Vicki Iseman files $27 million lawsuit against NYT over McCain hit piece
posted at 7:18 pm on December 30, 2008 by Allahpundit
Remember that one? It blew up in the middle of the primaries, alleging that McCain staffers were convinced he’d had a “romantic” relationship with her in 2000 and that he’d admitted to acting “inappropriately,” then burned white hot for two days before it fizzled from the fact that even the left was embarrassed by how shoddy it was. Now, 10 months later, safe from any campaign consequences, it’s payback time.
The good news? Given their revenue trend, they might be judgment-proof by now.
The 36-page complaint charges that the story implies an “unprofessional relationship” between Iseman and McCain.
Both Iseman and McCain denied any improper relationship. However, the public viewed the story as being about an affair, according to the suit, which cites the post-publication remarks of 10 different commentators across the political spectrum. In each case, their comments about the story assumed it was about an alleged affair, the lawyers noted…
The suit claims that Iseman suffered damage to her mental, emotional and physical health. The lawyers noted that she continues to work as a lobbyist in Washington, for a firm based in Arlington. They said they anticipate developing their case on damages as the matter moves forward.
Here’s the complaint, the most interesting part of which starts around paragraph 50 with the argument about “actual malice,” i.e. reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the material. She probably doesn’t even have to prove recklessness — for First Amendment purposes, assuming she’s regarded as a “private figure,” all she’d have to show is negligence — but since the story involves a matter of supreme public importance like the election, courts will be loath to hold the paper liable for bad reporting unless it was really, really bad. Was this really, really bad? Well, (a) other journalists looked into the charges and found nothing there; (b) not only McCain and Iseman but John Weaver, a central figure in the story, adamantly denied the perception of a romantic relationship; (c) the Times itself wavered on whether to publish it and didn’t pull the trigger until TNR pressured them into it with a behind-the-scenes story on the paper’s dithering; and (d) most damning, the paper’s own ombudsman dumped all over the piece. The crux of the NYT’s defense, then and now, is that it never asserted that the two had had an affair, merely that their relationship as Senator and lobbyist was inappropriately “close” and that some McCain staffers were worried that it might have turned romantic. Here’s Clark Hoyt rolling his eyes at that a few days after the story ran:
The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that The Detroit Free Press disclosed recently, or the photograph of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap…
I asked Keller why he decided to run what he had.
“If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we’d have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members,” he replied. “But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.”
I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.
Indeed, although that won’t stop them from standing by the story, of course. Exit question: Think Maverick’s excited at the prospect of reliving this chapter of his life on the stand, if need be?
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Not in the slightest, unless you defined “not liking” by Arab standards. Which I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that you don’t.
I’m far more to the right than you and frankly I’m tired of being ragged on by conservatives for not kissing their !@#% feet at every opportunity. Soon enough we are going to be bankrupt and Israel will have to deal with the consequences of founding a nation in the middle of Islamic home turf on land that Western nations ran off the squatters.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 11:47 AM
While I understand your argument – and actually agree that comparing progressive taxation to slavery is foolish – but it is a little rich for a liberal to complain that comparing something to slavery is “bad”.
Liberals, forever, have linked every possible issue to slavery, segregation, the holocaust, etc. There is an entire industry that exists to do this – the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world.
Why, requiring photo ids to vote? It’s almost like bringing back Jim Crow!!! We on the conservative side of the fence hear these types of ridiculous claims all the time. the left loves to use these comparisons.
When the left stops using the race card for every single issue, I’ll have some sympathy for your outrage over comparing slavery to progressive taxation.
Monkeytoe on March 30, 2013 at 11:47 AM
“Post racial” is a dreamland ideal that is about as realistic as liberal economic policies. It’s one thing not to let sheet-wearing domestic terrorists run rampant, but to think you can live in a world where race is irrelevant is as realistic as Clowngress repealing the law of gravity.
Unfortunately, we are going to have to learn this the hard way when EBT cards suddenly don’t work and the resulting mobs don’t resemble Beaver Cleaver’s relatives.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 11:50 AM
That’s honest and I appreciate it. Also we know, we know that many conservatives are not the biggest fans of black folks (even the black ones). But it also hilarious that people say we are “stuck in the past” considering conservatives constant opining for a nation “more like the Founders intended.”
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 11:50 AM
Would it have helped if I said “most” blacks rather than let you assume all blacks?
Most blacks are Liberals. I dislike all Liberals therefore I dislike most blacks.
