The sorts of people who call blacks racist @glennbeck @AndrewBreitbart

source http://www.openleft.com/diary/19721/the-sorts-of-people-who-call-blacks-racist

Glenn Beck is a type.  Most folks have trouble recognizing it, because the type is not well-defined for them in their experience.  He's the type that calls blacks racists in public.  Lots of folks think that sort of thing.  Racism has--fortunately for the most part--become a kind of taboo in (most of) our society, and so most whites who still harbor significant racial resentment find it far more comfortable to convince themselves that it's blacks (and other minorities) who are the real racists.  But the difference between someone who may comfort themselves with such thoughts and someone who openly proclaims them to the world is what sets apart the type I'm talking about.  And it is a type that's fortunately not well known to most of us.  But it's starting to become much, much clearer if folks are paying attention.

Of course there's Beck, as mentioned above.  More recently, attention has focused on Andrew Breitbart, who pushed the hoax that Shirley Sherrod is a racist--and that the NAACP crowd she spoke to applauded her racism.  But now Media Matters has exposed a writer for Breitbart, Dr. Kevin Pezzi, who is so far gone that even Breitbart has gotten rid of him.  And yet, the similarities are far more striking than the differences:

What the Pezzi saga tells us about Breitbart

August 05, 2010 6:05 pm ET by Ben Dimiero

Earlier today, we pointed out that Andrew Breitbart's Big Government published posts from Dr. Kevin Pezzi smearing Shirley Sherrod as a racist.

Pezzi is rather?overtly racist, and has repeatedly used racial epithets like "Japs" and "Chinks," and claimed Native and African Americans should have been grateful for their subjugation by whites. Additionally, Pezzi is a doctor/"sex expert"/author/inventor/huckster, who, among other things, says he has "beaten Bill Gates" on a math aptitude test, is "bigger than some porno stars," and stumbled upon a cure for cancer. Pezzi has also apparently?created?a series of at least six fake MySpace profiles of women claiming to be big fans of his sex books.

In response to our posts, Big Government has now disappeared Pezzi's articles. If you attempt to visit the pages for?his posts and bio, you are greeted with an error. While Big Government has disappeared Pezzi from their website, they posted the?following?"Editorial Note" from "Publius," which doesn't mention Pezzi?by name:?

Earlier this week, we read an on-line column which provided one of the most thorough and well-researched examinations of the many controversies surrounding former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod. We asked the author of the column for permission to reprint his article. Since publishing the articles, we have been made aware of other writings from this author which do not reflect the principles and values of this site. Because of this, we have removed the articles from Big Government. While we stand by the information contained in the articles we published, we do not wish to see the underlying issue confused or diminished by other work the author has done. We regret the error.

?
So, let me get this straight: After Breitbart and his "Big" websites became the focus of well-deserved criticism and national ridicule for posting a misleadingly edited video and smearing Shirley Sherrod as a racist, their defense was that Breitbart merely posted the video he was given, and he didn't bother doing any extra research. (Breitbart later?conceded?that the video was out of context and that he "should have waited for the full video.")

Yet in the wake of this embarrassment, Big Government sought out posts from a guy smearing Sherrod as a racist without doing any research into his background. Notice a pattern here? Breitbart and co. are so eager to cover their tracks and somehow "prove" that Sherrod is a racist that they have long-since abandoned any pretense of responsible behavior.

Once upon a time, the GOP used to have a couple of reckless, wild-eyed backbenchers in Congress who would spout off just about anything that popped into their heads.  Then they made Newt Gingrich their leader.  One upon a time, rightwing media had a good deal more such figures, but most of them were relatively discrete when the spotlight was on them.  Then the Reagan Administration destroyed the Fairness Doctrine, and Rush Limabaugh was turned into the first post-fairness media star of the right.  Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart, and Kevin Pezzi as the logical extensions of this "progression".

It's not just that Pezzi is a racist.  It's of a piece that he's also:

a doctor/"sex expert"/author/inventor/huckster, who, among other things, says he has "beaten Bill Gates" on a math aptitude test, is "bigger than some porno stars," and stumbled upon a cure for cancer.

This sort of megalomania on the individual level is not aberational.  It's the logical expression of the underlying attitude that denigrates blacks and puffs up whites in the first place.  It's the "Drum Major Instinct" that Dr. Martin Luther King so thoroushly described in his famouse speech of that name so long ago.  This is what white supremacry looks like.  It's what folks who call blacks "racist" look like.  It's not a pretty picture at all.  But ultimately, it's more foolish, sad and pathetic than it is anything else.