The Worldnutdaily's Uncle Tom : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

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The Worldnutdaily's Uncle Tom

Posted on: July 28, 2009 1:16 AM, by Ed Brayton

What else could you possibly call a black writer who savages the NAACP, calling them "one of the most radical socialist organizations in America" and part of the "totalitarian cult of liberalism"?

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Comments

They have a couple of them over there. They're men for whom their radical religious beliefs are so important they'll gladly suck up to people who treat them like crap (except when they're being nice to them so as to use them for some reason). It's much like the "Log Cabin Republicans" who value their money more than their rights, and therefore kowtow to the people who consider them lower than dog-doo.

Posted by: Buffy | July 28, 2009 2:12 AM

I really don't think that allegations of race-treachery are cool for white guys to be throwing around. Not saying this guy shouldn't be criticised, absolutely he should, but calling black people who don't agree with us on the best way to deal with racism "Uncle Tom" isn't cool.

Posted by: SeanH | July 28, 2009 6:58 AM

I have to agree with SeanH. We should call them "Uncle Stroms".

Posted by: democommie | July 28, 2009 8:28 AM

Uncle Ham?

Posted by: Taz | July 28, 2009 8:53 AM

Calling him an Uncle Tom, no matter how crazy his statements may be, is an ad hominem argument that should be beneath you. The only thing that matters is the quality of his thoughts.

Posted by: Tom | July 28, 2009 9:37 AM

It also maligns the original Uncle Tom who endured but did not support slavery.

Posted by: Erp | July 28, 2009 10:28 AM

It isn't an ad hominem attack. That is generally the type of argument that says that a proposition must be wrong because the person espousing it is an idiot. For example, I might say that because Newton believed in alchemy, calculus cannot be true.

Uncle Tom is a time honored insult, criticizing a person for not rebelling or for tacitly supporting a regime that adversely affects a person because of that person's trait. More specifically, an African-American who supports racist or racist leaning people.

Posted by: Bob | July 28, 2009 11:04 AM

Bob:

Spot on, except that there is no such thing as "racist leaning"; You is or you ain't.

Posted by: democommie | July 28, 2009 11:34 AM

Okay, if we're having trouble with "Uncle Tom," how about "demented hatemonger" instead? Seriously, this guy is so unhinged and out of it, his race doesn't even matter, and he's no more connected to any racial issue than he is to anything else here on Earth.

Posted by: Raging Bee | July 28, 2009 11:35 AM

I'm not black and I'm not a member of the NAACP so my opinion doesn't carry much weight because I'm entirely outside of the situation. Yes, I, like everyone else, have an opinion but it isn't my call to make.

On the other hand I think #1 has the right idea. Who, in their right mind, would be a Log Cabin Republican? It would be like a Jew joining the white supremacists. You go in knowing that your reviled. But also that you will be trotted out and used as a propaganda prop to attack your own ethnicity. Which makes me think that a person who does this sort of thing has a lot of self loathing, hate of their own group, and masochistic tendencies. I would think it would be more efficient to just abuse one's self in private with a broomstick wrapped in barbed wire but perhaps public shaming and really serious abuse is more their cup of tea.

Takes all kinds I guess.

Posted by: Art | July 28, 2009 1:03 PM

A conservative libertarian?

Posted by: Gingerbaker | July 28, 2009 1:23 PM

Art - it's only been recently that conservatism and social conservatism have come to dominate the Republican party, which is why I left the party last year. So while the Log Cabin Republicans' loyalty to the GOP in the past year or two is now arguably irrational, it certainly wasn't prior, especially since the Democratic party also didn't provide much hope (remember, Clinton signed DOMA).

The Log Cabins members were and are looking to reform the party and get the party members to acknowledge how their current objections are in direct conflict with the party's founding principles through the Eisenhower era, principles which were disregarded as Nixon and Reagan began attracting social conservatives from the Democratic party and those numbers grew to a point they now dominate the party.

Until last year I belonged to a moderate Republican group that also fought to maintain our republican principles; our group also supported the Log Cabin Republicans in spite of the invasion of southern Democrats and western conservatives that have mutated that party from republicanism to conservatism. This is the wing that ex-Gov. Christie Whitman led nationally and Colin Powell best exemplifies.

It now appears that while conservatism has greatly damaged the country and the Republican party, there are still some members left in the party, not many, who hope the party's reform means going back to republican principles. I quit last year when the Convention unanimously approved of Palin's VP nomination given I perceive the party as being perfectly incapable of perceiving that the conservatism movement itself and its ability to govern is the root cause of the party's record. However, some still hold out hope that a few more electoral losses will bring the party back to the mainstream. I have little confidence in that happening which is why I left after 29 years of fighting conservatism in my own party. The disease that once infected mostly the southern wing of the Democratic party has now put the Republican party in critical condition.

Posted by: Michael Heath | July 28, 2009 1:29 PM

Art, I think in many of these cases what's going on is class trumps "community." My decades-old impression of Log Cabin Republicans is that they might have cared about gay rights/equality, but they considered themselves sufficiently above/removed from the consequences that this would not overcome their conditioned or self-serving conservatism.

Posted by: Uncle Glenny | July 28, 2009 1:30 PM

Don't these people (black and/or gay Republicans) understand how rude and masochistic it is to insist on crashing a party that not only doesn't want you, but insists on walking on your face with sharp cleats?

