A Shouldn't Equal B

I should not be able to read a four paragraph long blog post about sports and entertainment news and be able to figure out the poster’s political affiliation when said poster never brings up the subject of politics. Similarly, I should not be able to read a book about baseball and determine, without his ever discussing the subject, which political party the author calls his own. A short while ago, however, I was able to. Neither of the two cases above involved actual discussion of politics, government, or policy. Nope, it was all about race. That’s a shame.

This thought was brought about because of what happened when I did a Google search on a rumor I heard on the radio. One day recently I heard that Brenda Warner had expressed a desire for Denzel Washington to play the role of her husband, Kurt, in a movie an upcoming movie about the former quarterback. That seemed odd to me, so I looked up the rumor. The first Google link was to a blog by someone named Debbie Schlussel. (Link) I’d never heard of Schlussel prior to this clicking on the link. In her blog post, she briefly quoted a column from The Arizona Republic:

He has met with producers interested in doing a movie on his life story. If Brenda had her way, Warner said, Denzel Washington would land the lead role.

“It would probably challenge Denzel in ways he’s never been challenged before,” Warner mused.

I shook my head as I read the quoted text. Then I read a bit further. The next two paragraphs and one sentence of Schlussel’s post are:

Washington is a great actor, but this is just dumb. What are they gonna call it–”Down Wit’ Dat, My Bruthah: The Kurt Warner Story, Exuberant Suntan Edition”? I’m always annoyed at the pretentiousness of people like Brenda Warner who want to show the world how “enlightened” and non-racist they are by insisting that someone Black should play someone White and vice versa in the most absurd of examples. That’s what’s going on here. And it’s phony. The kowtowing to liberals and political correctness stretches the bounds of the ludicrous.

See, she has it all wrong. And not because of race. Brenda Warner wants to play herself in the movie, and maybe she has a thing for Denzel Washington. But if she was really smart about this, she’d know that Denzel should play Brenda Warner. And if we’re really gonna keep it real on this, Whoopi Goldberg would be cast as Kurt Warner.

You know, just to be down with the struggle.

I shook my head again, but in a much different way. “This woman’s obviously a Republican,” I thought to myself. I clicked on the “ABOUT DEBBIE” link at the top of her blog. The beginning of the page begins:

DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL:
Conservative political commentator, radio talk show host, columnist, and attorney

Schlussel’s unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism and a host of other issues make her a popular speaker and television and radio news talk show guest, both nationally & internationally.

The second and third sentences of Schlussel’s Wikipedia page read, “Her writing frequently targets the largely Muslim population of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, which she refers to as “Dearbornistan.” Her columns are often provocative and controversial, specifically those detailing what she considers the unsavory elements of Islam, the objectionable activities of American Muslims, illegal immigrants, as well as liberal and faux-“conservative” politicians.

Well, there you go.

Ignoring, for the moment, the racism exhibited in her statements, this is not to cast aspersions upon Schlussel’s political views, but rather to say that I should not be able to figure them out based on a comment she makes about the possibility of Denzel Washington portraying Kurt Warner in a movie.

Thinking about Debbie Schlussel reminded me of a book I read late last year, A Tale of Three Cities: The 1962 Baseball Season in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco by Steven Travers. When I reviewed this book, I wrote:

Frankly, it makes me sick to read someone repeatedly call 1962 the last year of American innocence. Not that things are anywhere close to perfect now, but referring to any time in America prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as "innocent" is insulting.

The author comes across as very dismissive and condescending of all the Black and Latino players on the 1962 Giants who ever expressed that some of the treatment they received in San Francisco was due to racism. This book takes place in 1962! And Alvin Dark, the Giant manager, was a man known to have trouble with the idea of non-White ballplayers in his clubhouse.

