The Philosopher king of the Untutored Mob
Yo Rushbo!
I was sitting here at my table working on a book when I saw your rotund figure on television exclaiming that the President’s response to the unlawful arrest of Skip Gates – my friend and the most distinguished Academic in America – was “a black militant response!” You also said that “agents of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor” had attacked the poor white fireman in New Haven” and now white policeman are under attack from the “East Wing of the White House.” Although I know you are a meglo-maniacal know nothing who will do most anything to boost your ratings and stay in the news, I was still shocked at this rancid incendiary rhetoric.
The more I hear from you the more several things become crystal clear: You are totally without any sense of decency or responsibility; you are not deeply committed to anything beyond gratification of your enormous appetites, which obviously dominate your life; You are embarrassingly ignorant and unread; you will say anything to keep your ratings up; you care nothing for the poor white saps who are so devoid of self esteem or real knowledge about the world that they self-identify as “Ditto Heads.” Which means that they rubber stamp anything you say.
You are their philosopher king Rush. And if there were enough of them, I’d bet my bottom dollar they would put you in charge of the country. Thank goodness they are a small fraction of the American population, and they are obviously the dumbest. It is hard to tell if this is tragedy or farce. After all, Senator Al Franken was right about you: You are a big fat idiot! Hence in you we find the tragic-comic absurdity of the jabbering jester as philosopher king
Yet every time I attempt to dismiss you as an inconsequential fool, I remember what the great American film maker Frank Capra says about how Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini looked like cartoon characters to military film makers at the onset of World War II. Tasked with making ant-Axis propaganda films for the US Army, Capra said their work was complicated by the fact that Hitler looked like the great silent movie comic actor Charlie Chaplin, and Benito looked like he was having a fit, with all of his over the top dramatic gestures. And we know how dangerous these two jokers turned out to be. The problem was how do you get people to recognize the danger of two guys who looked and behaved like cartoon characters.
So I recognize the fact that because you look like W.C.Fields on dope, and talk like a professional fool, does not mean you aren’t dangerous. Talk radio is a powerful medium because it comes right into your ear and you can listen while you are doing something else. So people who drive around all day can listen to you. Although frankly, anyone who would rather listen to you everyday rather than the musical fare radio offers – from Bach to the blues – probably suffers from some sort of intellectual deficit and is emotionally disturbed.
These lost benighted souls turn to you for what amounts to therapy or catharsis alas, and you repay them with the equivalent of intellectual junk food, the kind of stuff that’s devoid of spiritual nutrition, ingredients that can enrich their lives and lift them to a higher plane. Everything you do is designed to bring out the worse in them and cannot possibly lead them to viable solutions to their problems. Another thing we can assume about your audience given the time of day you are on the air: They are not the people who are running this country, and in all probability they don’t hold a job that requires serious attention at all. Hence they are far from the brightest bulbs in the box. Not many Ivy League grads there.
In fact Rush, they are the same kinds of people that Hitler and Mussolini appealed to. But the Nazi experience is most instructive in your case, because interestingly enough the Italian fascist movement was not anti-semitic in the beginning. In fact there is evidence that Mussolini thought Hitler was a nut on the Jewish question, after all, as the Jewish Historian Lenni Brenner has shown, there were Jews among the founding members of the Italian fascist movement. Hence the centrality of racism to the Nazi project makes it resemble the American experience more than the Italian. And for good reason: Most of the Nazi ideas about race came from here, as David Blaine has shown.
It is well know by serious students of the rise of the Third Reich in Germany that the most important vehicle for transporting the German nation from a leader in science, philosophy and art music to a nation of barbarians capable of murdering six million of their countrymen was the way Dr. Goebbles employed talk radio to incite the untutored mob by convincing them that all of their problems were caused by the Jews.
The fact is that Germany’s problems at the time were mostly caused by the Armistice conditions set in the Versailles Treaty of 1919, under which the Germans were punished for starting World War I. Just like the present economic crisis is the result of misbegotten Republican military adventures and economic incompetence. But to listen to you, and your Republican partners in crime like Patty Buchanan, one would think the problems of the white working class are caused by black and Hispanic people!
I confess that I am at a lost to understand what your end game is Rush. Do you want to start a race war in America? Well in spite of many similarities, this is not Weimar Germany. For one thing a black man sits in the White house and there is a black man sitting in the Attorney General’s office who controls the federal police forces. Hence if any of your brown shirt ditto heads attempt a beer hall putch they will be crushed by the strong arm of the state, just as Hitler was. But unlike in Germany they will get no second act in America Today. You came along too late Rush; the best you are going to accomplish with your version of Operation Helter Skelter is to incite some poor dumb rednecks to murder ala Charles Mansion. You appeal to the most backward and unstable elements in white society, the genuine failures who are looking for a scapegoat to explain away the fact that they are white men without wealth or power in a land set up for them to make it.
