Introducing Red Tails 2.0: The "Sassy Black Sistas Special Edition" Courtesy of George Lucas

Red Tails, George Lucas' long awaited World War 2 love letter to the storied Tuskegee airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group has finally been released in theaters across the country. As I pointed out in my review some months back, the movie is a throwback to the golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. For some viewers this makes for a good, old school, nostalgia heavy, and fun, movie going experience. The critics are a bit more negative, with their consensus being that Red Tails is a horrible disappointment.

There has been much talk about Red Tails online, with George Lucas receiving both praise and condemnation for his honest sharing about the difficulties of getting Hollywood to make a "black" film in which white actors are not central to the story. Across the black blogosphere, the upset at Red Tails has been at the apparent omission of black women from the Tuskegee airmen's story. Clutch Magazine for example, has featured a series of posts on this question, where the feeling is that the lack of black women in Red Tails is a reflection of their broader status as second class citizens.

In the digital age, there are no final edits. To point, George Lucas has a habit of tweaking with, fixing, and updating his films. The epic Star Wars trilogies have been continually updated by George Lucas. There is little reason to believe that Red Tails will not receive the same treatment. Readers of We Are Respectable Negroes know that I love to play script doctor. Given that popular films are a playground for the imagination, I am going to run with the concerns expressed by some in the black blogosphere about the role of African-American women in Red Tails.

As always, populism is both liberating and fun.

What follows are my casting choices for the inevitable update of Red Tails, what I am calling "Red Tails 2.0: The Sassy Black Sistas Special Edition":

Red Tails is pretty standard World War 2 action fare. It features masculine comradeship, fast machines, explosions, the obligatory prisoner of war scene, a foreign love interest, and a pretty linear and predictable plot where the Tuskegee airmen struggle against white racists, win the approval of their superiors (and white peers), and go on to triumph over unbelievable odds. Adding some roles for black women in keeping with the Hollywood tradition could open up some interesting possibilities. Let's free our minds and have some fun.

***

Red Tails needs more comic relief. The film could benefit from a motherly figure who has been in the U.S. Army for some time as either a Secretary or Stenographer (perhaps a Buffalo Soldier?). She is now a trusted adviser to the senior officers in the 332nd. This character doesn't take any back sass from the young lions in the unit who are cocksure and a bit overconfident. This character also dispenses folksy wisdom, as well as a shoulder to cry on when matters get too dire, and friends are lost in combat.

Tyler Perry's Madea fits the role perfectly.

The Tuskegee airmen could not win World War 2 alone. There were many support personnel, mechanics, and the like who kept the P-51 Mustangs, "the Cadillac of the sky," up and running at peak performance. This actress should be attractive, but also comfortable with machines and tools. It would be a bonus if she complicated gender stereotypes about black femininity. She is a "strong black woman." She is also vulnerable. Her body and habitus should suggest athleticism, confidence, and a no nonsense attitude balanced with a need to love someone--be they male or female. Queen Latifah (or perhaps the movie Pariah's Adepero Oduye) is a great choice for the part of Master Sergeant Mechanic for the 332nd airgroup:

Red Tails has been criticized because one of the Tuskegee airmen in the film has an Italian love interest. According to its critics, this is a slap in the face to black women. They offer the following: How come they cannot have a woman of color, either a wife or girlfriend at home (or one they meet overseas) who is the object of their affection? As a corrective, there are many possibilities from which to draw for the movie--and still remain historically grounded. My suggestion is that Red Tails should feature one of the many multiracial blacks who could be found throughout Europe during World War Two.

There were Afro-Germans, French, Italians, Russians, and other nationalities across the continent. One of the pilots in the Tuskegee airmen should have an intense relationship with a character who is the child of a Black Sicilian and a white Northern Italian woman.

Hauntingly beautiful, she would be marginalized by the French in the small town near where the Tuskegee airmen are based. One faithful night she meets one of the black American pilots outside of a segregated U.S. Army club. They then proceed to dance the night away in an alley where he sings jazz classics in her ear and she provides the chorus in Italian. There relationship is a whirlwind of sexual bliss and intense, immediate love. She becomes pregnant with their love child, only to have her lover killed during one of the Tuskegee airmen's final missions of the war.

There is only one choice here: Halle Berry.

Rosie the Riveter is an iconic image from World War Two. Women served throughout the U.S. military. While they were not allowed in "combat" positions, they took great personal risks flying aircraft across the Atlantic to Europe, towing planes for gunnery practice, as nurses and spies in Europe and Asia. In fact, one of the most noted aviators of the 20th century was Bessie Coleman, an African American woman, who in the dark days of Jim Crow, flew across the United States solo. If history does in fact echo, Red Tails should include many more women of color in its narrative.

Truth is fiction; fiction is truth. The Tuskegee airmen were facing difficult odds. The War Department, in realizing that it was foolish to hold back talented war fighters from the front lines, have called up an elite group of female aviators. "The Black Banshees" are assigned to the Italian theatre of World War Two, where they appear in the last thirty minutes of Red Tails in order to save the day after the 332nd suffers heavy casualties on a particularly harrowing and poorly planned mission. At first, their presence is resisted by the Tuskegee airmen. Inevitably, The Black Banshees win over the Tuskegee Airmen, and each woman pairs up with their opposite number among the 332nd. At first the mutual attraction is resisted, but eventually each member of The Black Banshees marries a Tuskegee airmen after retiring from the service, pregnant of course with future aviators, who just like mom and dad, will be the cavalry of the skies in the jet age.

Members of The Black Banshees include Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Missy Elliot, Jean Grea, and MC Lyte. Their flight leader is Angelina Jolie channeling her earlier role as Cleopatra.

War is hell. Blood is spilled. Bodies are broken. Nurses in wartime are sisters, mothers, confidantes, objects of unrequited love, and skilled technicians who put broken bodies back together again so that they can go out to fight (and be broken) again. There is something almost Freudian and Oedipal about nurses in many World War 2 movies: they are sister-mother-lover figures. The love is many times quite chaste...until it surrenders to desperation...and lust. Red Tails needs this actress to be compelling, pathos filled, and sincere. Gabrielle Sidibe, of Precious fame, is the perfect young actress to play the role. She is a member of the U.S. Army's nursing corps who is transferred from Atlanta, Georgia to the European theater in order to tend to the young and homesick men of the 332nd air group.

Red Tails is not a perfect movie, few are. But, Red Tails is an opportunity to self-indulge and spread our proverbial wings. True, viewers may not get exactly what they want; but, they should also be honest about the good that is there...and the hellish possibilities that could have otherwise been. This is not a soft-bigotry of low expectations as a decision rule and rubric for judging Red Tails; no, it is just real talk.

In that spirit, what other actresses would you add to Red Tails and why? And how would you cast the obligatory big budget black actress of the last few years, she who is Miss Beyonce (who I intentionally left out of my hypothetical casting game), in the film? Would you include a dance number where all of the black women in the movie break out in song Dreamgirls style?

The World is Now Made Less Interesting: Meteorologist Dr. Mel, from New Haven's WTNH, has Passed Away

Dr. Mel passes away at 66: wtnh.com

This is for the folks who have cracked my secret identity, for those readers from New Haven and Hamden, Connecticut, and all people who have a beloved personal weatherman or weatherwoman.

Dr. Mel Goldstein has passed away. He fought a long and very public fight with cancer and it appears he finally succumbed. Dr. Mel didn't lose. Dr. Mel simply went on to another fight; he had to predict the weather for the elder gods on another plane of existence.

