You know what? The more I hear people like Ventura, or Hank Aaron, try to cash in on a tactic of using “racism” as a shaming mechanism, the more I realize that this country has become kind of a giant shithole lorded over by sanctimonious pricks who are looking to divide us in order to draw attention — and perhaps riches — to themselves.
I’m not going to rehash the provenance for the Redskins team name, because it’s already widely known that the name was intended as tribute, and that over time it has become, in practical usage, a symbol for a professional football team coming out of DC, nothing more. Ventura knows this, just as Hank Aaron knows that the vast majority of those who disagree with Obama are not part of some modern-day Klan.
But by saying these things, they draw attention to themselves, and they receive plaudits from the very people whose adulation they seek — the modern day inquisitors and the professional, governmental press that fawns over them. Ventura is an attention whore. And if he wants to pretend Dan Snyder is trying to “buy the right to be racist,” it’s just as justifiable to say that Ventura is looking for a way to sublimate his anti-semitism into something that can pass for nobility.
Fuck him. He should have just gone quietly into the night, and dragged Schwartzenegger and Oprah and Colin Powell along with him.
Which brings me back to Aaron: I didn’t comment yesterday on his remarks because frankly I was too disgusted; after all, here’s a man who was in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record when I was a small child, and who played the majority of his career in a decade wherein Republicans marched with blacks and civil rights leaders against the Klan, against the segregationists, and against the Democratic politicians who worked to block Civil Rights legislation. I remember writing a book report on him in second grade, and I still remember his home run, which I watched live on TV, off of Al Downing, that broke Ruth’s record. Later, when I was in high school, I commemorated the moment in a large drawing that made the rounds at local art shows.
Like many others, I understood, at least intellectually, the pressure Aaron was under during those days, just as I understand that a remainder of racists from all parts of the country harassed and threatened him. Which is why I, like many others of my generation, spent our youths pulling for him, idolizing him, inspired by his ability to overcome such adversity and continue on, the very model of consistency.
For him, years later, to call those from the party of Lincoln, which was formed in part as an abolitionist party, the modern-day Klan in neckties and starched shirts, is to do a disservice not only to those people who have always stood for individualism and a color-blind society, but to those who sacrificed so much taking the fight to an entrenched group of racists in many of the states. To suggest that those of us who fight daily to maintain individual dignity and autonomy are really just racists for vehemently disagreeing with the policies of a red-diaper baby, whose confidants include a collection of sixties radicals, domestic terrorists, and foreign provocateurs who hate this country, is absurd on its face, and really shouldn’t even be dignified with this response.
Not only that, but such historical revisionism shows how deeply stupid and, yes, enslaved, Aaron is — not to his color, but to the Democrat Party, for whom he’ll be used as a mouthpiece and a mascot of sorts. In fact, his brother-in-law happens to be (surprise!) a leftist Democrat Congressman.
LBJ, in touting his Great Society Program, famously said, ““I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”
Henry Aaron, a man I once looked up to and a man who never came out in defense of people like Clarence Thomas, eg., is now playing the role of Samuel L Jackson in Django Unchained. He’s the kind of modern-day plantation slave LBJ envisioned, albeit one of those who gets the special privilege of living in the Big White House and speaking candidly, on occasion, to Master.
And in doing so, he may win over a bunch of Democrat and progressive hacks and get a medal of freedom or some such from the odious, race-baiting Obama, who can’t wait to rub shoulders with notorious race-hustler Al Sharpton; but he has forever tarnished his legacy, and he has essentially accused nearly half of all Americans — those whose party freed the slaves and fought for Civil Rights — of being like the bigoted Democrats they fought so hard against four decades ago.
Congrats, Henry. The Ghost of LBJ and Robert Byrd (and his Kleagle hood) would like to thank you for being a good boy and knowing your place. You’ll be rewarded with a pat on the head and some extra vittles come supper time.
There were a few people that I respect trying to get me to lay off Hank because of a) his historical significance and b) he’s old. My response is that his words were worse BECAUSE he’s such a beloved figure. Make that “formerly beloved”.
I was rooting for him as child and, like you, watched him hit the homer that immortalized Al Downing. It was great. Watching him tarnish his once proud legacy by spouting racist and historically ignorant bullshit? Makes me want to go to Cooperstown and urinate on his picture.
Aaron has been like this for years. It’s only new to people who haven’t been in the Atlanta market.
I was in love with Willie McCovey’s swing, just a thing of beauty. Aaron, though I was aware of his great achievements, never really appealed to me. But that’s without any connection to his political ignorance or knowledge, for which I took no measure at all.
Of men who suffer persecution though, it seems there are in the main two predominant reactions or two paths to follow: the one, the easier or more common of the two, to succumb to the hate becoming angry and hateful oneself — the other, by far the rarer, to so despise hate, to take hatred so seriously as to refuse ever to enter into it, to insist on always being capable of identifying it truthfully, most especially within oneself.
And to general appearances, Aaron elected the former path, whereas someone like Elie Wiesel sought the latter.
“Sideway-topic” sliding just like history.
2164 is far not enough. “History” might get derailed or turned back. He’s aiming for more than just another 200 years, he plans to weld not just one group, as per LBJ, but all of us permanently to him and his successors for eternity. All our minds are to be made right or unmade completely.
LBJ, rehabbed by the New Left at last.
Did Obama even live in LBJ’s America?
About 4 years worth till ’67.
Of course he was very young.
Link, sorry.
Sdferr wrote: And to general appearances, Aaron elected the former path, whereas someone like Elie Wiesel sought the latter.
As did Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Like Mr. Wiesel, she refused to let hate consume her. And like him, she refused to not take part in the joy that is living life.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/04/09/article-2600308-1CF9169600000578-236_306x423.jpg
Look at the vibrant love of life in her eyes. Look at the gaiety in her smile.
Well placed Mr. G.,
Well placed!