It’s not surprising that you understand this lunatic fringe of losers, because in your heart you must say: “There but for the grace of God go I.” For no one knows better than you that without the gift of gab and talent for buffoonery you would be one of their number; your history in broadcasting attest to this possibility. You were on your way to failure in the broadcast industry when you stumbled upon the angry white guy routine and things turned around. And I am convinced that it is the desire for money and adulation that motivates you. And the struggles of the poor dumb peckerwoods that you fleece of their emotional energy and affections matter little to you except as a body count for Arbitron ratings. That’s how your bread is buttered, and from the look of things we can surmise that you consume a mighty share of it.
I fully understand that given the fact that you are a big fat idiot this conversation is way above your head – after all, your success with the untutored mob is a function of the fact that you are not much smarter than your listeners. It is a classic case of the blind leading the blind. Yet I feel compelled to pull your coat to a couple of things, and as with much of what I have said here this too is intended to enlighten a wider audience. First off, even if skip Gates had shouted at the cops and told them to “get tha fuck outta here” after he showed them his Harvard I.D. and Drivers License they should have got tha fuck out!
Cops are public servants not our masters. The reason we have constitutional protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” is to protect American citizens against the arbitrary abuse of police powers exercised by the occupying British Redcoats during colonial times. In fact all of our constitutional rights were created in response the tyrannical practices of the British crown! But since you recently confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence I don’t expect you to understand any of this. Still, ignorance of the constitution is no excuse.
The second point I must make before ending this letter is: President Obama’s response to the Abuse of the police powers of the state in violating the soverign rights of a citizen was measuered and reasonable in the extreme. A black militant would have said: “This is just another example of how racist peckerwood pigs behave when dealing with black people. These pussies are being driven mad with penis envy – just like that fat dumb ass motherfucker Rush Limbaugh. All of them racist crackers can kiss my ass! As far as I’m concerned They are all a bunch of paleface blue eyed Devils just like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us. They are evil by nature so what can we expect. But Allah is going to bring these evil cracker mother fuckers to their knees soon, because we are living in the last days and time and Amerikka is going down just like Babylon! In the mean time I urge my brothers and sister to buy guns just like the whiteys are doing… and if one of those pale ugly no-lip booty-less devils put their hands on you put their ass six feet under!!!” that’s how black militants talk Rush.
In truth Barack Obama’s statement was measured and milquetoast; just like virtually all of the black commentators who are given prominence as spokesman on black issues on the tube. If I didn’t have first hand knowledge of how black commentators are selected in white controlled media I would be scratching my head and wondering where they find these guys. But let me be clear Rush, all though you are far too dumb to dig it: none of the people whom you and other right wing white hysterics call the far left of the Democratic party are what you say they are. I am a life long Democrat – a Yellow Dog Democrat in fact – and I represent the far left of the Democratic party. And I’m not nearly as nice as the people you continuously slander. I hope you die the death of a polecat and stink your way to hell! Now that’s how we roll.
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Playthell Benjamin
Fall 2009
An Open Letter to Dr. Laura
Posted in On Right Wing Pundits and Bloviators, Playthell on politics with tags Abe Foxman, anti-Defamation League, Dr. Laura, Playthell's commentary on Dr. Laura, Rabbi Shmuley, racist radio on August 21, 2010 by playthellHi Dr. Laura
You may not remember me, but I remember well the night we met. Let me refresh your memory. It was at a book party for the prolific and erudite Rabbi Shmuley Boetec about six years ago. It was a posh affair on Fifth Avenue where you and I were guest speakers. I was not familiar with your work beyond the fact that you were considered a prominent and well respected relationship expert. In fact, that was the raison d’ etre for the discussion, as Rabbi Shmuley was also a celebrated relationship expert, having written the wildly popular Book: “Kosher Sex.” I admired your spunk and intellect that night, as you boldly pointed out that you disagreed with some of the learned Rabbi’s relationship advice because he was a male chauvinist!
You might remember that I was the last of an impressive array of speakers, all of whom had been given strict time limits; I was the last to speak precisely because Rabbi Shmuley wanted me to speak with no limits. This was because Schmuley and I were co-hosting a radio show on WWRL AM in New York at the time, he had heard my take on class, ethnicity and race in the US and he wanted the audience to hear my analysis of Afro-American / Jewish relations in historical perspective.
We had known each other less than a week, but after our first encounter on air he began to read up on me. He discovered a feature story I had written in Emerge magazine, “Blacks and Jews: Our Tattered Alliance,” which had attracted a lot of attention in news paper reviews around the country and resulted in my being invited to present a lecture on the topic at Harvard – a recording of which I shall soon place online. Shmuley, who has a great admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King – whom he has repeatedly said “has done more to bring the teachings of the ancient Hebrew prophets to life than any Rabbi I know” – thought my views on the subject of blacks and Jews in America would bring some much needed clarity to the muddled thinking on this subject.