I like conservative blacks because they are conservative. Allen West, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Mia Love, a former co-worker, a good current mountain biking friend, et al.
You Liberas are so desperate to smear conservatives as racists that you equate political disagreement with racism.
Most of us just shrug our shoulders and say “whatever”.
Charlemagne on March 30, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Which means, to liberals, you’re a closet racist who speaks in ‘code’. You have been judged and sentenced by the Left. After all, if you truly weren’t a racist, you would have to be liberal. It’s impossible for a Conservative to not be a bigot somewhere along the line.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 11:52 AM
You’re stuck in the past on things that don’t work, libfree.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 11:52 AM
On the bright side, remember Crowder?
Same thread:
I look forward to our resident (D)s defending the Klan when violence breaks out.
rogerb on March 30, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Do you see how this is almost the complete inverse of what you said earlier? Why others are trying to defend what was said earlier, I have no idea.
segasagez on March 30, 2013 at 11:53 AM
I look forward to them bravely defying said violence.
Okay…you can stop laughing now.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 11:54 AM
Come on, surely you’ve been on HA long enough to know what we want is a federal government that operates within its Constitutionally prescribed boundaries, stops growing and inserting itself deeper into our lives, and basically just leaves us alone. You Liberals just can’t stop. There is a pathological need to continuously meddle.
Charlemagne on March 30, 2013 at 11:56 AM
We only like the clean and articulate blacks who can speak with a negr0 dialect, must be too many white ni**ers in our ranks.
Bishop on March 30, 2013 at 11:56 AM
Charlemagne,
Please note, for evidence to my 11:52 comment to you, libfree’s 11:50 comment also addressed to you. Remember, as libfree so strongly asserted, they know you’re a closet racist no matter what you might say.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 11:57 AM
Mellon Collie:
Bullsqueeze. Jewish settlers paid ridiculous prices for land throughout the 20th century. When the Zionist movement decided to make a home for the Jewish people in Israel, the Jordanians living there had a life expectancy of 37 years.
It was swampy malarial land they paid as much as 1000$ per acre for.
When the land was divided the Jews got a tiny piece of land and the Jordanians got the lions share.
Of course just after, 3 arab countries tried to annihilate the Jews.
But hey, keep blaming “western powers” which justifies your anti-Semitic animus.
DavidM on March 30, 2013 at 11:58 AM
What? It’s exactly what I wrote earlier. I said I don’t like most blacks because they’re Liberals, not because they’re black. How could you have interpreted it any other way.
I’ve had enough and its late. I have to go to bed.
I’m in Shenzhen China at the moment.
Charlemagne on March 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM
I didn’t blame them for anything, D-grade liberal.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 12:01 PM
But progressives are opining for a nation “more like what Karl Marx intended” so I guess I would prefer the founding fathers version which put America on a path to freedom and liberty over some dead Euro-trashes version of a totalitarian state that basically caused a major world war and cost the lives of over a hundred million people in the 20th century worldwide.
Some “stuck in the past” ideas are better than others…
William Eaton on March 30, 2013 at 12:02 PM
Are we all still fighting over the Civil War? Newsflash: The South won:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/01/31/how-the-south-will-rise-to-power-again/
The losers still operating under the Blue State Model will get “Emergency Financial Managers” for consolation prizes.
Speaking of Blue failure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/former-school-chief-in-atlanta-indicted-in-cheating-scandal.html?_r=0
Punchenko on March 30, 2013 at 12:02 PM
I am less concerned about the Klan’s freedom to be idiots and much more concerned about our eroding religious liberties. It is far too easy to act brave and say you support freedom of expression when the Klan is such a marginalized and comical organization. The following kind of crap is far more disturbing and detrimental to our liberties, especially when most in the media want to pretend it isn’t happening.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/27/Blasphemy-Laws-The-Next-Step-in-Religious-Tolerance
http://www.teapartytribune.com/2012/11/26/dearborn-mi-an-emerging-zone-of-hate-and-intolerance/
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 12:06 PM
At the very least the south learned from last time. If there were to be a repeat and they hadn’t, they’d quickly find that keeping their way of life would be impossible with deer rifles against tanks and drones and cruise missiles.