He was a quirky guy. Dr. Mel was very popular and a true populist: he would show up all over New Haven county and talk to people. From the rich to the poor, all of us--the black, brown, white, yellow, and red--we all trusted him. I am sure if Dr. Mel decided to run for Mayor he would have won in a landslide.

In fact, at the supermarket in the old Ames-Stop & Shop Plaza near The Strand Theater on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden, Connecticut ("back in the day" during the 1980s), I met Dr. Mel.

My dad, mom, and me? We were all overwhelmed. Dr. Mel was genuine, and it was as if he had known us for years as he talked to us for a good fifteen or so minutes. While my favorite celebrity encounter was getting Mr. Fuji's (of the then WWF's) autograph at Bradley's department store while he stood in line wearing a kimono and flip flops, my encounter with Dr. Mel is a close second.

Random factoid: I am named after a weatherman. Therefore, my highest complement is that Dr. Mel was THE DUDE that all of us trusted when it came to his predictions about closing school for a winter storm. If Dr. Mel said there would no school tomorrow, we were never disappointed. Those other folks, on those other networks? Not to be trusted.

You will be missed Dr. Mel. Your passing means that we are all a bit older. You will never, not ever, be replaced.

In the unique cadence of Master Yoda, "irreplaceable, you are."

Dr. Mel, you are real people. You are also a respectable negro. Do travel well.

Juan Williams is a Human Toilet and Chauncey DeVega is a Nasty Boy

Juan Williams is in on this angle; in the language of professional wrestling the Gingrich-Williams fracas is a "worked shoot."

I left a little easter egg in my piece on Juan Williams and the Tea Party GOP's air raid siren politics of racial appeals to white conservatives. No one gave either a wink of approval or a moan of condemnation...until today.

The good folks at the Right-wing website Newsbusters have declared me a very nasty boy--one you don't bring home to mother. They picked up on my suggestion that Juan Williams, in his Stockholm-like loyalty to Fox News and the Tea Party GOP, is a political coprophagist. Hopefully, this allusion to Juan Williams' (and that of black conservatives more generally) role as a human receptacle for white racial resentment will resonate around the Right-wing echo chamber. It would be good fun.

And do check out the peanut gallery's reaction as well for a laugh.

Hearing oneself discussed in the third person is always great sport. Courtesy of Newsbusters:

While several media liberals have praised Juan Williams of Fox News for pushing around Newt Gingrich with the idea that his campaign rhetoric is at best insensitive to black Americans, Chauncey DeVega at the Daily Kos is sticking to the theory that Williams is a tool of racist Republicans: "Juan Williams is an object of abuse, a means to prove a point. Juan Williams is a paid pinata for white conservatives."

Or Williams is a toilet: "Juan Williams is/was a repository for the fecal matter of white conservative bigotry, and a need to maintain superiority over negroes who dare not to step off of the sidewalk when white folks pass." Or Williams is actually "coprophagic," he eats feces:

That in another life Juan Williams would be a critic of "negro agitators" during the Civil Rights movement is coincidental to his designated role on Fox News: he is exemplary of Joel Kovel's theories about white supremacy, and how it manifests as a White society which is collectively (and individually) stuck in the fecal phase of human psychological development -- it is all over his face. Juan Williams smiles while cashing his checks at the prospect of his political coprophagia at the ass end of conservative politics. He revels in playing the role of the human centipede.

Chauncey followed up his pinata line with this:

I do not know if he was legitimately hurt and surprised by their reaction to him, or if his pain was not feigned, and rather sincere and real. In understanding the logic of Republican racism and naked appeals beyond the dog whistle, Williams was the stand-in, the object of abuse through which to actualize rage and hostility. Barack Obama was not available. Any black body would do. The cheering, snide glee of Newt Gingrich dressing down uppity "Juan," and the audience's cheering of a "boy" being put in his place, would be missed by only the most in denial observer.

Let's just round up the crazy with this final brain-blast:

In 2012, Republican candidates are using overt signals, what are for all intents and purposes blaring air raid sirens and signal flares that race, whiteness, and American identity are deeply intertwined. The appeals to white racism by the Tea Party GOP during the primaries are not background rhythms or subdued choruses. They are the driving guitars of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," the chorus of Jay-Z's "99 Problems," the opening moments of the Notorious B.I.G's "Kick in the Door," or the flipped samples of Justice's "Stress". You feel it. You know it. To deny the obvious is to close one's ears to a driving drum line and cadence that travels up through your shoes...and to your bones.

How else can a fair observer excuse away Republican arguments that blacks are lazy parasites, whose children should live in work houses and pick up mops and brooms to learn a work ethic, that "illegal" immigrants should be killed by electric fences, or Muslim Americans should be subject to racial profiling, marked like the "Juden" of Nazi Germany?

[HT: Johnsey deFlagga]

Racial Air Raid Sirens: Newt Gingrich vs. the Uppity Negro vs. Boardwalk Empire vs. Speaking Lies in the Black Church

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Google search limited to the last seven days yields the following results:

282,000 returns for "Juan Williams" and "put in place."

23,400 returns for "Juan Williams" and "uppity."

It would seem that someone is getting the message about those negro rapscallions.

The video of a Gingrich supporter applauding his reinforcement of the colorline, and the "natural order of things" through a "moment of instruction" for Juan Williams, is priceless. How can you deny the obvious that all this "lazy negro mop carrier uppity negro talk" is precisely about race, when one of your own white racist supporters signals just such a thing, and you, the candidate, smile in acknowledgement of what is a not so inside joke?

Ultimately, Newt Gingrich is a master of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Several days before a debate during which he would demagogue the lazy coloreds on a national stage for the delights of white racially reactionary conservative populists, Newt Gingrich campaigned before a black church assembly. Ironic (or perhaps fitting?) then, that the Great White Father who wrote his dissertation on King Leopold's vicious white supremacist colonial enterprise in the Congo would yearn to play the Great White Father to African Americans:



I am unsure if Newt Gingrich is closer to the Batman character Two-Face or He-Man's Man-E-Faces, but his practiced lies-as-truth speech mongering does most certainly remind me of Nucky on Boardwalk Empire--but with less sincerity, generosity, or pragmatic spirit:

An Air Raid Siren: Chris Matthews was Right About Republican Racism in South Carolina, But Wrong About "Dog Whistle" Politics

On his MSNBC show Hardball, Chris Matthews called out Newt Gingrich and other Republicans for what he described as their "dog whistle" appeals to white racism during the South Carolina debate on Monday night.

He was correct in identifying the work that racism does for the Tea Party GOP and its candidates in their efforts to win over white conservative voters. However, Chris Matthews was too generous and kind. Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and other Republican candidates are not engaging in subtle dog whistles to their faithful, where racism and white racial anxiety hides in the background, masked and hidden by other language.

Definitions matter: dog whistle politics are based on a signal or cue to the in-group, and one so subtle that those not in the know will overlook it as no more than quixotic background noise, a blip, a comment without context or meaning.

For example, during the 2004 election, President Bush's mention of the infamous Dredd Scott Supreme Court decision had nothing to do with African Americans and slavery. Rather, it was a wink to a rabidly anti-choice conservative Right-wing audience that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned by his administration.

In 2008, McCain-Palin featured a negative campaign ad which borrowed from the movie The Ten Commandments and suggested that Barack Obama was the Anti-Christ. If one was not part of the Left Behind Jesus Camp Christian Nationalist Dominionist crowd, the visuals and narrative of the commercial were odd, bizarre, utterly strange, and devoid of context. The ugliness of these symbols and metaphors were so covert, that they made sense for those outside of the targeted audience only after Time magazine thoroughly deconstructed the campaign ad and its malicious intent.