I went on to write:

My absolute favorite part, though—and by favorite, I mean the part that made me put the book down for four weeks and only pick it up again because I really did want to learn about the 1962 baseball season—was Travers' rant against a Chronicle columnist who wrote favorably about an experience he'd had in Paris when the people there learned he was from San Francisco. The City, "like John Kennedy," wrote the columnist, Charles McCabe, "has been formally canonized in Europe." Oh boy, does this set off Steven Travers, whose response is to say Europe is a continent that merely starts wars (World War I, World War II, Vietnam), that America has to take over and win for them. He blames the conflicts in the Middle East on the failures of the French. This next passage is Travers at his elitist best (bold text for my emphasis):

McCabe in his column wailed against our nation's tendency towards wealth and power thrust upon the whole world. The elite columnist again seemed unable to see that which was placed before his eyes. Here were a few tiny agrarian colonies, separated by an ocean from the salons of political, economic, and political influence, yet in a scant 200 years we had become the most powerful empire in the annals of mankind. McCabe and his kind were the last people on God's Earth to embrace the knowledge of the fact that such a thing could happen only by a divine, guiding hand.

As was the case with Debbie Schlussel, I determined that Travers was a hardcore Republican. After confirming Schlussel’s political leanings, I decided to look up Travers to confirm what seemed obvious. I found a document written by Travers entitled Repudiation of the Criminal Barack Hussein Obama. (Link) Boy, was this a biased piece of work. From reading his baseball book, I figured that Travers was a member of the far right. It turns out he’s a part of the ten miles past the furthest to the right person you’ve ever known.

Near the beginning, Travers, while apparently forgetting that the Anti-Christ and Satan are not the same individual, calms his readers’ fears that the President is the Anti-Christ/Satan:

A year ago, many worried that the criminal Obama was the anti-Christ. Biblical scholars generally conclude that such a creature is merely a malevolent spirit, and that the concept of Satan coming to fruition as a political or military leader is more a Hollywood construct. Brother Harold Camping is a Biblical scholar operating on a worldwide network called Family Radio. He says Christ will return on May 21, 2011, but offers no worry that our President is the Dark Prince.

For one thing, one might surmise that Satan would be a helluva lot smarter than the bumbling, stumbling Dumbo man with his stilted phrases, his incoherent speech in a lame attempt to “help” [Martha] Coakley, and his unimpressive arguments on behalf of most everything he advocates.

Later:

Meanwhile, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is called “dumb.” One listens to her speak of a “fallen world,” of man's true relationship with God, and why the Founding Fathers favored limited government because they recognized the inherent corruption of men's souls, and one hears articulation so far and above the yap-yap-yap of the “man” who never stops talking, or getting face time on TV, or showing up at every soiree in which he can honor himself; well, Palin runs circles around Acorn Man six days of the week and twice on Sunday. We are led to believe that the Ivy League elites are so much better educated, yet has anyone noticed that one can attend Harvard and graduate hardly without attending class these days? Everything is on-line there and most everyplace else.

Even more so than the passages quoted above, the most political sentence from Travers’ essay is, “The 1960s are over, baby!” He wrote that in reference to an earlier statement in which he wrote that 2010 would bring about the repudiation of, “the legacy of the 1960s counter-culture.”

Travers also wrote:

They call him articulate. Who are they fooling? Hearing the ignoramuses call Obama “articulate” is a joke. He is neither articulate nor particularly smart.

Never mind that I find it hard to believe any person, no matter his/her political feelings, can describe Obama as inarticulate or unintelligent without being a stone cold racist—one would have to perform a lobotomy on me in order to convince me otherwise—the point is that Steven Travers is a hardcore Republican. Reading one baseball book convinced me of that.

It is both sad and despicable that both sides of America’s mainstream political spectrum have moved to such far extremes that those who are political cannot speak about any subject without clouding their words with their political views. It epitomizes that fractured nature of this country. It also shows how much groupthink is occurring today. Common sense would tell you that most people exhibit a cross-section of so-called liberal and so-called conservative views. It seems as though that cross-section is getting smaller by the month. One is either in this camp or that.

I don’t know about you, but my political thoughts cannot be described in any generality. I am neither Democrat nor Republican. I do not believe in political parties. I am one man who thinks and feels for himself. I cannot be identified by one label. Why would anyone choose to reshape his/her views just to fit into a group? America’s political labels and party leaders are symbols of our societal weakness.

It’s stupid.