The SPLC is claiming credit for Dobbs resignation from CNN.

I'm surprised the SPLC didn't also try to take credit for making Ron Paul lose the 2008 nomination. After all, seems they and the ADL were involved with the MIAC report scandal.
http://www.infowars.com/alipac-issues-advisory-on-miac-and-s...

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SPLC sucks

Guilt by Association: The Southern Poverty Law Center Hurls a Punch

Carol M. Swain

Political Analyst, Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University

A few days ago, I received a notice from a friend informing me that the Southern Poverty Law Center had included me in this week's HateWatch. I linked to the article criticizing film maker, Craig Bodeker for a DVD he produced called a Conversation About Race, for which I wrote a blurb recommending the documentary film for classroom use. Using the tactic of guilt by association and a highly selective list of the film's reviewers, the SPLC's article stated:

Bodeker's documentary has received most of its praise from hate publications and groups, including Vdare.com, The Occidental Quarterly, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance and the Council of Conservative Citizens' Citizens Informer. (One so-called mainstream fan of the film is the controversial black scholar Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University and a member of the National Council for the Humanities. In a blurb posted on the documentary's website, Swain calls the film "outstanding" and "meticulously done." "[i]t offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue," she writes. "I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.").

I responded to their attack with several Tweets directed at the SPLC. I have been highly critical of the organization in recent months because of its penchant for going after conservative individuals and groups who have exercised their First Amendment Rights to speak out on issues like illegal immigration. In fact, I have published two Huffington Post blogs critical of the new direction that the SPLC has taken. So, I was not exactly surprised that the SPLC would seek revenge against me, a relatively conservative black woman.

Yesterday, I sent out the following 140 character statements in response to the SPLC attack:

* The Southern Poverty Law Center is doing a disservice 2 America. It is working 2 shutdown racial dialogue. http://bit.ly/4sID8B #SPLC #tcot10:55 AM Oct 8th

* There aren't enough new hate groups 2 keep the #SPLC busy, so they target individuals & conservative organizations 2 raise money.#tcot #sgn10:58 AM Oct 8th from web

* Watch the film the #SPLC has called racist & decide 4 yourself. http://bit.ly/Q1sJF Film is an exc. prelude to a real conversation on race.11:04 AM Oct 8th

* Why is there a B in my bonnet? The SPLC calls the DVD racist & then quotes my endorsement of the film.Political incorrectness is not racist.11:07 AM Oct 8th

This morning I received an e-mail from Dr. Heidi Beirich, Director of Research and Special Projects at the Southern Poverty Law Center, providing me with a link to a new posting about Mr. Bodeker. She wrote: "I thought you might want to know that the maker of the documentary on race that you have been publicly praising is an avowed racist who

Read More:

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-..._b_316107.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-..._b_316107.html

In Defense of Carol Swain
A black scholar gets smeared as "an apologist for white supremacists."

By JAMES TARANTO

"Carol Swain is an apologist for white supremacists," Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center tells the Tennessean. Carol Swain is also a friend of this column. To our mind the charge seemed awfully far-fetched, so we decided to get to the bottom of it.

Swain, who is black, is a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University. She is an expert on white supremacists, having written a book on the subject, "The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration," which was published in 2002 by Cambridge University Press and drew plaudits from scholars both liberal (Harvard's William Julius Wilson) and conservative (Princeton's Robert P. George).

Readers may remember that we criticized Swain back in June for a comment she made to the Washington Post. She contacted us through Facebook and told us we had misunderstood her intent. We offered her an opportunity to respond, which she accepted. We became Facebook friends and started keeping up with her writings. While we don't always agree with her (on immigration, for instance, her views are closer to Lou Dobbs's than to ours), we've been impressed by her integrity and independence of mind.

The current kerfuffle involves an hourlong documentary film, "A Conversation About Race," whose Web site prominently features a blurb from Swain: ". . . Outstanding . . . Meticulously done . . . I highly recommend this film . . ." Deeper in the site is the full review, which is more qualified:
This outstanding film provides an opening salvo for the long-awaited national debate on race. Meticulously done, it offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue. I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.

According to the Web site, the filmmaker, Craig Bodeker, "redefines the conventional wisdom on Race and Racism" by asking "a diverse group of Colorado residents" questions about their attitudes toward and experiences of racism.

The SPLC strongly disapproves of the film. Sonia Scherr, in an Oct. 8 entry on the organization's Hatewatch blog, describes it as "a hit among white supremacists looking for a smart-sounding defense of their beliefs" and takes issue with several of the arguments Bodeker made in the film. In an Oct. 9 Hatewatch entry Scherr makes a case against the filmmaker. A reader discovered Bodeker's comments on various YouTube pages, which, Scherr writes, "expose him for the bigot he is":
He repeatedly refers to blacks, including President Barack Obama, as "monkeys." In one post, he uses the anti-gay slur "fag"; in another, he suggests that Van Jones, the black White House advisor who resigned last month, should be lynched.

