McKinney's Basic Instinct

As I write this, Cynthia McKinney and her fellow race hustlers are pleading the notoriously anti-Semitic congresswoman's case in her cop-smacking incident at a news conference before a hallelujah chorus at Howard University.  The case being, naturally, that the cop she physically assaulted was racist (and a far cry from her much more conciliatory "official" statement).

I'll leave my personal feelings about the congresswoman aside for the moment, or the cast of characters backing her up that included the America-hating Harry Belafonte, but I was struck by at least one thing:

Two rationales were provided for McKinney's behavior.  First, that the Capitol Police should be better trained to know who the Members of Congress are because it has a bearing on their safety.  (I'd add that a 10-year political veteran of D.C. like myself also can no longer recognize her after she ditched her trademark braids for a radically different 'do.)  I have also personally witnessed something similar happen to a white senator.

And second, Team McKinney is alleging that the police officer knew who she was and was harassing her merely because of her race.

Now, if you're going to mount a defense in advance of what is reportedly her potential arrest, shouldn't you at least be sure that the two reasons you give aren't directly contradictory?

Comments

[Tommy]

I'll leave the political analysis to you because I know nothing about the incident but having in a former life been a prosecutor, I will try to address the legal question: pleading in the alternative is a well respected legal defense. Its sometimes referred to as the, "I wasn't there, I didn't do it and if I was there I was justified," defense

Also, I am certain you weren't suggesting that if one hates something America does, it necessarily means one hates America.

[James]

Mal,

Agree with everything but calling Belafonte "America hating." While you may find his politics loopy, I think he loves the country just as much as anyone else.

peace

[Malcontent]

James, nobody that cozies up to Hugo Chavez is OK in my book. Sorry.

And he said that it wasn't yet clear whether racism was involved, then he went and did a protracted spiel about ... racism. It was just a sad dog-and-pony show.

[el polacko]

belafonte has turned into a crazy old man who sees evil everywhere and believes it all emanates from racist white america. i fail to see how that's 'loving his country' but i do feel a little sorry for him. to be so agitated and unhappy at his age is kinda sad.

[James]

Mal,

I didn't say you had to find Belafonte okay. I just said I he wasn't "America hating." Nothing more. Nothing less.

peace

[North Dallas Thirty]

I didn't say you had to find Belafonte okay. I just said I he wasn't "America hating." Nothing more. Nothing less.

Well, let's see.

The only people Belafonte doesn't hate are people like Cynthia McKinney.

Given that everything else, in his mind, is a tool of or perpetuates racism, he hates them.

Giving Ms. McKinney a generous 5% of the American electorate and institutions, that means that Harry Belafonte hates 95% of America.

I vote we just round up and say he does hate America.

Then, as a measure of apology, we should send him on an all-expenses paid move to Liberia so he can live among the "enlightened".

[anapestic]

I'm no fan of McKinney, but this all seems like a big deal about very little. The article you link in support of your claims of anti-semitism only succeeds in showing that her father is anti-semitic and that she's defended muslims.

I think her response is intended to cover all the bases. They're saying that the cop either didn't recognize her, in which case he's incompetent, or he did recognize her, in which case he's out to get her. She doesn't really have any way of knowing whether he recognized her or not.

Also, I'd be careful about saying that people shouldn't be expected to recognize the Congresswoman after she has a change in hairstyle. It sounds a lot like "they all look alike to me."

I don't approve of the way she's handling the situation, but I suppose if the Republicans are doing everything they can to blow it out of proportion, it's not all that surprising that she's responding in a very big way. I don't think there's any racism here, but I do see a lot of partisanship. If it had been a Republican congressman who'd been involved, I suspect that the whole incident would have vanished.

[anapestic]

"The only people Belafonte doesn't hate are people like Cynthia McKinney.

Given that everything else, in his mind, is a tool of or perpetuates racism, he hates them."

Do you have some support for those statements? They don't make any sense to me. You can believe that someone is subtly racist without hating him. Do you hate everyone who disagrees with you?

[Queer Conservative]

I'll say it loudly, and often: "Belfonte hates America." I might be persuaded to modify that to "Belonte hates white America" but it would take a lot of convincing considering his attitude toward Colin Powell and Condi.

Belafonte does love certain things: Castro, Chavez, socialism, communism, and of course calypso.

[Robbie]

"Do you hate everyone who disagrees with you?"

Yes.

[anapestic]

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Surely y'all have better refutations of whatever it is that Belafonte is saying than "Why do you hate America?"

I know a lot of people who are vehemently opposed to the current administration and some, though not all, of them probably even hate Bush, though they mostly hate his policies. None of those people hate America. Conservatives have been trotting out that canard for as long as I can remember. I don't know whether it's lack of a valid argument or simple laziness, but in either case, it's not very convincing.