In 2012, Republican candidates are using overt signals, what are for all intents and purposes blaring air raid sirens and signal flares that race, whiteness, and American identity are deeply intertwined. The appeals to white racism by the Tea Party GOP during the primaries are not background rhythms or subdued choruses. They are the driving guitars of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," the chorus of Jay-Z's "99 Problems," the opening moments of the Notorious B.I.G's "Kick in the Door," or the flipped samples of Justice's "Stress". You feel it. You know it. To deny the obvious is to close one's ears to a driving drum line and cadence that travels up through your shoes...and to your bones.

How else can a fair observer excuse away Republican arguments that blacks are lazy parasites, whose children should live in work houses and pick up mops and brooms to learn a work ethic, that "illegal" immigrants should be killed by electric fences, or Muslim Americans should be subject to racial profiling, marked like the "Juden" of Nazi Germany?

In all, the Tea Party GOP's campaign for the presidency rests upon marshaling white anger and rage at The Usurper, a perpetual Other, and one not fit for the presidency by virtue of his birth and skin color--he who we know as President Barack Obama. If Birtherism is not based on this calculation, on what else does it rest?

Race matters to the Tea Party GOP. It matters overtly. And it matters to the white populists of the Republican Party without apology or subtlety. This leads to the following practical question: how do we separate the subtle dog whistle from blaring conservative racism? What are the elements of the racial appeal? How can we identify it so that reasonable folk can neuter and castrate it? Is this even possible?

Knowing is half the battle. As such, I highlight the following elements to the puzzle:

The speaker effect. Using one of the most gross examples, when Newt Gingrich talks about lazy blacks on welfare and food stamps who do not know the meaning of hard work he is mindful of his audience. Remember, politics is ultimately about the creation and reinforcement of imagined communities. Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, and Paul know exactly how to talk to their respective audiences in order to get a response. To point: white conservative populists have disdain for non-whites, see them as lazy, outside of the polity, and as rightful targets for appeals based on symbolic racism. In the eyes of the Right, "those people" are not "real Americans." They never can be.

The audience as a public who receives, internalizes, and circulates the Tea Party GOP message about race, white racial resentment, white oppression, and hostility to people of color. The folks in the audience and on the stage during the Republican primary debates "get" the terms of the conversation. In fact, they are deeply attuned to the language and rhetoric of the New Right, as anyone who either goes to one of these events, or votes in a primary election, are deeply invested in its outcome, and a return to white American normality. In all, they are chasing nostalgia and a Leave it to Beaver vision and lie of America. This audience is also "tuned in" to politics. Gingrich and his peers are sending signals to a group primed and ready for his racial appeals...without a need for explanation.

This reality speaks to why there should be no surprise when Republican audiences cheer the death penalty, dying people without insurance, or heckle soldiers who happen to be gay. There are unstated rules, a script, which govern social norms and behavior. The outliers who go to political debates are intimately familiar with this language. Like marks at a professional wrestling event they know when to boo and when to cheer.

Context matters. In isolation, perhaps it would be a more difficult case to suggest that Gingrich's appeals to white audiences about lazy blacks are predominantly and clearly about white racism. However, given that communities are created through speech, and that "discourse" is about a sense of shared meaning with unstated assumptions, any argument for conservative colorblindness is judged to be insincere.

In South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, there was Rick Perry (a neo-Secessionist that wants a Civil War 2.0 and a renewed fight for states' rights); Ron Paul (a bigot whose newsletters continue to suggest that African Americans are ravenous, craven, criminal, stupid beasts); Rick Santorum (a man fascinated by bestiality and the idea that blacks are parasites who only want to live off of white people); and Newt Gingrich who sees all African-Americans and Latinos as being on welfare and the public dole until proven otherwise. In total, these candidates are a rogues gallery where white supremacist attitudes towards non-whites is a standing rule, one only to be disputed after the fact.

Juan Williams is an object of abuse, a means to prove a point. Juan Williams is a paid pinata for white conservatives. I do not know if he was legitimately hurt and surprised by their reaction to him, or if his pain was not feigned, and rather sincere and real. In understanding the logic of Republican racism and naked appeals beyond the dog whistle, Williams was the stand-in, the object of abuse through which to actualize rage and hostility. Barack Obama was not available. Any black body would do. The cheering, snide glee of Newt Gingrich dressing down uppity "Juan," and the audience's cheering of a "boy" being put in his place, would be missed by only the most in denial observer.

Juan Williams is/was a repository for the fecal matter of white conservative bigotry, and a need to maintain superiority over negroes who dare not to step off of the sidewalk when white folks pass. That in another life Juan Williams would be a critic of "negro agitators" during the Civil Rights movement is coincidental to his designated role on Fox News: he is exemplary of Joel Kovel's theories about white supremacy, and how it manifests as a White society which is collectively (and individually) stuck in the fecal phase of human psychological development--it is all over his face. Juan Williams smiles while cashing his checks at the prospect of his political coprophagia at the ass end of conservative politics. He revels in playing the role of the human centipede.

The excuse of ignorance and a lack of memory. One does not need to understand the root of a thing in order to buy into its power. White conservatives (and others) who traffic in racism do not necessarily need to be able to explain how blacks came to be associated in the White racist mind with apes. Likewise, those who hate Jews do not need to be able to give an exegesis on Nazi propaganda in order to be expert anti-Semites.

This is one of the greatest tools and defenses of the contemporary white racist--I didn't know that, you are being unfair!; You are "playing the race card" for calling out my association of the Obama with watermelons and apes as "racist"; I never associated blacks with welfare or crime, people like you are the real bigots for calling attention to how Republicans talk about such things, we are really all Americans!; stop talking about slavery, my family never owned black people!; (and of course) whites are oppressed in America by Barack Obama!

There is a collective reservoir of symbols, assumptions, and narratives that individuals borrow from in a given society in order to make sense of their world. Knowing the wellspring helps; it is not a requirement to perpetuate common sense understanding(s) of the world.

Ultimately, Chris Matthews was correct in the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. To defeat President Obama, the Republican Party is wallowing in white racism in order to win over racially and economically insecure white voters. However, Gingrich and company are doing this overtly. There is little subtlety. Looking forward, the 2012 Presidential season will make the infamous Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential election look like a celebration of Dr. King's birthday. The challenge for liberals, progressives, and reasonable conservatives, is how to make the Republican Party pay for their race baiting, and desperate reaching back to the Civil War, Redemption, and Birth of a Nation as playbooks in order to defeat the United States' first Black President.

Sadly, matters may be so dire that the white identity politics of years past are now "new school" rather than "old school." To marshal that fear, insecurity, and anger one does not need nuance, sophistication, or dog whistles. White conservatives can put such feelings on blast and gin up the psychological wages of white fear, white anxiety, and white rage to try to defeat Barack Obama.

As always, the past isn't even past. It is yesterday. Get ready folks. What occurred in South Carolina is only a warm up for what the Tea Party GOP is preparing to unleash in the months to come. What is coming to pass will be an ugly, wild ride.

For Folks Smarter than Me: Is Ron Paul a John Mearsheimer "Realist?"

I do hope that Ron Paul stays in the Republican race, between another batch of racist newletters coming to light today, and his pain in the ass truth-telling about foreign policy as exemplified by his astonishing idea that common sense ought to have some influence on statecraft, he is mighty entertaining.

The audiences for the Republican primaries are more fun than the candidates themselves. Last night, the Tea Party GOP South Carolinian populists were in great form as they cheered Newt Gingrich putting uppity negroes back in their appropriate place, and booed Ron Paul's suggestion that the golden rule ought to have some impact on America's foreign policy calculus.

