members that CUNY reform was in their interest. But Badillo avoided such audiences like the plague. He had traded the street he needed, for the one he could use.
Herman Badillo was not sold out; he simply fizzled out. A longtime contender among the heavyweights of New York ethnic politics, on May 11 he will be carried out of the ring on his shield.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Barack Obama Thrown-Under-the-Bus Club
By Nicholas Stix
Last updated at 7:11 a.m., Thursday, June 19, 2008.
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
As Barack Obama’s supporters have made clear, only a “racist” would criticize or fail to support the post-racial, post-political Perfect Master. And yet, His path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is already littered with a record number of political “corpses” of his most loyal supporters. If this is “beyond politics,” give me a smoke-filled room!
Member List
Prof. Samantha Power (white)
Grandma (white)
The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah T. Wright Jr. (biracial)
The Rev. Otis Moss III (black)
Fr. Michael Pfleger (white)
Jim Johnson (white)
Who will be the next inductee?
The Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. James Meeks? (black)
The Hon. Sen. Emil Jones? (black)
Distinguished professor Bill Ayers? (white)
All members get a t-shirt saying, “Barack Obama threw me under the bus, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!”
I say, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks goes next. Although he’s a Democrat, he is just so not with the program, as far as gay marriage is concerned. Four years ago, I wrote that although Obama then claimed to oppose gay marriage,
And sure enough, his evolution complete, he now supports gay marriage, in whatever deliberate disguises, just as he knew he would four years ago, according to his timetable, in order to secure the support of gay Democrats and their friends. And the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks can’t keep his mouth shut, either. Whereas the late Jerry Falwell, whose demise white leftists publicly cheered, distinguished between the sinner and the sin, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks does not. But then, unlike the Republican Falwell, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks is a black Democrat, and thus can do whatever he damned well pleases.
Initially, some Obamanoids who haven’t gotten the memo may reflexively deny that the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks is a close Obama ally, as “libertarian” Daniel Koffler ludicrously did, in opposition to me (“Barack Obama Does Not Have To Apologize For James Meeks”; see
Michael Weiss’ refutation here), but then The Master will give a signal, and still Koffler, et al. ‘I never heard him say those things. I had no idea that he held such intolerant beliefs, which I categorically reject.’
The next inductee will likely be "distinguished professor" (which is apparently academese for “domestic terrorist”) Bill Ayers. Why? Because he’s white. Black voters will already be restive over His having inducted three “blacks” into the club, and will demand some white meat.
By this time, Republican opposition researchers should have dug up sufficient dirt on the Hon. Sen. Emil “Steak” Jones’ corrupt machinations to go public. Jones was Obama’s political mentor, and the man who, more than anyone else, made him a U.S. Senator, so you know that it’s only a matter of time before The Master throws him under the bus.
After that, it’s got to be someone white or Asian. Reader Bill Baar suggests Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod “Blago” Blagojevich.
Once Obama is through with the aforementioned names, it’s anyone’s guess who goes next. The only Obama ally who is safe is Michelle “Mama” Obama.
Last updated at 7:11 a.m., Thursday, June 19, 2008.
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
As Barack Obama’s supporters have made clear, only a “racist” would criticize or fail to support the post-racial, post-political Perfect Master. And yet, His path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is already littered with a record number of political “corpses” of his most loyal supporters. If this is “beyond politics,” give me a smoke-filled room!
Member List
Prof. Samantha Power (white)
Grandma (white)
The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah T. Wright Jr. (biracial)
The Rev. Otis Moss III (black)
Fr. Michael Pfleger (white)
Jim Johnson (white)
Who will be the next inductee?
The Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. James Meeks? (black)
The Hon. Sen. Emil Jones? (black)
Distinguished professor Bill Ayers? (white)
All members get a t-shirt saying, “Barack Obama threw me under the bus, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!”
I say, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks goes next. Although he’s a Democrat, he is just so not with the program, as far as gay marriage is concerned. Four years ago, I wrote that although Obama then claimed to oppose gay marriage,
The only recognizably Christian position Obama takes is his opposition to same-sex marriage, due to the “religious connotations” of marriage. (“Religious connotations”? What about “civic religion”; the “separation of church and state”; the “enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God's mandate”? Don’t ask.) This is surely due to the fact that blacks are the racial/ethnic group most adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, and Obama does not want to rile the one voter bloc on which his candidacy is most dependent. However, I would expect his position on same-sex marriage to begin “evolving” around, say, … November 3 [2004]. Once Obama is safely ensconced in the U.S. Senate, he knows that his black base will stick by him, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse. Then he will doubtless begin the sort of “education” of the Christian black electorate in matters of same-sex marriage, which black leaders earlier conducted in the matter of abortion.
