Five Easy Questions
ArchPundit
For those interested in me and how the blog got started and continues, Eric Zorn has posted my responsed to Five Easy Questions along with some nice words about me. Thanks Eric.
September 2004
From Chillinois
Blogger sucks. I wasn’t able to post all day Tuesday because Blogger sucks and won’t work. I want to write about Jesus and Keyes and Kitty Kelley. Perhaps God is punishing me. Or protecting me from myself.
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Heh. I remember that pain.
For those discovering the crappiness of Blogger, let me suggest two alternatives. Blogstudio was my second stop in the blogosphere and is generally pretty reliable. I had good luck with them.
Second, and one Eric Zorn has suggested is Bloghorn which is developed and run out of Saint Louis and is an excellent user friendly interface and hosting service.
The Complicit Media
Michael at the Chicago Report asked:
Keyes is criticizing Obama for threatening to give him a “spanking”. Who called this press conference? At first I thought that Keyes must have covered something else … that our car wreck hungry media just didn’t want to talk about health care or taxes or other issues of substance. But not even the Illinois Leader had any substance. Who’s running this campaign? I hope it’s Keyes himself. I’d hate to think that someone is actually making a living in this business holding press conferences like this.
Actually Michael, it looks like Keyes called it:
Keyes, who will be greatly outspent, relies on free media in his campaign against Obama, Kay reported. As a result, he frequently calls news conferences to respond to responses. First, he criticizes Obama. When Obama responds, Keyes calls a news conference to respond, which is what he did on Tuesday.
Though I’m sure the dynamic duo of Pascoe and Proft are involved in such decisions too.
Blast from the Past
Funny thing, I was making fun of Keyes back before we had any idea he’d be coming to Illinois
11. Vic Roberts. Please, please let him in any debates. A quick measure of a candidate is if they can handle crackpots. Remember McCain handling Alan Keyes? He’d separate the talented from the empty suits. And when is that interview coming Eric Zorn?
Eric never did get to do that interview. What a shame.
Gary Hart has added ArchPundit to his blogroll.
Why thanks! and I’ll be returning the favor!
I’ll be adding Dean’s as well, and well one can hope that I’ll be able to add a blog by Alan Keyes for the humor value.
The Race Card
Alan has an affinity for blaming his mistreatment on his race. Remember his past efforts catalogued in the Illinois Times piece:
Keyes is also legendary for playing the race card. He quit his State Department job in 1987, blaming it on a racial snub by Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead. (Keyes accused Whitehead of looking past Keyes and speaking to subordinates while arguing over Keyes’ plan to withhold funding for any UN committees that refused to support U.S. policies. Whitehead called the charge “outrageous” and “inaccurate.”)
In 1992, when he wasn’t given a prime speaking spot at the Republican National Convention, Keyes made headlines by blaming the decision on racism and accused fellow Maryland Republicans of being racist for not supporting him. Keyes spoke twice at the convention, including once in primetime. Because the Republican National Committee withheld financial support for his losing cause, Keyes accused them of racism and complained that in the Republican Party, “colorblind means that when a colored person walks in, you suddenly go blind.”
Running for president, Keyes accused the media of “a blackout to keep the black out.” Salon.com reporter Jake Tapper recounted that after the Oct. 28, 1999, presidential debate, Keyes accused journalists of being racist because they didn’t ask him questions in the pressroom: “The people of this country have gotten over their racial sickness — I don’t know that you folks have. I think that merit means nothing to you because you can’t look past race. And I think I’m deadly sick of it. If you’re not in the mold that’s supposed to correspond to what you folks say is ‘black,’ what you claim are supposed to be the attributes of the race, then you’re shut out.”
When Tapper pointed out the media attention to African-American Republican J.C. Watts and asked him about it, Keyes responded, “The very question is a racist question!” Keyes told the media, “You do to me what you did to my ancestors! You ignore my successes, just as you ignored my ancestors’ successes. You ignore it and then you report it so people can think badly of me. And then you want to tell me you’re not a racist!”
Keyes told USA Today in 2000 that he was excluded from media coverage because of racism: “I think it’s racially motivated. And it’s racially motivated not in the sense of just being against blacks but being against black conservatives, who would threaten the base of left-wing liberalism in America.” Keyes claimed that the media was playing a “Stepin Fetchit game of racial politics.” When an interviewer praised his oratorical skills, Keyes called it racist because it denigrated his ideas.
As Kevin Merida noted in the Washington Post in 2000, “How do you explain a black man who regularly uses slavery metaphors to make his points and yet complains he has been racially typecast?”
When Keyes invokes the civil-rights movement, it is only to make a point about his favorite issue, abortion. Keyes has said, “I believe I fight the same battle, when I speak on behalf of the unborn, that Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. were fighting.”
