HuffPo: '15 Most Overrated White People' (this is a Brietbart story)

Breitbart.com ^ | 10-12-12 | William Bigelow

[bigbob]

The Huffington Post, ever eager to curry favor with anti-American pundits and racists posing as free-thinkers, has published a screed by Marc Lamont Hill, who is a black professor at Georgetown University, titled “The 15 Most Overrated White People.” Keep in mind that this is a man who not only praised convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, but published Jamal’s writings, and also was accused of supporting Fidel Castro and Khalid Muhammed.

So who are some of the people on Hill’s list?

Christopher Columbus, described as “an immoral treasure hunter” and a “vicious conquistador.”

Elvis Presley: a “cheap facsimile of Little Richard.” Spoken like a true racist.

Ronald Reagan: “largely responsible for shutting down mental hospitals, bloating the military, shrinking benefits for the needy, sparking mass incarceration, and declaring ketchup a vegetable for our children's school lunches.” Also closing down the Soviet Union and rescuing the American economy, you moron.

There are others on the list who deserve it (Bill Clinton and Justin Bieber come to mind), but this column is just one more instance of a black racist venting his fury on the people who have largely civilized the modern world. Are there whites who are overrated? Sure. But if Hill really wanted to be truthful, he could have added one to the list: Barack Obama’s mother.

[skeeter]

I don’t need their approbation, I just think about all the other examples in history when one segment of a society is spoken of as though they are somehow less valuable. It never ends well.

[wardaddy]

He’s a PHD and can barely speak properly...sad...just another gimme degree because of what he is rather than what he earned

a mediocre IQ, it’s so painfully obvious

[wardaddy]

exactly....the Delta bluesmen along with two other roots....religious and Appalachin-Country with a hair of up and comer Jazz pretty much formed Rock and Roll and later Rock...

I love the old bluesmen...most came from my homestate...I have educated myself on them for 35 years now....but there is a reason the big Rock bands went so much further

not because they were white..was Hendrix white?

it was talent and to some degree at least compared to the 1920s guys...electric guitars

it’s like saying Mozart ripped off the Keep harp player from the 1400s

[kabumpo]

Strongly, strongly disagree. Elvis was an original, in that there had never been anyone like him before. He was influenced by blues, gospel and country music, and all three strands met in him and formed something new. It is ridiculous to compare him to Little Richard, hello, a pianist - whom he looked and sounded nothing like. And LR never sang ballads, which Elvis did beautifully.

[kabumpo]

Yes, but Led Zepplin did not remotely improve upon Dixon or Burnett. Simply made a watered down version that was palatable to mindless white teenaged boys.

[x]

Welcome to the real world. Stupid people say stupid things everyday and post it on the web. There's not much point in getting mad at every idiot with a laptop and an Internet connection.

Some of what Hill wrote may not have been seriously intended. He's done Red Eye on Fox News (as a token leftist to be sure), and some of what he's doing here is intentionally clownish. C'mon, is this really to be taken seriously?

Billy's hulking presence in the Western literary imagination has led to the marginalization of other incredible writers of his era, such as Kyd, Middleton and Webster, whose work merits equal if not greater attention. Also, as a result of his deification, we ignore the fact that many aspects of Shakespeare's work -- such as the writing in Hamlet or the generally narrow range of female roles in his plays -- just aren't that awesome.

It's a joke at Shakespeare worship to be sure. Also a jab at the people who always put the Shakespeares of the world down. Or is there really no irony there?

I don't get your source's reference to Obama's mother, though. We here are probably among the few people in the world who ascribe any importance at all to her. Very few other people "rate" her one way or the other.

[x]

i·ro·ny (r-n, r-)
n. pl. i·ro·nies
1. a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.