And sure enough, his evolution complete, he now supports gay marriage, in whatever deliberate disguises, just as he knew he would four years ago, according to his timetable, in order to secure the support of gay Democrats and their friends. And the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks can’t keep his mouth shut, either. Whereas the late Jerry Falwell, whose demise white leftists publicly cheered, distinguished between the sinner and the sin, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks does not. But then, unlike the Republican Falwell, the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks is a black Democrat, and thus can do whatever he damned well pleases.
Initially, some Obamanoids who haven’t gotten the memo may reflexively deny that the Hon. Rev. Dr. Sen. Meeks is a close Obama ally, as “libertarian” Daniel Koffler ludicrously did, in opposition to me (“Barack Obama Does Not Have To Apologize For James Meeks”; see
Michael Weiss’ refutation here), but then The Master will give a signal, and still Koffler, et al. ‘I never heard him say those things. I had no idea that he held such intolerant beliefs, which I categorically reject.’
The next inductee will likely be "distinguished professor" (which is apparently academese for “domestic terrorist”) Bill Ayers. Why? Because he’s white. Black voters will already be restive over His having inducted three “blacks” into the club, and will demand some white meat.
By this time, Republican opposition researchers should have dug up sufficient dirt on the Hon. Sen. Emil “Steak” Jones’ corrupt machinations to go public. Jones was Obama’s political mentor, and the man who, more than anyone else, made him a U.S. Senator, so you know that it’s only a matter of time before The Master throws him under the bus.
After that, it’s got to be someone white or Asian. Reader Bill Baar suggests Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod “Blago” Blagojevich.
He's an Obama super delegate and now with [white Obama real estate patron and Chicago developer-fixer Antonin “Tony“] Rezko convicted and key Democrat Majority Leader Mike Madigan talking impeachment, we may see Obama take Madigan's warning and through the Gov under the bus too.
The impeachment talk divides the Democratic party in Illinois. At some point Obama will have to take a stand on it (I would think)... Blagojevich is a super delegate for Obama (as is Meeks) and it would seem odd to have an elected offical under impeachment hearings, leading the delegation.…
Obama will need a fleet of buses.
Once Obama is through with the aforementioned names, it’s anyone’s guess who goes next. The only Obama ally who is safe is Michelle “Mama” Obama.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Channon Christian’s Ordeal: Knoxville Horror Torture Testimony
By Nicholas Stix
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
(Warning: The following post contains gruesome details.)
Upon discovering the corpses of Christopher Newsom, 23, and his girlfriend, Channon Christian, 21, on January 7 and 8, 2007, respectively, Knoxville, Tennessee authorities stonewalled the media as to the cause of death and the bodies’ condition. In response, white supremacist Internet radio host Hal Turner set in motion rumors that the assailants had lopped off Newsom’s penis and one of Christian’s breasts. But what Channon Christian actually endured proved every bit as bad as the rumors....
Read the rest here.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Nepotism at Commentary Magazine: An Open Letter
By Nicholas Stix
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
The magazine that embodied the meritocratic ideal commits spiritual suicide.
I am writing this missive to publicly protest the naming of John Podhoretz as editor-in-chief, effective January 2009, of Commentary magazine.
When my Hungarian-born Nana, Fanny Frank Simpkins (1893?-1976) was alive, had anyone told her that one could sensibly modify the phrase “Jewish intellectual(s)” with “mediocre,” she would have written him off as either an imbecile or a madman. Thank God, she is gone; were she alive to see what Commentary has come to, it would kill her.
According to E.B. White in This is New York, 60 years ago, New York City had 2,000,000 Jews. And from circa 1890-1950, it was as if New York’s factories were mass-producing brilliant Jews. Alas, the genius factories have all shut down.
The Gershwins. Rodgers. Copland. Kern. Hart. Hammerstein. Sondheim. Where do we find their like today?
Back then, many of the greatest Jews had attended the Asphalt League City College of New York (CCNY), which circa 1915-1965 had the most rigorous admissions and graduation requirements of any American college, private or public. Others never made it to CCNY, but instead graduated from “UCLA: The university at the corner of Lenox Ave.” Today’s mediocrities have invariably graduated smugness cum laude from Overpriced Private Universities (OPUs) in the Ivy League or their OPU cousins (e.g., the University of Chicago, NYU).
In matters of intellect, most of the greatest Jewish intellectuals of yore—even when, as was often the case, they were socialists—including those who made Commentary great, stood for excellence, and for meritocracy as the political principle that best fosters excellence. Nepotism is the corrupt enemy of the merit principle, and the bulwark of mediocrity. Commentary has now made a 180-degree turn, and embraced nepotism and mediocrity.
