Mark Steyn: Racist dog whistles and the men who hear them

The Orange County Register ^ | August 31, 2012 | Mark Steyn

[2ndDivisionVet]

American racism is starting to remind me of American alcoholism. At the founding of the republic, in the days when beer was thought of as "liquid bread" and a healthy nutritional breakfast, Americans drank about three-to-four times as much as they do now. Today the United States has a lower per capita rate of alcohol consumption than almost any other developed nation, but it has more alcoholism support groups than any other developed nation – around 164 groups per million people. France, which drinks about 50 percent more per capita than America, has one-twentieth the number of support groups. The French and Italians enjoy drinking, the English and Irish enjoy getting drunk, and Americans enjoy getting drunk on ever more absurd stigmatizatory excess. At Walmart they card you if you "appear to be under" – what is it up to now? 43? 57? And the citizenry take this as a compliment: Well-preserved grandmothers return from failed attempts to purchase a bottle of wine with gay cries of, "I was carded at Costco! They've made my weekend!"

And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who "appear to be" racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use "Chicago" as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O'Donnell pronounced "golf" a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was "working to earn a spot on the PGA tour," O'Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word "golf" is subliminally associated with "Tiger Woods,"(continued)

[xp38]

The Eiger....upscale and frighteningly white.

[xp38]

It's only the beginning of September. So we've got two more months of this.

Sadly I have to disagree. Unless there is a sea change in the culture we have a lifetime of this ahead of us.

[Impala64ssa]

Hey, I like NASCAR. Am I a,ahem, RACEist too?(ta da bum!)

[Impala64ssa]

And another thing, the game of pool is racist. Why must the WHITE ball be hit into the BLACK ball? I call on the gov’t to close down the pool halls and ban the manufacture and import of pool tables.

[AFPhys]

I am the most racist American, proudly.

When I hear the word “Constitution”, it immediately calls to my mind the failure of 0bama and the Democrats.

[Darnright]

>Lashes and chains..... I think the plan of attack is evident now.<

Well, from an historical standpoint, it stands to reason the democrats would fall back on such a metaphor. They were the party of lashes and chains, remember.

[hattend]

BTTT