Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Surprise! John Burns' White Victimization Rant on Big Journalism Attracts Racist Commenters


John Burns, leader of the St. Louis tea party's failed campaign against public transportation and James O'Keefe's fellow conspirator on a plot to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter, is back with another White Victimization rant. In January, Burns claimed that Wash U students deciding not to give Bristol Palin $19,000 was just like segregation. Today, he's back claiming that Attorney General Eric Holder said that "Whites Can't be Victims of Racial Injustice Because They Haven't Suffered Enough."

The problem for Burns' analysis? Holder didn't say anything of the sort. Here's Holder's quote from Politico:
The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.

"Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia—which was inappropriate, certainly that (note: Burns dropped this when he reprinted the quote)…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black.
For anyone with a rough knowledge of the case, the context of Holder's remarks is pretty clear. What happened in Philadelphia was an isolated incident instigated by a clearly crazy dude, King Samir Shabazz. It was disturbing, as the actions of insane people often are. But it was not in any way similar to the systematic efforts to disenfranchise black voters back in the 60s. Those were actions designed to prevent an entire group of people from voting: the recent incident was a crazy guy acting crazy.

But Burns, as usual, isn't interested in what Holder actually said. Rather, he just invents thoughts, attributes them to Holder, and then gets morally outraged by them. For example:
So the obvious takeaway from this is that some racism is worse than others. Some racist injustice is worthy of prosecution, other racism is not. Apparently, whites simply haven’t suffered enough. They don’t deserve legal protection. So, any injustices committed against white people should be swept under the rug. It’s not worth Eric Holder’s time.
Of course, Holder didn't say anything like this, and there's no reason whatsoever for a sane person to believe that he would. And then there's this:
During the healthcare debate, Holder likened opposition of Obamacare to opposition to civil rights. Not civil rights in the sense that, “all Americans share civil rights,” mind you, but “Civil Rights” as in the struggle for black legal equality in America during the 40’s-60’s. Translation: those who oppose Obamacare are racists. Such language is naked race-baiting and scapegoating.
Actually, that's not at all what Holder said:
It's not surprising that opponents, having lost in Congress, have taken to the courts. We saw similar challenges to laws that created Social Security and established new civil rights protections. Those challenges ultimately failed, and so will this one.
So Burns is just inventing quotes from Holder in order to play the "White Victimization Card." And sadly, the readers at Breitbart and Dana Loesch's site eat that crap up. Even more distrubing than Burns' White Victim fantasies are the blatantly racist comments that followed. There were commenters calling for Obama and Holder to be "swinging from a tree:"

There were commenters who expressed support for White Nationalism:

And there were all kinds of other vile, disgusting, racist comments:








If Big Journalism is really worried about racism, they might want to start banning some of the knuckle-draggers who regularly comment there.

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