Salon calls Drudge a “disgusting” racial provocateur for linking numerous mainstream news stories about Memorial Day mayhem

But hell, we already know that you don’t even have to talk about race or be involved in an issue that has anything to do with race in order to be a white racist. According to numerous liberals today, the reason tea partiers and Republicans oppose the Democrats’ spending measures and Obamacare is that Obama is black. Meaning that if you have any non-liberal position on government programs, taxing, and spending, it’s not because you care about those issues, it’s because you hate blacks, and your supposed economic concerns are just a cynical front for your racial hatred.

Which really means that only liberal positions should be allowed. I wish that conservatives would call liberals out on this and force them to make their totalitarian implications plain.

In any case, given the current liberal standards for what constitutes racism, Salon’s accusation of racism against Drudge is pretty mild. At least Drudge actually linked mainstream news stories about a wave of black misbehavior (though neither the stories nor Drudge used the word “black”) across the country on Memorial Day weekend. What a vile—to use Salon’s word—thing to do.

Here is the article:

Matt Drudge’s disgusting race war awareness campaign
By Alex Pareene

Matt Drudge’s non-political obsessions used to be harmless things like “extreme weather” and “pictures of Olympic wrestlers.” Since the election of Barack Obama, though, Drudge—the proto-blogger and reclusive creator of the noted Courier New tribute site the Drudge Report—has developed a new fixation. He seems to be actively seeking out and publicizing stories of kids and young people getting in fights. Not just any people, mind you! People with something in particular in common.

It sort of started with the tale of Ashley Todd, the 20-year-old McCain campaign volunteer who claimed she was attacked by a savage, black Obama supporter, who supposedly carved the letter “B” into her face. She made the whole thing up, but her story’s many inconsistencies and unlikely elements did not stop Drudge from heavily publicizing it, until it all fell apart.

Then there was the tale of the New Black Panther Party poll-watchers who “intimidated” Fox cameras in Philadelphia. You can imagine how much Drudge enjoyed that one. [LA replies: Obviously the New Black Panther polling incident and the Justice Department’s ideologically-driven decision not to pursue the case, was and remains an important story. But in the thinking of liberals, if you post a news article about a real-world event that puts blacks in a negative light, you are provocateur of white racism. ]

Since Obama actually took office, though, Drudge has seriously stepped up his “scary black people” coverage. There was, in September of 2009, the story he heavily publicized of a kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up. A kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up is not really national news—until Drudge makes it so. The fact that the beater was black and the victim white is why Drudge made it national news. Rush Limbaugh made the subtext explicit: “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”

This is the narrative that Drudge is trying to create, especially on slow news weekends when there’s nothing real to aggregate and post: The blacks are rising up and attacking the whites. If that sounds a bit crazy, in a Charles Manson way, then you’re obviously not paying attention. Black people are angry and they’re taking over! When Barack Obama was campaigning to win Chicago the Olympic games, Matt Drudge led with a terrifying photo of (black) gang violence and the breathless, all-caps headline, “OLYMPIC SPIRIT.”

The violent death of a young man is definitely news … in Chicago, where it happened. It had very little to do with whether Chicago is a suitable venue for the Olympics. Violent murders happen in big cities and small towns across the nation every day. But only some of them can be used to stoke paranoia about emboldened, angry black people rising up.

It all came to a head, as John Cook noted, this Memorial Day weekend when Drudge posted 10 separate headlines—including the massive, above-the-logo one—related to violent incidents involving “urban” people at venues like “Black Bike Week” in Miami and “Rib Fest” in Rochester, N.Y. There was an “Urban Melee in Charlotte,” for example. Do you know what makes an “urban melee” different from a regular “melee”? It’s not that it takes place within the city limits of a major metropolitan area. It’s that it involves the world’s most obvious code term for “scary black people.” [LA replies: Leave aside the fact that the term “urban” did not come from Drudge, but from the mainstream news sources he was posting. What Pareene is saying is that if you use a polite euphemism, such as “urban,” to avoid saying anything negative about blacks, that is actually a sinister code word for blacks. So if you say “black rioters,” you’re a racist. But if you say “urban rioters” you’re also a racist.]