Keyes even argues that abortion “is committing genocide against black people in this country with devastating demographic results that we have already seen in the course of the last census.”
When it comes to race, what Keyes rejects is the idea that any black person — except for Alan Keyes — suffers discrimination. Keyes told Larry King in 2000 that if he was the victim of a “driving while black” police stop, he would not blame police but would fault the “black folks out there disproportionately committing certain kinds of crime.”
If past is prologue, he’ll only argue it’s racism whenever he’s challenged more frequently from here on out. In reality, the fact that he is African-American has probably shielded him from criticism in the past. Jacob Weisberg made the point after an eruption after the 2nd Presidential Debate in 2000
You know what’s fascinating? Can I make a statement here? The New Hampshire debate that was held in the ’96 race, they did the polling afterward. I actually won the debate in the eyes of the people polled. I OFTEN win these debates, and every time I stand before you press folks, you have no questions. I find it kind of amazing. At some point, you know, one has to start to wonder. The people of this country have gotten over their racial sickness. I don’t know that you folks have. I think that merit means nothing to you because you can’t look past race. And I think I’m deadly SICK of it. Every time I get in front of audiences in this country, they respond, just as it was tonight, to the answers THAT I GIVE. But your response is nothing because you don’t represent those people. You apparently represent the same money powers that are seeking to destroy the representative nature of our government. I frankly think you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. At some point you ought to wake up to your responsibility not to let vice take place in darkness and not to let virtue languish unnoticed. That’s your job, but you don’t do it, DO YOU? Instead you PANDER to the money. But if you were doing your job, we wouldn’t have to worry about campaign-finance reform, because there would be sufficient attention paid to every candidate in the race that the American people would know who they are and what they stand for without the expenditure of billions of dollars. But they don’t know, because you won’t do your job. That’s SAD! And it’s DESTROYING our democracy.
With that, Keyes stormed off the stage and departed the room, leaving reporters somewhat stunned. In fact, I think the racial factor works mildly in Keyes’ favor. If he were a white Republican, and thus less of a novelty, the press would portray him more directly as a fanatic. Ignoring Keyes is the kindest thing the press can do for him.
The Spanking Thread at the Leader
So many places to go, but look at the thread starter:
WOW a GOOD OLD FASHIONED SPANKING! Oh excuse me, Barak wants to give Keyes a pseudo Spanking! Now just where would he like to spank Keyes? On the buttocks or across the mouth? Or a pseudo spanking across the EGO! Well IT is high time we remembered the old line, SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD!!!! I say that Barak Obama has been a spoiled child and should be whooped with a pseudo rod!
Spoiled because he crept into bed with the likes of George Soros
Spoiled because he thinks he is better than us because he went to Harvard and got educated by the smartest of Liberals like Larry Tribe and Alan Dershowitz.
Spoiled because he gets soft cushy interviews with the liberal likes of Dick Kaye and Andy Shaw.
Spoiled because he thinks the Daley democratic machine combined with the lock step union vote combined with the ignorant catholic (yes I mean what I say IGNORANT because so many of these people vote Democratic because grandpa did)will put him over the top… OH I forgot the GAY vote and the Lake Front and North Shore Cream Cheese vote. Oh , I also forgot the african american and hispanic vote. A regular majority of minorities!
Spoiled because he thinks the MEDIA will continue to fawn over him.
Spoiled because he thinks that the Limosine Liberals will invite him over to the club.
OF COURSE HE SHOULD ONLY BE STRUCK WITH A PSEUDO ROD because all we want to affect is his ARROGANT LIBERAL EGO!
Might want to switch to decaf.
a dog returns to his own vomit
Courtesy of the Good folks at the Illinois Family Institute. Chillinois has the deal.
Hey, run that guy for office!
Chicago Report Falls
The Chicago Report is even getting in on the act regarding the Senate race
As I told OneMan a while ago–just enjoy the trainwreck–it’s rare that you get to watch one this close up.
Something about knowing the mind of God and madness
The Good Ambassador informs us who Jesus would vote for and suggests that spanking is something more than a basketball reference. (note Requires Internet Explorer)
Inconceivable. Quick someone get Mike Conklin of the Trib to do an immitation of Wallace Shawn
Via Austin Mayor
Yo Mamma
“Oh, Mr. Delay Guardia,” says Judge Lyttle. “Really! You see, that is my point. You tell a man he’s engaged in wrongdoing and he says, ‘Yeah, you’re right.” Everyone recognizes that’s facetious. We all are familiar with that. Now, in my neighborhood, had Mr. Sabich come from those parts, he would have said, ‘Yo’ momma.'”
There is broad laughter in the courtroom. Larren has scored again. He sits on the bench, laughing himself.
“But you know, in Mr. Sabich’s part of town, I would think people say, ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ and what they mean is ‘You are wrong.'” Pausing. “To be polite.”
More laughter.