Nattering Nader
Yikes!
Looks like it's a bit past time for Ralph Nader to hang up his spurs. His dead-ended candidacy this year already made no sense. As I suggested a few months back, if he wants to pressure Obama from the left -- great. But do it in a way that counts and makes a difference -- not make a mockery.
His mutterings today about Obama's attempt to "talk white," however, indicate that this just might be the moment in which Ralph should gently extricate himself completely from the presidential fray.
This is no gaffe by Nader. It's not some inappropriate use of language. It's not racism.
It's more what you call being cluelessly out of synch. The notion that there's a black way of doing things and a white way of doing things in politics is something you might have been able to peddle with a modicum of credibility at some point in our recent history.
But this is precisely the sort of dogmatic --and stupid-- jibber-jabber that Obama's candidacy offers us a chance of finally overcoming.
So what was Nader suggesting? By his logic, should we demand that Nader himself "talk white" while Obama talks black? or should Nader talk Lebanese (his family heritage)?
Maybe at this point, Nader should just stop talking. Y'know, give it a rest for a few months.
This is hardly the first-time Nader has indulged in a generational-based kind of reactionary public scolding. The Ralph Nader we heard today is the same Nader who got called out back in February by Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej when they razzed him for his parochial school views of the Web:
The truth is, Nader didn’t just grow up in the age of manual typewriters. He’s still living in it. Back in September 2007, he gave an interview to a college paper. Asked how the Internet has affected social activism in the 21st century, Nader replied: “On the one hand, it’s a spectacular form of notification; you can tell people in great numbers at very little cost what is going on.
“It is also a spectacular form of transmitting information, although not necessarily absorbed by the people it’s transmitted to. Thirdly, as a mechanism of actually getting people to do something — acting, mobilizing — it’s still significantly a snare and an illusion. If you spend 50 hours a week looking at screens — TV, computer, video game, etc. — you’re not out in reality; you’re in virtual reality. ... So, that’s why I say it could be a snare and a delusion, because things occur and are achieved in reality when it comes to social change.â€
More recently, a student at St. Louis University asked him about Facebook and other social networking platforms. With a derisive snort, Nader said, “It’s getting high on trivia. Social networking could be civic networking, right? But it’s, it’s sort of narcissistic. Like, why do you have to know where every one of your friends is every 20 minutes?†Further showcasing his ability to connect with millennials, Nader added, “I happen to think that young people today spend too much time listening to music†and complained that people who are listening to music “don’t know you’re there†and that “you can’t even get them to sign a petition.â€
Let it also be noted that Sifry was among the first to support Nader as a None of The Above candidate way back in the 1992 NH primary and -- along with me -- supported him in his 1996 and 2000 runs.
But that was then. This is now.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I also supported him in 1996 and 2000. I would have also supported in 2004 had it not been for the right wing’s success that year in making me feel sympathetic to John Kerry after their odious and fraudulent swiftboating of him. Still, I was not completely discounting Nader for my vote in 2008, although that subsided when Hillary Clinton lost the nomination fight. The most recent statement by Nader (”talk white”), a hero of mine, has me puzzled.
June 26th, 2008 at 6:21 am
That does it. I’m going to start talking black. Isn’t that off the hinges?!
June 26th, 2008 at 6:31 am
Nader must be on to something because rather than call Ralph out as a jive-ass motherfucker, Barack Obama had this to say: “What’s clear is, Ralph Nader hasn’t been paying attention to my speeches. Ralph Nader’s trying to get attention. He’s become a perennial political candidate. I think it’s a shame, because if you look at his legacy … it’s an extraordinary one.”
Or maybe it’s the difference between being clueless and having a lot of class.
June 26th, 2008 at 6:33 am
“I happen to think that young people today spend too much time listening to music.”
Maybe McCain should take a page from Nader and replace his “Get off my lawn!” slogan with that one.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Yeah, how dare Nader attack Obama. He doesn’t even wear an American flag pin.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:48 am
David: “odious and fraudulent swiftboating of him.”
You know David, a million dollar reward (or was it $10,000.00?) has been offered for proof that anything the Swift Boaters said was false. Why don’t you collect… imagine, being able to drink progressive Kool-Aid for the rest of your life and being able to afford it.
Marc, you know that Nader hasn’t been saying one damn thing different new this cycle, you supported and voted for him before and the only thing different now is that you have bought the Obamessiah’s brand of nonsense.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:48 am
At least reg is consistent in his condemnation of Nader… more than I can say for some in here.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Oy Vey.