[Robbie]

Anapestic, there is a vast difference before critique of government and jumping up on stage with a notorious anti-American foreign leader and spewing nothing but vitriol at your own country.

Furthermore, you're correct in that hatred of Bush does not equal hatred of America. However, it is a concrete fact that the two seem to commonly go together in the more fringe elements of the Left. Have you ever seen an anti-war, protest? Ever taken a gander at the banners and signs a lot of those people are carrying? Because a lot of that isn't about Bush at all, but about America

If you haven't seen what I'm talking about, I recommend looking a little more closely next time one of these marches meanders on by. Not only look at the marches, but look at the organizers, people like International A.N.S.W.E.R. They're not just anti-Bush. They're anti-American, anti-capitalism, pro-socialism, pro-revolution (and by revolution, I mean the left-wing kinds that got lots of Latin Americans killed in the 20th century).

I concede people can get sloppy, especially in the blogosphere, by not doing a good enough job of not making clear distinctions between simple Bush hatred, and the kind of larger America hatred of Belafonte and his crowd.

But, those people are out there, they are at times prominent, and trying to obfuscate their attitudes by saying "Hating Bush doesn't mean hating America" is a willful attempt to set up a strawman that no one else is discussing.

[anapestic]

I am not attempting to set up a strawman that no one is discussing. The discussion got started, in fact, a few comments back when someone else tried to draw a distinction between Belafonte's politics and hatred of America. This led yet another commenter to say that since Belafonte perceives widespread racism, he must hate America. That argument strikes me as a complete non sequitur, yet I hear it all the time, sometimes targeted very narrowly and other times used very loosely.

"America" is a concept with very many definitions. It is often a synecdoche where the actions of the administration, rather than the United States of America, are being described. In those contexts, people often criticize American actions and then people with whom they disagree come back with the implication that they hate the country as a whole. It just doesn't hold water. There probably are, indeed, a few people out there who would really say "I hate this country" and mean it, but they are very few indeed, and the idea that you can't both get on a stage with Chavez and be glad that you live in the USA requires an almost deliberate lack of subtlety.

[Robbie]

Look at it this way. When you're a celebrity, on a mission to help needy children, and you climb on stage with a foreign leader who is very hostile to your home country - a foreign leader who crawled over the backs of the poor to obtain power - anti-American isn't an out of line stream of commentary. When you're over-looking that foreign leader's own policies that are objectively repugnant, and similar to policies you critique in America, just so you can take pot shots at your own country - yeah, that's whacked out.

Points for the "synecdoche" though. You almost never see it used correctly. That and metonymy.

[anapestic]

I'm not arguing that Belafonte's actions were either wise or good. But how can you claim to know that he did what he did just so he could take pot shots at his own country? And what specific pot shots did he take at the U.S., anyway?

My review of the news reports of Belafonte's appearances with Chavez indicates that Belafonte was sharply critical of Bush himself and somewhat critical of the American media, but I don't see anything attributed to him that could be construed as hating America, unless you think that Bush and America are the same thing, and I would object strenuously to that premise.

[PatrickP]

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

No, prayer is, but that's another post.

I know a lot of people who are vehemently opposed to the current administration and some, though not all, of them probably even hate Bush, though they mostly hate his policies. None of those people hate America.

They hate America as it is and will not be satisfied until they are not ashamed in tho provincial and fat and stupid. They should live in Europe as I have and they would begin to see what a great place America really is.

[anapestic]

The people I'm talking about are people I know, Patrick. I don't think you're in a position to know how they feel about America. If you used to hate it and now don't, good for you, but please try not to extrapolate the universe from a sample of one.

[North Dallas Thirty]

Do you have some support for those statements? They don't make any sense to me. You can believe that someone is subtly racist without hating him. Do you hate everyone who disagrees with you?

No. But since my name isn't "Harry Belafonte", whether or not I do is not germane to the discussion of whether or not HE does. And, given his actions, it is quite obvious that he does.

Unless, of course, someone is anti-Bush, in which place they can be completely racist, despotic, and repressive, as Chavez is, and receive Belafonte's cheers and claps.

And here's the money quote, Anapestic:

I'm not arguing that Belafonte's actions were either wise or good.

Then why in the name of all that's holy are you defending them?

I think I know why.

Cynthia McKinney and Harry Belafonte are racist, hateful, anti-Semitic twits. But, since they're anti-Bush, there must be SOMETHING good about them that has to be supported and protected.

[Gus]

Cynthia McKinney is a corrupt, hypocritical jackass who goes through life looking for racism and trouble. While her "angry black woman" routine seems to appeal to enough voters in Dekalb county Georgia to get her elected, an appreciable number recognize that this approach has consequences. Her effectiveness in representing the people of her district is very questionable and she faces a seasoned local politician (County Commissioner) who may unseat her (again)in the primary this summer.

For all her faux anger, she lives in an expensive part of Atlanta and sends her child to an exclusive private school--not the public school system.

