Red Bank Mayor Pat Menna, wearing a pre-COVID mask, and Red Bank activist and Board of Education member Sue Viscomi. photo via Viscomi’s facebook page
By Tommy DeSeno
“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by
those who hear it.” – William James
A regrettable development in American culture is that racism
is being obscured by false claims of racism.
Both destroy their targets.
If a racist is one of the worst things a person can be, then
falsely claiming someone is a racist is one of the worst things you can do to a
person. We are in a current whirlwind of
Cancel Culture and instant ostracization by social media. Those who are
careless labeling others as racist can easily ruin the life of someone who had
been careful not to be one. No one should have such power over the reputation
of others, but in these odd times where the Internet is forever, everyone does.
When he was Monmouth Democrat Chairman, Vin Gopal made no secret of his desire to turn Monmouth County into Essex and Hudson Counties south. Now that he is a candidate for State Senate, Gopal is embracing the radical alt-left leaders of the national Democratic Party and enlisting their support for his campaign. DNC Chairman Tom Perez and Deputy Chair Keith Ellison will be in Asbury Park this afternoon to rally support for Gopal. The radical Democrat leaders will also be making stops in New Brunswick and Newark, according to published reports and an email blast by Congressman Frank Pallone.
One tragic thing occurred and one tragic fact was laid bare as a result of the the Princeton professor’s arrest and subsequent saga that ended yesterday with her quietly paying her fines. She both succeeded in cheapening future legitimate charges of racism, and highlighting the deterioration of societies opinion of our cops. Specifically she attempted to ameliorate her humiliation not through accountability but by blatantly fabricating mistreatment by police officers – while invoking the charge of racial motivation. Both the dishonest act itself, and the ease with which the charge might have been accepted as legitimate – had there not been incontrovertible evidence proving otherwise – are tragic. Read the rest of this entry »
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — Juliet of the House of Capulet
I’ve written columns for many outlets over the past 15 years, and one practice I’ve always maintained is to spell out the whole “N” word when it is being used in an historical context, as in, “Slave owners referred to blacks as “N.” I do the same when quoting another person, as in, “He called him a “N.” I’ve also reserved the right to spell it out in condemnation of the word itself, as in, “It’s wrong to call anyone a “N.”
My thinking was that the “N” word is an insult when intended that way. I owe my American brothers and sisters with superior protective pigment the courtesy of not using that word as an insult, because it is worse than other words on the insult scale.
However, I don’t owe anyone a distortion of history. I don’t owe anyone less than exactitude when it comes to a quote, lest I be distorting history myself.
Yet every single editor I’ve had changes the spelled out word to the abbreviated “N word” before my column is published (I’m using the abbreviated “N” word now instead of spelling out the word, in recognition of Ricochet’s past practice).
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t use the word casually. I don’t use it in my own conversations and have not done so in decades. I think the only time I ever really used it was during a fistfight on the playground. There are different rules when throwing down — I would get called a cracker, a honky, etc. and I would yell out as many reciprocal remarks as I could. None of the white or black kids watching considered it racist. Afterwards, even the combatants did not. When you are in a fight, the rules of decorum are suspended. You’retrying to insult the guy you’re punching in the face.
“I have a handicap, you know. I’m a white guy, running in the State of New Jersey. That’s my handicap. “
“I took down an inappropriate, silly tweet after 20 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes. 5 months later, Anti-Semitic, hate filled videos are still posted on Cory Booker’s website. Where’s the race card now? Where’s the media now? “Where’s the liberal left now in defending us against this kind of hate filled Anti-Semitism?”
~Steve Lonegan
Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, the front runner in the August 13 Republican primary for the nomination to replace the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, held a press conference in Kinnelon yesterday afternoon to address the reaction to the tweet(pictured to the right) posted by his campaign on Thursday night during the Democratic Senate Debate.
Lonegan billed the event as a “press conference on political correctness” but the tweet and his opponents “pulling the race card” was the topic. In classic Lonegan fashion, the candidate confronted the problem and flipped the criticism back on his opponents. In this case, his opponents being Booker, who is expected to win the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, the “liberal media” and Dr. Alieta Eck, his opponent for the Republican nomination.
Lonegan said the tweet, which was removed quickly, was posted by a young staffer who remains employed by the campaign. “He made a mistake. I’m not going to ruin his career by firing him. I don’t do that. I will help him learn from it,” Lonegan said.
“Racism, racism, racism. They can’t wait to play the racist card,” Lonegan said of the Booker campaign and the media, “They couldn’t wait for the opportunity, any opportunity at all, a silly map, which is meaningless, sent out by some kid in a campaign, that had no intent other than to ah, whatever the intent was, I don’t even know what the intent was. But they can’t wait to pull the race card. Cause that’s how they play politics.