Considering the uniqueness of the event – the audience was packed with blacks and Jews of varying class and educational backgrounds, religious and secular – I’m sure you must remember it despite your whirlwind schedule. Hence you may recall the tremendous ovation my presentation received. For no one greeted my message more enthusiastically than you, as you embraced me warmly and showered me with accolades. I had no doubt that your expression of fraternity was genuine, as you gave me your private phone number and invited me to call and chat sometimes.
Rabbi Shmuley
spreading a message of racial Harmony in the US
That’s why I was shocked and surprised when I heard of the racial imbroglio that you now find yourself in. I confess that I have not followed your career closely, but when I found myself being stalked by a deranged female fan of my radio show, you were the first person I considered calling for advice as to how to handle the situation. Especially as she was using the internet to launch anonymous attacks and I had read where you had been the victim of several such attacks. But I had written your number in a phone book and never transferred it to my computer file and when I looked it up the ink had faded on a couple of the digits and I couldn’t make out the entire number; I started to call your show but thought the better of it. But judging from the way you “helped” the young black female caller that touched off the present firestorm, perhaps I made the right decision.
However it was then that I learned how big you had become. According to the information I am reading now you are the biggest female radio show host in the nation – and the only radio host of either gender who has your own You Tube channel. Now it has all suddenly come crashing down…what happened? How could it all end with a single phone call? I guess you must be wondering the same thing. After taking a close look at the incident that precipitated your demise I would attribute your dramatic fall from grace to two fundamental factors: A lifetime of white Privilege and the arrogance it produces in dealing with nonwhites, and the hubris that results from feelings of omnipotence when one is constantly sought out by others for their superior wisdom in dealing with the trials and tribulations that life presents to us all.
Unless I am to assume that you had dropped a tab of acid, or ingested some other mind altering drug, when you were browbeating the black female caller from Colorado who sought your advice in dealing with friends and family of her white husband that constantly accosted her with racially offensive remarks, then the explanation for your behavior must either be the reasons suggested above, or you are indeed a cold blooded racist!
Since I grew up in the apartheid South in the hey day of white supremacy I think I know an avowed racist cracker when I see one, and you just don’t strike me as that. But when ignorance, arrogance, and a sense of white entitlement are combined with hubris the result may well be a distinction without a difference. How dare you assume that you know best when Afro-Americans should be offended by the use of the word Nigger? Who appointed you the arbiter of our sensibilities?
Failing to heed the adage, “When you are already in a hole stop digging,” you attempted to justify your racist drivel by accusing the young black woman – who went by the nomme de Plume “Jade’ – of being “too sensitive.” Then you offered the silly half baked explanation that because black comedians say “Nigger” it should be cool for whites to say it: “”I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing,” you screeched. And you accused her of “NAACPing me,” what the hell was that all about? I cannot imagine a response that more perfectly combines ignorance, arrogance and white chauvinism. Since you are a Jew let me put this in terms that you will surely be able to understand. Unless you really are as silly and shallow as you appear to be in this instance.
Have you ever heard Jewish comics perform in the Borscht Belt resorts of the Catskills? Well I have. When I was in the boxing business I had occasion to spend time in the training camps of the great pugilists Michael Spinks and Timmy Witherspoon, who trained at The Concord and Kutchers. The way the deal worked was that the fighters were to make themselves as visible as possible while training there, which included having dinner in the main dining room, which is also where the floor shows were staged. The shows always included a comedian, that’s why these Borscht Belt resorts became the training ground for so many great Jewish comedians.
Minnie Tonka: Jewish Burlesque Commediene
Would Jews find this routine funny if performed by a black woman?
What struck me most emphatically about the performances of these comedians was that Jews were often the butt of their jokes. Just like black comedians working the chittlin circuit – although the comics of the past had a better sense of the racial realities and far too much self respect to yell “Nigger!” in public. Yet when the language of the Jewish comics is appropriated by outsiders it was considered anti-Semitic. Just like when whites appropriate the language of those black comedians Afro-Americans consider it racist! Furthermore the anti-Jewish epithet ‘Kike” is a term German Jews created to describe Jews from Eastern Europe.
But does that give others the right to use this term with impunity? When put in these terms it is clear that your logic does not hold and your argument falls apart! Furthermore, no group on earth is more sensitive to ethnic insults that American Jews! You all even have an organization with a vast research capability that monitors not only what is said about Jews in the media – broadcast and print – but also scours academic and literary texts for arguments considered injurious not only to American Jewish interests, but that of the far away state of Israel as well.