Posted by: gary l. day | July 28, 2009 2:34 PM

What I'd like to know is, why would some black person want to write for WorldNetDaily in the first place??????
Anne G

Posted by: Anne Gilbert | July 28, 2009 6:12 PM

Anne Gilbert asks:

why would some black person want to write for WorldNetDaily in the first place??????

My immediate, and possibly prejudicial hunch is it provides far easier access to money, fame, and power. Minorities in the party that contains and supports minorities provides a road to success requiring mostly merit with lots of competition; on the other hand allowing yourself to serve as anecdotal evidence that the Right is not prejudiced provides a far easier path to money, fame, and power. It's a relationship where both parties mutually exploit the other.

Does anyone really believe Clarence Thomas would have been nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president if he was a liberal or centrist? Does anyone take Thomas Sowell's columns seriously or do they merely serve as defense fodder that conservatism isn't inherently racist? Would Michael Steele be Chairman of the GOP National Committee if he were white?

That's not to say I think that Thomas' conservative sensibilities aren't authentic, I believe they are. However, it does provide an example for other minorities that being a contrarian can provide shortcuts to success, especially given Thomas' perceived incompetence.

Posted by: Michael Heath | July 28, 2009 6:54 PM

Michael Heath @12 - Believe it or not I'm still a registered Republican. Back in the time before Nixon's fall Republicans had a reputation as straight talkers, fiscal conservatives and pragmatists. I could always deal with a pragmatist. It's the zealots and people operating on abstract principles they don't really understand but can't compromise that bother me.

I got along pretty well with the social conservatives back then because even the prudes and those dead set against change couched the opposition in the right of an individual to to have a private life and to be essentially free within that private sphere. Even those who were libertarian in bent (I'm not sure they used the term back then) openly admitted that we didn't win WW2, build the nation, and accomplish the many great works by individual effort. While none were happy about paying taxes very few said much about the taxes on the upper end that were pushing 90%.

I think your right that the Dixiecrats, the religious right ,and the scorched earth demagogues and zealots killed the Republican party. The Contract with America sounded good as long as you didn't actually read it. Balanced budgets, term limits and real statesmanship are attractive goals but nobody who knew the actors or read the bill, filled with giveaways to big business, while tossing a few coins at the working class, didn't understand that it was a farce. To date it was the clearest evidence that the GOP had sold its soul to the special interests and substituted showmanship for statesmanship.

I haven't voted for a Republican in a very long time. Based on the lying push-polls the GOP keeps sending me in the mail, and GOP insiders who want to defeat healthcare reform because it will be "Obama's Waterloo", all of which tells me they still love the demagoguery and the fight more than effectively governing and the nation, I won't be voting for GOP candidates to hold positions, as opposed to voting in a primary, for a very long time still.

In that sense I may have something in common with the Log Cabin Republicans. But then again I don't spout GOP talking points, represent the part, or even go to their events. Technically I'm still in the party, and hope I'm doing some good voting for the least offensive candidate in the primary, but that has a lot to do with the GOP not attacked my ethnicity, sexuality or race. Even there I keep thinking I need to shift my registration. Then again I can still vote for anyone I like in the election and being registered in the GOP I'm unlikely to be 'caged' like a lot of Democratic voters were.

So it goes.

Incidentally 'voter caging' outrages me far more than many issues. Ed Brayton ought to do a piece, maybe two, on that issue. Having to moderate my speech for five minutes while a policeman does his thing doesn't bother me as much as having my vote taken away.

Posted by: Art | July 28, 2009 7:29 PM

If we're looking for the legitimacy of authentic blackness to call the Worldnetdaily (seriously, I'd never heard of it until the link) writer in question an Uncle Tom, you have it. I've always been ponderous of black republicans and Log Cabin Republicans alike for similar reasons, but have also been giving more consideration to the delacate dance of identity politics within the Republican camp its minority members must do of late. Allow themselves to become the mouth piece of the party to add legitimacy to the hegdgemonic aspects of the base, all the while selectivley responding to the blanket statements and general discomfort the party seems to display towards "others" despite its need to woo them. There's been talk, tepid at best, about the need to be more objective about their views from what I understand...but I've yet to see anything but nervous laughter when screeds about "taking the country back from the immigrants and coons" comes up. Delicate dance for minority conservatives indeed.

Posted by: gwhiz | July 28, 2009 9:04 PM

There's no such thing as a race traitor.

Posted by: Louis B. | July 28, 2009 9:13 PM

Wow, I haven't seen such a tomming since Clarence Thomas, and by a caucasoid at that. Well done, sir, speaking truth to power, and in fine tradition:

"It is no wonder that Du Bois seeks the company of white people, because he hates Black as being ugly...Yet this professor, who sees ugliness in being Black, essays to be a leader of the Negro people and has been trying for over fourteen years to deceive them in connection with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Now what does he mean by advancing Colored people if he hates Black so much? In what direction must we expect his advancement? We can conclude in no other way that it is in the direction of losing our Black identity and becoming, as nearly as possible, the lowest Whites by assimilation and miscegenation.'

-- Garvey, The Negro World, Feb. 13, 1923

Posted by: tom van dyke | July 28, 2009 10:13 PM