Scherr provides several specific quotes, and readers in the Hatewatch comment section post screen shots to these and others. For the record, Bodeker, in a post on the Web site of the National Policy Institute (which describes itself as "the right's answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center" and is described by the SPLC as "a racist think tank" and by the Associated Press as "a white-advocacy group"), issued this response:
[Scherr] relied upon an anonymous cyber-stalker to gather "quotes" attributed to me from the comments section of unrelated political videos from Youtube. She called this piece of journalism "A Peek Behind the Curtain: Views of a Racist Filmmaker . . ,"
Some pretty strong statements were quoted--as well as MIS-quoted, surgically and deceptively edited,, taken out of context, and even made up! And once again, these "quotes" that represent proof of my "racism," were found on the comments section of Youtube.
Have any readers ever been to the comments section on Youtube? Does anyone NOT KNOW what a mosh-pitt of "free expression" it is? There are, sometimes, actual screaming matches, even though they're conducted in written form. Sometimes people say harsh, mean things there, in that last remaining refuge of Free Speech. Am I to assume that the SPLS's Sonia Scherr has never made a sarcastic comment? Or even a distasteful one? Or that anyone who EVER has should be stereotyped, marginalized and disenfranchised? This seems to be what the SPLC suggests.

Bodeker does not disavow any specific quotes, and he acknowledges that some of them were accurate. No reasonable person can deny that the comments quoted were invidious. True, they are protected by the First Amendment (see our June 16 column for an exposition on hate speech and the Constitution). But freedom of expression does not mean freedom from criticism, and the SPLC is entirely within its rights to report on what Bodeker has written in a public forum.

Carol Swain wrote her review of "A Conversation on Race" in August, two months before Bodeker's YouTube comments surfaced. In a Puffington Host post on Oct. 12, Swain responded to the revelation:
The racist comments attributed to Mr. Bodeker are ugly and vile. Would I have reviewed his film and given it a positive endorsement had I known more about his background? With the knowledge I have today, I would recommend the film be shown along with background information about Mr. Bodeker's hostility towards racial and ethnic minorities.

Because we think highly of Swain, we decided to watch the film and draw our own conclusion. Our reaction was mixed: We found the interviews fascinating but Bodeker's narration disagreeable. We do, however, see Swain's point about the film's value in illuminating the subject of race in America.

In the interviews, with people who responded to a CraigsList ad, Bodeker makes a compelling case that much of what he calls the "conventional wisdom" about race consists of prejudice--not racial prejudice per se (although Bodeker attempts to frame it that way), but unthinking assumptions about the nature of American society and the racial attitudes of others.

Bodeker probes the interview subjects for contradictions, and finding them isn't hard. They agree that racism is pervasive, but are unable to give a clear definition of the term. He asks them to describe examples of racism in their own lives. They oblige--but their stories are ambiguous or innocuous. The most convincing anecdote turns out to be a case in which a white man describes overcoming his own prejudice. Lane, who looks to be around 40 and is originally from the South, describes a childhood episode in which a teacher warned him not to put his mouth on a water fountain because "black people do that." Years later he was a lieutenant in the Army, and a black fellow officer had run out of water. Lane remembered his teacher's admonition and hesitated to share his canteen. The black officer, noticing Lane's discomfort, offered to drink from a cup. "I said, 'No. You're my comrade in arms.' "

Later, the subjects readily answer in the affirmative when Bodeker asks them if blacks are better at basketball than whites. But when he asks why whites score better than blacks on standardized tests, they insist the tests are biased because they are written by whites. Then he asks why Asians do better than whites. This prompts the following exchange with an older unnamed man of indeterminate ethnicity:
Man: Well, first of all, Asians have 6,000 years of written, literate history behind them.
Bodeker: But you said the tests were made for whites.
Man: Well, they're made for people who think a certain way.
Bodeker: So Asians and whites think a different way than African-Americans do, and Latinos?
Man: (stammers) There are different ways of thinking. Different populations represent those ways of thought and cultural congruences different ways.

The man seems dangerously close to espousing a theory of racial essentialism.

Bodeker presents his interview subjects more sympathetically than he presents himself. Whereas they come across largely as good-natured but confused, he seems bitter and sarcastic. He makes clear that he nurses racial grievances--not necessarily against minorities but against social conventions that he sees as oppressive to whites.

He is angry about the imputation of historical guilt: "I can trace my earliest ancestors here in America to the 1870s, after our Civil War. No forefather of mine ever killed an Indian or owned another human being--ever."