It’s called the Anti-Defamation League, and the black community has no watch dog guarding our interests that even begins to approach the power of Abe Foxman, who has destroyed quite a few careers of people for transgressions far less odious than yours! If you don’t know about this, then you should Google the late great investigative journalist Robert I. Freedman and read his work on the ADL. So why didn’t you tell Jade “Don’t do an Abe Foxman on me?” You accuse black people of applying a “double standard” because we tolerate remarks from black comedians that we find offensive when others use them against us – although there is a clear difference in intent if your are laughing with me or laughing at me – yet Jews are just as guilty of this. Double standards indeed!
Abe The Grand Inquisitor!
Why you did not recognize this is anybody’s guess; only you know for sure whether the motive was ignorance or arrogance. I strongly suspect it was a bit of both – as opposed to the plain old racism of which you stand accused. In other words, like most white media talking heads, you just didn’t have a clue what the fuck you were talking about! According to the information I have been able to acquire about your academic training you hold a Doctorate in physiology from Columbia University. Although that is an impressive achievement, it in no way qualifies you to pontificate authoritatively on matters that require knowledge of sociology, psychology and history. Which means that you were in over your head to begin with in attempting to answer the question the caller put to you; hence a little humility would have been in order rather than the haughty arrogance you displayed.
Perhaps people who call radio show hosts to seek advice on matters about which the host has no demonstrated competence – either in terms of academic credentials, demonstrated excellence in performance, or a written paper trail – deserve whatever they get. But then, arrogant radio show hosts who offend entire sections of the population with racial or ethnic insults that encourage injurious behavior against the offended group deserve what they get too. And the spectacle of a millionaire bloviator – who has amassed a fortune broadcasting opinions she is unqualified to offer over 250 radio stations nation wide crying about her First Amendment Rights being violated when listeners complain – is ludicrous!
It is a rare occasion when true wisdom flows from the mouth of Howard Stern, but he is certainly right regarding your ridiculous whining about having your first Amendment Rights violated. It remains to be seen if he is also right in his prediction that you are faking the funk when you say that you are going to retire from radio, and you may be sure that I shall watch your career moves with interests. And I shall henceforth offer critical comments on your bloviations when the situation demands it.
But let us dwell a bit on the First amendment issue, because it is a dramatic illustration of the point I wish to make about your ignorance regarding history. It also demonstrates my long standing contention that white commentators don’t necessarily have to know what they are talking about to be provided a platform to pontificate to the multitudes on critical issues. The First Amendment was designed to prevent the government from suppressing unpopular speech, mainly speech critical of government itself.
It was conceived by men who knew all to well the tyranny that results from unchecked power because they had witnessed it under the monarchies of Europe. This is the same impulse that led the architects of the Constitution to prohibit the government from establishing a state religion; for they had also witnessed the power of the Church of England. What the first Amendment does not do, nor was it ever intended to do, is protect people like you from being muzzled either by your boss – in this case the station owners who broadcast your shows – or the machinations of the marketplace.
Therefore if parties who are offended by your caustic pontifications decide to boycott your sponsors unless they dump you, that’s not a violation of your First Amendment Rights! And you discredit yourself as a serious commentator on important societal issues every time you say so. Furthermore, it marks you as a hypocrite since the organized Jewish community is the best in the country at playing this game and I have never heard you utter a peep about it.
Of course – like Rush and Sean and Glenn – you appeal mostly to mindless sycophants, the kind of people the late great Dean of American letters and insightful judge of human foible and folly H. L. Mencken called “Boobus Americanus.” Thus it is no surprise that you have received thousands of e-mails supporting you in your mindless folly. But there is one e-mail that you must publicly disavow – and the sooner the better for the sake of your reputation – and that’s the one from Silly Sarah Palin, the verbose Alaskan barbarian. The reasons why you must reject her offer of sisterly support is first because you are on record calling her a ignoramous and an unfit mother after John McCain choose her as his presidential running mate – thus you will look like a shameless charlatan if you don’t – and second because she is a transparent racist who is apparently willing to incite a race war in America if it serves her interests: political and personal.
Palin’s Role Model
A Real Vicious Bitch!
Sarah is, by her own admission. “a pit bull in lipstick;” which is synonymous with an evil dangerous bitch! And you cannot lie down with dogs without getting up with fleas. How you handle your newly minted relationship with Sarah Palin – who is not only a transparent racist but is as shallow as a dry creek bed – will tell us even more about who you really are than anything you have said or done thus far. As the Zen Master said to his devotee: “We’ll see.”
Ps: You say that you want to debate these questions: Really?
Well I’m available 24/7, call me ASAP and let’s get it on!
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As always, Playthell George Benjamin
Harlem, New York
August 21, 2010
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