Even if it just stopped after the title, David Thompson's Ray Gun Patriarchy would be a great read. Those three words in that configuration just tickle me. I want it to be the name of a band or book or a big metal sign I could hang in my living room or all of the above.

Thompson takes into a Gaurdian columnist called Bidisha for her wandering rant Planet Diversity. And he does it well. Her thesis is that science fiction and fantasy genre novels are a the exclusive province of straight white males writing entirely about straight white males. She defends this point by creating a strangely exhaustive list of non-straight, non-white, non-male authors who have written well-received, if not particularly famous, books.

Once again illustrating the essential racist character of the liberal-left, Michael Steele's election to the hitherto invisible RNC chairmanship has endowed it with a new, higher profile.

In Republican circles, Steele is considered to be smart, articulate and telegenic, albeit no political genius in the mold of Reagan, or strategy meister patterned after Newt Gingrich. He's a strong horse in the Republican stable for a Senator's seat or of course the RNC chair, and notably, would also be if he were lily white.

The Democrats don't see it that way, in fact, they can't see it that way.

Evil twins have certain identifying characteristics. For one thing, they lead parallel existences. Obama and Steele are roughly the same age—Obama is 47, Steele is 50. They were both rising stars in their respective state parties. And they both now lead their respective national parties. But whereas Obama was blessed with supreme good fortune—he won his first state Senate race on a ballot technicality, and his opponent for U.S. Senate was Alan Keyes—Steele was less lucky. A Republican in a Democratic state, he chose the worst year possible to run for Senate: 2006. And while Obama cruised through the cesspool of Chicago politics with hardly an ethical blemish, Steele is now fighting accusations that he misspent campaign funds. (Steele called the allegations "not true.")

Evil twins also tend to have inverted moralities—or, in this case, politics. Whereas Obama favors government spending in the stimulus bill, Steele supports tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. "Individual empowerment—that's how you stimulate the economy," he says. On social issues, Steele has been reliably conservative, with the occasional exception. "I am philosophically the polar opposite of the man," Steele said of Obama in 2008.

Author Christopher Beam forgot to mention the most important distinguishing characteristic for these evil twins--they're black. How else to equivocate between the POTUS and a lowly RNC chair?

I'm appalled that I've misperceived the meaning of "Vanity Fair" for all of these years. I had always thought the magazine was titled after a place name in Pilgrim's Progress, a metaphor for ostentation and frivolity.

Apparently what it really means is that beauty is white.

Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto appears in Vanity Fair's March issue A LOT lighter than she is in real life, and it's pissed off a lot of people!

Why did they have to give Freida the whitewash treatment like Beyonce got compliments of L'Oreal ?

We don't know because Vanity Fair has refused to answer questions about the whitewashing.

The track record is still perfect--all the racists I know are self-described liberals...

The parallel lives of 2 mixed race Americans, Barack Obama and Booker T. Washington, show how degraded has become the once honourable cause of racial equality. President Obama be-clowned himself over the arrest of his Irish-Yoruba friend, Harvard professor "Skip" Gates, "the nation's most famous black scholar", "public intellectual".

Booker T. wrote 100 years ago:

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Update h/t Powerline: Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes

Harry Reid's evaluation of Barack Obama as a Presidential candidate has generated almost no buzz beyond the political enthusiast class. Should it?

He is quoted in "Game Change" by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

"light skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one"

I am underwhelmed. This is simply a paraphrase of Joe Biden's comments about Barack Obama being a bright, articulate good-looking and 'clean'. That blurt elicited its own chorus of murmurs, and for similar reasons--politicians are deathly afraid of giving even the slightest offense to the 'black people'. One has to appreciate the irony of so many pimp-posers and gang-bangers getting their feelings hurt by a couple of old, white Democrats. Add to that the comic relief of the Rev. Sharpton making the rounds of the news programs in his James Brown pompadour.

Yeah, that Barack Obama sure is different alright. At no point do you worry about the possibility that he'll mug you or accuse you of raping a black girl.

