Slopes of Big Ugly

One of the most glaring problems with Movement Conservatism is that they let Jonah Goldberg belong to it. A worse problem is that they let him speak. To compound this error, they give him something of a prominent platform.

In today's episode of Jonah Goldberg being an ass, here he is denying that Jesse Helms was a racist sonofabitch.

From a reader:

It would be refreshing if the National Review took the occasion of Jesse Helms' death to reflect on American conservatism's historical complicity with racism, rather than to make jokes about fringe left definitions of racism.  All I have seen on the Corner are breathless eulogizations of Jesse Helms.  If you really wanted Americans outside of your base to take people like Ward Connerly seriously, you would call a spade a spade, and denounce Jesse Helms' racist legacy as a stain on conservatism.

Me: I have no problem with reflecting on conservatism and race. But I find these sorts of finger-wags tiresome. The gist seems to be: "Agree with my unfair stereotype of conservatism or be guilty of conforming to my unfair stereotype of conservatism." If conservatives are the racists he suggests they are, why aren't NRO writers celebrating Helms' alleged racism rather than denying it? Maybe folks around here don't think the liberal line is true (in whole or in part)? And as such, throwing Helms under the bus to appease the fingerwaggers would be nothing more than an act of cowardice.

If the reader could break out of the Corner and read some of the pieces we have posted on the homepage, he might at least contemplate that Helms' career is more complicated than the mean-spirited and agenda driven mainstream media obits have suggested.

One of the most important differences between principled liberalism and the deeply muddled "conservatism" of Jonah Goldberg and the moral morons he speaks for is that for liberals, the "oh yes, he was a racist, sure... BUT" style arguments cut no ice. Especially when the racist (and homophobe!) in question was (a) egregiously bigoted, (b) politically powerful, (c) unrepentant, and (d) lauded on his expiration as some sort of a "hero" by a soi-disant "intellectual movement."

Recent discussions of "conservative" v. "liberal" views of patriotism and so forth really just boil down to where you stand on the end of Jesse Helms, and I for one am content to let matters there so rest. I mean -- it's Jesse Helms, for the love of fuck...

UPDATE. Jonah Goldberg links to this to explain why "conservatives" are not clueless douchebags on the issue of race. The first few sentences are a positive delight.

On April 4, 2008, mourners gathered at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to memorialize William F. Buckley, Jr., who had died five weeks earlier. That same Friday, mourners one thousand miles away gathered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to memorialize Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been murdered there exactly 40 years before.

The coincidence resonates. Drawing on exceptional rhetorical talents without ever being elected to public office, each man transformed the terrain where mere politicians clash.

The sheer bloody cheek. More tomorrow. (But for now, nobody at the fucking NR has any goddamn business talking static to Pravda. No shit.)

 

Comments

[bayville]

I don't speak or read Goldbergese but is he trying to say, in his usual convoluted way, that the legacy of Jesse Helms is more complicated than the proud, loud bigot he publicly portrayed for more than 50 years.

In other words he openly despised niggers, queers, and jews but he flew coach, loved dogs and he often bought his grandkids ice cream.

That same game can be played with any public figure in history (see: Stalin and his dry sense of humor).

[Me]

I'll post what I have elsewhere. Shorter Goldberg: "The proof that we're not racists is that we deny it".

He is painfully dumb.

[Ripley]

Jonah doesn't just speak the Truth - he births the Truth.

It's like Maureen Dowd with a goatee. But all serious-like...

[Urbaniak]

Does Jonah know that his buddy Michael Graham wrote this on NRO seven years ago:

Long before Rush Limbaugh, Helms was on the airwaves dismissing the University of North Carolina (UNC) as the "University of Negroes and Communists."

This is one of the disturbing legacies of Jesse Helms. Though you won't see it mentioned in the media coverage of his retirement, Helms was in fact an avowed and unapologetic segregationist. As a campaign worker, he helped elect segregation candidates before his own run in 1972. Unlike neoconservatives who espouse state's rights on principle, despite any unwanted outcomes on racial issues, Helms backed state's rights specifically because he wanted states to have the right to segregate. If Helms's position on 1960's civil-rights legislation has changed since then, he hasn't mentioned it.

Awkward!!