It’s one thing to make yourself such a PITA that the opposition literally goes broke trying to fight you, that’s a big part of how America was formed in the first place. But winning a close-in land war without all your infrastructure being flattned…that’s another.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 12:06 PM
And you should be familiar with the history of your political movement. Modern conservatism is a specific outgrowth of southern resistance to the Warren Court decisions (check the language of anti-integrationist activists in the fifties, read your George Wallace and your Barry Goldwater) and the eventual passage of the 1964/1965 civil rights legislation. There is no modern conservative movement without the ascendency of racial liberalism (see Buckley v. Baldwin debate at Oxford). Just as there is no moral majority movement without sexual liberation movements. This idea of a race, gender, sexually neutral critique of “big government” is brand spanking new. Contemporary conservatives shortsighted-ness is not the fault of people who know this history.
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:09 PM
And you’re going to bed?
DarkCurrent on March 30, 2013 at 12:09 PM
.
Yeah, that’s what’s happenin’! Whitewashin’! Too funny!
ExpressoBold on March 30, 2013 at 12:09 PM
Yup. That’s the big story in Atlanta. I’m surprised it didn’t get more national coverage or anything on HA.
slickwillie2001 on March 30, 2013 at 12:10 PM
So what is the basis for liberal shortsightedness?
Bishop on March 30, 2013 at 12:12 PM
Inflation.
Solaratov on March 30, 2013 at 12:12 PM
If that were the case, Robert Byrd would have been a Republican.
Gelsomina on March 30, 2013 at 12:13 PM
Modern conservatism is an outgrowth of classical liberalism. We just use the title conservative because fascist liberals stole the title liberal because they wanted to hide their fascism. Your academic understanding of conservative is woefully misinformed.
And Barry Goldwater was a classical liberal whose concerns over civil rights legislation had nothing to do with bigotry. He was concerned that such legislation would grant a specific group of people special rights and privileges above and beyond the average citizens rights and privileges. Only a university trained twit would lump Wallace and Goldwater together.
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 12:18 PM
I think he’s saying that sin is genetically inherited. That’s the best I can do to make sense of liberal logic.
Fenris on March 30, 2013 at 12:20 PM
At least linking photo ID (and limits to early voting) is in the ballpark of poll taxes and grandfather clauses. Though I will concede that black people seeking to vote are not subject to the systematized violence that was once visited upon them in the Jim Crow south (and which no southern government has ever publicly apologized for I might add). I think that part of the problem black folks have is that there’s never really been any kind of process of reconciliation in this country. There has never been a real public airing of the full extent of the harms.
For example, how much do Americans know about white southerners who stole land from black people after enslavement? How many know about the mobs who burnt down courthouses to destroy deeds of sale that proved black people owned plots of land? How many Americans know about forced re-enslavement in the south in the early 20th century? There is no database on lynching violence, we have no idea the full extent of those crimes. There are still communities were stories of lynchings are kept under wraps. How many Americans know that Prince Edward Virginia closed down their public schools for a decade to avoid complying with Brown v. Board? How many know that local banks financed white kids in Prince Edward attending private schools (the beginning of Charter School movement). How many Americans know about Rosewood and Tulsa? How many know about the bloody summer of 1919, where whites engaged in anti-black race riots across the country, north and south? And on and on and on. Yet how many Americans can quote you chapter and verse about the Holocaust. Black people will continue to live in the past, while our history is actively squelched by conservative elements in both parties.
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:21 PM
So you need ID to buy beer, but not to vote.
Liberal logic at its finest.
MelonCollie on March 30, 2013 at 12:22 PM
You are confusing white with Aryan. That’s not the same. The Nazis, for example, had nothing against brown people, as long as they were Aryan, like the Iranians.
Gelsomina on March 30, 2013 at 12:24 PM
Well, except for the FACT that the KKK was democrat, through and through. Organized by, paid for by and supported by democrats – from their inception until today.
They were – and are – the terrorist enforcement arm of the democrats.
Solaratov on March 30, 2013 at 12:24 PM
Wallace and Goldwater were different only in the tone and tenor of their rhetoric. Goldwater’s concerns about “special rights and privileges” is hilarious, because it assumes that white access to a Jim Crow world was a “right.” This is precisely the problem with modern conservatism. The conservative response to the Warren Court and the ’64 bill was that the existing social order, which was explicitly white supremacist, were part of the “natural rights” of white citizens. And, of course one can understand why conservatves felt that way. They had about 80 years of post-Reconstruction history indicating that segregation and white supremacy were rights protected by the state. In other words, because the state upheld a racist order, conservatives imagined that order as being natural. So while Goldwater’s argument makes sense within the rubric of protecting “natural rights” from the state, there is no way you can divorce that claim from a racist history of state formation that had identified a range of privileges with whiteness.