In 1963, in “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” Norman Podhoretz, then a leading liberal, showed great courage in confronting, in Commentary's pages, the black racism that he had known all his life. Over forty years later, with black racial terror having long since been institutionalized, his son’s response to anyone speaking honestly—even with restraint—on the subject of race, is to denounce him as “bigoted, racist scum.”
That was Norman Podhoretz, in a 1993 postscript to his 1963 essay. To borrow from Steve Sailer, I have yet to hear of the son denouncing the father as “bigoted, racist scum.”
Methinks young Podhoretz has traveled in too many taxis and limousines, and in too few nighttime subway cars.
He treats anyone who honestly confronts the destruction that open borders dogma has wreaked on, and continues to wreak on America, with the same knee-jerk contempt.
Without honesty and intellectual courage, all the brains in the world are worthless. And when one combines a mediocre mind with dishonesty and cowardice, the result is unintentionally farcical.
The only thing left for John Podhoretz to do, in order to make complete his erasure of everything good that Commentary has long stood for, will be for him to embrace affirmative action, as have almost all of America’s corrupt, nepotistic elites.
The Jewish intellectuals, R.I.P. At this rate, Commentary will soon join them.
(Check out my Wikipedia exposé, “Wikipedia on Race,” in the July 2008 American Renaissance!)
The magazine that embodied the meritocratic ideal commits spiritual suicide.
I am writing this missive to publicly protest the naming of John Podhoretz as editor-in-chief, effective January 2009, of Commentary magazine.
When my Hungarian-born Nana, Fanny Frank Simpkins (1893?-1976) was alive, had anyone told her that one could sensibly modify the phrase “Jewish intellectual(s)” with “mediocre,” she would have written him off as either an imbecile or a madman. Thank God, she is gone; were she alive to see what Commentary has come to, it would kill her.
According to E.B. White in This is New York, 60 years ago, New York City had 2,000,000 Jews. And from circa 1890-1950, it was as if New York’s factories were mass-producing brilliant Jews. Alas, the genius factories have all shut down.
The Gershwins. Rodgers. Copland. Kern. Hart. Hammerstein. Sondheim. Where do we find their like today?
Back then, many of the greatest Jews had attended the Asphalt League City College of New York (CCNY), which circa 1915-1965 had the most rigorous admissions and graduation requirements of any American college, private or public. Others never made it to CCNY, but instead graduated from “UCLA: The university at the corner of Lenox Ave.” Today’s mediocrities have invariably graduated smugness cum laude from Overpriced Private Universities (OPUs) in the Ivy League or their OPU cousins (e.g., the University of Chicago, NYU).
In matters of intellect, most of the greatest Jewish intellectuals of yore—even when, as was often the case, they were socialists—including those who made Commentary great, stood for excellence, and for meritocracy as the political principle that best fosters excellence. Nepotism is the corrupt enemy of the merit principle, and the bulwark of mediocrity. Commentary has now made a 180-degree turn, and embraced nepotism and mediocrity.
In 1963, in “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” Norman Podhoretz, then a leading liberal, showed great courage in confronting, in Commentary's pages, the black racism that he had known all his life. Over forty years later, with black racial terror having long since been institutionalized, his son’s response to anyone speaking honestly—even with restraint—on the subject of race, is to denounce him as “bigoted, racist scum.”
Today, when black-on-white violence is much more common than it was then, many white readers could easily top those stories with worse. And yet even today few of them would be willing to speak truthfully in public about their entirely rational fear of black violence and black crime. Telling the truth about blacks remains dangerous to one's reputation: to use that now famous phrase I once appropriated from D.H. Lawrence in talking about ambition, the fear of blacks has become the dirty little secret of our political culture. And since a dirty little secret breeds hypocrisy and cant in those who harbor it, I suppose it can still be said that most whites are sick and twisted in their feelings about blacks, albeit in a very different sense that they were in 1963.
That was Norman Podhoretz, in a 1993 postscript to his 1963 essay. To borrow from Steve Sailer, I have yet to hear of the son denouncing the father as “bigoted, racist scum.”
Methinks young Podhoretz has traveled in too many taxis and limousines, and in too few nighttime subway cars.
He treats anyone who honestly confronts the destruction that open borders dogma has wreaked on, and continues to wreak on America, with the same knee-jerk contempt.
Without honesty and intellectual courage, all the brains in the world are worthless. And when one combines a mediocre mind with dishonesty and cowardice, the result is unintentionally farcical.
The only thing left for John Podhoretz to do, in order to make complete his erasure of everything good that Commentary has long stood for, will be for him to embrace affirmative action, as have almost all of America’s corrupt, nepotistic elites.
The Jewish intellectuals, R.I.P. At this rate, Commentary will soon join them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