[K. Ron Silkwood]

Although a continent separates us, I am usually taking a dump at the time Doughy is "writing." Coincidence? I think not. The universe has a way of timing similar actions and making them resonate.

[Douglas Watts]

Movement = Ick.

[Douglas Watts]

At least the Black Hitler has been found.

[theperilouspea]

The deep dark want whose name is an unexamined embarrassment on a privy wall .

[DrDick]

Jonah really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't he. If there is a person on the planet less self aware and clueless, they are somewhere at Redstate.

[Tom Hilton]

Everyone "find[s] these sorts of finger-wags tiresome"--especially if they're right. The more culpable you are, the more tiresome you find the finger-wagging. Waving it away as 'tiresome' is a half-clever dodge that means nothing.

[Jemand von Niemand]

Little Jonah is so... little; of anything.

Helms' racism was one of the fundamental pillars on which his political actions and publicly-stated personal opinions were based.

While racism can appear anywhere, it's actually been nurtured by politicians, like Helms -- 'conservatives' -- who grew up swimming in a pool of white supremacy, and developed a political strategy which depended on and pandered to a base of white, Xtian conservatives who possessed the same attituides and committed the same actions.

Little Jonah tells us, If conservatives are the racists [his Reader] suggests they are, why aren't NRO writers celebrating Helms' alleged racism rather than denying it?

Aside from noticing Jonah's obvious Straw Man, the racist and elitist threads running through America's Right wing are so pervasive that Goldberg can't even acknowledge they exist. He'd have to own up to his own racism in the process.

And, attempting even a backhanded comparison of Buckley -- a sagging, old blueblood fascist sympathizer, to Dr. Martin Luther King is inaccurate and repulsive; a little like comparing Mussolini with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

But Goldberg's beyond a recognition of irony. It must be something to be a public joke on that kind of scale -- which in the end is an even bigger joke.

[bayville]

Pantload: Still Digging

When Goldberg begins, "Let me explain where I'm coming from,'' get ready for a smorgasbord of straw men, backpeddling, non sequiturs, bad writing and general confusion.

He doesn't disappoint in his folo to the original post on Dear Ol' Dead Jesse. His tribute to Dixie -new and old- includes the obligatory reference to Islamodabadofascist jihadists; the rationalization that Helms racism was constrained by the fact the GOP is not a racist party (? I know), and culminating in a link to noted Dixie and Helms historian John O'Sullivan (via Ireland) on the region's literary history -"will anyone deny that some of the finest American literature in the last hundred years has emerged from the South?''

Point being, I guess, that Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner weren't Yankees. So there!

Over 700 words later, his conclusion is something which he no doubt found inside a fortune cookie at K-Lo's infamous Crazy Saturday Party this past weekend:

"So, yes, Helms was heroic on many issues, but he was no hero of mine,'' summarizes Big Little Lucianne.

[darkblack]

No doubt this is a prelude to calling those who are anti-racism and anti-homophobia some type of 'fascist', a delightful conceit concocted in Mama's word garden and easily attached to those whom one wishes to demonize with deliberately confused political concepts.

'...But I find these sorts of finger-wags tiresome'

Might I suggest isometrics?

;>)

[Pat Johnson]

Lucy Anne's little spawn is just the gift that keeps on giving. And giving. And giving.

Hats off to anyone who takes the time to read his blather then reports back that, yep, more of the same crock of crap.

[Jay B.]

I have no problem with reflecting on conservatism and race.

Yes you do. You have a problem with everything but lunch.

If the reader could break out of the Corner

The reader should heed this and flee. The problem: The only way out is tattooed on Jonah's ass.

[If escape is possible]read some of the pieces we have posted on the homepage, he might at least contemplate that Helms' career is more complicated than the mean-spirited and agenda driven mainstream media obits have suggested.

Not true. Helms' great gift to liberals and conservatives alike is that he is NOT complicated. His legacy, like his politics, is nothing if not obvious in language, intent and deed. Jesse would probably agree, but he's currently being lectured on Hell's Internet Traditions by Eiljah Muhammaed for the rest of eternity.

[Bitter Scribe]

It was, no doubt, utterly fascistic to tell Southerners that they couldn't beat up and murder black people to keep them from voting.