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:27 PM
Wow, I guess the Democrats down there haven’t all traded in their hoods for Chez T-shirts yet.
/Same old sheet./
S. D. on March 30, 2013 at 12:30 PM
George Wallace ran for president four times, thrice as a Democrat and once as an Independent.
Goldwater opposed the religious right, and believed in abortion as well as getting religious considerations entirely out of any political campaign. He also had a lean toward libertarian views.
The Civil Rights legislation never would have passed without high Republican support. See how Al Gore Sr. opposed those bills, as did most other Democrats.
You’re the one with the internal issues around here, not we Conservatives. AS I noted earlier and you proved to us all, you have decided that it’s impossible for a Conservative to be anything but somehow bigoted. But your tender, self-centered feelings of perpetual victimhood leave you incapable of discernment in so many areas.
You have two hands there, and one shovel doesn’t seem to be enough. Can I offer you another?
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 12:31 PM
Sounds like you have a problem then, unless you’re working on a time machine.
Bishop on March 30, 2013 at 12:31 PM
So, are you saying that blacks just cannot comprehend the process of getting an ID card? Even a free one? How do they cash checks; or buy booze?
That sounds as though you’re saying they aren’t smart enough to do the simple things necessary to live in a modern society.
And that you support voter fraud – as long as your choice ‘wins’ the election.
You’re an idiot.
Solaratov on March 30, 2013 at 12:32 PM
But modern progressivism is a outgrowth of the communist movement in America. Almost every cause the modern progressives push for is nothing more than a vehicle for their ultimate objective which is some form totalitarian socialist or communist state that will protect the white progressive elite. They despise individual liberty and the common folks. The leaders it produces are of the nanny control freak type, people who believe the people must be controlled at all levels of life. Mayor Bloomberg, although not a card carrying democrat, is a good example of where the modern progressive movement is headed. A powerful police state that can stop people at will with no evidence (in this case blacks and latinos), that can tell the people what to eat, tell the people how to protect themselves, all in order to protect the party elite (mostly white) who in this case live on Manhattan Island from the rest of New York.
The funny part of about New York and Bloomberg is they use gun control as a cover for racially profiling the heck out of their population, without calling it racially profiling and all those left rich Manhattan types are perfectly happy about that. That way they can go to their coffee houses and midget dog grooming parlors in protected peace.
That is the modern progressive movement in a nutshell in every major American city with the exception of places like Detroit where there is no white progressive elite left.
William Eaton on March 30, 2013 at 12:36 PM
The United States won this war. Those guys whose names are on the parks? They are traitors who fought for the institution of slavery — not for any putative states right — those rights had been lost when the Taney Court ruled against the Missouri Compromise and in favor of the Fugitive Slave Laws.
The South had won the war, but it snatched defeat from the jaws of victory…
It’s taken a few years, but it really is time to rename the parks.
unclesmrgol on March 30, 2013 at 12:37 PM
On the issue of Jim Crow and white citizens natural rights the two were in agreement. In that sense, they mirror the contemporary comportment of the conservative movement, intense disagreement on most social issues, but agreement on racial issues.
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:39 PM
You need to move on, sweety, and realize no one with $$$ cares. It’s all about LGBT-Americans and ensuring a steady flow of cheap labor flows across the southern border.
:-)
Speaking of the southern border, a lot of Confederates moved to Latin America after the War of Northern, er, the Civil War.
Punchenko on March 30, 2013 at 12:39 PM
And here you all are, sucked in by a juvenile argument tactic spewed by libgleeandgay. You’re arguing about slavery one hundred and fifty years gone and civil rights carved into stone fifty years ago. For two generations every line formed in front of every opportunity has been legally reordered to put everyone who is not a white male in front of everyone who is. That is inarguable; that that bit of social engineering has produced no positive results is empirically undeniable.
And worse, you are all letting this POS preach a fallacious history of conservatism- as though he is party to some sort of victorious Reich. He does not merit a retort; he should be nothing more than the bloody gunk mired in the drive belt of a tracked vehicle.