The latter moment was very telling. Years ago I believed, truly in my heart, that the United States was preordained for greatness and that she could do no wrong in the world. My thinking was tautological: America was great because it is great; America does good abroad because America is good; America is first among nations and by virtue of that fact she can do what she wants because she is the first among equals (and lessers).

I was also seven years old at the time.

Contemporary populist conservatives are mired in anti-intellectual authoritarianism. Their rabid brand of American exceptionalism is resistant to all empirical reality, fact, and nuance. The Tea Party GOP, in its appeal to nativism, and desire to court Fox News low information voters, encourages and reflects a profound amount of infantile thinking on the part of its public. When mated with a penchant for Christian Dominionism, and the hold that "faith" and the Culture Wars has over reason, the realpolitik of the Right naturally devolves into that of true believers, heretics, traitors, secret pledges, and the "paranoid style" of governance and politics.

The negative response to Ron Paul's damnable thought that America does not have carte blanche to act in the world without consequences or blowback is a symptom of this cultural-political sickness.

In watching Ron Paul work through the idea that states should think long-term and that no power is more "exceptional" than any other--thus freeing it from the consequences of its actions like some divine chosen one--I was called back to Robert Kaplan's recent Atlantic magazine piece on noted political scientist John Mearsheimer.

In Kaplan's profile on Dr. Mearsheimer's body of intellectual work (with an obligatory mention of the Israeli Lobby thesis), and the influence of "realism" on international relations theory, one passage seemed particularly relevant:

Such thinking is prologue to Mearsheimer’s admonition that a struggle with China awaits us. “The Chinese are good offensive realists, so they will seek hegemony in Asia,” he tells me, paraphrasing the conclusion to Tragedy. China is not a status quo power. It will seek to dominate the South China Sea as the U.S. has dominated the Greater Caribbean Basin. He continues: “An increasingly powerful China is likely to try to push the U.S. out of Asia, much the way the U.S. pushed European powers out of the Western Hemisphere. Why should we expect China to act any differently than the United States did? Are they more principled than we are? More ethical? Less nationalistic?”

For the many folks smarter than I am on these matters, can you help a brother out? Is Ron Paul a type of realist--perhaps a "defensive" one? If not, what school of statecraft is Ron Paul an adherent to? Is he a pure isolationist?

I play in these waters at the child's end of the wading pool, and there is no way I could swim in said pool without two life preservers and a rope. Teach me a thing...or ten.

Juan Williams Plays the Black Pinata For Newt Gingrich and White Conservatives in South Carolina

Boy you best know your place.

Juan Williams earned his several million dollar a year contract as Fox News' designated black whipping boy conservative last night...

There is racial progress in America: the Republican crowd for last night's South Carolina debate only booed Juan Williams for his uppity back sassing, whereas not too long ago they would have called up a lynching party.

Once more, my black conservative readers, can you please explain your affinity for a Republican party that consistently (and with glee) lies about and belittles African Americans? And which does so before a national audience--and even to one its "exceptional" pet negroes?

Ultimately, I do not know which was the more offensive aspect of the South Carolina Tea Party GOP debate: was it A) Rick Santorum's factually and sociologically challenged understanding of the relationship between poverty, marriage, and opportunity structures or B) Newt Gingrich's consistent insistence that black people are lazy bums who need to pick up mops, and are uniquely addicted to food stamps and welfare?

This one is yours folks.

Enjoy a Free Preview of the Documentary "All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert"

It is great when you can still be surprised by life. Ignorance is bliss; discovery is joy.

Last week, I was forwarded the early link to the upcoming documentary, "All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert." Until that moment, I had never heard of Winfred Rembert. I wish I had known about this remarkable artist many years earlier.

My mom comes from a little town in the South that now has a population of only 300 or so. On that level, Rembert's story, and his work at chronicling a world disappeared, resonates with me. I promised her that we would go back to our family land; I intend to keep that pledge.

On Dr. King's holiday we can celebrate the slaying of Jim and Jane Crow, but we must also be honest about how the two Great Migrations, and racial integration, helped to put a nail in the coffin of the Black Metropolises (and other vibrant African-American communities across this country).

Those times were not to be idealized--the nightmare years of racial supremacy, white violence, and segregation are not to be yearned for despite the Utopian dreaming of some black nationalists and others--but they are an epoch which black folks ought not to ashamed of. In all, Winfred Rembert is a great model of cultural resistance through art and the everyday, quotidian politics of black life.

Here is the description for the documentary on his life and work. The film will be released during Black History Month, but you should take time to enjoy this preview courtesy of the good folks at SnagFilms.

With his intensely autobiographical paintings depicting the day-to-day existence of African Americans in the segregated South, Winfred Rembert has preserved an important, if often disturbing, chapter of American history. His indelible images of toiling in the cotton fields, singing in church, dancing in juke joints, or working on a chain gang are especially powerful, not just because he lived every moment, but because he experienced so much of the injustice and bigotry they show as recently as the 1960s and 70s.

Now in his sixties, Rembert has developed a growing following among collectors and connoisseurs, and enjoyed a number of tributes and exhibitions of his work. In "ALL ME: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert," the artist relives his turbulent life, abundantly visualized by his extensive paintings and, in a series of intimate reminiscences, shows us how even the most painful memories can be transformed into something meaningful and beautiful. A glowing portrait of how an artist—and his art—is made, "ALL ME" is also a triumphant saga of race in contemporary America.

The Obamas vs the Romneys: The Republican Mind and Visions of Whiteness and Race Suicide on Dr. King's Holiday

The road to the world imagined by Dr. King remains long.

Some four decades after his murder, and the inauguration of the Southern Strategy, the sweet appeals of racial code words, and the succor offered by white racial resentment remain undeniable to the Republican Party. When Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney talk about lazy, parasitic African Americans who should pick up mops to learn about hard work, and where "the blacks'" exalted leader wants to turn America into a "Socialist-Communist-Fascist European welfare state," the signals to white racism are beyond dog whistles. They are blaring air raid sirens.

Dog whistles can also be subtle; they can be visual cues which speak to the faithful.

For example, some Americans see Mitt Romney's much publicized family photo as one of homogeneous whiteness and WASP glory.Whether in rust belt towns, gated communities, poor white rural America, or the nondescript suburbs, this is the America of "Nixonland" that so many yearn for. This is real America; the best of us; a country that they/we should die to protect.

Of course, this is a memory steeped in false nostalgia. It is whiteopian dreaming. Nevertheless, such illusions are both compelling and compulsive to many Americans of a certain age, hue, ideology, and experience.

Other folks see the family photo of Barack Obama and his kin as the future. Americans are a cosmopolitan people. While there exists a deep and historic nativist impulse, as well as a fear of the Other, the country's greatness has been its ability to include all folks that want to belong-- what is an all embracing sense of pluralism and "we the people" that is flexible, accommodating, and inclusive.

Citizens use heuristics, memes, cues, and slogans to make sense of politics, and to work through their own political decision-making. As such, for many, the photo of Mitt Romney's family is that of "real America," and to deviate from this approved model is hazardous to the Common Good, a decision that is perverse, and one that is "unAmerican."

By implication, for the collective consciousness of the white Tea Party GOP populist electorate--and although they may lack the vocabulary to express this cogently--there is something inherently wrong with the interracial, international, and "diverse" nature of Barack Obama's family. In all, the Obama way is "race suicide": it is a path of destruction for the United States, as to be American is to be quintessentially and unquestionably "white."

Folks like Pat Buchanan are honest enough to voice such sentiments, feelings which are the rotten, beating heart of the Tea Party GOP. Others who share Buchanan's anxieties and loyalties are not as courageous; they play around with his themes while not owning their substance.

