(Note: The English Wikipedia will be blacked out globally beginning midnight Wednesday January 18, 2012. This 24-hour long action is being enacted to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act ) PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.)
On several occasions in the past I have examined Newt Gingrich, a phenomenon that we have come to know, simply as Newt. Of course, he made his initial mark as a Congressman from Georgia and Speaker of the House during the
Back during the first Act of his political career, he made his mark as the perennial antithetic to Bill Clinton. In the contemporary revival, he began early, reprising his contrarian role vis-à-vis President Obama, accusing the President of harboring a Kenyan, Anti-Colonial Worldview. In latter months, he graduated to calling POTUS the Food Stamp President.
In the past several weeks as his candidacy first appeared to conduct a “Phoenix-like rise from the ashes,” only to subsequently wilt again, after Mr. Gingrich was pilloried by Super PAC ads, the former speaker has further raised the rhetorical ante. He challenged African American students to procure jobs as school janitors, urged African American adults to eschew Food Stamps in favor of paychecks (a prompting that totally ignores the fact most Food Stamp recipients are white), and insisted that President Obama has “Put more people on Food Stamps than any other President."
Monday was the annual observance of the Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr. Holiday. I spent a portion of the evening watching a televised Special on the life and times of Dr. King. On another channel, Fox News sponsored a Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate at the
In a sort of throwback to yesteryear irony, the centerpiece of Monday evening’s debate seemed to be a series of exchanges between Fox analyst Juan Williams and Mr. Gingrich. When Williams posed a question about whether some of Mr. Gingrich’s remarks were insulting to blacks, the former Speaker haughtily dismissed him, engendering wild applause from an audience, apparently in perfect synchronicity with Newt.
Williams doubled-down and tried to forge ahead, referencing a black woman who had questioned Gingrich about referring to President Obama as a Food Stamp President. By this time, the audience not only cheered the candidate, they booed the questioner (Williams).
In times gone by, Republicans formulated an orthodoxy known as the Southern Strategy. It was a pattern of behaviors and practices designed to appeal to Southern white voters by exploiting racism and whites’ fears of lawlessness by blacks. It’s not my gift to extract and convey what is in Mr. Gingrich’s heart. So I will not deign to humor you in that way. I can say confidence and clarity that the results of such acrimonious assertions by the former Speaker, regardless of intent, will serve to inflame a significant portion of the African American community.
I understand that black voters, Herman Cain, notwithstanding, are written off by the GOP. Mr. Cain even suggested that blacks are brain washed. The Hermanator is not here to defend himself, but, I submit that black voters are not brain washed, but neither are they brain dead. When a steady stream of abusive rhetoric and minimizing strategies are embraced by leading candidates in the GOP, that African Americans do not find themselves drawn to their former Party-of-choice in larger numbers cannot be deemed surprising; nor should it be.
Alas, if I did not have substantial reasons to think otherwise, based on a decades-long pattern of statement, positions, and behaviors, I would be convinced that Monday evening’s demonstration was a prescribed segment of “The Newtonian Code: An Evening of Satire on MLK Day!” As it is, it reeks of the Southern Strategy redux.
I’m done; holla back!
Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com. A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategyhttp://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/newt-gingrich-and-the-art-of-racial-politics/
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