M240H on March 30, 2013 at 12:40 PM
Seriously, you are woefully misinformed about Goldwater. Your ignorance would be comical if it wasn’t so depressingly stupid. Just a short synopsis of Goldwater since I doubt you will put down your communist reference material and actually learn about the man.
http://www.freedomsjournal.net/2011/10/09/urban-legend-goldwater-against-civil-rights/
Just a little taste of what your ignorance has aligned itself with.
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 12:41 PM
libfree is a product of it.
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 12:42 PM
This is about 90% accurate, but black radicals are already engaging in critiques of the racial politics and soft-racism of white progressives. We’re putting that house in order, perhaps conservatives need to work on the racialist elements and legacies in their political movement eh?
Well, here is where we disagree. I think that Bloomberg is a liberal, not a progressive. Or maybe a PINO?
You’ll get no argument from me on that one. But if you recognize that white supremacy is ubiquitous in American society why do conservatives get so upset when black people say “America is a racist nation.”
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:44 PM
Wow, again total agreement. Wait a minute…are you all secretly progressive?
libfreeordie on March 30, 2013 at 12:46 PM
Totally false. Hope you’re not teaching that to your kids!
wiki:
As for Nixon, the plan he implemented in 1969 wasn’t his-it was drafted in 1967.
D-
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 12:46 PM
It is not my fault that the liberal progressives refuse to teach history so that Americans understand the meaning of words and ideas. I am not going to self regulate my speech because people like you imagine that other people are too ignorant to understand my statements.
Not having access to what you create means that you do not own yourself. Now, when I pay for legitimate government functions, such as courts, military and so forth, I am paying for a service. When I have money confiscated from my paycheck in order to hand the money over to what is now a majority moocher class of citizen, that is slavery plain and simple. I do not have any choice over the matter, and if I chose to refuse to make those payments, I will be locked away in prison and have my family taken from my protection through force. Social Security and medicare are generational transfers of wealth, thereby securing the other aspect of slavery in that your children are then to be enslaved.
They are immoral and improper functions of government and need to end. I will use what ever logical arguments are needed to convert people to my side.
astonerii on March 30, 2013 at 12:48 PM
The heyday of the “Klan in the north” was in the 1920s and their animus was directed at Roman Catholics, Jews and immigrants…who were mostly Roman Catholics and Jews. Also, the claim that a requirement of photo ID is equivalent to poll taxes and literacy tests, etc. is both factually inaccurate and asinine.
cicerone on March 30, 2013 at 12:49 PM
Just a guess here: When 90% of black voters pull the lever for a presidential team who singularly uttered the phrases “typical white person” and “first really clean, articulate black guy”?
When someone screams “RACISM!” and then votes for two dudes who spewed their own racism, personally it makes me tune them out.
Bishop on March 30, 2013 at 12:49 PM
We have statues and places named after people like Shawnee (Native American) war leader Tecumseh who allied with the British Empire during the War of 1812. In fact we have lots of places named after Native Americans many of whom fought with the confederacy during the civil war in what is today Oklahoma. The Native Americans also fought against those same Union commanders like Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. yet I doubt you are calling them traitors or demanding they have their names removed from parks, statues, and history.
I think the North was right during the war, I had ancestors who fought on both sides, but I am not going to do a modern day chest thumping over it or try to erase peoples history one way or the other. If you are going to tell the history then tell the complete history or none at all.
William Eaton on March 30, 2013 at 12:51 PM
Of course, if they had a brain in their head they’d protest simply as themselves and not the Klan, they might even win some converts if they did that, but this way they’ll just get some eggs thrown at them and the parks will be renamed, they’re idiots.
clearbluesky on March 30, 2013 at 12:52 PM
Like I said, you have decided it’s impossible for Conservatives to be anything except bigoted. That fact destroys any accusation against us no matter how many phony liberal arguments you make. Whites and minorities get along just fine on their own, except for people like you trying to stir the pot all the time. If there are truly problems, they’re caused and perpetuated by your side alone. And you’re a prime example of that. All proof most people need is what happens in their daily lives, over a long period of time. Of course you’ll dismiss the personal ‘anecdotes’ of thousands of witnesses, because your little Marxist pamphlets are the final word to you. And that’s okay; it’s your life. Live it in ignorance if that fills some deep-seated issues in you.
Still, my offer to you for a second shovel remains.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 12:53 PM
“we know” no such thing.
You believe such a thing however, so that makes it fact?