Nader is an American hero, and barring any criticism of him, objectively more progressive than Obama. His point was objectively what the Obama campaign themselves claim ot bbe doing “closing the gap” with white voters with his disgraceful Moynihanian “Black fathers” speech. Yes, he was talking “white” - guy got a poll bounce for, as Ishmael Reed put it, dissing half a race. And there is no such thing as “Lebanese” as a language.
I’d support Nader in a safe state over Mr. United Jerusalem.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:03 am
“dogmatic –and stupid– jibber-jabber”
Its far preferable to bend over backwards not to insult the white power structure? To ask muslim women to leave his dais?
June 26th, 2008 at 8:39 am
“his disgraceful Moynihanian “Black fathers†speech. Yes, he was talking ‘white’ ”
Tell it to the black folk who were his audience. Idiot !
June 26th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Black bourgeoisie?
June 26th, 2008 at 8:50 am
So Black folks can’t be wrong about Black interests? Lets call this what it is, a class issue, where the Black bourgeoisie is aping the white racist power struture by blaming “pathological behaviour” for the structural longterm capitalist/white supremacist issue that creates a complex kinship situation in the Black working class, and other working classes I add.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:25 am
The sad part is jcummings is the poster child for what the leftist education can do to an otherwise halfway intelligent child. Just what hiring leftwing kooks, and retaining them in the face of their clearly wacked out mostly communist views, letting them rant and spoon feed their political agendas to our young adults whose parents, or others parents(gov’t), are paying for a well rounded education.
Most are becoming become practically madrassas for the political agenda of their wacko professors, with censorship rules for not only the hiring of, but even students holding of, any adversary opinions.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Jim R
Your personal attacks are really uncalled for, and I’ll add that I’m a fourth generation “communist”. Further, I enjoy what I do. Do you enjoy your alienated labour?
June 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
My supervisors are members of the Royal Society of Canada, and in one case, the Order of Canada. Some places respect the Left.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Finally, I hope I indoctrinate as many impressionable children as possible.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:04 am
GM,
Why take someone up on a bet, when all they do is welsh on it.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:16 am
“…. and I’ll add that I’m a fourth generation “communistâ€. ”
This is amazing. You should qualify for membership in some sort of analog to the DAR.
Do you know of anyone else with this many generations in the fold? Was your great-grandfather an immigrant here (to the U.S. or Canada)?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am
“the Black bourgeoisie is aping the white racist power struture”{
Yeah, the Apostolic Church of God at 63rd and Dorchester in Woodlawn is a stronghold of the “black bourgeousie”. And the choice of words is unfortunate.
Martin Luther King’s comments on problems afflicting too many black families in the wake of the Moynihan report - which he didn’t condemn but saw as a potentially useful analysis despite a “blame the victim” danger if not followed on with a social policy agenda - would make a white leftist’s hair stand on end (”The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic. Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people to pull themselves out of poverty and backwardness.”) Of course, MLKjr was another guy who a lot of the left and black nationalists saw as “talking white” since he wasn’t calling for revolution “by any means necessary.”
June 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Also, it’s defamatory to attribute these problems to the “black working class” when the catastrophe is that so many black men in particular aren’t even in “the working class.” If you’re looking a for “structural” issue, that’s it.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I guess any black person with a job is a member of “the black bourgeoisie.”
June 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Nader never saw Obama brush off his shoulders like a brutha, despite not being black enough. Obama… Brush ya shoulders off
June 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am
>Jim R Says:
>…Most are becoming become practically >madrassas…
In Arabic, anyway, “madrassa” is the ordinary word for “school.” It’s appropriate indeed that the Bushists have adopted it as the official designation of everything they are against.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am
One of the greater stupidies of the left-left, currently being given voice by jcummings, is the implicit and often unexamined hostility to the notion of personal responsibility. Some of my comrades (!), in their admirable zeal to leaven injustice, turn all forces into causes of victimhood. This world-view becomes so encompassing, that a simple admonition about responsibility to the family one sired can be regarded as “disgraceful” rather than responsible.
It does not follow from being left, or liberal that libertinism in all things is acceptable. And it is neither disgraceful, nor patronizing to point out that there ought to be limits to our behavior. Only the jerkiest of the knee-jerk left would regard obligation and self-restraint as an imposition on freedom.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Randy, how can we take the word of 10 crewmen who served with Kerry over that of a rightwing smear group? Some of those crewmen might be Democrats, after all.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Randy, thanks for the link… interesting. So, before you say he welched, did in fact his offer contain the clause(s) he says about the ads? I don’t know. But if he did say that, my statement should stand… when people talk about the swiftboating of Kerry, they are generally talking about the swiftboat ads. At least that is what I think is happening.
