'Chocolate City' Sprinkled with Nuts

[thedrifter]

'Chocolate City' Sprinkled with Nuts
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 19, 2006

So Hillary Clinton thinks the House of Representatives is being "run like a plantation." And, she added, "you know what I'm talking about."

First of all: Think about what a weird coincidence it is that Hillary would have made these remarks in a black church in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day. What are the odds? Did she even know it was a holiday? Bravely spoken, Senator. I haven't been this surprised since finding out Hollywood likes a movie about gay cowboys.

As Hillary explained, the House "has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."

Yes, that's what was really missing on plantations during the slavery era: the opportunity to present a contrary view. Gosh, if only the slaves had been allowed to call for cloture votes. What a difference that would have made!

Madam Hillary also said the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." While Hillary is certainly qualified to comment on what the all-time worst presidential administrations were, having had firsthand experience in one of them, I think she might want to avoid the phrase "go down in history."

All I can say is: It's a good thing we had a stealth candidate like Harriet Miers to tiptoe past these powerful, scary Democrats! Sorry if that sounds churlish, but after Judge Samuel Alito's magnificent performance last week, I think Republicans can stop being afraid of their shadows when it comes to our judicial nominees.

Ever since Bork, Republicans have been terrified of nominating candidates with something in their background that might possibly suggest the nominee did not get down on his knees (another phrase Hillary should avoid) and thank God for Roe v. Wade every night. That's how we ended up with mediocrities like David Hackett Souter and Anthony "Third Choice" Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

Besides being stunningly qualified, the characteristics of the current stellar Supreme Court nominee include these:

His mother immediately told the press, "Of course he's against abortion."

He had expressed support for the Reagan administration's positions on abortion in a 1985 memo.

He refused to accede to the Democrats' endless browbeating and tell them that Roe was "settled law."

And the Democrats couldn't lay a finger on him. Sam Alito marks the final purging of the Bork experience.

All the Democrats could do was scream about his inactive membership – back in the '70s – in CAP, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which had a magazine called Prospect, which once ran an article, apparently satirical, complaining about Princeton admitting co-eds. In my mind, the only potentially disqualifying aspect of Alito's record was that he wasn't a more active member of CAP, a group opposed to quotas, set-asides and the lowering of academic standards at Princeton.

Then this week, we found out Sen. Teddy Kennedy still belongs to an organization that doesn't admit women. Oh – also, he killed a girl.

I'm fairly certain I've mentioned that before – I don't recall, Mr. Chairman – but I don't understand why everyone doesn't mention it every time Senator Drunkennedy has the audacity to talk about how "troubled" and "concerned" he is about this or that nominee. I bet Mary Jo was "troubled" and "concerned" about the senator leaving her trapped in a car under water while he went back to the hotel to create an alibi.

It's not as if Democrats can say: OK, OK! The man paid a price! Let it go! He didn't pay a price. The Kopechne family paid a price. Kennedy weaved away scot-free.

But the Democrats are "troubled" about Sam Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton 30 years ago. If they're "concerned" about lifetime appointments for people with memberships in "troubling" organizations, wait until they hear about Bob Byrd! (Former Kleagle, Ku Klux Klan.)

They're a rotten bunch, these Democrats, and I'm happy to see an end to their reign of terror.

Now that Zell Miller is out of office, the only office-holding Democrat I like anymore is Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans. I had never heard of him until Hurricane Katrina, but after his "gaffe" this week, he's my favorite Democrat. I like a politician who casually spouts off insanely politically incorrect remarks in front of large audiences and TV cameras.

Nagin cheerfully told a crowd gathered for a Martin Luther King Day celebration that New Orleans would soon be "Chocolate City" again. I don't know who's supposed to be offended by that. I'm not. Perhaps all the white mayors who know they couldn't have said it. True, life's unfair. Oh well.

When it comes to choice-of-word crimes, I'd prefer detente to mutually assured destruction. Lead us off the chocolate plantation, Mayor Nagin!