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 12:54 PM
Good question, we currently have a black president presiding over a country with racial preference laws that not only allow, but encourage discrimination against caucasians, so yeah, America is a racist country, just not in the way you think.
clearbluesky on March 30, 2013 at 12:55 PM
Do they still wear hoods? I’m all for free speech but it seems to me that you should have the intestinal fortitude to put a face to the comments. I know I am wasting my breath but ignoring these people rather than making their one ring circus into three is a much better tactic.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Agreed. You can disagree with the worldviews of the two sides of the Civil War, but there is no denying that some of the finest infantry who ever walked this Earth were present on both sides of the conflict.
It took seeds of steel to cross that field as Pickett’s men did, and the 1st Minnesota roared into the face of 10-1 odds to save their own army. Those were some incredible men we had.
Bishop on March 30, 2013 at 12:57 PM
Epic Fail. If you yourself had bothered to “read your Goldwater” you would know that he was no racist; in fact he was instrumental in integrating the Arizona National Guard before Harry Truman integrated the Armed Forces.
Incomplete
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 12:58 PM
So erase history? Richmond should take down their memorials to Southern generals? I don’t think so. Jacksonville has a high school named after Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Klan didn’t start out as what it has become.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 12:59 PM
No, it’s just the truth.
The white upper class cares more about their gay son being able to have a gaudy wedding and their Latino housekeeper that they’re paying under the table not being deported.
And if the Latino housekeeper wants more $$$, well, Latino housekeepers who will work on the cheap are a dime a dozen.
Punchenko on March 30, 2013 at 1:01 PM
Speaking of definitions and filthy bigots…
rogerb on March 30, 2013 at 1:02 PM
The Ku Klux Klan was founded with the express intent of preventing freed slaves from voting for the nascent Republican Party in the south. It was (and to a large extent still is) a terrorist movement founded by folks who panicked at the thought of losing the political power they subsequently enforced through Jim Crow laws.
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:07 PM
You’re forgetting one thing, though. Liberals have decided it’s impossible for any minority to be racist or otherwise truly bigoted. Any such bigotry to the Left is merely striking back for past injustices, and therefor understandable and justified.
Only heterosexual whites can be bigots. Everyone else is seeking social justice.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 1:07 PM
Does he still call himself a professor? I haven’t seen him make that claim in awhile. Professor of Dishonest Propagandary maybe?
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 1:07 PM
Saying it doesn’t make it so, prove it. At least we don’t have “the soft bigotry of low expectations” when it comes to our fellow man.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:07 PM
Apologize? Who is it that’s supposed to apologize? Did Robert Bryd apologize? the fact that segregationist were voted out of office negates the need of the “people ” to apologize because the rejected the politics of segregation. The only ones needing to apologize are the segregationist who have mostly died off. The heirs of segregation are in fact the nanny staters and general statist who simply can’t bear to see people living freely and in peace and that would be the progressives.
AH_C on March 30, 2013 at 1:08 PM
It’s 2013, and Asians have surpassed whites in almost every measurable stat of “well being” in America. Income, education, incarceration rates, etc.
By your measures, we live in a society mired in “Asian supremacy” where Asians are “holding back” whites, blacks, and Latinos.
visions on March 30, 2013 at 1:09 PM
Still breathlessly awaiting for the good perfesser to discuss the rampant racism against Whites that has gone on in the 50th state since the late 1940s. I lived through it in the 60s, just as O’bama did.
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 1:09 PM
But all people are racist to a degree. All humans have bigotry of one kind or another, likes and dislikes. African-Americans have a racist and bigots among them as well, but unlike outright white racist, like the Klan, you will not call out African-American nationalist groups like the Nation of Islam, or even the strain of deep rooted racism that runs in groups like the NAACP. An example is when an African-American murders someone who is “White” the police and local politicians say very little and never declare it a “hate crime” even when there is clear evidence it was such as the Kevin Shifflett case. The MSM will not say a word on those cases either. Yet if a “White” person kills or attacks an African-American it must be a hate crime according to the police and politicians, the MSM goes nuts giving it 24hrs coverage. The Zimmerman case in Florida is a good example.
If you don’t enforce laws equally you will have a breakdown of society and cause civil disorder. It does not matter if you think you are right or not or getting social justice. Either you protect all people under the law or you do not. To me the political correctness you are pushing is not only wrong but extremely dangerous.
Another example there is open gang warfare in places like LA between Latinos and African-Americans. Many Latino immigrants were victimized by African-American gangs when they first move to America. Does that mean Latino gangs are justified in “hunting and killing” random African-Americans like they are now doing in LA? Was it justified that African-Americans can be racist to Latinos because of other past issues.