Michael, if you are willing to take the word of the 10 crewmen would you also be willing to take the word of the something like 20 or so officers who were also serving with him in his group?
And come to think of it, how many other swiftboaters left after 1 scratch, one bruise and a piece of rice in the ass (because of primarily his own negligence in blowing a rice stock?) Were there other’s who left after such minor wounds (legitimate or not) in 4 months?
I’m just asking. Nader - ‘08 /or/ Barr - ‘08
June 26th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
You sure you want Barr? He worked for the ACLU. you know.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
hey Randy, sometimes the ACLU does some good stuff! Not often, but sometimes.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
My great grandfather was a Litvak cobbler who arrived in St. john New Brunswick in the 1890s
June 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Reg and Dan O
Its all about context. Obama recited the litany in order to make nice with the white folks. MLK said what he said in a different context. MLK was not a Marxist, but towards the end of his life he certainly came to strongly oppose capitalism.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
And in the last instance, to Dan O
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
June 26th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
“MLK said what he said in a different context. ” Yeah…the release of the Moynihan report.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Marc you know I’ve got a heart condition so please don’t excite me by actually finding fault with “st Ralph” even if it is about eight years too late. Oh, well better than never I guess.
Why Am I surprised that Pickens would welsh - after all hgiving money to a Veteran’s Group? We all know that the only way to support the troops is wear a flag pin and tie a yellow ribbon. Next you’ll be calling for a GI Bill or some other commie idea.
And speaking of commies, jc could well be a fourth generation communist as the first international dates back to the 1860’s and wasm recognizedm by none other other than Charles Francis Adams, Minister to the Court of St.James, when he sent Marx and Engles a letter thanking them for their condolences on the death of Lincoln and support for the Union Cause.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Obama talks white when he asks other people to cover the expenses from a failed Presidential campaign of someone whose family earned $100,000,000 over the last few years and is perfectly capable of paying off that debt herself.
What about the working families? What about those with no health insurance? What about those who can’t pay their mortgages? What about the children? Why doesn’t he ask for money for them?
He might as well cut taxes for oil companies and the rich.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
MLK was not trying to impress a white audience at the expense of his community. Only a knave would deny the political calculation on Obama’s part making that speech. MLK on the other hand was engaging in analysis for his own communal behalf.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Members of the International came to the States to fight the Union cause, just as similar moves were made to Spain not much later.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
The first international was an outgrowth of a movement that dates back at least to the left-Baconian underground of Elizabethan England, and certainly the Ranters, Diggers and German Peasant uprising. I’m not talking affinity, I’m talking actual links on a chain, as it were. If we’re talkign strictly affinity, the first labour strikes were by the builders of the Pyramids.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
jc, you’re probably thinking of the Germans (”I fights mit Siegel!”) who left after 1848. Most promenent was Carl Shurz who bacame US Grant’s Interior Secty. See Bruce Catton’s 2nd volumn of the history of the Army of the Potomac - “Glory Road.”
June 26th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I don’t know the exact details, but Marx’s own writings on the era confirm this point.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:06 am
“Some places respect the Left.”
Yes JC, and you will notice those places disrespect basic freedom, like press and speech.
Canada’s basic democratic right are now at risk by gov’t speech monitors and controllers with the odd name of “Human Rights” Commissions.
Over years of liberal/leftist administrations, these ‘Commissions’, whose original understood mandate was to monitor real discrimination based on employment, housing, and business, were loaded up with leftist activists political appointments.
They are now in the business of harassing, suppressing, threatening and penalizing those who speak or publish views they find offensive, ie, views they are not in agreement with. That would be right wing views of course. These commissars don’t even need a real complain from a member of a ‘protected’ group, they can issue a complaint themselves if THEY THINK a SPEECH or PRINTed opinion is LIKELY to expose someone to OFFENSIVE opinion. Of course the really neat thing is they get to decide and penalize, including life time bans on speech, outside the judicial branch of government.
Their biggest complainer, and money maker from it, has been one of their own ‘investigators’. Now this is the sick shit you would perfer JC, because it fits perfectly into the pattern of ever communist regime that has ever existed. Gulags anyone?
June 27th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Jim R
Canada’s run by conservatives right now. Nice try, and answer my question…do you enjoy wht you do? You seem incredibly bitter. Are you alienated? Broke? In debt?
June 27th, 2008 at 9:52 am
And I don’t have the time to correct you, as everyone knwos you’re a troglodytic ass, but you are repeating absolute mythology.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Once they set up the gulags in Canada maybe we can use them for extraordinary rendition.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:56 am
(I attached this to the wrong discussion, so let me re-post this here).
remember that in the 70s (or 80s?) Nader or someone working for him made a somewhat similar racial remark. Nader or his associate was fighting in DC for some environmental or safety cause, and proceeded to censure an African American officeholder who wasn’t taking the desired position, saying something to the effect that a Black person should surely have an understanding of oppression and the abuse of power.
