Hate Speech at The Washington Post

The Washington Post specializes in detecting racism undetectable even by the most vigilant politically correct police — then self-righteously denouncing the perpetrator.

Let a Southerner cite the principle of states rights to defend a Confederate battle flag atop a state building and the Post's editorial board promptly denounces the pathetic yahoo for "employing sanitized abstractions to obscure the violence, inequity and immorality" represented by that flag.

Let a sports team owner defend his team's name (Redskins) and the Post pounces again: "Redskins is not a term fashioned by American Indians," tutored a Washington Post editorial. "The nickname was assigned to them just as the pejorative designation "darkies" was once imposed on African-American slaves. That was wrong then — this is wrong now."

Let Republican Sen. George Allen make that off-handed "Macaca" crack about his Democratic opponent's Asian campaign aide and they're all over him. The comment was clearly a "slur." The WAPO editorial scolding Allen was titled, "Many Indian Americans are Disturbed by Allen's Remarks," they cited "frustration over ethnic stereotypes," as the provocation for this disturbance.

Let Bill Bennet make an oblique reference to black crime rates and a Post editorial promptly brands him: "the poster child for racism."

Let the National Rifle Association's Dr Paul Blackman make a similar reference while citing mountains of irrefutable statistics, and he has "adopted a racist position."

And if you think advisories against unsafe Chinese imported foods might past muster with an editorial staff usually quick to trumpet the dangers of everything from Alar on apples to almost everything in a Hostess Twinkie (Twinkie Deconstructed, April 27, 2007) think again. Turns out that a WAPO editorial sniffed out: "Yellow-peril imagery," in these recent advisories about Chinese imports. "They conjure images of the fiendish juggernaut of the Chinese Poison Train bearing down on the hapless American consumer, tied to the tracks by a nefarious evildoer with a Fu Manchu mustache."

With this in mind I invite you to examine an editorial cartoon run last week by this hyper-sensitive guardian of liberal sensibilities, by this vigilante, prosecutor, and judge for anything printed, spoken, or whispered that could conceivably imply a derogatory quality to any conceivable ethnic group: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070822/cx_po_uc/po20070822.

Note that a smiling Uncle Sam insults an American ethnic group as “nuisances" while forcibly expelling them from the nation in a rickety boat titled "Cuban-Americans," while these scowling, elderly and Mafiosi-clad people scream “we demand a chance to interfere with the '08 election!”

By “interfere” we have to assume the cartoonist refers to the right, privilege and duty bestowed upon U.S. citizens known as "voting." It so happens that the cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, is himself an immigrant to this country. In an interview with Time magazine he admitted to “leaning Democratic” in his politics.

I now invite you to contemplate the reaction from the usual political-correctness police had any other U.S. ethnic group (except overwhelmingly Republican Cuban-Americans) inhabited that boat. Imagine the fire and brimstone (literal, perhaps) if instead of Fedoras (rarely worn by Cuban-Americans, by the way) the group had worn kuffiyeh's, burkha's and chadors!

Imagine the clamor and attempted extortions followed by craven apologies and grovelings if the boat's passengers had been "nappy-headed" and headed for Africa! Imagine the rallies in Los Angeles and the indignant blusterings by California politicians and Nancy Pelosi if they'd worn sombreros!

Such cartoons are indeed imaginable with other ethnic groups — but surely with Uncle Sam cast as the villain, wearing a white hood, a swastika or an Ann Coulter mask. Maybe all three. In this one Uncle Sam smiles benevolently while handing the boat's ethnic occupants their just desserts.

When earlier this year authorities in Virginia's Prince William County attempted to enforce U.S. laws against illegal immigration the Washington Post denounced it as “shameful," "hypocritical" and "ugly." "Hounding Immigrants" ran the editorial's title (no mention of "illegal" in the title, though it came up in the text.) "By singling out illegal immigrants, local politicians are contributing to what is becoming a poisonous, increasingly nativist atmosphere that will infect relations with Hispanics generally."

Nothing "poisonous" or "infectious," "shameful" or "nativist", mind you, about a cartoon gloating over the expulsion of U.S. citizens of Hispanic origin from America's shores in a manner identical to Ferdinand and Isabella's expulsion of Jews and Moors from Spain.