Death threats, charges of racism and the disapproval of his neighbors couldn’t get Bill Skuby to remove a photo altered to depict President Obama as a witch doctor from the window display of his high end mens clothing store in Spring Lake.
Click on photo for full view
Skuby removed the photo, “for now” he says, that has generated strong reactions, both pro and con, from his window display yesterday. He said respect for the office of President of the United States and the bullying that his bi-racial granddaughter has experienced since the controversy has emerged moved him to remove the photo that has generated nationwide attention. He said he will decide whether to put the controversial photo back into the display on Monday.
Skuby has been using one of his windows for edgy advertising for years. His Halloween display mocked President Obama last year too. This year he added the witch doctor photo over the words Obama Care with the C in Care being a Soviet hammer and sickle and a black hat with F.Y.B.O. embroidered in white on the front and S.L.N.J. Tea Party embroidered on the back. The hats are for sale for $25 and Skuby says the proceeds are going to charity.
This year Skuby’s display is making an impact beyond the borders of the tony town on the Irish Rivera.
Spring Lake resident Barbara Parnell walked past the display on Monday and found it to be “overtly racist.” Parnell called the clothing manufacturers who supply Skuby’s store to complain. She told them that the press had been alerted. “I plead the 5th amendment,” Purnell said when asked directly if she alerted the press. Later during a phone interview she said that one of the people quoted in the Asbury Park Press’s initial article about the display, not her, alerted the media to the display that she said “does not represent the Spring Lake business community.”
While Skuby seemed to be enjoying and cashing in on the publicity on Tuesday and during radio interviews on Wednesday morning, when MMM visited his store on Wednesday afternoon the ugly phone calls and emails from all over the country as well as the negative reaction of his fellow business owners on Third Ave were taking a toll on him and his wife Gail.
“90% percent of the reaction has been positive and supportive, but the 10% has been over the top,” said Skuby, “I’ve gotten six death threats and someone threatened to destroy the store if the display is not removed. I’m resigning from the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District, putting my house on the market and moving my business out of town when my lease expires at the end of the year.”
During a phone interview on Thursday, Skuby said that about half of the negative responses he received were not about race, but about respect for the office of the presidency. “That’s what got me to take it down. I’m not sure I will keep it out of the window, but I see their point.”
Over at NJ.comStar Ledger columnist John Farmer tells a tale of a dinner party he attended where he asked his fellow Caucasian guests (and hosts presumably) if they believe President Obama was born outside of the United States and if they believe he is a Muslim. Most of the guest at the party that took place in a “pretty typical” “slightly upper-middle class neighborhood” admitted to believing that Obama is a foreign born Muslim, so said Farmer in the piece, After nearly four years of Barack Obama, is white America still uneasy with a black man in the White House? Most of the commenters at NJ.com think the column is fiction.
How could Obama even have become president if white America was uneasy with a black man in the White House?
After four years, more Americans of all races are uneasy with that particular black man in the White House! Herman Cain or Allen West would not make me uneasy. Condoleeza Rice wouldn’t make me uneasy. Colin Powell’s uneasiness makes me uneasy, not his skin color.
Farmer’s column is likely the an early indication of how the race card will be played by the left stream media in conjunction with the Obama campaign over the next four + plus months.
What will happen is “white guilt” isn’t working according to polling data come October? What will the lefties do if Mitt Romney chooses a black running mate?
Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon called for fiscal accountability in Newark this week. You wouldn’t have known that unless you read The Star Ledger. The Asbury Park Press, the newspaper/pay site that covers O’Scanlon’s Monmouth County district missed it.
At issue is the $24 million in state aid that Newark is “due” this year, after the state taxpayers kicked in $32 million to Newark’s budget last year, in the face of blatant waste on the part of Mayor Cory Booker and the city council.
Booker squandered $3.7 million in legal and consulting fees in a fight with the New Jersey Devils hockey team over revenue sharing. Booker lost the fight, which even The Star Ledger says was a waste and should have been settled, and vowed to spend more—O’Scanlon says $1 million more, The Ledger says $100 thousand more—in appealing the ruling that favored The Devils. As the ruling stands, Newark owes the Devils $600 thousand.
Newark’s city council is disgrace. A “gaggle of blowhards,” Ledger editor Tom Moran calls them, who “awards itself the highest salaries in the state, along with a free car.” Newark’s city council is paid six times more than Jersey City’s city council, according to Moran. $3.45 million in salaries paid to the Newark city council in 2011.
Also at issue is that the overpaid council has yet to pass their budget that was due in February. Yet, they want the $24 million from Jersey taxpayers.
According to The Ledger, O’Scanlon said,
“Cory Booker is fighting an expensive personal vendetta with one hand while he has the other hand out expecting state aid”
and
“As the ranking Republican member of the Assembly Budget Committee, I cannot, in good conscience, imagine handing Newark another $24 million when the mayor is continuing to rack up legal fees and costs for litigation that could have been settled months ago,” O’Scanlon said. “The state should not be in the habit of bailing out towns and cities that are unwilling to help themselves.”
