"Passing" For A Pundit

I was trying to figure out how to say something about Black History Month, but Mary Matalin gave me the perfect excuse today with this little gem, which she came up with on “Hannity and Colmes” (another hat tip to Atrios – Kos pointed this out, and I’m sure Steve Gilliard will have something better than this post shortly).

(I have a question: I honestly don’t know this, because I have MUCH BETTER things to do in my life than subject myself to propaganda on Faux News, but what exactly does Alan Colmes DO on that program? I mean, is he a total cipher? Does he have a pulse? Does he just sit there waiting to get conked on the head, not unlike a whack-a-mole? James Wolcott, in the piece I linked to below in “Stacking The Deck” where he criticized Don Imus, basically said that most liberals “don’t have any balls,” and apparently Colmes is Exhibit A in that argument.)

OK, now back to Matalin.

Her statement is absolutely laughable party because she made it in de facto defense of a presidential administration which, in effect, declared war on African Americans by totally abdicating its responsibility to coordinate evacuation and rescue efforts of the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (and don’t worry…I don’t mean to absolve the state of Louisiana and ESPECIALLY New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin or police chief Edwin Compass by pointing that out). Also, as noted here by Julian Bond, the net effect of Dubya’s scheme to privatize Social Security would be “to double…the poverty rate among older African Americans, pushing most African American seniors into poverty.”

I know it was a coincidence that the funeral of Coretta Scott King happened to fall during Black History Month, but Matalin’s ridiculous partisan bile is all the more irritating because she happened to release it at this time. As noted at the site of The History Channel…

Every February, Americans celebrate Black History Month. This tribute dates back to 1926 and is credited to a Harvard scholar named Carter G. Woodson. The son of former slaves, Woodson dedicated his life to ensuring that black history was accurately documented and disseminated.

In an effort to bring national attention to the contributions of black Americans, Woodson organized the first annual Negro History Week in 1926. He chose the second week of February in honor of the birthdays of pivotal black supporters Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

From Jackie Robinson to Tiger Woods, Harriet Tubman to Barack Obama, Black History Month pays tribute to inspirational African Americans from the past, as well as those who will continue to make history well into the future.

I am grateful that Mr. Woodson started this tradition, but I have to admit that I think it’s a bit silly to designate a particular month to a particular race (and, as Chris Rock noted caustically once, “the shortest month of the year too”). I think people of either sex and all races, creeds, and ethnicities should be recognized and appreciated for their contributions each day (OK, cue the theme – “we aaare the world, we aaare the children…”).

And of course, during Matalin’s idiotic diatribe, she states that “one party has completely taken itself out of the game here.” Gee, you don’t think she’s talking about the Repugs, do you? Of course not. Well, who does that leave?

Well, as long as she’s bashing the Dems again, I should mention the following (again, courtesy of The History Channel from their “This Day In History” page):

1989 Brown elected chairman of the Democratic Party

Ronald H. Brown, a former Supreme Court lawyer and leader of the National Urban League, is elected chairman of the Democratic Party National Committee. He was the first African American to hold the top position in a major political party in the United States.

Brown, born in Washington, D.C., in 1941, was raised in New York City's Harlem, where he worked as a welfare caseworker before joining the U.S. Army. After holding important positions in the National Urban League, an advocacy group for the renewal of inner cities, he became a member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar and served as chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As chairman of the Democratic Party, Brown played a pivotal role in securing the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, the first Democratic president in 12 years. In 1993, he was appointed America's first African American secretary of commerce by President Clinton, a capacity in which he served until April 3, 1996, when he and 32 other Americans were killed when their plane crashed into a mountain in Croatia. Brown had been leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore business opportunities that might help rebuild the war-torn region.

For a time, I thought that Brown’s fundraising mail was incessantly annoying, but I came to realize that doing that was a necessary part of his job. And I also remember that, shortly after he was killed in the plane crash, I had to write to senior management at The Vanguard Group to get them to lower their flags to half staff, which they did not do for a few days even though President Clinton called for a week of observance; they eventually did so when the week was nearly over, leaving me to wonder how this bunch of Main Line GOPers would have acted had this happened to a Republican commerce secretary in a Republican administration.