Ironically, their need to couch such wickedness in race neutral talk is "progress." However, the concerns of reactionary white populists are centuries-old, near and dear to Whiteness and a country originated as a White Republic. For them the question remains unresolved (even in the year 2012): how much racial equality is "enough?"

The challenge here is that to be wholly inclusive, and to really create a radically democratic society, is to risk the privileges of Whiteness. It is to create a world in keeping with Brother King's vision where white people are forced to compete on an equal playing ground with people of color. Some of us are more than ready for that world.

Others, those White Dreamers, who foreground whiteness as "real and "idolized" America, are scared to death of a multiracial, multicultural, pluralistic 21st century. Whiteness is such a valuable currency, one whose rewards have been outsized for so long, that to consider further reductions in its returns is terrifying to many White Americans.

On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, conservatives will mouth breath about his legacy as they spin an empty story of racial equality, racist Southern Democrats, and white victimhood in the Age of Obama. These contortions are to be expected. The joke is--and has long been--that the real Dr. King, the radical visionary and not the deracialized, apolitical panderer for gross consumerism and empty politics, would be hated by conservatives, Red State America, and many others fearful of his progressive vision, if he lived in the present.

This fact is a signal to Dr. King's greatness.

All Americans should be reflective on this day. Sadly, many conservatives, and others who hold a deep disdain for people of color, the poor, unions, the working class, immigrants, and the disadvantaged, will try to find a way to steal Dr. King's vision. The time is long past for such antics to be made obsolete. In the year 2012, those on the Right who bastardize and rape Dr. King's legacy, should finally stop such foolishness.

Brother Martin does not belong to you. Sorry. He belongs to us. It is about time that his legacy and vision were taken back--without apology--by those who would stand shoulder to shoulder with him in the present, and that are the offspring of his struggle and martyrdom.

And Tea Party U.S.A. is not part of that vision. They never were and could not possibly be today.

Football Theodicy? Tom Brady is to Tim Tebow as Stone Cold Steve Austin was to Jake the Snake Roberts

Oh Mr. Tebow, I know that the faithful Christian Nationalist evangelical Dominionists who believe that you are favored by Providence--and that God intervenes in football games--will valorize your suffering as it is both epic and prophetic.

But, I simply could not resist: Tom Brady and the Patriots just kicked your ass.

This begs a question: does Tebow's humiliation introduce a theodicy problem for his zealous faithful? How do they reconcile an all knowing, all loving, omniscient and omnipotent god with the existence of football evil in the form of the unholy trinity that is Brady-McDaniels-Belichick?

Should Black Women Boycott Red Tails, George Lucas' Tuskegee Airmen Movie?

While we wait for the epic sonning that Tom Brady, the Hooded One, and Josh McDaniels are about to put on Mr. Tebow this evening (that trio sounds like a country rock group, no?) here is something to pass the time.

There is a good conversation on Clutch magazine's website about the interracial gender politics of Red Tails, George Lucas' upcoming Tuskegee airmen movie. One of the primary tenets for those who study the politics of popular culture is that audiences (or "publics") receive, process, interpret, and circulate ideas on their own terms. Of course, there are any number of corollaries and complications to this argument. But, the basic idea is that populism "matters"; once a "text" is out among the public, part of our work as critics is understanding the "why's" and "how's" of their investment (or not) in it.

I reviewed Red Tails months ago. There, I made mention of one aspect of the story--the romance between a black airman and a white Italian woman--that I thought was superfluous to the plot and could easily be left on the cutting room floor. I did not read this plot point as subverting the overall story, or as being deeply symbolic of the state of the family and love relationships in the African American community in the twenty-first century. Moreover, there were many love and sexual relationships between black GI's and European women in all theaters of World War Two. Given the "historical" nature of Red Tails, a wink to this fact would not be out of order. Ultimately, my observation was based on efficiency in story telling. It was not some deep aversion to the idea that a young man far from home would find comfort in the arms of a beautiful woman.

Populism can be empowering. It can also be confusing, distracting, and lead to any number of interpretations--some of these are cogent and compelling, others much less so. What strikes me the most about the comments on Clutch magazine's site is not how some readers (in a vacuum not having seen the movie) are making impassioned claims, but how short the leap is from Red Tails the World War Two action film, to "black women in Hollywood are misrepresented all of the time and hated by the mass media," to "black woman are unloved by black men and Red Tails reinforces this fact," to "Red Tails should be boycotted because there are no black female love interests."

It would seem that there is much pain in parts of the black community, where the seemingly trivial and benign are interpreted as the significant, the poignant, and the meaningful.

Thus, I must ask: Are matters really this dire?

From the peanut gallery:

AJ JANUARY 10, 2012 AT 3:14 PM

Will definitely not be seeing it. Typical hollywood spin of BM with WW, never a BW/Bm love story made with real money. when they put a love story with a BW on the big screen as the main story, then maybe. until then – NOT. The majority of the tuskegee airmen had BW for wives/girlfriends – why can’t we see a high quality, big budget romance between them? Please. And Lucas being with Melony Hobson means nothing, since she is past child-bearing age (and he is too, imho).

Jess JANUARY 10, 2012 AT 8:05 PM

@PINK: I know just what AJ is talking about. How about you do more than look at trailer snippets, and find out what more the movie is supposed to be about? YES, this movie does feature an interracial relationship between one of the Airmen and a white woman. And YES, I agree with AJ – why the pattern of almost all movies focusing on romantic relationships between Black men (particularly those of integrity and character) with white women? Why can we not get big budget films made like this where the love a Black man (or any man) has for a Black woman be showcased? Why must the IR thing be shoved down our throats. Think about your daughters. Ifthey are going to watch a film celebrating Black achievements, why are they discounted and pushed to the sidelines always for someone white? I don’t buy it, and call bull...

@Jess – You nailed it! Every war movie *except* those with black soldiers show the soldiers fighting to come home to their women (of the same race). This is true for every white war movie from the black and white era, to “Saving Private Ryan” and right on down to “The Dirty Dozen.” When it comes to black soldiers, movie makers find ingenious ways of leaving black women out! This trend even touched “A Soldiers Story.”And now black women, who are once again NOT shown as women worth fighting for, are supposed to bear the burden of supporting “Red Tails.”

Otherwise, we risk seeming ungrateful to Hollywood, unsupportive of black male actors, close minded to interracial themes or just plain too ignorant to see period pieces or anything that doesn’t have Tyler Perry’s name on it. But they keep missing the point: Show us some love and we will do the same for you!

AJ JANUARY 13, 2012 AT 11:26 AM

And it’s all about what is pushed to our youth – Lucas’ relationship is not being pushed to millions. His movie, on the other hand will go to millions, in full CGI with emotions on display. So BM can continue to believe in the goodness and sweetness of WW and others instead of their own. The youth are being taught, again and again by Hollywood, to believe we BW are not worth saving or anything else positive. Other than to be helpers and sidekicks. If this movie doesn’t show how the Airmen loved Lena Horne, and how she stood up for them it is not worth any little money I have.

Sure Lucas will make millions, and our community will continue to be brainwashed into hating BW and girls.Money talks, bullshit walks. He put ALL the money up for this, its obviously a labor of love for him. He wants this story told, and he wants to practice his art in film at the same time.Yet, that’s just not good enough for some of you. You want to yap about him not being married to his black girlfriend, you want to whine that there are no women’s concerns “represented” in the movie, you don’t want an action movie, you want a romantic comedy, where are the movies about black history before slavery, why should we go see a movie made by “Massa” about black people, etc.?

