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Saturday Night Card Game (I could not accuse Salon.com of tokenism, even if I wanted to)

Saturday Night Card Game (I could not accuse Salon.com of tokenism, even if I wanted to)

In one of the most snide and offensive columns written this year in The NY Times, University of Pennsylvania Political Science Professor Adolf L. Reed, Jr. called Tim Scott and other Republicans who are black “cynical tokens.”

In response, I noted that I would not be so offensive as to accuse either The New York Times Editorial Board or The U. Penn. Political Science Department of tokenism even though they don’t, um, “look like America.”

So I decided to take a look at Salon.com, whose author David Sirota has carved out for himself the inglorious first of Injecting racial politics into the Newtown, CT, murders:

“The issue with it will be, politically, I think; the profile is white men,” Sirota said. “That’s a profile that’s not, essentially, in America allowed to be profiled. That’s the one profile in America that’s not allowed to be profiled.”

Sirota’s “white privilege” rants have been featured here prior to the Newtown shooting.  He has attempted to use the White Privilege construct against, among others, the Tea Party movement, All Roads Lead to White Privilege

White Privilege, as we have explored here before, is the seemingly perfect answer to the inability actually to prove racism — it’s everywhere so no proof is needed.

But Sirota’s really trying to make a name for himself  with White Privilege in the aftermath of the shooting, a strategy promoted by Salon.com, David Sirota on CNN: The media doesn’t profile white men:

Salon columnist David Sirota spoke with CNN to elaborate on his observation that recent mass shootings have been perpetrated by white men, and that “if this was any other kind of demographic, you would be hearing that in a much different way, a much uglier way.”

Salon.com gives Sirota a platform to perpetrate this intellectually lazy headline-grabbing nonsense.

So let’s take a look at the 14 regular columnists at Salon.com (who they call on the home page the Salon.com “Voices”)


I could accuse Salon.com of intellectual laziness, but I could not accuse it of tokenism, even if I wanted to (which I do not).

White privilege, however, may fit.

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Comments

Really, you can’t judge just by their pictures, if they’re a person of color.

Look at a picture of Elizabeth Warren, for example. /sarc

    Milwaukee in reply to rinardman. | December 22, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    All of us know that your comments are just code words for “high cheek envy”. Medication and therapy may prove to be beneficial. (Maybe for you, maybe for us, since we even consider “high cheek envy”, maybe for Elizabeth.

    This comment is meant to be humorous, maybe snarky, maybe a bit cheeky.

DINORightMarie | December 22, 2012 at 5:49 pm

I must say you are as always 100% right on the money.

But it just occurred to me…..

What about that lady professor at Univ. of AL who shot up the entire Science Dept. because they denied her tenure (or whatever her anger-issue du jour was).

She shatters his “white males” do massacres theory, doesn’t she? And, of course, we all know that white males have NEVER been “profiled” before by, say, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Sheila Jackson Lee, or others of their “I see race first and always in EVERTHING” glee club.

Of course, so does the fact that Chicago is a walking shooting gallery, where massacres occur frequently, and apparently quite regularly.

But that would ruin this leftie prof’s schtick, so it will all be dismissed as irrelevant “noise,” I suppose.

So predictable, these ideologues and propagandists. Too bad so many voters believe them.

    Oh, you mean Amy Bishop?

    Another thing about Massachusetts to be ashamed of.

    She blew her brother to kingdom come when she was a kid. Her mother had some law enforcement connections (the kind of connections you get when you’re undressed, IYKWIMAITTYD) that resulted in District Attorney Bill Delahunt not prosecuting Bishop for the death of her brother.

    Delahunt, of course, goes on to become a Congressman.

    Funny thing is that when Bishop went bonkers and shot all her colleagues, Delahunt all of sudden felt the strong urge to retire.

    Coincidently, I’m sure.

    You used the word Chicago! Which, as everyone knows (At least Chris Matthews, anyways) is a secret racist keyword.

    See also:

    Major Nidal Hasan

    John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo

    Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

    Wait, wait a minute… I’m seeing a pattern here, but, no; I’m sure it’s just my unconscious racism at work. There must be some nuance the kierarchy has blinded me to.