Reid and Biden are just stating what a lot of white public relations people have been telling black professional athletes for decades--wear a suit, don't get a tattoo and sound like you've been to a few University English classes. Michael Jordan was the original articulate, clean black man, and we rewarded him for not scaring us with hundreds of millions of dollars. Tiger Woods perfected the game (and I don't mean golf) until the scab got ripped off his scam. Corporate America just doesn't have all that much use for playahs and pimps.

On the other hand, Harry Reid should have resigned for his clearly racist attack on Clarence Thomas as a functional illiterate.

While being interviewed on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on December 5, Senator Reid was asked about the possibility of Justice Thomas replacing current Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is currently being treated for thyroid cancer. Reid called Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court" and said his "opinions are poorly written."

I'll defend Reid on the recent comments because they are clearly harmless. The irony is that one could not expect quid pro quo from Reid or his political allies. As Ann Althouse commented at the time of his Clarence Thomas slam...

Legal scholars are not as critical of Justice Thomas' legal prowess as are liberal politicians and activists. Commenting on liberal criticism of Thomas' jurisprudence, University of Wisconsin Law Professor Ann Althouse wrote: "It is my observation that liberals tend to lapse into the lazy belief that those who don't agree with them must be stupid or evil, and to me Reid's remarks look a bit like that... I realize the senators can't get away with opposing a judicial nomination on the grounds that they simply disagree with their opinions... but to attack Thomas' intelligence is shameless."

A Huffington Post article of white gay anger and GLBT resolve to defeat Harold Ford Jr. in the New York Senate race, reveals this surprising, and unselfconscious usage of a formerly loaded term.

"Ford could certainly receive a lot of the White gay anger directed at African Americans after the same-sex marriage defeats," says Kenyon Farrow, executive director of Queers for Economic Justice and no Ford fan. Ultra light-skinned and with scant Negro dialect, Farrow says Ford could "also emerge as a proxy target for Pres. Obama" -- a ballot-box rejection of yet another (supposedly) anti-gay Black man.

..well why not? The 'Negro' Caucus gave Harry Reid the all-clear, and by extension, to everyone else as well.

The GLBT in New York State appear to be snarling chihuahuas--aggressive rhetoric and dire threats, but little muscle to back it up. With nothing but losses on the books, politicians aren't showing them any respect these days. The state is 18% black and about 13% hispanic. The 2000 census counted about 46,000 same sex couples, so perhaps 100,000 gay and lesbian voters in the state (more or less).

Considering that the New York State Senators roundly rejected gay marriage less than 60 days ago, its a safe bet that the GLBT hasn't captured the hearts and minds it needs to prevail on the issue.

Last night, the lovely bunny and myself watched a rare episode of Oprah because she was interviewing Jay Leno. For reasons I don't understand, Leno is being perceived as the villain in Conan O'Brien's decision to leave the network and Leno getting the Tonight Show back.

None of this has any particular significance, but something Leno said prompted me to bring it up. To paraphrase; The TV business is brutal. If you don't have the ratings, you'll be fired in half a second. Sometimes you get fired even if you do get the ratings (which happened to Leno twice...).

Which brings me to Chris Matthews.

Matthews had his worst week in 2009 last week in the A25-54 demographic for his 5pmET live airing, averaging 88,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data. The previous week, he had his 2nd worst week, averaging 99,000.

I can think of half a dozen conservative blogs that get more readership than that, every single day, and they aren't being paid like Matthews either.

Seems to me that Stewart isn't taking much of a risk mocking Matthews, who is and has been so eminently mockable for such a good, long while. His viewership is simply statistical confirmation that Matthews is the left-wing incarnation of Tucker Carlson--an unintentional clown.

The mystery lies in why NBC likes him so much better than Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien? He can't be making any money for them, and he's certainly doesn't provide MSNBC an aura of credibility. The only time he makes the news is when he says something stupid and someone else with an actual audience decides its worth some mockery.

Just by comparison, consider that Sarah Palin, who's career as a pundit Matthews mocked with, "Ha! She can't be a pundit, she doesn't know anything!", pulled in 4,000,000 viewers for her debut. Chris, Chris, Chris. It not what you know that makes you a pundit, its how many people care about what you know.

I expect my next post mentioning Chris Matthews name will be to announce the cancellation of Hardball.

