Mitt Romney, rather bravely, went to court the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at the NAACP’s annual convention. He got booed.
I’m going to reduce government spending. I hope everyone understands that high levels of debt slow down the rate of growth of the GDP, of the economy. And that means fewer jobs are created. If our goal is jobs, we have to stop spending over a trillion dollars than we take in every year. And so to do that I’m going to eliminate every nonessential expensive program that I can find. That includes Obama care and I’m going to work to reform and save –
(BOOING)
In reply to the frosty reception, Romney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News:
“I am going to give the same message to the NAACP that I give across the country which is that ObamaCare is killing jobs, and if jobs is the priority, then we’re going to have to replace ObamaCare with something that actually holds down health care costs,” he said.
He addressed the fact that in 2008, President Obama got 96 percent of the African-American vote, and said that he believes he’ll take some of that vote away because African Americans are disappointed with the president’s policies.
He added, “By the way, at the end of my speech, having a standing ovation was generous and hospitable on the part of the audience. And I believe that while we disagree on some issues like ObamaCare, on a lot of issues people see eye-to-eye. They want to get the economy going again.”
Every broadcaster knows, but will not say, why blacks vote Democratic almost exclusively: welfare. Free stuff.
Every broadcaster knows, but will not say, why blacks voted en masse for Obama: racial solidarity.
Romney’s changes to the welfariat will probably be minor—and any cuts in welfare will be used to justify waging wars.
Still, the mere hint that, under the too-white to like Romney, state-mediated distribution of the wealth of others would slow provokes black ire.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal editorializes that with his NAACP visit, Romeny was appealing to the wrong constituency: the black liberal establishment.
Well, if Romeny’s “mistake [was] thinking that the NAACP represents average black voters,” it’s an error one can understand. Voting records that lack nuance attest to it. Blacks, moreover, have never risen against their shakedown elites, because, as the community perceives them, race racketeers like “Reverend” Al Sharpton are doing the Lord’s work.
A dear friend (and libertarian luminary) wrote to say, “Bravo.” He also divulged that he had given up on combating what goes for wisdom (Sophia) in America today. He quit writing for the “public.” His career spans decades to my 15 years (having arrived in North America in 1995). My friend is fortunate in the sense that most of his magnificent writing was done before America entered “The Age Of The Idiot.”
Illiterate and educated: They joined to castigate and curse this writer for writing truths that, if heeded, could set free the prisoners on the “Yellow Jail Bus”—those coerced to ride and/or pay for government schools.
Illiterate and educated: There was scarcely a difference in the quality of argument. I described immutable reality: a dysfunctional, ineffectual adult that had abnegated her duty and dissolved into a puddle of self-pity in the face of taunts from a couple of crappy kids. I urged: “Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base. There is now one non-teaching adult for every eight or nine children.”
For using words to describe reality, I was peppered with ad hominem, my character impugned. (And no: to the detritus delivered to my WND email address, and posted below: Even though she has had a life far harder than Karen Klein’s, in Israel and South Africa, my mother is still a dignified, beautiful lady at 73. I love you, mom.)
A day will come, and a child riding the Yellow “Jail Bus” will be beaten to a pulp (or maybe to death) by the type of wolverines who set upon Klein. Klein will have retired (and moved closer to “the Mecca of maturity: Disneyland”). But true to the system and society she represents, another ineffectual, fearful female will have taken her place.
I wonder what my assailants will say then? A second-hander might write a similar article … years down the line. (As has happened with most hot topics; mainstream catches up.) Or, more likely, people will continue to pay homage to PC pietism, making sure no one utters words that cleave to reality, such as, “Feeble, too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid.”
Kids could be injured because of Klein-like adults in positions of “authority.” But so long as nobody’s feelings are hurt—all will be deemed copacetic (even if it’s not). Wreaths will be lain, candles lit, tears shed, more slobbering will happen on weak-minded TV shows.
Not to tax the American Mind too much, but the Klein episode conjures a story by Edgar Allan Poe. (Don’t worry; your kids won’t hear about him in the public schools, from where his ilk has been expunged. Poe was, after all, some white American dude who could, “like write and stuff.”)