How did we get so good at complaining? Like I said, I don’t know how good the movie is going to be. But it’s got to be better and send out a better message than the next low-nutrition meal from Tyler Perry (which I believe is called, “Medea Gets A New Wig” or something like that). That steaming load of empty calories will be served up soon enough at a theatre near you. Get a grip, everybody!

Vertigo Schtick JANUARY 14, 2012 AT 7:16 AM

@LemonNLime

Alright looking at IMDb has confirmed the character Sofia (playing by Portugal native Daniela Ruah), is the Italian love interest of a certain main character–perhaps Terrance Howard. So I can kind of see where the outrage is coming from. Still, I’m not going to bash the movie unless they make her the star of the movie. I am upset (given that they, the Airmen did not marry interracially) that this new twist was added. But I figure that’s just a way of marketing to all audiences, as no one is particularly interested in seeing a movie about black love besides black people. Not yet anyway.Sigh, one step forward, few steps back :/

YeahRight 2011 JANUARY 13, 2012 AT 2:34 AM

Pilot is pretty much on the money with his/her comment. George stated his purpose for making the film “to give teenage boys role models” paraphrasing and by in large I like he meant black teenage boys. End of story. If black women want a movie that does this for black girls than I suggest we hit up these black actresses, singers, and talk show personalities to invest in an idea that doesn’t show grown women in a constant state of depression and anger (not over racism or injustice but over a freaking man). Black women played a huge role in the history of this country, its our responsibility to tell it.

Tiff JANUARY 12, 2012 AT 8:33 PM

I was happy about this movie. God knows we are desperate need some positive black movies outside of Tyler Perry. I was going to support this film too. Not going to support it after Kola Boof said on her twitter page last night that the main love interest in this film is a white woman despite the fact all the Tuskegee airman was married to black women. She also had seen the movie in advance.

I could care less that none of the main actors in the movie are married or dating non-black woman but what is mess up is Hollywood once again trying to erase the existence of black women yet begging for black women to support them economically. George Lucas who is dating a dark skinned black woman ought to be shame of himself for allowing this to happen, he should at least know better but guess not, he is willing to throw black women under the bus just to prove something to Hollywood. I know he funded the movie but the screenwriter of this film is Aaron Mcgruder who wrote Boondocks and I am sure some black women has some issues with him.

AI JANUARY 14, 2012 AT 8:21 AM

I respect you ladies desire to boycott a movie that doesn’t have a Black female love interest to the Black men. However, I doing so will not send the message: “Continue doing big-budget Black movies, but do it with Black love interests.” Rather, it says “Black movies don’t make money.” Money talks first. When it comes to Black films, studios don’t take the time to sift through what worked and what didn’t. They just say eff it, and do another Perry film or a “feel good” movie like The Help. When you convince studios that you are talking money, THEN you have the financial leverage to get folks that care in casting. I don’t say this to convince you to change your mind, bc your principles are admirable and just. Just to caution you that it won’t be effective.

LemonNLime JANUARY 14, 2012 AT 6:56 AM@Vertigo Schtick

– I would love to know. I have heard 2 arguments 1. is that the cast is made up of several men who date or marry non-black women and therefore shouldn’t be in it and 2. the love plot that is in the story is based around one of the airmen and a white woman (comment from people who supposedly have already seen the movie). If it is reason 1, I could care less let people live their lives. If it is reason 2, I just ask that it is historically accurate for the time period, even if it is brutal because if people are seeing a movie about history they should see real history. I just have a hard time believing any film were actual Airmen help create and tell the story would have a white woman as the main love interest. But that is just me. Other than that I say it is best for people to calm down until we’ve actually seen it.

Laughter is Your Friend: Courtesy of Comedy Central, Do You Want to Win DVDs of Sinbad, Eddie Griffith and Patrice O'Neil?

I promised to bring the readers of We Are Respectable Negroes more goodies in the year 2012. I generally pass on promotions, but this most recent offer from the good people at Comedy Central was too good to let slip by.

This Sunday will feature the debut of comedian Kevin Hart's special "Laugh at My Pain." Dude has gotten lots of great press and you should certainly check him out at 9pm EST.

As a nice incentive to spread the word about his show, Comedy Central is offering up the following DVDs to all of you: Patrice O’Neil's"Elephant in the room"; Sinbad's "Where you been?"; and Eddie Griffin's "You Can Tell ‘Em I Said It."

We have 3 sets of DVDs to give away, so there is much goodness to go around.

As is our habit here at WARN, you need to put in a little work to win this great set of prizes.

Here is what you need to do.

In keeping with my ghetto nerd roots, I would like you to imagine that space aliens have finally made first contact with Earth. If you had to choose one comedian, either living or dead, as humankind's ambassador to the universe, who would you send and why?

This contest will run until next Wednesday night. Get creative, be reflective, make your case, and win a prize. Pretty easy, no?

Jar Jar Mea Culpa? George Lucas Discusses His Tuskegee Airmen Movie "Red Tails" on The Daily Show

George Lucas is making the rounds to promote his newest film Red Tails. I attended a screening of the movie several months ago and wrote my review here. On The Daily Show Lucas echoes my observation that Red Tails is a corny, over the top, jingoistic, 1940s era World War 2 movie--just one with black folks as the centerpiece of the story. In short, Red Tails is the World War 2 movie that The Tuskegee Airmen deserved and never received: it is their/our Flying Leathernecks.

I love Star Wars. I owe Lucas and his fantastic creation a great deal both personally and professionally. As such, I feel that I have earned the freedom to engage in some critical ghetto nerd talk about the prequels and Lucas' politics more generally. Dude is on the right side of so many issues, and his body of work signals to this fact, that (to my eyes at least) Red Tails makes up a bit of the ill will left over from the Jar Jar debacle that is the Prequels.

Lucas drops the shield with Stewart, engages in some self-deprecating humor, talks long term plans for the Red Tails franchise, and the reality that Hollywood will not finance black movies save for Tyler Perry's hot garbage new age race minstrelsy (notice how George bites his tongue, speaking very carefully about the coonery and buffoonery that are Madea and Meet the Browns).

I will see Red Tails again both to support the venture, and to see if the final edits improve on what was an already more than serviceable film.

Here is one of the real faces, the real voices, and real people who were the heroes known as The Tuskegee Airmen. This interview with Alexander Jefferson of the 332nd Fighter Group from the U.S. Army War College archives (an amazing resource by the way, one that I will be featuring more often) is worth a view.

Men like this are legends, elder gods:

An Inside Con Game? Why Would Cornel West Go On the Hannity Show?

Last night, Brother Cornel West appeared on "Brother" Sean Hannity's TV show. Lord. "Brother" Sean Hannity? Save me now. I cannot stomach Fox News; only a few seconds of viewing leave me spent and exhausted--their lies and distortions are that burdensome.

In all, this an entertaining interview. But, it left me with many head-shaking moments, and a few questions.

One, why would Cornel West go on the Hannity Show? Fox viewers are not going to buy his books, they see him as a crazy negro intellectual leftie Commie, so what is the point? Is Brother Cornel just putting his head in the lion's mouth for a cheap thrill?

Two, why would Cornel walk back his observations about Herman Cain being on "the symbolic crack pipe?" You are on enemy territory, why not go hard and stick to principles? And yes, it was fun to hear Hannity mentioning some of my talking points on Herbie Cornbread Imagine There is No Pizza Cain (once more, I had a moment when I regretted not going on Fox News those months back). One day, I will get my metaphorical hands around the throats of Hannity and company, I just have to wait for the moment of my own choosing.

Three, are the talking heads all in bed with each other? Is this a big charade that the true believers, marks, and the low information voting public don't realize is a sham? Left and Right need a good fight, just like boxers who feign hatred for each other to build up the gate. Is this a dynamic present in the Cornel West Fox News interview?

