by Teri O'Brien
The eagerly anticipated return of AMC’s outstanding series, “Mad Men,” now in its fourth season, coming on what we hope will mercifully be the heels of the latest Kabuki sideshow in Obama’s post-racial America, the Shirley Sherrod Charade, seems an appropriate time to note an interesting cultural phenomenon: “racist” has become the new “homo.”
The use of that now-quaint sounding, archaic term is intentional because it harkens back to the time punctiliously chronicled by “Mad Men,” not only in its recreation of daily life, with children playing with dangerous household objects like dry cleaning bags, and pregnant women puffing on cigarettes, which at that time were sometimes referred to by what has now become the new derogatory term for homosexuals, but in its presentation of their treatment by larger society. The early sixties were not exactly the best time to be “gay,” to put it mildly. Even the slightest suggestion that one had that predilection could end a promising career and doom one to virtual banishment, so much so that many male homosexuals married women, using them as “beards,” human shields against whispers about being “light in the loafers.
Contemporary character assassins reject the use of “gay” as a term of opprobrium. If anything, left-wing elites in popular culture, academia and traditional media celebrate the “gay lifestyle.” They prefer to heap their scorn for those, like mouth-breathing Christians, who suggest that conventional marriage, or in the bizarre lexicon of the most radical, “opposite marriage,” is any way superior to so-called “same sex marriage,” and for the most contemptible group of all, “racists.” Using the term “racist” to marginalize, smear and destroy their enemies is a win-win for the Left. First because, they, and only they, are qualified to determine who the real racists are. For example, as the self-appointed designees of who shall wear the scarlet “R,” they determined that the late Senator Robert Byrd, a man who was an enthusiastic member and recruiter for an organization that routinely murdered innocent black people, the Ku Klux Klan, and went on to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and to use the “N” word, was not only not a “racist,” but as Bill Clinton eulogized, a “good person.” Members of the Tea Party are “racists” because the Left says so.
The effectiveness of such selective application of the term began to diminish, right around the time that an increasing number of Americans, who tend to be fair-minded, and who largely accept Dr. King’s compelling, aspirational and magnificent suggestion that we evaluate our fellow human beings not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, noticed its selective application. No matter. When the word loses any semblance of its meaning, and therefore its power to malign, change the meaning of the word, and so the Left has done, tying it to fealty to their failed ideology . As explained Princeton professor, Melissa Harris-Lacewell explained recently on MS-NBC, “if you regularly support public policy which will have a disparate impact, creating greater inequality for people of color,” you might just be a racist.
Or as stated by our latest heroine of racial healing and redemption, Shirley Sherrod, who in her now-famous, soaring, uplifting NAACP speech, slandered opponents of Obama’s health care scheme by declaring that their resistance is “because you have a black president.”
According to at least one career attorney at the Justice Department, this new definition of “racist” has been enshrined in official, if unspoken, policy at Attorney General Eric “Nation of Race Cowards” Holder’s “Justice” Department.
Now the Left wields the term “racist” as a cudgel, in the same way that the word “homo” or the “F” word that they claim was screamed at Congressman Barney Frank last March as he walked to the Capitol, was used in the early 1960‘s, to terrorize their opponents, and send them cowering silently in the corner, lest the charge turn them into pariahs. Fortunately, it is not likely to work this time, for the same reason that nothing they do works in the long run. People are catching on. The Left must always create an alternate universe, with an invented language and made-up events because, as Dr. Thomas Sowell so pithily stated, reality is not optional.
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Teri O’Brien is an author, speaker, recovering (non-practicing) attorney, and dangerous thinker. She hosts the Teri O’Brien Show on Blog Talk Radio, 2-3:30 p.m. Central time. You can contact her at http://www.teriobrien.com