“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” tells of inmates in an asylum who overpower their wardens, tar and feather them, throw them into underground cells, and proceed to have “a jolly season of it” without them.
If only…
UPDATE I (July 1): Abelard Lindsey: You may need to re-read the column. Excerpt: “… Perhaps the two [bus drive & monitor] live in fear of potential lawsuits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders…”
This was an excellent commentary on both the public schools and the “sissified” adults that pretend to manage them. I agree with you completely.
Greg
UPDATE III (July 5):
From: John W.
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 9:23 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Thanks….
I only “taught” children for one year. If I can’t spank ’em, I can’t teach ’em. I found other work!
Thanks for a great article.
John W.
I’m getting tired of this thankless, punishing gig. I may just oblige my detractors and, for starters, close the moderated sections of what is a labor-intense blog spot. If you have a preference, which I very much doubt it, you may register is by clicking to Donate.
ILANA
Here’s a sample of America the Virtuous:
From: bizlique@comcast.net [mailto:bizlique@comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 6:23 PM
To: imercer
Subject: cunt
you’re a bitter old hag and total cunt.
here’s some attention: i hope you die soon and when you do, we’ll rejoice like we did when breitbart died. that will be your legacy.
From: Virginia Gomez [mailto:virginiagomez4@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 2:20 PM
To: IMERCER@WND.COM
Subject: YOUR ARTICLE ON MS. KAREN KLEIN
Wow, and ‘YOU’ actually have the nerve to call yourself a writer?! … But what can one expect from a ‘liberal’ whom I consider jerks and idiots. There aren’t any nice words I can use to describe your despicable article on: “Bullied ‘jail bus lady’: Fearful, fatty Not a Hero”. Is your mother overweight or is your dad overweight from eating too many twinkies?? Would they be considered “Fatty”? Do you call them “fat” without regards to their feelings?? It’s a shame that YOU haven’t taken a real close look at yourself in the mirror and seen how ugly you really are! …when I saw that you are a liberal I said to myself “hey, what else can one expect from a liberal, thank god she has not disappointed me.” Take your shitty comments/ articles and apply them to your parents and other jerkoff liberals who appreciate your worthless talent.
From: Thomas Mariani [mailto:xmarianix@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 3:00 PM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Bus driver
How can you write things like this, “Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat”. Ilana, Go fuck yourself.
From: C B [mailto:taz11375@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 6:06 PM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Exclusive: Ilana Mercer asserts Karen Klein is perpetuating infantilism in America
The new ‘poster child’ for a bully victim in America is, wait for it, not a helpless small child, robbed of lunch money by the schoolyard ruffian, but an adult entrusted with supervising them.
The Internet watched 68-year-old Karen Klein, who was charged with ‘monitoring’ bused children in the town of Greece, N.Y., dissolve in tears to the taunts of her 13-year-old charges.
Klein’s failure to fend off the feral children was captured on YouTube by her tormentors, students at the Athena Middle School in suburban Rochester.
To the sight of a feeble adult, who occupies two seats on the vehicle she’s supposed to supervise; too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid—the Internet erupted in cheers.
Klein was quickly catapulted to fame for her, yes, courage. ‘God bless, you are my hero,’ effused a woman with the handle ‘Marykate,’ in an online post.
Charitably put, Klein has not advanced adulthood in infantile America. …
… In defense of the wolverines who preyed on Klein, how is an adult such as herself to command their respect? From whom are these fiends, out on a wilding spree, expected to learn a lesson? From Supervisor Klein, who was not adult enough to holler for help? Klein lacked the wherewithal to ask the bus driver to stop the bus and set the kids straight, then and there. …
… Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty, who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat? Perhaps the two live in fear of potential law suits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders? …
… Natural order is not predicated on state-enacted laws. The natural order that has worked throughout the ages to tame young terrors is predicated on hierarchy; on the preservation of clear, never-to-be-blurred boundaries between adults and kids. These boundaries were once upheld in-house—in the principal’s office, the home and the church. …
… Restore old-fashioned discipline to classrooms and school buses.
… Better still: Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base. There is now one non-teaching adult for every 8 or 9 children. …
If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.