Ellie

[thedrifter]

'Chocolate' City
By Linda Chavez
January 19, 2006

Imagine for a moment that Salt Lake City was hit by a massive earthquake that toppled buildings, destroyed infrastructure and made the city unlivable for months. Much of the city's population fled, many never to return. Then imagine that the mayor began wistfully extolling the virtues of his town in barely veiled racial euphemisms. "Salt Lake City has always been a plain vanilla town," he says, at first only before audiences he thinks will warm to the message. Then, as the city starts to rebuild, the mayor hints that he's not thrilled that many of the jobs to rebuild the city are going to Latinos and blacks, many of whom did not live in Salt Lake before disaster struck. Before long, the mayor gets bolder in his appeals. "It's time for us to rebuild Salt Lake City -- the one that should be a vanilla Salt Lake," he says. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are, this city will be vanilla at the end of the day. This city will be a majority white city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have Salt Lake City any other way. It wouldn't be Salt Lake City."

Are you squirming yet? I certainly would be. And if this fictional scenario played out in real life with the mayor actively discouraging non-whites from moving into Salt Lake City, the feds would be on the case. Housing discrimination is against the law -- it has been since Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. A city official who made clear his intention to keep his city white would not only incur the wrath of the federal government, but he'd likely be hounded from office by the media.

So why is it that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin -- whose comments I've paraphrased above, substituting "vanilla" for "chocolate" and Salt Lake City for New Orleans -- can get away with such blatantly racist claptrap? Most major newspapers buried the mayor's comments, if they reported them at all, and those national news programs that played them did so largely without commentary. I can't imagine a white mayor praising the racial purity of a white community getting similar treatment.

For all his appeals to black solidarity, the irony is that Ray Nagin wouldn't be mayor of New Orleans were it not for whites. Nagin won election as a political novice in 2002 because white voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for him. According to Ed Renwick, the director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics, Nagin won about 90 percent of whites' votes, but less than half of blacks'. Perhaps he thinks he can curry favor with New Orleans' African-American community by appealing to race. But those who were stuck for days in the Convention Center during Hurricane Katrina may not soon forget that their mayor let them down. He was slow to order an evacuation when Katrina was bearing down on the coast, refused offers of help to move people out of the city before the storm hit, and let city workers -- including many police and firefighters -- flee rather than stay to keep order in the city. He had no clue how to marshal New Orleans' own resources to help in the rescue, letting school buses that could have been used to transport people out of the city be inundated by rising flood waters. And in the first few days of the tragedy, he was hunkered down out of sight, except for a strange call-in to a radio show where he rambled on about everyone else's but his own failure to provide leadership.

The best thing Ray Nagin could do for New Orleans would be to announce he's withdrawing from the mayor's race. Instead, he makes racist appeals and then pretends he didn't mean what he said. When asked about his comments by a local reporter Nagin said, "Do you know anything about chocolate? How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about." Yes, and vanilla comes from a brown bean, but no one would believe that a mayor who talked about making sure his city stayed "vanilla" was promoting racial integration.

Linda Chavez is the author of the new book, "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics."

Ellie

[OLE SARG]

Nagin is a fricking IDIOT!!!!!! The second best thing nagin could do is withdraw from life - how in the f@#% did this simpleton get elected mayor of NO???? Somebody needs to let nagin know that somewhere a village is missing their IDIOT!!!!!!! He could fill that slot easily!!!

'Nuff said.

SEMPER FI,
OLE SARG

[Osotogary]

He doesn't live in New Orleans anymore, does he?
What about just being an American first? I know that I am, first and foremost, an American. After that I'm German American, Irish American, probably Attila the Hun American, Roving Band of European Invaders, Pillagers, Plunderers American etc., etc. LOL
He has created his own political nightmare and he'll probably want to blame it on someone else. What a shame.

[rsta]

I gather from his statement that New Orleans has no further need of monetary assistance from the rest of us! Oh well, I hope they live happily ever after.

[greensideout]

He doesn't live in New Orleans anymore, does he?
What about just being an American first? I know that I am, first and foremost, an American. After that I'm German American, Irish American, probably Attila the Hun American, Roving Band of European Invaders, Pillagers, Plunderers American etc., etc. LOL
He has created his own political nightmare and he'll probably want to blame it on someone else. What a shame.



"What about just being American first?"
Well said Gary but then, how could you cry for special treatment?

Ann Coulter is a hoot, I love to read her comments!

[Osotogary]

It is amazing that "Americans" came to the aid of the citizens of New Orleans first. Once the help was there, it became categoried for whatever reason. Damn shame.