Preeminent neocon and newly-minted New York Times columnist Bill Kristol embarrassed himself last week by incorrectly stating that Barack Obama was present for one of Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons and for neglecting to mention that his information came from the notoriously untrustworthy right-wing tabloid, Newsmax.com.
Now Kristol has embarrassed himself again this week by stating, in the wake of Obama's speech on race, that racism is not really a problem in America. "The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race," Kristol writes. "Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn't necessary to end what Obama calls the 'racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years' -- because we're not stuck in such a stalemate."
Kristol provides no empirical evidence to back up such an ignorant claim. He fails to mention, for instance, that 50 percent of African-American men in New York City were unemployed as of 2004; or that 1 in 10 black men in their 20s are behind bars; or that more than half of all black men in inner cities do not finish high school; or that the subprime lending crisis is considered to be "the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern US history," according to United for a Fair Economy.
Of course we've made racial progress in America--and Obama is a testament to that. But only an idiot (or a racist) would allege that racism does not remain a major problem in our country, and that we don't need to do a lot more to address it. Kristol is not an idiot, he just plays one on the Times op-ed page.
His spectacularly bad judgment on the war in Iraq was reason enough to oppose
His spectacularly bad judgment on the war in Iraq was reason enough to oppose
Kristol's appointment as a Times columnist. The Times' own ombudsman called the hiring of Kristol a "mistake." It's worse than that. His basic disregard for facts of any kind is well beneath the Times--or any self-respecting paper of record.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/?pid=301941
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/?pid=301941
2 comments:
I guess when nothing else works just bring back racism. It's sad this country has dropped so low as to use one of the worse parts of our history. We see Americans who even judge others while thinking their perfect. Clear sign God has left the USA. But the hypocrites filled the Churches Easter Sunday as if they were really Christians.
Why does this blowhard still have a platform? Does he know his buddies at Kellogg, Root and Brown have been kicked out of Iraq? Yup, not welcome there anymore...
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