Republicans Employ “Reverse Racism ” Strategy in Opposition to Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Appointment

In the late 1960′s, break through comedy TV hit, “Laugh In”, developed the genre of comedic visual “drop- ins” which consisted of a host of character’s doing one liners after, during and between the fast paced program of skits and parodies that comprised the substance of the broadcast. One drop-in featured then presidential candidate Richard Nixon with a full-face camera shot with Nixon delivering the line, “Sock it to me?” Alternatively, comedian Arte Johnson, would suddenly appear on camera, dressed in a Nazi WWII uniform, and would deliver the line, “Veeery interesting.” A young bodacious vixen, Goldie Hawn, appearing in a bikini would wear slogans painted on her body while performing writhing dance steps. Farcical comedy at its best

One of the more interesting characters was an actor dressed as a Southern plantation owner with a white broad brimmed, flat crowned hat, a black string tie around the collar of his white shirt, and clad in an all white suit (a la Colonel Sanders of KFC notoriety). He was always portrayed on the veranda of a mansion, smoking a slender cigar, and would turn to the camera and say, “Like my daddy, the Colonel said, “You just can’t be too white.”

White men founded this great country of ours. All of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence, all of the elected officials, and the only people permitted to vote were white males. They made all the rules, owned all the businesses and means of commerce, were all of the judges, juries and law enforcement officials, and decided virtually everything of importance of the era. They were the only ones who really counted or mattered. Every other human consideration occupied a lesser importance in life.

White men in this Republic have been at the root of every cause and conflict in the 233 years since the signing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1776. It was the conflict between Northern white male industrialists and Southern white male agriculturalists that led to the Civil War. President Lincoln used the opportunity of that war to emancipate slaves, as a furtherance of the regional animosity between white males. Up until very recently in our nation’s history, white men were the ones that both precipitated and solved the great issues of the day. Women have been voting for President only since 1920. Blacks could not vote with any substantive proportion in several states until the mid 1960′s. Hispanic Americans are only now in the infant stages of realizing their political potency in this culture. The greatest bastion of white male supremacy was always the nine judges on the Supreme Court. However, eventually, that began to change with the appointment of Judge Louis Brandeis in the 1930′s who became the first Jewish member.

LBJ appointed Thurgood Marshall as the first African- American to the court in 1967. Followed by Ronald Reagan appointing Sandra Day-O’Conner in 1981 as the first female justice. Subsequently President George Herbert Walker Bush appointed Clarence Thomas as the first black replacement for retiring Justice Marshall in July of 1991. The second female to occupy a seat on the court came with President Clinton’s appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

President Obama’s election over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination answered the question of whether an African- American male candidate could defeat a white female candidate. The stage was now set for the question, “How far had males evolved politically in this country; apparently enough to elect a black male candidate over a white male candidate?” One major theme at Obama’s inauguration was the assumption that, as a nation, in ending the stranglehold of white men occupying the presidency, that finally, race and gender would be less of an issue going forward.

I am a white male that was vigorous in my support of Obama’s candidacy in the primary and general elections. Only one in four white males are Democrats. White males are not a significant enough voting block in Democratic primary elections to elect a candidate on their own. Two of every four white male voters in America are Republicans. They exert tremendous influence in Republican Party affairs. They constitute about three fourths of Rush Limbaugh’s radio audience.

This past week Rush broadcast in full throat that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Appellate Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor of seventeen years and two prior Senate confirmations is a “Racist.” We have now come full circle in political punditry. One of the most caustic media personalities in broadcast history is leading the “racist” allegation along with Gingrich, Hannity, and Liddy to name a few in of a chorus of white brethren of lesser media stature. Their claim is based on the case concerning promotions in the New Haven, Connecticut, fire department. The case is controversial to be sure, but Judge Sotomayor’s decision was not based on racial prejudice as contended, when viewing the case in its total context, in my judgment.

The primary objective of Rush is to maintain or increase audience share. His ad revenue structure is based on his current and large audience shares among white males that are not offended in the least at Rush’s contentions, regardless of how outrageous and incredulous they appear. More discerning members of the body politic choose not to listen to his venomous rants against a host of American subcultures and interest groups. Fear is the epicenter of Rush’s audience appeal. Fear is the product of ignorance, outside immediate life threatening circumstances. Judge Sotomayor has given his white male audience two groups to be angry and fearful of: Hispanics and women, and women of poor economic backgrounds, to boot.

Rush relishes chiding and deriding the homeless, handicapped, gays, or any group that can elicit a guffaw from his audience. His reference to Louis Farrakhan, Muslim religious leader, as “Calypso Louie”, is a case in point, or “Barack, the Magic Negro.” The man is an unadulterated megalomaniac that has nearly every elected Republican official in America afraid of him. They are even more cowardly and pitiful than the Democratic milk toasts that occupy far too many seats in Congress.

Mark Twain wrote of a man in a small Southern Indiana town that bravely and single-handedly fended off a lynch mob. Twain opined:

“No lynch mob has any sand in it, when faced by a man known to be splendidly brave.”

We seem to be in a condition of profound poverty of ordinary men and women, who are morally brave, to stand up against the myriad of injustices that are occurring from the dispensation of the promised closing of Gitmo to Cheney’s outrageous justification of scrapping our nation’s moral integrity. Those are just a few of the matters that require a new sense of indignation, for only from indignation can we achieve that “More perfect union”.