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Pitts: GOP is Racist, Homophobic
Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts wrote this in today's Miami Herald (emphasis mine):
They'll be back. Don't think for a minute that they won't.These things run in cycles, and death in politics is about as permanent as death in Marvel Comics, which is to say, not very. Yes, Team Red had its butt kicked and its lunch money taken a few weeks back, yes Team Blue stands at the prow of the ship, arms wide, screaming ''king of the world!,'' yes the GOP slinks off into the wilderness now amid grumbles of recrimination and remonstration.
They'll be back. Count on it.
Indeed, they are already plotting their return, pundits and polls debating the best way of regaining favor. Shall they be more like Reagan or less, less socially conservative or more? Shall they groom Sarah Palin or forget they ever heard the name?
Allow me to insert into the discussion one tiny hope. Namely, that the GOP will plot a path back to power that does not require stepping on scapegoats to get there.
Ever since Richard Nixon's infamous ''Southern strategy'' of 1968, Republicans have won power largely by convincing voters that strange and exotic others were to blame for all their ills. It's the feminists' fault, they said. Or the blacks. Or the Hispanics, the Muslims or the gays.
And this:
Indeed, ''let us save you from them'' has been arguably the GOP's most enduring message for four decades, a promise to people shaken by change that the party will repeal the '60s and reinstate the '50s. And never mind that this would mean returning women to the kitchen, Muslims to invisibility, gays to the closet and blacks to the back of the bus. Never mind that it was about as likely as returning toothpaste to the tube.
What can be said in response to this hateful diatribe? It shows that Leonard Pitts, behind all the flowery talk about unity and hope and equality, is a hypocrite who doesn't have a clue what the vast majority of Republicans and conservatives really stand for. That's because he probably doesn't know more than a handful of Republicans/conservatives.
BTW, I would love to get Edward Schumacher-Matos' reaction to this column. Of course, he would probably say that it's "ideologically accurate".
Pitts is right about one thing: the GOP will be back. These type of hateful columns will just make it that much easier to get back in the game, trust me.
The entire column, if you dare, can be read here.
posted by Robert at 10:55 AM
2 Comments:
Pitts has written better columns. This seems like one of his worst. One of the problems with being a columnist is that you have to write on schedule even if you don't have anything to say. One of the benefits of being a columnist is that you get paid even if you write garbage. It reflects poorly on Pitts that he couldn't come up with something better to write on one of his off days (I'm being charitable and assuming that he isn't merely a hateful jerk).
Of course the Herald prints this kind of crap while putting opinion statements from people it disagrees with under a microscope. Everyone knows there is a leftist bias, but media mgmt somehow thinks it can get away with sham ombudsmen and other phony reforms as an alternative to making a real effort to remove the political bias from news reporting. The market is now punishing the old media for behaving in this way.
In the e-mail I sent off to Pitts, I mentioned that's it's possible that he had an off day. I also mentioned that while disagreeing with him on most basic issues, I have always admired his insistence on personal accountability in the black community. Thus, my deep disappointment with the column today.
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