[freedomtowernight_edited.jpg] 26th Parallel: Pitts-Slapping

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Pitts-Slapping

I've stopped reading Leonard Pitts' columns. Frankly, I don't have the time, energy and will to sit through another one of that man's articles and read another lie about how racist and nasty Republicans (read: conservatives) are.

Fortunately, there are still activists out there who can stomach Pitts and give him a little dose of his own medicine.

In his June 21 Issues & Ideas column, GOP blind to its race problem Leonard Pitts Jr. unfairly condemns the entire Republican Party as racist based on the actions of a few. In reality, the Republican Party, since its inception in 1854 as the antislavery party until today, has been the party of freedom and equality for blacks. A better case can be made that the Democratic Party is a racist party.

As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years, and their policies have turned those communities into economic and social wastelands.

Democrats fought to expand slavery, while Republicans fought to ban it. After the Civil War, Republicans amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom, citizenship and the right to vote. Republicans then passed the civil-rights laws of the 1860s that, sadly, were over turned by the Democrats with the Repeal Act of 1894 after they took over Congress in 1892.

Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen was instrumental to the passage of civil-rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. He wrote the language for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of the civil-rights legislation without the support of Republicans. Johnson's statement about losing the South was not made out of a concern that racist Democrats would suddenly join the Republican Party. Instead, Johnson feared that the racist Democrats would again form a third party, such as the short-lived States Rights Democratic Party.

Democrats readily demean black professionals who do not toe the Democratic Party's liberal line, denigrating them as ''sellouts'' and ''Uncle Toms.'' A Democrat blogger depicted RNC Chairman Michael Steele as a ''Simple Sambo'' with a blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, thick red lips.

Condoleezza Rice was demeaned by a Democratic cartoonist as an ignorant, barefoot ''mammy.'' Democrats Al Sharpton and Harry Belafonte denigrated Gen. Colin Powell and Rice as ``house Negroes.''

Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy called some black judicial nominees, including Judge Janice Rogers Brown, ''Neanderthals.'' Democratic Senator Harry Reid slurred Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as an ''embarrassment'' who could not write properly.

Has Pitts condemned racism in the Democratic Party?

FRANCES RICE, chairman, National Black Republican Association, Sarasota

I don't believe the Democratic Party itself is racist. Nor do I believe most Democrats and liberals are racist, either. But Frances Rice puts the finger on something many Democrats don't want to admit to: their party's own dark history as well as their largely failed policies towards minorities.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't say it better than Ann Coulter:

"Liberals don't read, they don't know history, and they're stupid."

That's it, in a nutshell.

10:20 PM, June 28, 2009  
Blogger Rick said...

From the Pitts piece...

"Which is that, yes, I am cognizant of the danger of painting with too broad a brush and no, I am not saying membership in the GOP is synonymous with membership in the KKK. I know there are Republicans of racial enlightenment and common decency. Indeed, I am counting on it, counting on them to search conscience and demand their party find ways of winning elections that do not depend on lazy appeals to the basest emotions of the hateful and the unreconstructed."

So Ms. Rice is pretty much mischaracterizing Leonard Pitts. Appears to me that she is the one that needs to learn to read.

.

11:05 PM, June 28, 2009  
Blogger Robert said...

Notice that Pitts qualifies what he's about to write by stating that he's cognizant of painting with too broad a brush, then goes ahead and does it anyway. Pitts' references to racism have always been pointed at the Republican Party as a whole, not necessarily individual members of such. That's why he's "counting on" Republicans of "enlightenment and common decency" (his patronizing would be funny if it wasn't so nauseating) to talk sense to the GOP.

I think Ms. Rice pretty much nailed Pitts for what he is, a GOP-hater who will stop at nothing to miscategorize.

1:42 PM, June 29, 2009  
Blogger Rick said...

You're going to make me do it, aren't you, Robert?

Here's what follows what I quoted in my last comment, in its entirety...

Do it because it's the right thing. And do it because it is in the party's long-term interest. As a 2008 Gallup poll indicates, black people are more religious than Republicans as a whole and just as conservative on some key moral issues. Yet only 5 percent identify with the party of religion and conservatism. The GOP's ongoing inability to win over such a natural constituency speaks volumes.

I keep waiting for somebody to do something about it. I mean, I can hear Republicans of racial enlightenment and common decency yelling at me from here.

They want me to know there is nothing honorable, much less inherently Republican, in the hatred expressed by these weasels in elephant's clothes. In response, I would give them this advice:

Don't tell me. Tell them.


Three things:

1. Slamming something someone wrote and not linking to it, really does suck.

2. Slamming something someone wrote and not taking the time to read it [your own words], really does suck.

3. Pitts goes out his way to make sure the reader understands that he doesn't think that the entire Republican Party is racist and that there some "Republicans of racial enlightenment and common decency." Out. Of. His. Way. You have to call it "patronizing" in order to substantiate your argument let alone rubber stamp Ms. Rice's.

It's pretty obvious that Mr. Pitts doesn't like the GOP, just like many Americans out there, but to twist his words and ignore obvious positions is poor gamesmanship.

Too bad.

.

4:13 PM, June 29, 2009  
Blogger Robert said...

Relax, Rick. I did read it after seeing Rice's letter. Perhaps I should have spelled that out to you. No gotcha moment here. Move along.

Pitts has a history of slamming Republicans and the GOP. Since you're so adept at searching, go through this blog and do a search for Pitts, and you'll see what I mean. The man barely hides...wait a minute, he doesn't hide it at all...his contempt for conservatives. If you can't pick it up even in what you quoted above (we're supposed to prove blacks we're not racist), it's probably because you like Pitts and agree with his message.

I'm sorry my blogging etiquette isn't as impeccable and meticulous as yours. Then again, it's really the least of my concerns how you feel about my blogging.

4:39 PM, June 29, 2009  

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