by Racialicious Special Correspondent Latoya Peterson

George F. Will is a staunch conservative who believes fighting for more inclusive speech (and anti-racist activism in general) is generally bullshit. According to Will, liberals (and minorities) need to toughen up.

Exhibit A is the second paragraph in yesterday’s column
Misstep in a Liberal Minefield:

For decades, liberals, believing that “self-esteem” is a universal entitlement that is endangered by nearly universal insensitivity, have striven to make everybody exquisitely sensitive to slights. Liberals have become industrialists as an indignation industry has burgeoned. It writes campus speech codes, infests corporations with “sensitivity training” workshops and “consciousness-raising” retreats, and generally enforces the new right to pass through this vale of tears without tears or even being peeved.

Get the idea?

Here’s another quote (Exhibit B) from Will about “racial fatigue:”

Steele has brilliantly dissected the intellectual perversities that present blacks as dependent victims, reduced to trading on their moral blackmail of whites who are eager to be blackmailed in exchange for absolution. But Steele radically misreads Obama, missing his emancipation from those perversities. Obama seems to understand America’s race fatigue, the unbearable boredom occasioned by today’s stale politics generally and by the perfunctory theatrics of race especially.

An anti-racist ally, he is not.

I generally can’t stomach Will’s columns, as many of them are some variation on “hey liberals, shut up.” While he makes interesting arguments about Roe vs. Wade and provides great quotes on the need for separation of church and state, his willingness to blow off racism and its long reaching effects sours me to most of his writing.

So, back to Exhibit A. How did he manage an about face in yesterday’s column?

It is unfair, and wonderful, that Clinton has been castigated for her insensitivity in uttering the incontestable truth that President Lyndon Johnson, as well as Martin Luther King Jr., was indispensable to enactment of the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965. To his credit, Barack Obama seemed not quite able to conceal his boredom with his assigned role of slighted victim in the charade of being offended. His campaign, however, methodically played a muted part in the required dance of agreement.

Clinton’s clanking, wheezing political jalopy, blowing its gaskets and stripping its lug nuts, has moved on from faulting Obama for a kindergarten essay (in which he supposedly revealed a presidential ambition that was unseemly around the teeter-totter) to accusing him of wanting to be reasonable, even likable. Is there nothing the man will not stoop to?

America has passed another milestone on its march to equal opportunity thanks to Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, who this week proved that a black billionaire can be just as witless as are certain white billionaires who think their wisdom is commensurate with their net worth. Introducing Clinton at a rally, Johnson called Obama a “guy who says, ‘I want to be a reasonable, likable Sidney Poitier in ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ ” For the uninitiated, that is how you call someone an Uncle Tom in an age that has not read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Johnson also said the Clintons were “involved in black issues” when Obama “was doing something in the neighborhood — I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book.” Johnson was, of course, referring to Obama’s admission of teenage drug use. With Bill Clinton supporting him, he later insisted that he was referring to Obama’s community organizing. The Clinton campaign should not be blamed for this comic dishonesty. In the Clintons’ orbit, meretriciousness is as reflexive as a sneeze, and reflexes are not moral failures.

Ok, it is obvious to anyone with eyes that Will hates Hilary Clinton. He is doing everything in his power to ensure that the Clintons don’t make it back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, which includes gleefully reporting on any and all bad press Hillary receives.

And yet, I wonder - how bad is it when a columnist known for accusing people of being overly PC calls out your camp for race baiting? How is this happening?

Has Hell frozen over?

Can someone check and bring me back a daiquiri?

____

Bonus! A few of my favorite comments from Will’s column:

As to the black vote, which is the primary subject of these posts, I find it curious that a white woman would suggest that she is blacker than a black man and can represent the black community more effectively. How can a white woman claim loyalty from the black community by telling them that a black man cannot win an election? Doesn’t she see that her pitch is essentially that black folks must forever depend on white folks.
—ohlsonrw

While one might reasonably argue that we have become overly sensitive about racial and gender slights, one would be obtuse and willfully blind to argue that we as a society did not need to become much more sensitive about race, ethnicity, and gender than we were just a generation ago. Remember when most black men were called boys and blacks and whites had separate water fountains and blacks couldn’t stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants. Remember how George Wallace could attract millions of votes, north and south, by denigrating a whole race of people. Remember how Strom Thurmond, a race-baiting white politician who secretly fathered a child by the family maid, became a major player in the Republican party, along with Barry Goldwater who opposed the civil rights act of 1964 Remember how most good-paying jobs were closed to women and when men could sexually harass them on the jobs they could get.

Yes, George we needed not only major changes but a revolution in our thinking and behavior. Too bad you never joined the revolution, but can only carp about “liberal sensitivity.”
—DWSouthern

George Will backed one president who gave a speech on state’s rights at a location in Mississippi where three civil rights workers were killed. He backed another president who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights act as a Congressman. He backed a third president whose administration has tried to disenfranchise black voters and then did nothing as thousands of black people were jeoparadized by Hurricane Katrina. Now, he believes that he is entitled to lecture Democrats like Clinton on liberalism and race relations. The modern conservative movement opposed every step in civil rights this nation has made since 1964. Will lecturing Democratic liberals or making fun of such liberals is obscene.
— mrgavel

Another anti Clinton oped from the WAPO. There are four today. Three overtly attacking Clinton and one telling us Obama walks on water. This one from Will is by a man who spent the years 2000-2006 telling us what a wonderful president George would be and was. Someone should replay some of Will’s opinionating on the merits of Bush as guide to his unique insights and perception. Why these people have any credibility is a mystery to me and of course they don’t have much. Is is it surprising when you have to read tendentions tripe like this.

—-johnbsmrk

The solution to Hillary’s problem with African-Americans could not be more obvious, nor the timing more fortuitous.

The date: Next Monday, Martin Luther King Day. The time: Noon. The place: Macy’s window. The event: Rev. Al Sharpton assumes the position, and Hillary puckers up.

—rob