Fourth, do Hannity and the Conservative Jesus Christ hates the poor and loves the rich Christian Nationalist Dominion crowd really believe the crap they spew? I am not a "Christian," but the Right-wing prosperity gospel war monger types have always been the object of much fascination on my part. What mental gymnastics do they use in their biblical hermeneutics? Can their pastors, ministers, and other oracles be brought up on charges of biblical malpractice?

Finally, who the hell are the "so-called" rich that Hannity defends as an oppressed and aggrieved public? What leaps of faith are necessary for listeners to sustain a belief in, and adherence to, such Orwellian fictions?

The lie isn't even that persuasive, even for the most superficial and dim of viewers. Why does it have any traction at all?

Do You Want To Win a Copy of the New Book The Obamas?

I like giving folks goodies. To that end, I have been gifted with a few copies of Jodi Kantor's new book, The Obamas, to give away to the readers of We Are Respectable Negroes. Widely discussed in the press, a target of criticism by First Lady Michelle Obama, containing titillating gossip about Barack Obama's edict that a staffer must watch Barbershop 1 and 2 in order to learn about the sacred relationship between a black man and his barber, and with tales of ghetto nerd greatness such as an Alice in Wonderland themed party (with an appearance by Chewbacca) in the White House, The Obamas sounds more than intriguing.

Now, you all know that you got to earn your keep around here--no one gets a free ride from this respectable negro.

The election of Barack Obama was an amazing moment for the United States. We saw what was once thought impossible--a black man elected President in a country, where for a majority of its history, folks such as Barack Obama were held as human property. As I have written elsewhere, that moment, as well as the years which followed, were/are the stuff of science fiction. The unbelievable has now become mundane; but for many, there remains a warm glow surrounding the election of the United States' first black president.

Memories are malleable. They do not live like people do. For those of the Civil Rights generation, there is a tendency to exaggerate, lie, bend the truth, or simply "misremember" their role in The Movement. For example, my mother told a tall tale about being in the streets with Dr. King, staring down dogs, and marching for freedom. Moms maintained this lie for years. Under pressure, she later confessed that she had no taste for non-violence and would have gone to jail if a white cop had beat on her. Thus, no Dr. King marching and protesting for her. But, she held onto that creative reinterpretation of history because the story was "fun" (and it inspired her son).

In that spirit, tell me your personal story about the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

You can be creative and do a dry run of the myth which you will spin for your great grand kids when they ask, "where were you when Obama won? What did you do to help his campaign?"

Do you have a poignant story to tell, something so true that it must be shared for the benefit of all times? Or do you have a secret shame, one that you will need to change for the benefit of your legacy? Were you in jail? Indifferent? Overslept on election day or forgot to register? Secretly voted for McCain/Palin, but lied to everyone by telling them that you cast a ballot for then candidate Barack Obama? Did you engage in a post-election night of kinky rutting, one where you and your partner role-played as Barack and Michelle?

Unburden yourself. There is no judgment here--just a cool prize.

The two best submissions (as judged by me) will each receive one copy of The Obamas.

Have at it. The contest will run through Wednesday, January 18th, at which point I will announce our winners.

Good luck.

Melissa Harris-Perry on The Colbert Report is "the Strong Black Woman"

The Colbert Report
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Damn right! Black women carry the burden for the absence of the black male in the African American community. We are indeed yetis. Some of us are even kinky koalas...inside joke.

The strength of the Colbert character is his honesty. He is so wonderfully flat and transparent that one can easily imagine that there are many such white male conservatives: they are self-entitled, narcissistic, and can't imagine a world outside of their own experiences. In all, they are not "bad" people. Rather, the Stephen Colbert's of the world are just ignorant of the great depths and magnanimity of their own ignorance.

[Talk about a turn of phrase.]

Melissa is good in this spot. Unlike some heavy hitters like the genius historian Nell Irvin Painter who crashed and burned on The Colbert Report, Dr. Perry plays the role nicely--she is not too serious and maintains a good sense of humor about the whole matter...while still keeping her game face on.

There is also a nice bit of self-deprecating humor as Melissa describes herself as a "strong black woman"--one who is black on most days.

In all this is some good stuff. And of course, congrats to Melissa on her new MSNBC show. She knows how to shine and get her hustle on. Melissa is also cool people who will most certainly bring some new voices (and faces) to the table at MSNBC.

I am looking forward to her debut. Are you?

Uncomfortable Worshipfulness Towards a Killer? Fox News Interviews Chris Kyle, Navy Seal Sniper With 160 Kills

Is it just me, or is there is something profoundly uncomfortable and unsettling about this interview?

I am a bit of a grognard. In my teens, I was more interested in weapons, machines, and things that go boom. With age, I have gravitated more towards military strategy, and am increasingly fascinated by soldiers' individual accounts of combat.

When I was 12 years old I would have found former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle's account exciting. I would have taken his deeds in Iraq (where he killed at least 160 people), as some great display of "manhood." Some years later, now knowing several former and active duty military personnel, I possess a different type of respect for their service.

To the one, all of them have upset the stereotypes of soldiers as video game, heroic warriors, worshiped as two dimensional cartoon characters by many in the American public. Almost all of these veterans, especially those back from Afghanistan and Iraq, are critical of the policies which put them and their comrades in harm's way on imperial misadventures.

Chris Kyle was feted by Bill O'Reilly last week: his deeds were recounted, and killing admired by the Fox News faithful. There is an odd homoeroticism (or is it homosocial worship?) in this interview, where O'Reilly as an archconservative is channeling a deep fascination with the "how" of death, and a type of hyper-masculinity that is the bleeding heart of Right-wing authoritarianism. Here, O'Reilly reminds the viewer of why straight men enjoy watching the freakishly large penises that dominate much of American pornography. Hero worship, with no small amount of projection, is, and remains, the thing--it is the means for a visceral thrill.

I have read many accounts of the personal killing that is done by snipers. They hunt people. The most dangerous prey is their quarry.

“After the first kill, the others come easy. I don’t have to psych myself up, or do anything mentally — I look through the scope, get the target in the cross hairs and kill my enemy before he kills one of my people,” Kyle writes in his new autobiography, “American Sniper.”

I wonder what the intimacy of death experienced by Chris Kyle has done to his soul. While many would not frame killing during combat in these terms, soldiers who have to take a life are often damaged by the deed. They become "victims" of a sort. To my eye, it is curious thing that Bill O'Reilly does not ask such an obvious question about his guest's interior life.

As Dave Grossman and others have painstakingly documented, killing is an unnatural act. Moreover, most soldiers are highly resistant to killing, and thus increasingly sophisticated training techniques have been developed to overcome their aversion. In fact, historically, a relatively small number of soldiers have accounted for a disproportionate percentage of kills on the battlefield. These people are "natural" warriors; they exhibit sociopathological tendencies such as low affect, low levels of empathy, and an ability to distance themselves from the act of taking another life. Predictably, these natural killers gravitate to the most elite military units where their particular "gifts" will be of most use--and they will be more likely to get a chance to ply their craft.

This is not a claim that elite soldiers such as the Navy Seals, the unit which Chris Kyle was a member of, are "crazy," sociopaths, or are especially prone to violence outside of a combat situation. It is however, an acknowledgement that there are bad and dangerous men who are born that way. The training sharpens the edge.

The son of a Sunday-school teacher and a church deacon, Kyle credits a higher authority for his longest kill.

From 2,100 yards away from a village just outside of Sadr City in 2008, he spied a man aiming a rocket launcher at an Army convoy and squeezed off one shot from his .338 Lapua Magnum rifle. Dead. From more than a mile away.

