Re: Ishmael Reed: "What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama" Keeping Cool & Caring" NYT

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Reed's argument: he met a self-identified white progressive who called the Tea Party a people's movement, therefore ALL white progressives believe this to be the case, is a noxious contortion of logic.  We jeer at ignorant Tea Baggers who use this idiotic method of pointing to the particular as proof of the general:  I met a black person who was X, therefore ALL black people are X.  It's as ignorant a construction coming from Reed.  Oh, he thinks Clarence Thomas was mistreated by Anita Hill, does he?  How progressive of him.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>

>
> Michael Bailey  wrote:
>
>> he's done a lot of good research and makes good connections.
>> He draws some distinctions that make pretty good sense to me.
>> At no point does he stand behind black conservatives for being black.
>>
>
>
>hee hee, poverty of thought, poverty of expression!
>
>"he's done a lot of good research and makes good connections"
>
>real descriptive!
>the book's a collection of essays and articles of varying depth and,
>if you like Reed, quite a treat.
>In contrast to Carter who alienated Washington systematically, Obama
>has really tried to work with both parties.
>Is it wrong to suspect some of the hysterical obduracy of the
>opposition is due, not just to them being unable to adjust to the end
>of the Bush era, but also to racism?
>Is it paranoid to take note of news trends?
>
>"He draws some distinctions that make good sense to me"
>resolute standing-behind-Clinton and abandonment of Obama in the same
>quarters is one of them; attention to "party lines" as they relate to
>racial issues among liberals and feminists is another...
>
>"at no point does he stand behind black conservatives for being black"
>
>("merely for being black" would be better...)
>
>actually he is readier to accept Long Dong Silver, er, Clarence
>Thomas's version over Anita Hill's than I would be, and a just a tiny
>bit more accepting of some of what I would tend to call "macho
>bullcrap" from various quarters than I like, but that's sexism not
>racism (and I don't see him as a "vector" of sexism, but more of
>someone who has seen and suffered unjustified charges of sexism and is
>maybe over-ready to see certain other, less-unjustified, charges as
>unjustified)
>
>
>
>-- 
>"Three things in life are important. The first is to be kind.  The
>second is to be kind.  And the third is to be kind." - Henry James