The news over the weekend was dominated by calls -- make that screams -- for elected officials to "step aside." The elected governor of Virginia is supposed to step aside because of a photo taken 34 years ago. Or maybe not that photo but another one. The elected president of Venezuela is supposed to step aside to make way for his self-appointed interim successor.
OK, the last time Nicolas Maduro won an election in Venezuela it wasn't much of an election. And Juan Guaido did say he will call an election to confirm his self-appointed job. But promised Latin American elections have a history of being a long time coming once the caller thereof has the presidential sash.
I don't have a lot of faith in democratic elections since this country showed in 2000 that, under favorable conditions, good lawyers and noisy spinners can evade the will of the voters. But what is the difference between a coup backed by the colonels and a coup backed by the President of the United States, and now the heads of important European states? Just askin'.
The constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia provides for impeachment of a governor. It might look a little silly to impeach a newly-elected governor for something that happened 34 years ago, But it would be no sillier than getting rid of the governor through calls to "step aside" from other state politicians (some of whom have pasts that wouldn't bear much examination either) and national Democrats falling all over themselves to get tribally correct for 2020. Which seems to be the inevitable outcome.
Did social media noise replace elections while we were snoozing through the half-time show?
This black executive at CNN makes the point that some of the most racist politicians made the biggest advances for African-Americans.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/us/racist-photo-northam-blake-analysis/index.html
Is it possible to find a racism pure white person? I can sympathize with black people but I certainly don't know what it's like to live my life as one. That cognitive limitation is, in itself, a kind of racism. So, is the search for a Southern white politician of impeccable racial standards a quixotic futility? Even Harper Lee's father wasn't a sweetheart.
Stanley, one sentence in particular from the article you linked struck me: "In the church of modern-day media there is no room for redemption."
DeleteYou ask if it's possible to find a racism pure white person. I don't think it's possible to find a racism pure person at all. Or maybe I should phrase that a prejudice pure person.
Yes, Katherine. People are the same all over, and that goes for the bad stuff, too.
DeleteHere's what makes America great...a black pastor who does not demand Northam resign.
ReplyDelete"But Mr. Peacock, 61, is among the Virginians bucking the political establishment that has swiftly demanded Mr. Northam’s resignation after an image on his medical school yearbook page surfaced on Friday, showing two figures, one in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
As the pastor of a church, Mr. Peacock said he now embraced everyone, regardless of race, and that he was a living example that people can change.
“I have to look at his heart now and see what his real feelings are,” said Mr. Peacock, who grew up in Portsmouth. “I could vote for him again if he could persuade me that’s not really him now.”
And maybe the NYTimes too: (makes America great): After they slobbered over the photo all week-end, their reporter found Mr. Peacock quoted above, and reported that Northam attends an African-American church, which he apparently did this Sunday!
Times story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/us/northam-virginia-liberals-race.html
A couple of miscellaneous thoughts:
ReplyDelete* Whenever the social media rage mob fails to ruin someone's career and life, I view that as a win. I'm with Tom: if there is an impeachment process, then use it to legitimize his removal from office (if that is the outcome). If he decides that resigning is the decent and honorable thing to do - so much the better.
* Northam's vulnerability is heightened because he went on the "racial offensive" during his election campaign, explicitly accusing his opponent of being a racist.
* Stanley makes an important point. People do change. As Christians, we have to believe in the possibility of conversion.
I certainly wouldn't pass muster until, in high school, I started reading some Catholic thinkers among whom was Teilhard de Chardin. Suddenly, some attitudes I learned in my environment didn't mesh with my expanded Catholicism. Teilhard himself had some real racial bloopers. Just like Honest Abe.
DeleteI don't think anybody would want to be judged on his or her worst moments, especially if they have repented. And I don't think anybody should be judged on his or her worst moments anyway, but rather on his or her body of work. This approach of name-shame-and-ruin a person on social media doesn't allow for change or offsetting behavior or (I suspect in this case) offsetting sins by the casters of the first stones. We didn't have it before we had instant communications. What I am saying is that what happened to the kids from Covington and is happening to Northam now is not like what happened to Richard M. Nixon or William J. Clinton, the last two presidents who came close to being removed by constitutional means. Those cases took years.
DeleteAlthough we know what most of the people who have access to the media think, has anyone polled all the Virginians who elected Northam governor on whether they have changed their minds?
And if Northam has to step aside for his sins, what about the public official who brags of groping women, pays off his one-night stands and legitimizes the kind of folks who think black-face is a hoot and the Klan defended Southern womanhood? Does he get a pass because he is so good at social media?
Something completely different.
ReplyDeleteI check in on Pat Lang's site though I have foresworn commenting there. His military and dimplomatic background along with the dismissal of liberal schemes is always informative and bracing. He is a Virginian and here's what he posted about the Northam blow-up on February 1, when Northam's late abortion comments were in the headlines:
01 February 2019
Northam must go ...
"I am deeply ashamed that Ralph Northam is an alumnus of my alma mater. His callous endorsement of post delivery infanticide is not representative of what he and I learned at VMI where we were taught to revere Western Civilization's values as expressed in the history of the school. Many people will reject the record of our alumni in having fought for the Confederacy with the cost of the death of 50 % among our people, but the record of us all over a long time should stand for something whether you like that history or not.
"Northam is an opportunist. He rode scholarships given by the US Army to his bachelor's degree, a medical degree, a residency in pediatrics of all things and minimal army service to satisfy his contract with the army. Now, he endorses the murder of children for the purpose of riding the Democratic Party's race to the left and advancing his national political ambitions. He must go. pl"
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/02/northam-must-go-.html
Stanley mentioned Teilhard de Chardin. Here's a recent piece:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/trashing-teilhard
Trashing Teilhard
How Not to Read a Great Religious Thinker
By John F. Haught
This picture wasn't from his high school yearbook; it's from his MEDICAL school yearbook. He is 61, to in 1984 or so he was 28, when I speculate that picture was published … give or take a year. Wasn't he old enough by then to know the lack of wisdom on his part to pose for such a thing?
ReplyDeleteIs there/should there be a statute of limitations on racial offense?
ReplyDeleteIf I went to confession, the priest would understand that I've had a change of heart about my sins. He'd absolve me. But he'd still give me a penance.
If a priest gave me the penance of resigning from a position to which I had been elected by popular, I think I'd challenge the assumption that he can ignore the decisions of other people to punish me. That sounds like what the Supreme Court did in 2000.
ReplyDeletethat's "by popular vote."
ReplyDeleteAll of this huffing and puffing is a way of avoiding doing anything substantial about the issues that black people are dealing with all the time. It’s a way to pretend you care about black people when in fact you don’t. If only a fraction of the rage and opprobrium directed at Northam could be directed at, say, the Supreme Court, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, or at the former slave states that are actively working to prevent black people from voting, or at the continuing murder of black people by police officers, or at the unconscionable number of black men (and women) in prison, black people might actually be benefitted by public outrage. But what’s going on is just a sham, a cover for inaction and indifference.
ReplyDeleteOh, Bob, Amen.
ReplyDeleteBob: you are absolutely right. Thank you.
ReplyDelete