"The soft bigotry of loose adulation" comes to Iraq.

here

I doubt it, but obviously he saw nothing bothersome or offensive about his words. I wonder if any such issue was even raised by one of his advisors. (I'd guess not, although you'd have to even Colin Powell biting his tongue.)

I think we're working here not with Bush (the person), but Bush (the administration), anyway.

That's what made me lose my enthusiasm! I mean, he's basically unpacking the condescension in Bush's use of "gifted," and yet he mildly blows it with a term of his own that's ripe for the same sort of unpacking. Not that this makes the article a bad one, or anything -- thinking about that as I read the rest just took a bit of the steam out for me.

NB: "Ethnic" is not a functioning category. Being not-white is not some sort of extraneous quality some of us on Earth are afflicted with and others aren't, and white people are not some sort of true-and-actual human beings on whom everyone else is a stylized variation.

But perhaps I'm being too charitable to Saletan, or he's being too charitable to Bush and company--and he should have used "nonwhite" instead of "ethnic."

I don't understand ST in the friggin least. For one thing, Bush and Saletan are talking about the entire population of Iraq, who are by definition not a minority. For another thing, I've never seen anyone refer to F.W. de Klerk as "ethnic." And for a third thing, no, white people are not the fucking base standard around which everything else revolves, and non-white people are not, contrary to popular belief, just white people with some extra shit like melanin and accents and more interesting religious icons. Being a non-white person in a mostly-white nation may make you a numerical minority, but it does not make you just some variety-pack bonus flavor of white people, and it most certainly does not mean that you have an "ethnicity" whereas they do not.

Holy moly, is ST Trife?? What's up?

I guess what this might obscure is the real ethnic differences that exist w/in racial majorities and minorities. But in an article about, say, apartheid, race does seem the relevant characteristic.

I wonder as above if this formulation isn't harmful even if (or rather, because) it seems so logical and normal to me.

[from AMG: "Intelligent and middle-class, rapper Marvin Young earned a degree in economics from USC, where he met Michael Ross and Matt Dike, co-founders of the fledgling Delicious Vinyl rap label...]

fwiw, i will plead guilty to some degree of what this article is complaining about. i remember once hearing BB King being interviewed on the radio, and i said something to some co-workers (one of whom is Black) about how "well-spoken" he was. i was genuinely ignorant at the time that "well-spoken" was such a racially-loaded term (and luckily, the Black co-worker was polite enough to explain [politely] why that was so).

Maybe the agenda behind Bush's statements was not to simply boost the Iraqi's ego, but to remind Bush's voters that the Iraqis are not as they think of them. You know, stupid, barberic ragheads. Maybe he HAS to reduce them to an alien mass of unfaced humanity to make any sense to all those red states.

But there I go generalizing.

While purporting to "respect difference," the acolytes of otherness are "clearly horrified," Badiou observes, "by any vigorously sustained difference." Arguing that genuine difference entails conflict, Badiou contends that "difference" is really a recipe for homogeneity and consensus. By this token, left-wing militants, along with Christian and Islamic fundamentalists and African practitioners of clitorectomy, are stigmatized as "bad others" and disinvited from those "celebrations of diversity" sponsored in campus halls and advertising agencies. "Good others," on the other hand, exhibit differences that are remarkably consonant with "the identity of a wealthy West." Indeed, with its mantra of "inclusion" and its vagueness about "the exact political meaning of the identity being promoted," identity politics supplies exotic grist for the corporate mills of Western democracies. Thus, in Badiou's view, "difference," cast in the image and likeness of consumerism, joins "rights" as rhetorical camouflage for Western economic and military domination.'

Eugene McCarraher reviewing 'Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil' By Alain Badiou

Bush has a typical right wing mistrust of 'the other', which he destroys with the military. When he's crushed 'the other', though, he comes on TV with Blair and puts on the 'nice cop' voice, claiming to be ready to celebrate 'talent', diversity and rights. 'Talent' is the word that expresses the degree of 'otherness' which is allowable to the crushed people. 'Talent' here means a potential to co-operate with the new bosses. It is, so to speak, the talent of an employee rather than the talent of a self-employed person. It is talent 'we' recognise and define, not talent you discover in yourself (the obvious organisational skill of a Bin Laden, for instance, is not 'talent').

froth on, froth on,

you bloated corpse of a long-dead ideology

When "black leaders" do it, they call it "empowerment."

I hate that Nas verse about Kush and slave ships.