This caused a stir.
More generally, one aspect of sixties/post-sixties hippie liberalism/leftism I would definitely not want to see revived is that era’s pervasive sense of the boundaries of authentic Blackness–many Whites then were fully comfortable with remarking on whether a Black person was Black enough.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Lost pronoun…
“I remember that in the 70s…”
June 27th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
jc: “Canada’s run by conservatives right now.”
Boy, I bet Mark Steyn and McClains are sure glad to hear that. Cause the CHRC is all over their butts. Gosh, maybe if they walk in and say “Hey guys, kiss my butt. Canada’s run by conservatives right now.” Why, I’m sure that all them CHRC folk will immediately turn in their resignations and immigrate to ohhhh, say Mass-a-chew-sits?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Communists at universities?
Perhaps Canada didn’t purge them all in the 50s and 60s like we did here in America.
I’m sure GM and Jim R are still profoundly dismayed at the injustice of that.
As for Steyn, his “persecution” by the CHRC is buying him more attention and, alas, credibility, than he’d ever get from his bloated, bigoted writings. He should be paying them residuals.
Note that invariably people express sympathy for Steyn’s right to write, but not his ideas.
I predict a bitter end for Steyn. Once his fame-ignominy from this episode blows over, he’ll fart around trying to become the next Jonah Goldberg, gathering wingnut welfare for a few good years, then fade into insignificance and wind up as a verbose music critic or, perhaps, a public relations executive for a tobacco company.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Seriously, BB
MANY of the purged academics came to Canada, one of the reasons that Canadian higher education shines.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
GM.
Our Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, leader of the conservative party.
June 28th, 2008 at 8:07 am
bunker and jc, see who the next leader of the free world could be: The G.M. Roper Phenomenon
June 28th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
GM,
Another thing to keep you off Bob Barr: here he says Bush is worse than Clinton.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Nader says Obama talks white, but Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must ‘kiss my ass’ for his support.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Thanks for the link, Woody (gasp, never thought I’d utter those words). Maybe Obama should compromise and get Bill’s rocks off by substituting a cigar for his lips. Ass wipe.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Bill Clinton should put a fork in himself, because he is so done.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:26 am
And by the way…I am beginning to think less and less of Obama, not because of his much less than progressive views (see his votes on FISA, Iraq funding, etc.), but because of his indulging of Bill Clinton and Sir Bill’s perpetual assholery. If Obama was any kind of a man, he would tell Bill (”Obama can kiss my ass”) Clinton to suck on a warm, hot brown piece of you-know-what. But Instead, Obama gives his Hillary a well publicized, small peck on the cheek, which is probably more action than this lady has gotten from her sleazy husband since their wedding night (if ever). Fuck you Bill Clinton, and the asshole donkey you rode in on.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:26 am
“I am beginning to think less and less of Obama, not because of his much less than progressive views…”
I swear David. Obama really is the Messiah if your are a progressive/leftist. The fact he has to be a highly intelligent, and yes crafty, politician, behaving and portraying himself as a middle man of the masses, while his voting record is the opposite, in order to win an election, should be a reason for ‘progressives’(whatever the hell this means) to ‘praise’ him.
Some wisdom for the younger crowd. Judge a man by his record, not his rhetoric, especially a politicians. If your are a leftist, Obama has not disappointed you in the past, and he will not in the future.
“Fuck you Bill Clinton, and the asshole donkey you rode in on.”
If Bill thought this would’ve make Hillary appear like the Messiah instead, he would have sit Hillary on one and hid in it’s asshole, as she rode it around the country in ragged clothes and sandals.
But alas, as Bill has done in the past with women, he crucified her instead.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:34 am
“I don’t have the time to correct you, as everyone knwos you’re a troglodytic ass”
You are always trying to impress me JC.
Get a spell checker. They’re free and come in very handy when you need to impress your teacher……then again, maybe not ‘your’ teachers.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I apologize for that rant above re: bill clinton. Woody’s link succeeded in making me angry once again @ the Clintons.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:22 am
>If your are a leftist, Obama
>has not disappointed you in the
>past, and he will not in the future.
well, inductively, David’s post characterizing Obama as unprogressive contained two good examples and Jim’s claiming that he’s a secret leftist zero.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:36 am
The more that Obama “moderates” his positions (versus flip-flops), the more he sounds like Hillary Clinton–but, without the cackle.