    If Sirota could just think of a way to accuse a gun of being racist he would be a hero of the collective and win a Nobel Peas Prize. All this hot air is aimed at banning all guns, but statistically guns are a positive force in the American culture because they save far more lives each year than they take. The problem is criminals and the insane. Both of which are, apparently, Progressive interest groups. Come election time there is never a shortage of larcenous Libs who encourage and facilitate fraudulent voting by criminals, convicts and the coo coo for cocoa puffs.

    Sirota and progressives in general need to stop thinking with their female parts and use logic instead of their always roiling emotions in this matter.

    GUNS SAVE LIVES

    A. Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day

    ( Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164. )

    B. States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and * If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.

    ( Lott and Mustard, “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns.” )

    C. Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.

    ( U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities (1979), p. 31.)

    D. Criminals are more fearul of a citizen with a gun more than they are the police.

    ( U.S., Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, “The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons,” Research Report (July 1985): 27.)

    https://www.gunowners.org/sk0802htm.htm

      Don’t waste you time with facts. It’s feelings that we need to deal with. Besides, these facts are racist because everyone knows that Blacks and Latinos don’t have guns and, therefore, can’t defend themselves.

      askeptic in reply to jasond. | December 23, 2012 at 12:09 pm

      Guns as Racist….
      It must be frustrating to him that “assault weapons” generally are known as “Black Guns”, and the AR15/M16 when first issued in VietNam was called by the troops (not affectionately) the “Mouse Gun”.
      But, being the clever little wordsmith that he is, I’m confident that he can find a way do further demonize an inanimate object.

Blind! Blind! I’m BLIND! Where are all the ‘people of color’, or are they putting into practice that racist policy of being ‘color blind’? That white slug top-center is a little darker than the rest, but then I noticed he just needed to shave. Not only do they consider themselves elite, but they’re lazy too! ALSO, what’s with the men(?) taking up the top 2 rows, with the women the bottom 2+ rows?

What a bunch of miserable socialist propagandists! All they can do is shovel false guilt on the rest of society, setting themselves up as our social conscious, while they themselves repudiate their own standards. No sarcasm here, just disgust.

They don’t even have a token attractive person, never mind a person of color.

Faccie brutte, the lot of them.

1. Some of their best friends are Negroes people of color.

2. Some people maintain that the claim that mass murderers are disproportionately white is an urban legend. (I’m not convinced either way.)

    TugboatPhil in reply to gs. | December 22, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    I’ve been thinking about that lately and in America, it’s probably if white men are the most likely to be mass murderers. But in Africa, it’s black men. And even though they call them civil or tribal wars, they have a LOT more mass killings in Africa than we do.

    Although that makes me a racist for even thinking that.

    jasond in reply to gs. | December 23, 2012 at 5:14 am

    gs – Information at the link you provided does blow Sirota’s racist theory.

    In 2005, offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites

    http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm

These outfits couldn’t afford to get on a public bus.

Not a token among them…

There are young Black men who like to play that game where they go up to an suspecting victim and punch them. If they are knocked out, the puncher wins some points from his gang. If the victim isn’t knocked out, the gang beats them until they are unconscious. I haven’t heard of any White gangs playing that game.

In the last 4 years the percentage and number of Whites and Hispanics who have been the victims of violent crimes at the hands of Blacks has gone up. Not a lot of that in the news.

David Sirota shares a talk show in Denver. He seems to like to pose as a pragmatic, sensible liberal, instead of a hardcore flaming liberal. Perhaps that needs to be pointed out to the listeners.

Wow, even Manfred Mann is “Blinded by the White.”

Bright White Lights, Big White Salon City!

White men are already the first profiled in cases like Newtown.

So, I guess white men are “privileged” to have privileged white columnists coming out in favor of profiling in cases like this where white men are already—and have long been—profiled, in stark contrast to cases like the Ft. Hood shooting, where these privileged white columnists echo the Obama administration’s view that screaming, “Allahu Akbar !!!” while slaughtering your fellow soldiers is a profile in “workplace violence.”

If that mentally ill boy gunning down kindergartners was known to have visited mosques and talked to imams, and if he were to have shouted, “Allahu Akbar !!!” during his rampage … the urge to profile by privileged white columnists would be a casualty, also.