The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran is back to his old tricks of using the race card while attempting to advance his political agenda.
In early 2010, shortly after Governor Chris Christie took office, Moran tried to derail the Christie administration by teaming up with Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver to call Christie and his team “…white men, most of them political neophytes…” who never rode a bus and couldn’t understand how their deeply their economic policies were impacting “working poor families.”
Moran did that before he realized that Christie is a “force of nature who could probably make a dog sing if he put his mind to it.”
In a column posted on Tuesday that defends the President’s constitutional pronouncements about the Supreme Court’s right to overturn ObamaCare Moran employed Jeanane Garofalo’s tactic of accusing Obama’s critics of being racist.
Because Moran is smarter and prettier, his accusation is sublter than Garofalo’s crude remarks, yet it is no less offensive:
Obama went on to make an important point: That if the court overrules the health care law, it will be practicing judicial activism. Conservatives have been complaining about judicial activism since the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and the heat rose considerably after Roe v. Wade.
Maybe fellow Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine can explain the difference between judicial activistism and constructionism to Moran.
Activistism is when a Court finds, invents or redefines a constitutional provision in order to make new law that is consistent with its political or ideological preference. That is what the U.S. Supreme Court did in Roe v Wade and what the NJ Supreme Court did in the Abbott decisions.
Constructionism is what a court does when it decides that the legislative or executive branches exceeded the power granted to them in the Constitution, like mandating people buy something they don’t want.
Moran, like Obama, probably knows the difference. Also like Obama, he probably just doesn’t think the Constitution is that important. That’s OK for Moran who hasn’t sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. It’s not OK for the President who has sworn that oath.
The race card worked well for liberals in 2008. The invoked it successfully to mute Obama’s poltical opponents in the Democratic primary and during the general election. They appealed to ‘white guilt” to get Obama elected. It was a disgusting and effective strategy.
But the race card is played out. It didn’t work in the politicization of the Trayvon Martin tragedy. It didn’t work when Garofalo played it. It didn’t work in 2010.
Moran should stop playing the race card. Conservative opposition to ObamaCare has nothing to do with the Jim Crow laws, just as Governor Christie’s economic policies have nothing to do with how many of his cabinet members and staffers have ever ridden a bus.
Moran’s job is the inform, educate and persuade. He should leave the obfuscation to politicians, activists and B-rate entertainers looking for their next gig.
Imagine if Rutgers announced they paid $32,000 to have a singer show up in Black Face, slur some drawl, shuffle through a few soft shoe steps and sing “Mammy” to the uproarious delight of white students. I’m betting the lot of you would have your magic sound-bite generating machines set on “I abhor racism” and cranked into overdrive. Someone, somewhere, would fire Don Imus.
Well, Rutgers did just that when they booked Chilean actress “Snooki” to speak last night, to deliver the uplifting and not dangerous message that the student body at Rutgers isn’t partying hard enough. Yes – pass me a Bud and a hypodermic needle.
MTV’s “Jersey Shore” Show is not a reality show with cameras turned on people living their lives. It is a scripted show with paid actors pretending to be someone else, and it involves racism.
Jersey Shore wanted the public to think this show was about Italian kids. That’s why they painted the Italian flag on their house. That’s why they scripted them to talk about “Italian family values” (in between all the casual sex and punching people). That’s why they are filming in Italy.
Know what else the producers did the first season? Never once mentioned any of the actors’ last names. Ever. Why? Because half the actors aren’t Italian. Snooki is Chilean. Others have last names like Ortiz, Farley and Pivarnik. What part of Italy are they from? MTV hid that these kids weren’t Italian. Black Face.
And that’s why it’s racist. MTV took a racist stereotype of a knuckleheaded, sexually uncontrolled, violent criminal, called him a quintessentially Italian name (Guido) and said “let’s make a show!” Being unable to find Italian kids who act that way, they hired actors who aren’t Italian to fill the rolls. Making a show out of a racist stereotype and hiring actors of a different persuasion to play the stereotype means you can only call it one thing: Black Face. It matters not that this time it is Italian Face. Black folks didn’t act that why when Jolsen sang, and Italians don’t act like Snooki. It’s a stereotype.
Don’t let MTV argue the popularity of the show. Stepin Fetchit was popular. Will MTV bring that back?
And don’t argue that the money only came from the mandatory student fee account (as if that’s not bad enough) and wasn’t taxpayer funds. That’s the same foolish point Planned Parenthood makes when they say, “We don’t pay for abortions with tax dollars – we pay for other stuff.” Money is fungible. Support for one end of a business supports another.
So Governor Christie, paesano, do you have anything to say about this?