Her act is wearing very thin.

[PatrickP]

but please try not to extrapolate the universe from a sample of one.

No, I've always been very happy to be an American. My sample of "one" is actually a sample of the many I have encountered personally as well as in print and on television and the Internet. There's this sort of underlying sense of self-loathing that they possess. I live in Southern California so I encounter it very often among my fellow homos in West Hollyweird and its environs.

[anapestic]

I was not defending Belafonte's actions. I was merely stating that his actions did not mean that he hates America. Hatred of America, NDT, is the broadside that people of your ilk use when you have no argument. Clearly you lack the subtlety of mind to make the distinction between defending someone's actions and disagreeing with an overly broad argument. I guess in your black-and-white world, everyone is either with you or against you.

Neither was I defending McKinney; she is not someone I would vote for. I was saying that the manufactured furor over her actions was simple partisanship.

You don't know anything about me, and your suppositions about my motives have neither foundation nor truth. There is, however, nothing in your posting record here to suggest that lacking either of those elements would keep you from commenting.

[PatrickP]

Surely y'all have better refutations of whatever it is that Belafonte is saying than "Why do you hate America?"

How does, "Why do you hate white people?" work for you?

And no matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says we're here to tell you that not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas and are expressing our solidarity with you. - Harry Belafonte to Hugo Chavez

Yeah that sounds like someone who really digs the U.S. Of A.

Clearly you lack the subtlety of mind to make the distinction between defending someone's actions and disagreeing with an overly broad argument. I guess in your black-and-white world, everyone is either with you or against you.

I'd say that going to a foreign country, a country that isn't exactly an ally of the US, bad-mouthing our President and then saying that you support the socialist revolution of that country's leader (whose legitimacy is questionable) is a pretty cut and dry indication that he does not love this country. So, yes, some things are black and white. Nuance and shades of gray have their place, but sometimes you have to accept reality even when it hurts.

Give it up, dude. Face reality and accept that many on the left despise this country. They are no better than Fred Phelps in this regard.

[PatrickP]

RE: McKinney

I was saying that the manufactured furor over her actions was simple partisanship.

Let's have a look at her record and see if maybe this most recent idiocy of hers is part of a larger pattern causing some to see the striking of a police officer in the context of a woman who is nuts. Maybe it's not partisanship and I'd say that the burden is upon you to prove that it is since you made the accusation. Simply saying that it is partisanship does not make it so.

A complete investigation might reveal" that "President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11.

During a nasty 1996 congressional campaign with racial tension on both sides, she called supporters of her Republican opponent "holdovers from the Civil War days" and "a ragtag group of neo-Confederates." Never mind that her opponent was Jewish.

And during the 2000 presidential campaign, she wrote that "Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time." Never mind that Gore's campaign manager was black. (McKinney is not a particularly partisan finger-pointer—there are enough delusions for both sides.)

After the majority-black district that first elected her to Congress was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, she lashed out at the court as racist. She compared the verdict to Dred Scott, the decision that declared slaves were nothing more than chattel, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which legitimized separate-but-equal American apartheid. (Never mind that she was re-elected in a white majority district two years later.)

Last fall, she tried to solicit money for black Americans from a Saudi prince who said U.S. policy in the Middle East was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks, then she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "Why such a negative reaction to my letter? I believe that when it comes to major foreign policy issues, many prefer to have black people seen and not heard." (To which the National Review's Jonah Goldberg retorted that "she needs to explain why I keep finding these quotes in my morning paper by Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.")

In August 1993, during her first term in office, a Capitol Hill police officer tried to prevent her from bypassing a metal detector, as members of Congress are allowed to do. For years afterward, The Hill reports, the Capitol Police pinned a picture of McKinney to an office wall, warning officers to learn her face because she refuses to wear her member's pin.

As McKinney put it in a 1996 interview with the Progressive, "African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us."

And it goes on and on. More here. http://www.slate.com/?id=2064530

I need a drink.

[Queer Conservative]

The people I'm talking about are people I know, Patrick. I don't think you're in a position to know how they feel about America. - anapestic

Google them. They're not shy about what they believe. And what they believe ain't patriotic any way you parse it.

[Craig Ranapia]

Excuse me? Even if McKinney wasn't an utter moonbat, her egotism knows no bounds. I'm not generally fond of parlour psychoanalysis, but I think it's fair comment to wonder if this woman is an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, a serious mental illness whose symptoms include:
* Confusion
* Inability to make decisions
* Hallucinations
* Delusions
* Nervousness
* Strange statements or behavior
* Anger
* Indifference to the opinions of others
* A tendency to argue
* A conviction that you are better than others, or that people are out to get you.

Or perhaps Miss McKinney is just suffering from advanced ego-titis, and can't understand why it's not a #1 priority for the Captiol Hill Police to memorise what she looks like after every trip to the beauty shop.