Al Sharpton's National Action Network is on the brink of dissolution.

"The organization has suffered recurring decreases in net assets -- and has been dependent upon advances from related parties and the nonpayment of payroll tax obligations -- to maintain continuity," the firm KBL concluded in an April 2 audit of NAN's 2008 financial records, the most recent available.

I can't see this as a revenue problem--opportunities for shakedowns abound. This is just an organization with no financial controls whatsoever.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN for flying off the handle during a radio interview and accidentally telling people what he really thinks.

"Deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier," the 52-year-old said.

He then pointed out Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, calling him a bigot with “white, liberal establishment point of view" and accusing “The Daily Show” host of picking on Sanchez's on-air mistakes because of his race.

"Here's what they do. This is the game they play: 'I just picked on Fox News, because they just had a bold-faced [sic] lie about something -- dammit, that means I gotta find something on CNN. Oh, I know… wait, hold on, let me find, oh that Rick Sanchez, that little Puerto Rican guy. I'll make fun of him,’” Sanchez surmised.

During the radio interview, Sanchez was asked about Stewart being considered a minority since he was Jewish, but balked at the suggestion.

"Very powerless people," he laughed. "He's such a minority, I mean, you know… Please, what are you kidding?…I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart...the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah," he said.

I find these comments completely fascinating because of how much they reveal about the psychology of affirmative action.

Consider how he defines minority--not in terms of proportion, but in terms of power. Thus Jews, who make up 1.7% of the American population, are not a minority, and in the liberal Democrat world, he's completely correct--no one hires a Jew to create diversity. You hire a Jew on merit.

Its the glaring exception to the rule that exposes the entire affirmative action enterprise as a fraud, and Sanchez's emotional reaction is entirely consistent with this paradigm. He knows he's a diversity hire, and he mightily resents it, because it says--in no uncertain terms--that he is window dressing, a token Hispanic to provide his employer with liberal bona fides.

I'm not a minority--well, at least not ethnically, but I was a 'bosses' son' which has surprisingly similar characteristics to being a diversity hire. No matter how hard you work and what you accomplish, there is always that asterisk by you name, always that qualifier that suggests that the playing field was tilted in your favor because of your relationship to the boss.

The temptation is to say--what are you complaining about? You have a good job, plenty of money--who cares what other people think?

Try it sometime. Money and security are poor substitutes for self-respect. The superficial civility of one's peers and superiors just can't seem to hide the real or imagined contemptuous sneer when you occupy a position by virtue of special privilege rather than competence and trust.

Whether a deliberate objective of affirmative action legislation or an unintended consequence, the result is the same--the elite protect their positions of power while creating an illusion of equality that no one involved actually believes in.

Sanchez has dodged accountability for what would have been career-ending mistakes on several occasions, starting with a no contest plea to a DUI in which a man was paralyzed, later succumbing to his injuries. Going from bad to worse, Sanchez then showed up in tapes revealing an improper association with an organized crime figure. Still Sanchez didn't get fired, and wasn't even suspended, instead given paid leave and the opportunity to look for another job.

Its hard to imagine any average white boy or girl, surviving these kinds of controversies in the notoriously image-conscious local news business, but Sanchez not only survived but thrived, moving to a Houston station, then to MSNBC in 2001, and more recently hired by CNN.

What set Sanchez off was that he caught Jon Stewart sneering. He might have been able to fool himself into believing that he really was making it in the big time on his merits, but no longer. Stewart was laughing at him, and the country along with him. Every self-doubt and suspicion returned in raging force. Stewart had broken the rules in which the liberal media pretends that Sanchez is just like every other anchor working at CNN, and Sanchez pretends that he's something other than the token Hispanic.

There are no heroes in this story, but CNN will continue as always, hiring the next token ethnic minority with appropriate mainstream liberal views. Sanchez on the other hand, is faced with granite reality that he's been a ruling class patsy and won't be getting a job at Fox News as a consolation prize.

Still, you won't find me echoing the contempt implicit in much of the commentary on this story, in fact, I kind of hope Sanchez gets a second (third, fourth?) act, but this time acting as a voice of warning for other ambitious members of minority groups, tempted to play three card Monte with the liberal elite.