Basically your version of “justice” will lead to a complete breakdown of this nation because all you care to talk about is white racism.
William Eaton on March 30, 2013 at 1:11 PM
Remember when “they have such discriminating taste” actually used to be a compliment?
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:11 PM
While others will say that it was started to supply protection to Southerners who were not getting any under the government installed directly after the war. I will admit that it devolved and probably quickly but I tend to be suspect of current teaching of history.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:11 PM
The same with Democrat-sponsored and -enforced gun-control laws aimed specifically at keeping blacks from defending themselves.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 1:12 PM
When did we get a good professor?
rogerb on March 30, 2013 at 1:13 PM
Well yeah, that’s true to an extent as well. In the antebellum south, land ownership was a primary measure of wealth. After the war, all of a sudden the old plantation system couldn’t sustain itself and many Radical Republicans wanted to punish the south harshly for their “treason and insurrection.” Whether the founding Klan members had justification for feeling as they did will be debated into perpetuity most likely, but it still remains that the Klan was violent and that they did seek to prevent blacks from voting because blacks voted overwhelmingly Republican at the time.
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:15 PM
The Klan was started in 1865 at the end of the war while Jim Crow laws were enacted in 1876. There have been several incarnations over the years and I think it is safe to say, not for the better.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM
I get you, but see my 1:19 comment. The Klan was before Jim Crow.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:21 PM
That’s why I said “subsequently.” Jim Crow arose after Klan-sympathetic Dems were elected to positions of power in state and local governments after federal anti-lynching laws were passed, again by Republicans.
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:23 PM
Nah, the media will just call it another Tea Party event and move on.
John the Libertarian on March 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM
Who all later became Democrats! Maybe we are going through another metamorphosis now. It could explain why both parties suck.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM
Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era
From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War (1861-65). They were more successful in achieving their political goals than they were with their social goals during the Reconstruction era.
astonerii on March 30, 2013 at 1:27 PM
I’m sure the Klan was all for Jim Crow, but such laws really weren’t possible until 1876. Reconstruction died altogether in 1877 after Republicans at that time bargained away black’s civil liberties in order to keep the WH.
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 1:28 PM
Also how do explain Hillsdale College, today a bastion of Republican and Conservative education in this country. You hear their advertisements on conservative radio and see them on conservative sites. Yet they were and are proud of their college being a epicenter of abolitionism and for fighting for the Union during the Civil War. Abolitionism is conservative, and was pushed for mostly by religious Christians in the north. If John Brown, a hardcore Christian, had been alive today he would be violently raiding abortion clinics. Would he still be the progressive hero you guys make him out out be when attempted to free the unborn babies from death?
William Eaton on March 30, 2013 at 1:31 PM
Don’t forget all the other non-white racism. Heck, even in Dave Drywall-Land up in Canada there is an aboriginal gang that used to beat up on Asians.
And as I note elsewhere in this thread, libfree is strangely intellectually incurious about the rampant non-white racism in Hawai’i, where our “post-racial President” claims to have been born.
From the Far-Right Southern Poverty Law Center, 2009:
BTW, for a long time the wiki page for Punahou, the elite private school in Honolulu that O’bama attended, noted that the school participated in the tradition cited above known as “Kill Haole Day”. That reference magically disappeared from said wiki page in the summer of 2008.
Del Dolemonte on March 30, 2013 at 1:34 PM
Reconstruction “died” after a federal presence was established in the South and the federal government was assured that the South would be loyal and accountable to the federal government. It was never supposed to carry on indefinitely.
As for the Republicans at the time who bargained away black civil liberties? They were mostly Klan-sympathizing former Dems who changed parties to have a better shot at re-election, their ingrained racism notwithstanding. They never believed in “black civil liberty” to begin with.
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:35 PM
So wait….libfree, who accuses all of us of being racists, is regurgitating racist nonsense from the Nazis about Jews not really being “white”?
High-larious. Clearly you’re as ignorant about the history of Jews in Europe as you accuse everybody here of being about the history of black in America.
Hint: When we were being killed in pogroms and blood libel hunts, it wasn’t a racial issue.
Lemme guess, you think Jews of EE-descent are “Khazars,” eh?