“God blew that bullet and hit him,” he said.

For Kyle, the enemy is a “savage” — there’s no room for gray, only black or white.

America is a militiarized society. Warfare and martial culture are at the heart of the country's economy and entertainment. Militarism is also central to America's political culture as well. For example, onservatives such as Gingrich, Romney, Bush, Santorum, Perry, and others play the tough guy as chicken hawks who swagger in a phallocentric game and performance which titillates their populist base, even as the irony that all either avoided military service (or exaggerated their responsibilities) remains uncommented upon.

Much the same can be said of the flag wavers in Red State, Right-wing America, a group of people who love to talk tough about foreign intervention, but in a society where a relatively small number of people have gone to war, are likely to have never been in combat.

We also cannot forget that President Obama presides over a killing machine that is almost industrial in its efficiency. While his Tea Party GOP detractors paint him as anything but "aggressive," "manly," "strong," or "brave" on foreign affairs, as Commander in Chief, Barack Obama has stacked up "terrorist" bodies as if they were cord wood. He shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

In total, America is a violent society. We lack the maturity to discuss this fact in honest terms. Likewise, many avoid a mature reflection on what the consequences--psychological, emotional, material, financial, and spiritual--are for those young men and women who are sent off to maintain and expand the empire.

And then we have men like Chris Kyle, an example of martial skill, who killed by the hundreds while wearing the insignia of his favorite Marvel comic book character.

His Charlie platoon even adopted the insignia of the comic-book vigilante The Punisher, spray-painting skulls on their body armor, vehicles, helmets and guns. “You see us? We’re the people kicking your ass. Fear us, because we will kill you, motherf--ker,” he writes.

Maybe I have gotten old. Chris Kyle and his tribe should be respected, they should be given a pat on the back, and welcomed home as best we can. But, their skill at killing should not be celebrated. That is a minor distinction; it is also an important one.

A country needs its heroes, and who it chooses to elevate as exemplars of martial prowess says much about its national character in a given moment. World War One brought us Alvin York. World War Two gave us Audie Murphy, Robert Leckie, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the 442nd Infantry Regiment. Vietnam had Carlos Hathcock. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought us Leroy Arthur Petry and Chris Kyle.

Where do we go from here? And what do heroes such as Chris Kyle--dangerous men with kill streaks in the hundreds--tell us about ourselves and the country's future at the nadir of American empire?

The Logical Fallacy of Defending Ron Paul's Racism or You Do Know That There Were Racist Abolitionists?

Ron Paul's non-answer about his racist attitudes towards black Americans during the New Hampshire GOP debate was a classic evasion. It was also a virtual admission of guilt.

Akin to a man on trial for murdering his wife--but who insists on talking about how he is a good father--Ron Paul is unable to explain away the racist screeds in his newsletters, opposition to honoring Dr. King with a national holiday, and belief that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be overturned because black folks' freedom is an imposition on white people's liberty.

Ron Paul is also a beneficiary of a cult of personality. With such status comes a reservoir of good faith among his public. To their eyes, the libertarian messiah could not possibly be a racist, for that would involve some reflection about the relationship between libertarian approaches to government in theory, and how in practice said philosophy enables white supremacy.

In all, if Ron Paul were a private citizen this would be a non-issue: his name is on the masthead of a newsletter which has repeatedly featured racist editorials; he cashes the checks from the subscribers to this newsletter; he believes that Civil Rights legislation is tyrannical towards whites; white supremacists have endorsed his works; his son, also an elected official, shares the same attitudes about sacrificing the full citizenship of black Americans to a "higher principle."

Check and mate.

Ron Paul's defenders have twisted themselves into all sorts of knots as they try to white wash these inconvenient facts. Their most common claim is that because Ron Paul supports ending the ruinous War on Drugs (with its well documented racial disparities in enforcement, imprisonment, and punishment), that he is a believer in racial equality. This is a symptom of a larger dynamic at work in post-Civil Rights era racial discourse

Primarily, the bar for what constitutes racism has been set so high that even the most obvious examples of racial animus have to be couched in careful terms lest an "innocent" white person be branded a bigot. Second, the definition of what constitutes "racism" has been narrowed down to include only bogeyman and caricatures of White wickedness, White hate, White sheets, White race pride tattoos, White hands holding nooses, and White hands burning crosses. And as an auxiliary-enabler of post-Civil Rights race discourse, the lazy newspeak of "playing the race card" was invented precisely to serve as a defense mechanism that exists only to enable such specious concepts as "white oppression" or "reverse racism."

Of course, real life is much more complicated. Here, the argument that Ron Paul is not a racist because he wants to end the War on Drugs is a logical fallacy. Racist people can support policies that are "race neutral." Racists can be "good people." Anti-racists and progressives can be forward thinking in some areas and unrepentant bigots in others. And of course, while many are loathe to admit it, racism is a sin of both liberals and conservatives alike.

As I am so fond of saying, history is once more our greatest teacher. For example, there were abolitionists who wanted to end slavery and the vile trade in human beings, yet who also thought that black Americans were subhuman. There were abolitionists who urged blacks to rise up against the evils of the Southern slaveocracy, yet these same people thought that the presence of Africans in America was a problem to be solved by colonization because their presence was antithetical to white democracy.

Hinton Rowan Helper was one such figure. His 1868 work, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, was second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin in its influence on the public imagination about the evils of chattel slavery. Helper was also an unrepentant white supremacist.

For example, in his compendium "The Negroes in Negroland", he included such observations as:

In every part of the United States, there is a broad and impassable line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins, and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society, — prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself, can subdue, — mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this'country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society ; and from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his virtues what they may." — African Repository , Vol. IV., page 118.

Even more pithy, Helper included how:

"'The negro is not wholly without talents, but they are limited to imitation, — the learning of what has been previously known. He has neither invention nor judgment. Africans may be consid- ered docile, but few of them are judicious, and thus in mental qualities we are disposed to see a certain analogy with the apes, whose imitative powers are proverbial.'" — Burmeister's Black Man, page 14.

Or how about this gem of common sense race science:

"So great a difference of opinion has ever existed upon the intrinsic value of the negro, that the very perplexity of the ques- tion is a proof that he is altogether a distinct variety. So long as it is generally considered that the negro and the white man are to be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong. When the horse and the ass shall be found to match in double harness, the white man and the African black will pull together under the same re- gime. It is the grand error of equalizing that which is unequal that has lowered the negro character, and made the black man a reproach." — Baker's Great Basin of the Nile, page 195.

People are complicated. One can be an abolitionist like Hinton Rowan Helper and believe that black humanity and personhood are sub-par, well below that of whites, and that African Americans have no place in American society. Ron Paul can be right on foreign relations and government waste for example, but dead wrong on matters of race, justice, and civil rights.

Such is life. Despite the temptations, there are no easy answers. Some in the American public will see Ron Paul's racism as necessarily compromising his vision, ethics, and judgement more generally; it is a first order problem, not a mere inconvenience. For Ron Paul's supporters, attitudes about black people are secondary to his libertarian vision for the United States. How a person reconciles this matter tells us a great deal about their own ethics and values.

On questions of race and justice the personal is indeed the political. The challenge here--and for libertarianism more broadly--is how these personal choices become impositions on the full citizenship, full rights, and full personhood of other people. To this point, Ron Paul's version of libertarianism offers no satisfying answers for those who are not White, not privileged, and outside of the moneyed classes.

Is he a racist? I do not know. But the policies which Ron Paul advocates, and the philosophy which he subscribes to, are none too friendly to people of color. For me, that is enough of a disqualification.