Jonathan Chait’s epic race fail: How a story about racism and Obama goes horribly wrong

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/jonathan_chaits_epic_race_fail_how_a_story_about_racism_and_obama_goes_horribly_wrong/



I’m glad Jonathan Chait told us that his poorly argued, slightly paranoid New York magazine cover story, “Why Race Has Been the Real Story of Obama’s Presidency All Along,” was written before his epic wrangle with Ta-Nehisi Coates over Paul Ryan and the “culture” of black poverty. Because otherwise, it could only be read as the self-pitying rant of someone who has lost a historically defining argument – someone who has been “sonned,” to use Coates’ term — and is still too hurt to have access to his powers of reason.

Even with the knowledge that Chait’s cover story predates his debate with Coates, I’m not sure what to make of an article that purports to seriously examine the role of race in politics in the age of Barack Obama, and then compares liberals’ claims of conservative racism to McCarthyism (specifically: “the poisonous waft of the debates over communism during the McCarthy years”). “Liberals dwell in a world of paranoia of a white racism that has seeped out of American history in the Obama years and lurks everywhere, mostly undetectable,” he claims.

Though Chait acknowledges that appeals to white racism have undergirded the modern Republican Party since the civil rights era, he insists liberals are bullies who refuse to “acknowledge that the ability to label a person racist represents, in 21st-century America, real and frequently terrifying power.” He singles out MSNBC for special scorn (full disclosure: I’m a contributor there), while never once mentioning Fox by name. “MSNBC has spent the entire Obama presidency engaged in a nearly nonstop ideological stop-and-frisk operation,” Chait writes.

See what he did with that “stop-and-frisk” reference? In case you’ve missed it, police departments in some cities have been accused of infringing the civil rights of blacks and Latinos by physically stopping them, and invasively frisking them, with little and sometimes no evidence of wrongdoing. It’s kind of a big deal to civil rights liberals, of every race. So Chait tweaks them by accusing MSNBC of stopping and frisking conservatives “ideologically” – as in metaphorically and without consequence, which technically means not stopping and frisking them at all.

If you liked that comparison, you’re going to love the whole piece.

Well, that’s if you can get past the opening anecdote, which features a clash between Bill Maher and Bill Kristol in which Maher claims the rise of the Tea Party is about having “a black president” and Kristol gets really mad and sad, and the whole mess is supposed to sum up the ugliness of American political debate. Clearly the angels are crying over poor Bill Kristol being hurt by charges of conservative racism made by a liberal comedian on TV. I think Reince Priebus ought to set the whole Kristol-Maher exchange to that Sarah McLachlan music the SPCA uses, and raise money for the RNC.

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. I guess this guy's a moron or whatever

But why bring his crap here, even if it's to take him down a peg? He's not worth it. He's not worth much of anything.

[Larry the Cable Dude]

2. Chait supports Obamacare

He is a progressive, actually: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/11/obamacare-hyperventilation-to-continue-forever.html

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. I'll take your word for it I guess.

[Larry the Cable Dude]

4. Or you can do research on his writings on Obamacare

But sarcastically saying that you take my word takes less effort.

[TroglodyteScholar]

5. It's true.

I'll refer you now to my first post in the thread.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. While I don't agree with all of Chait's article, I think it's far better written and thought through

than this rather desperate hatchet job on it.

Well worth following the link at the link (to http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-presidency-race-2014-4/index4.html#print ) and reading it for yourself with an open mind.

[joeybee12]

7. I look at that face and one word comes immediately to mind: smarmy...knr

[Recursion]

8. I, too, am glad he wrote that before TNC destroyed him

And that destruction was epic