When U.S. Federal authorities attempted to enforce U.S. law against illegal immigration in New Bedford earlier this summer the Post once again stormed to its pulpit and denounced it as: "Cruel," "lurid" "hypocritical, "self- defeating" and "illogical." "Stop the Raids! Stop Hurting Children!" blared their editorial headline. "The New Bedford raid is an inelegant example of how badly this country needs a clear-eyed immigration policy, one that provides . . . a path to citizenship for immigrants who have put down roost and contributed to the national economy." ("As long as they don't go on to vote Republican" they forgot to add.)

The immigrant (actually, refugee) group the Post insults in a manner utterly inconceivable for any other, is in fact the very one that “implanted roots" and "contributed to the national economy” like few others. The 1998 census shows Americans of Cuban heritage to have income and educational levels higher — not just than other "Hispanic" (a meaningless term) groups, but higher than the U.S population in general. Lower crime rates than the national average complete the picture.

But these insufferable people consistently vote close to 80 percent Republican, you see. This sin instantly nullifies all of the Washington Posts usual hyper-sensitivity in these matters.

Attempting to enforce U.S. law as in potential expulsion, (with full due process) of, illegal immigrants is denounced by the Washington Post as "xenophobic," "shameful," "poisonous," "nativist," "cruel," "self defeating," "illogical," and "ugly."

But a cartoon celebrating the expulsion of Americans who happened to be foreign-born, who played by the rules, who became U.S. citizens, who then outpaced even the overall U.S. population in educational and income levels (in "Americanization" you might say) and who specialize in exercising their right and duty to vote, well, these vermin should be shoved off en masse to Stalinist prison camps by a smiling Uncle Sam. Unreal.

Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him."

Courtesy of Babalublog

"Yesterday, Humberto Fontova knocked out the Washington Post in the fist round. Today, Carlos Erie tags up and takes them to the mat in round two. Here's his letter to the WaPo editorial board:"

Dear Editors:

Thank you ever so much for publishing Thomas Oliphant’s blatantly racist, frothing-at-the-mouth, hate-filled cartoon in Sunday’s Washington Post (August 26), in which Uncle Sam shoves a boatload of shifty-eyed Cuban American "nuisances" into the Florida Straits, and sends them back to where they came from. Thanks for letting your guard down. You have now finally allowed your prejudices to show openly. As the ancient aphorism has it, a picture is worth a thousand words. No one can doubt your bias now, or your utter disdain for Cuban Americans.

I am sure you have received plenty of mail from other “nuisances” such as myself, pointing out how Mr. Oliphant’s carticature of Cuban Americans is way off the mark and very much in the same league with depictions of Jews in the Third Reich or of Africans and Asians in a less enlightened America. I won’t belabor the obvious. Allow me simply to say thank you.

Thanks for coming out in the open so boldly. Thanks for your honesty. Thanks also for providing your readers with clues about what kind of bigotry is still politically correct.

Thanks also for allowing Mr. Oliphant the right to speak his mind openly. Three cheers for free speech and freedom of the press! This is what makes the United States the envy of the world, and such a magnet for the less fortunate citizens of benighted lands.

Mr. Oliphant’s cartoon brought to mind an incident from long ago. Back in 1964, when I was in eighth grade, one of my classmates in Bloomington, Illinois spit on my face, called me a “spic,” and told me to go back to my “stinkin’” country. Well, to be honest, the adjective Max used wasn’t really “stinkin’; it was an expletive that begins with “f”, which your newspaper refused to print back in the days when you first published the transcripts of President Nixon’s White House tapes. What happened in that schoolyard that day was beautiful, and a wonder to behold. All of the other boys jumped on this Max and started to berate and punch him. As they were pouncing on Max, dozens of my schoolmates said things to me such as “Don’t listen to Max, he’s an idiot.” “Don’t pay attention to him.” And so on.

Fortunately, that is the real America, and the real Uncle Sam, unlike what is depicted in Mr. Oliphant’s cartoon.. Bigots such as Mr. Oliphant and my eighth grade schoolmate Max are the exception rather than the rule. God knows why they harbor the prejudices that they do. In the larger scheme of things, they deserve our pity and compassion, as do all who are plagued by invincible ignorance which usually stems from a poor sense of self-worth.

Fortunately, thanks to you and Mr. Oliphant, the real America now knows for certain which prejudices are still dominant at the Washington Post, and how much you have in common with rabid skinheads, no matter how enlightened you claim to be.

Carlos M. N. Eire
T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies
Chair, Renaissance Studies Program
Yale University
Winner, 2003 National Book Award, nonfiction

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