I’m appalled by these Lord-of-the-Flies adolescents. But I also recall my Irish grandmother, who would have stuffed their words back down their throats ’til they choked, and then settled back for a nip of her favorite whiskey.
The U.S. these days is sadly lacking in cranky old folks.
I reply:
SS: I love your comment. Exactly my sentiment. I grew up around wiry little old Israeli ladies, who were so tough and scary that we kids used to imagine they were witches who would eat us up if we got close enough. (There were no Idiot Pads in those days; we’d think up scary stuff for fun.) Anyone taunting these former pioneers of the Holy land, who had drained swamps in their youth, would run for his/her life. We respected our elders.
UPDATE III: Guys start fighting on my Wall over abortion. I write: “AMM: There is not a thing you can do when people go off about fetuses (which I, of course, love). As I once wrote: “Would that Republicans fussed as much over the many fully formed human-beings dying daily in Iraq, as they do over fetuses.” Fuss all you like, but not on this Wall, fetuses (which I love) are not the subject here. But, I have a very low regard for your average Republican’s “culture of life.”
Ilana Mercer, one day you will be old, and fat, and powerless, and someone will heap on the last straw…and you will break, and sob, and understand what this woman went through. Until then, you’ll be a soulless fraud.
How does the fool writing this know I am not “old”? Because of the way I look? American slobs make me sick. You know nothing about real suffering, but you think a cruel word qualifies. (Read Into the Cannibal’s Pot to get a perspective on just how disgustingly self-indulgent and full of self-pity you are.)
Americans are blind to anything and anyone that isn’t like them; you can identify with Klein because she looks like you. You cannot identify with those who do not mirror indulgence and sloth (“old” though they may be).
From the fact that someone looks OK, you deduce that they are young, have it easy, haven’t suffered like the Klein woman has (she doesn’t know what real suffering is)?
If someone looks OK in middle age, you think that comes easily and doesn’t involve hard work and disciple, and isn’t achieved despite a difficult life? You pity the slack and pile on hard-working disciplined folks, for what? Driving themselves hard (I do that)? Running 12 miles a week for the last 22 years? (I do that, come rain or shine). Not wallowing in pity (I don’t do that). Anything to excuse the way you eat and look, and the arrogance with which you treat others not like you.
How old does the writer think I am, what with a daughter who is 29-years old?
Misplaced compassion and envy; that’s what this country is increasingly about.
What I once said in an interview about reason and misplaced compassion obtains: “In well-functioning people, the intellect is not separated from the affect (i.e. the emotional). They are integrated. When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion.”
“A dual spigot for an exterior faucet”: We purchased this item at Home Depot, the shop where men roam to feel at home.
The item was without a sticker. A woman clerk was manning the checkout counter. She and her female colleagues congregated to solve the problem. A man at the back was contacted on the intercom system and asked for a price. Alas, and eventually, another man had to save the day. Not one of the ladies was able to coherently describe the 2-outlet faucet adaptor, for the purpose of pricing the item.
A young man who worked the floor staged an “intervention.” He arrived on the scene, held the thing comfortably in his hands, and intuitively blurted out the description above. It was second nature to him. A minute or so later, we were finally on our way.
No doubt, this youngster’s female coworkers on the Home Depot floor would describe the task they just failed to execute as one demanding “equal pay.”
In reality, this anonymous, symbolic guy is worth much more to his employers than the gals. If his bosses did not fear a class-action lawsuit from his always watchful female coworkers, the man would be paid commensurate with his worth to the company; or his productivity.
Yes, that young man is more productive than his female colleagues in delivering the service that is Home Depot’s stock-in-trade. He saves customers time (and time is money). And much more.
Everywhere you go, men are enabling—and compensating for—female incompetence in work to which women are unsuited.
Everywhere, men are doing double duty, sometimes endangering themselves (as in police work), to give girls the delusions of grandeur they demand. And they do this without question. I guess a guy doing unequal work for equal pay would get fired if he questioned this PC protocol. …
Inveighing against “income disparity between men and women,” House Minority Leader (who should seldom be taken seriously), had said this …
If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.