Good Solid B-Plus on March 30, 2013 at 1:35 PM
No doubt! In my opinion the entire nation may have ended slavery but did very little to free black citizens. The South gets the lion share of press over this as the losers of the war but I can remember Northern cities that didn’t handle the integration of schools very well. And can remember being surprised (as a Southerner) that integration was even necessary in the North. Our history is what it is and some of our “fixes” have been stupid.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:37 PM
Jim Crow had very little to do with racist business owners, at least in the south. There were most assuredly many racist business owners in the deep south, but Jim Crow was as series of laws passed by city councils, county commissions, and in some case even state legislatures. It was (SURPRISE SURPRISE) a failure of government first and foremost..
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:41 PM
All of that is true, but the election of 1876 hastened its demise.
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 1:42 PM
The election of 1876 hastened the end of reconstruction because the power of the Republican Party increased and the power of the Democrat Party lessened. Hence, the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and passage of Jim Crow laws. You make it sound like the end of reconstruction was a bad thing with language like “died” and “demise.” Though there are times that I wonder if maybe the Radical Republicans weren’t correct…
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 1:45 PM
Come again? Republican power was on the wane and they almost lost the WH. The 1876 election was a complete and total clusterfark that almost went to the House and threatened to divide the nation once again. A special commission was created to sort the mess out and Southern states were promised that Reconstruction would end sooner rather than later if they agreed with the commissions final ruling.
Yes, Reconstruction could not last forever, but Republicans abandoned the effort entirely for political gain.
NotCoach on March 30, 2013 at 1:51 PM
We don’t need to wait for the media.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 1:51 PM
I find it odd Jazz used the term “War of Northern Aggression”. Odd and concerning.
antisense on March 30, 2013 at 1:54 PM
I, like most everyone, am more influenced by my own experiences. Even though I was a child of the south in the 50′s and 60′s, my father’s business, marine salvage, did not have a lot of obvious segregation. As an adult, I can look back on things that didn’t make sense to me and realize that it for what it was. I’ve sited this example before but when I was young I noticed that black families lived together and seemed to have better cars than homes. Never realizing that people wouldn’t sell to them. At the same time a group of middle class blacks bought a huge parcel of land near our home and developed a neighborhood that had homes we could only dream of. I wonder if I ever verbalized my confusion.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:55 PM
I have yet to break out a hood for any Tea Party outing.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 1:56 PM
I’m partial to The Great Unpleasantness.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 2:02 PM
Irrelevant. As libfree pushed all morning, all Conservatives are bigots to one level or another. They (liberals) know it! Just because you never did doesn’t mean you won’t ever do it later, or that you don’t secretly wish to. Plus, we Cons talk in ‘code’ all the time, too.
See how easy it is to be a liberal? Who needs proof when it’s so simple to accuse and hang on to it no matter what.
Liam on March 30, 2013 at 2:07 PM
Probably has tenure and can say anything.
Cindy Munford on March 30, 2013 at 2:08 PM
When I started reading Thomas Sowell, I had an epiphany. It’s something I think about from time-to-time in my capacity operating the cash register at the sandwich shop I work at. It’s stupid to segregate based on race, particularly when one is a business person. If a person is black and can’t get service at one place, that person will take their money to a competitor — all else being equal, of course. The only way for racial discrimination to work as a policy at all is to enforce that policy by government diktat which is exactly what Jim Crow did.
And by the by, it’s also worth mentioning that by many metrics, blacks led more prosperous lives under Jim Crow than they do now. I have to believe that’s because government is failing blacks again, but in different and worse ways than they were before.
gryphon202 on March 30, 2013 at 2:10 PM
I was in downtown Memphis earlier this morning. The police were blocking off a several block radius around the courthouse. No vehicles or pedestrians will be permitted in this area until after the Klan finishes with their show. It looks like the MPD has thought this out very well and are well prepared for the asshats in white sheets. It’s pouring rain here and cold, so that is also keeping people away. The counter protest does not seem to be materializing. There were some lessons learned from the last time the Klan came to town, and I don’t expect to see the violence and looting that happened last time.
The city of Memphis is roughly 70% black, so obviously the Klan is not getting a warm welcome, and they just show up here to stir up racial hatred and trouble. At least “The Justice Brothers” are not here stirring up trouble from counter protesters. Revrum Jesse and Al must have better things to do this weekend.
I’ll post more here if anything develops. I may head downtown later today, but for now, I’m staying home and out of harms way, if any harm does take place.
simkeith on March 30, 2013 at 2:13 PM
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