If you recall, LEO profilers had determined that the “DC sniper” was a White male.
It must have set the science if profiling years when it as determined that it was “two Black males”.
At least, they got the “male” part right.

How dare inherently racist white folk talk about racism!!

Wait … where’s my mirror?

Oops. Never mind.

Sincerely,

Jerry(White)B(oy).

I think it’s pretty well established that MOST mass murderers are white. Particularly true if guns are involved. But that’s common knowledge. Anybody raising it as a “new” issue is smoking dope.

    could be explained by the fact of a majority.

      Willy in reply to dmacleo. | December 23, 2012 at 6:34 am

      Interestingly, it’s also explained by educational level, which is higher among whites. Would-be mass murderers who are poorly educated get caught after their first murder, preventing them from becoming mass murderers. The educated, intelligent killers are able to cover their tracks longer.

Nice pictures. If “smug” was a race this group could start their own country.

[…] Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has up a post on “Saturday Night Card Game (I could not accuse Salon.com of tokenism, even if I wanted […]

To libs, ethnicity is more a state of mind and a political pose than anything to do with skin color. After all, Bill Clinton was the first black president, and somehow many people believe that Obama is a black descendent of slaves rather than a white descendent of slave owners, even though the later is more the truth. Without being able to look into their souls, we have no way of knowing which of these Salon columnists are actually African-American, Native American, Hispanic, etc. So, they very well could be guilty of tokenism.

IIRC, ~70% of mass murderers in the US in the past 100 years were white. Amazingly, that tracks with the percentage of the population!

sarc/ Obviously white privilege at work. /sarc

Their token good-looking person is easy to spot.

BannedbytheGuardian | December 23, 2012 at 1:34 am

Lol the guy in the beret?

At least one must be 1/32 token.

Setting aside for a minute the irony, is there even one of those photos that you could not immediately tag as a liberal, without even knowing who they were or what they did?

    el polacko in reply to skh. | December 23, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    that is SO true ! i have yet to figure out exactly what it is (the cultish glazed-over eyes?) but one can easily spot a lefty.

I guess Sirota doesn’t know what goes on here in Chicago at night – years of shootings.

I’ve been cashing in on white privilege ever since I learned the secret handshake. Now I’m worth billions. It’s too bad the professor can’t be in. Yeah, he looks white and all, but he’s probably one of those matzo ball white guys. So we’re holding of on the handshake.

Just like the Salon crew strongly believes it’s other people who should pay higher taxes, apparently they think it’s other people who should hire those whose skin is colored differently from theirs.

My’O’My’O’Myyyyyyy…! The mugshots of the NYTimes editorial board were massively diverse compared to their Lefty Bruthas & Sistahs at Salon.com,’Yo. Recall, if y’all will, that there was ONE black guy and ONE Asian guy on Pravda’s(NYT) board? Tolerance & Diversity run rampant,’Yo!!

Now…back to my fantasies of a stoning pit and the most deserving candidates for my Neocon wishes…Aaaahhhhhh..(-:

Can’t you guys just leave them alone to eat their waffle?

rightontheleftcoast | December 23, 2012 at 2:27 pm

Prof J, thanks for the good work here.

Eventually when the raw emotion, understandable and valid, for the horror of the Sandy Hook shootings, has been processed, CNN and Salon will still be left with the record of their disgustingly perverse profiteering and blame shifting.

I think thoughtful readers and viewers agree, which is why they are both circling the toilet, viewership, ads, and subscribers numbers-wise, and part of that is thanks to thoughtful commentators, like you, putting them on the record for all to see.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas to you and yours.

This is a project for someone with a lot more free time than I have (or the ability to delegate), but I’ve seen so many group photos ranging from the writing staff for Jon Stewart to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s staff where they’re overwhelmingly white that it seems like a worthwhile effort to gather the lot of them. Not only doesn’t the left put their hiring where their mouths are, but we seem to have a lot more high profile black brainpower than they do, and considering how few black conservatives there are, it’s almost inconceivable that that should be the case. Are they really so bereft of cerebral black talent that buffoons like Al Sharpton and Toure merit television gigs?