Drudge does not collect and attempt to tie together disparate, unrelated stories of crimes committed by drunk, rowdy white kids. And for the record, drunk, rowdy white kids commit a lot of crimes, in a lot of places! [LA replies: really? Were recreation areas all over the country shut down on Memorial Day because of riotous violent whites? Have gangs of whites, organizing themselves with social media, been invading and robbing retail stores in cities across the country?]

In an era when urban white flight is reversing and violent crime is at record lows across the nation, this world of race riots and constant violent attacks on innocent Caucasians exists only in the imaginations of Matt Drudge and the paranoid suburban and exurban white people he wants to keep terrified. Stoking those racial fears goes beyond cynical political point-scoring. To devote so much energy to attempting to make whites terrified of blacks is just vile. [LA replies: So, black violence, mayhem, and “flash mobs” are non-existent. If you read mainstream news stories telling about black mayhem and if you post those stories, you are vile.]

Patrick H., who sent the Salon item, writes:

Stop Publication of Hate Facts

Drudge’s behavior is outrageous. Examples of crimes committed by African-Americans should not be published. This only perpetuates stereotypes and creates hate and fear. For every reported crime committed by an African-American, the publisher should print two white crimes. Crimes committed by African-Americans is a rare, almost non-existent phenomena. Such crimes only exist in the haze of white fear and paranoia. I’m disappointed the author even referred to the reference to African-American crime. Dangerously close to hate speech. STOP THE HATE!!

- end of initial entry -

Mark Jaws writes:

Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures. Until prominent conservative Jews such as Matt Drudge, Mark Levin, and Bernard Goldberg switch tables on the liberal Jews who run the American media, and put them on the defensive for being too white, too male, too Jewish, and too hypocritical, then we can expect the Kosher Nostra Media Complex to keep emanating these daily charges of racism.

LA replies:

Don Marco,

What does the Jewish issue have to do with this? Too often, you insert your personal preoccupations into an issue when they’re not relevant.

LA continues:

The “Kosher Nostra Media Complex”? That just doesn’t work, when there are so many liberal non-Jews who have exactly the same philosophy as the liberal Jews. Trying to portray liberalism as a Jewish thing per se is false and doesn’t work.

Mark Jaws replies:

Don Marco believes that since the liberal media is so race and ethnicity obsessed, we ought to put it under the microscope and see how it stands up to standards of diversity it imposes on everyone else. It might be a stretch, but that is how your fellow caballero and ardent fan thinks.

LA replies:

“since the liberal media is so race and ethnicity obsessed, we ought to put it under the microscope and see how it stands up to standards of diversity it imposes on everyone else.”

That’s a perfectly legitimate argument that could be used and ought to be used. I didn’t mean to dismiss that argument. I think I was put off by your acting as though this argument is the be-all and end-all on which we either win or lose, as though the whole battle depends on Jewish conservatives challenging Jewish liberals.

Mark Jaws replies:

Don Lorenzo:

I relish your scrutiny. As I have said before, I am at best a community organizer who often puts your words and insights into action—or I try to. I don’t always do so well when I go solo. You are correct to a point—I often hone in on something which is not pertinent to the discussion of the moment. And I know very well there are tens of millions of Gentile liberals, leftists, and Commies, duped, or duping the current generation of children. I also know there have been such characters throughout Western history.

HOWEVER, today the weapon which has been used most effectively by the Left to batter us conservatives into submission is the racial hammer, which is picked up mostly by Jewish politicians and media pundits. It is precisely the Wieners, Cohens, Wasserman-Schultzes, Schumers, Joe Kleins, Ezra Kleins, Frank Riches who constantly bombard the Tea Party for being too white. Thus, if racial diversity is such a compelling national interest to these characters, I say turn the tables on them. This is what pro-Tea Party Jewish conservatives should say. Just as the Left uses whites (mostly Jews) to go after the Tea Party and it employs black Democrats to tar and feather black conservatives as Uncle Toms, we must use Jews to paint the Kosher Nostra Media Complex as too white and too Jewish.

Can I make my point any plainer?

LA replies:

You’ve held your ground and made a good point.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 01, 2011 11:54 AM | Send