Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Of Interest

Yesterday, Tuesday, July 17, the New York Times published an article about Antonio Delgado's early and brief rap career as "AD the Voice": "A Congressional Candidate Used to Be a Rapper. Will It Matter?" The following is quoted from that article:
In 2007, Mr. Delgado released a rap album featuring lyrics that criticize capitalism and America's history of racial injustice. They include frequent use of a racial epithet common among black rappers, and criticize some of the founders as "dead presidents" who "believe in white supremacy."
[John] Faso is trying to use the lyrics against him, saying they are "inconsistent with the views of the people of the 19th District and America."
Today, Wednesday, July 18, the Times published an opinion piece by its editorial board titled "Voters, You're Too Smart to Fall for John Faso's Bigotry." The editorial begins:
Representative John Faso must think very little of his constituents in New York's 19th Congressional District in the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains.
He's counting on their being bigots.
Both the article and the editorial are recommended reading.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK

7 comments:

  1. This comment has nothing to do with the candidates and everything to do with the tendentiousness of The New York Times.

    Whatever Faso's doing to cling to his seat, I didn't know the science was firm on the advisability of anyone's "frequent use of a racial epithet." The NY Times would have readers believe, axiomatically it seems, that when select people express the odious epithet as a right, then they themselves are not engaged in exploiting racial divisions.

    Is the newspaper now directing its readers to totally abandon the ideal of a color-blind society?

    How odd that it follows so immediately on Mr. Obama's admirable remarks at the 100th birthday celebrations for Nelson Mandela:

    “Democracy demands that we’re able to also get inside the reality of people who are different than us, so we can understand their point of view. ... And you can’t do it if you insist that those who aren’t like you because they are white or they are male, somehow there is no way they can understand what I’m feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.”

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  2. Anti- establishment, anti-capitalism, hates whites -- that is the Democratic platform. im not sure that is a winner in upstate New York.

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  3. the demographics of the 19th:
    50% male 84% white 43% earn under 50 k
    https://censusreporter.org/profiles/50000US3619-new-york-congressional-district-19/

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  4. So when does Mr Faso record a rap song extolling the virtues of what it means to be a republican ... it would sound pretty mean.

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  6. Actually, white men and women making less than 50 k are worried about making ends meet in one of the most expensive highly taxed states in America. How can anyone really afford anything anymore ? and there are no jobs in New York State unless you went to 4 years of college.

    Its tough out there for the under educated of all races -- and persuasions.
    it is more about opportunity -- and there isnt much here anymore.

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  7. There's an interview in the WS Journal today with Steven Teles, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Teles is a self-described "liberal democrat" who believes that the "Trumpified Republican Party [is] an existential threat to liberal democracy.” So far so good.

    But asking how it's possible that conservatives now populate so many of our legal institutions, Teles observes that long ago conservative students hit the books. Meanwhile, “'Liberals got power because they got control of professional venues.' As a result, they [Liberals] fell back on appeals to authority, or what Mr. Teles calls 'hiding the ball.' Rather than arguing against conservative ideas on the merits, they claimed their opponents were 'violating expert knowledge.'”

    "Whereas conservatism has a fairly coherent ideology, Mr. Teles says, liberalism 'is more organized around these siloed . . . claimants on state action' - feminists, environmentalists, public-sector unions, professional organizations and ethnic minorities, among others. This makes it difficult for liberals to develop a legal philosophy that 'isn’t just derivative of whatever the various coalition actors want.' Mr. Teles says they are tempted instead to think: 'Well, whatever we do has got to be backward-compatible with every coalition actor we’ve got.'”

    This Gossips post links to two NY Times articles which, together, "hide the ball" rather than attempt to square two of the Left's incompatible silos.

    To return to the example at hand (and the crux), the asymmetrical "right" to use a racial epithet is tacitly exclusive, and that cancels out Mr. Obama's dialectical message this week that understanding is not only possible but desirable:

    "[D]emocracy demands that we’re able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view. Maybe we can change their minds, but maybe they’ll change ours. And you can’t do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponents have to say from the start."

    Like so many on the Left, the editors at the NY Times are blind to their own incoherence, fooled by their own thoughtless facility at hiding the ball. They could do worse than reading Aristotle (see "Politics," Book III, Chap. 9), but they might risk a nervous breakdown if not outright implosion.

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