But he also asserts that "America was founded as a white nation," and that "her founding principles, which separate America from all other nations, were also developed by white men, not by a multicultural rainbow." Actually, the founders were almost all British, and their principles drew heavily on British intellectual and legal traditions. But their claim was a universalist one: All men are created equal, not all Englishmen or colonists. In any case, how can Bodeker take racial pride in America's founding but deny racial guilt on the ground that his ancestors didn't arrive until a century later? To borrow one of his catch phrases, that's a large disconnect.

Bodeker seems to envy groups that enjoy an affirmative sense of identity: "Hispanics can be pro-Hispanic without being anti-anybody; Jews can be pro-Jewish without being anti-anybody; blacks can be pro-black without being anti-anybody. But with whites, it's different. White people cannot be pro-white without being anti-everybody-else."

This is a matter of historical contingency. We're hard-pressed to think of an example in American or European history in which the affirmation of a "white" identity, as distinct from a specific national, ethnic or religious identity, has meant anything other than being "anti-everybody-else." And there are plenty of white ethnic groups in America that take pride in their heritage--and that, in some cases, were at one time among the "everybody else" that the "whites" were "anti," their skin color notwithstanding.

One segment of the film is inflammatory and invidious. After asking his interview subjects about race and crime, Bodeker cites federal statistics showing that the number of reported rapes involving a black perpetrator and a white victim is vastly higher than the number involving a white perpetrator and a black victim. He then says, "If selecting people for discrimination based on their skin color is racism, and it's a bad thing . . . isn't selecting people for rape because of their skin color also a bad thing? In fact, isn't it a much worse thing?"

Bodeker's assumption of a racial motive has no basis in the data, as the SPLC's Sonia Scherr notes in her Oct. 8 post:
It's unclear how many, if any, of the black-on-white rapes were hate crimes--that is, motivated at least in part by racial bias. An offense isn't a hate crime simply because the victim and perpetrator are of different races.

So the film, while interesting, is seriously flawed. Yet its shortcomings as a persuasive vehicle may enhance its value as an object for study. Bodeker makes a strong case that politically correct orthodoxy on race is vacuous, but by openly displaying his own resentments and prejudices, he shows that rejecting that orthodoxy does not necessarily yield a more enlightened and sensible view. He makes of himself an example of the phenomenon described in the publicity material for Carol Swain's "The New White Nationalism":
Hot-button issues including affirmative action, black-on-white crime and immigration policies are being exploited by the new white nationalists to woo mainstream whites into extremist movements. They exploit real racial and ethnic policy concerns which should be given a forum for intelligent discourse, says Swain. In fact, Swain goes so far as to say that if liberals and African American leaders don't start to address the legitimate concerns raised by the white nationalists on race matters, they risk being partly to blame for racial unrest in America.

This is a serious argument, and it deserves to be taken seriously, even by those, like the SPLC, that disagree. Criticizing Bodeker for the things he has said is entirely fair. But dismissing Swain as "an apologist for white supremacists" is the tactic of one who is trying to shut down, not encourage, debate.

The New Austerity
The Associated Press reports on First Lady Michelle Obama's appearance last week on NBC's "The Jay Leno Show":
It also looks like Bo--the Obamas' dog--is living like a king. The first lady said the presidential pooch celebrated his first birthday earlier this month with a Rose Garden party.
Bo, a Portuguese water dog, feasted on a cake shaped like a dog house that was made out of veal.
"We had a really sweet celebration," the first lady told Leno. "We had party hats."

The AP describes this as part of a "skit," so we wondered if it was just a joke. But London's Daily Telegraph has photographic evidence.

We hate to be a killjoy, but didn't we learn just last week that Obama's "pay czar" had ordered big cuts in compensation for executives of companies that got federal bailouts, and that the administration is seeking legislative and regulatory limits on pay even for executives of unsubsidized companies? And isn't a birthday party for a dog just the sort of ludicrous extravagance for which populists routinely (and not without cause) vilify billionaires? Why should we accept such wretched excess from the political class?

Conflicting Loyalties
The White House's war on Fox News Channel has provided a great deal of levity, in particular because of the awkward position in which it has put liberal journalists. They seem torn between conflicting loyalties. On the one hand, they feel a professional solidarity with fellow journalists; on the other, an ideological sympathy with the people in power. So here we have Time's Joe Klein, in a blog entry defending Fox News:
Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.

To be sure, that is Klein's "to be sure" paragraph. He goes on to make some perfectly reasonable criticisms of the administration, although in the course of doing so he repeats the McCarthyesque claim "that Fox News spreads seditious lies to its demographic sliver of an audience."

Then we have an NPR commentator who, as the Washington Examiner's Byron York reports, last week harshly criticized the administration:
On National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Wednesday, NPR political editor Ken Rudin said the White House campaign against Fox News is a bad idea. "It's not only aggressive, it's almost Nixonesque," Rudin said. "I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media; certainly Vice President Agnew's constant denunciation of the media. Of course, then it was a conservative president denouncing a liberal media, and of course, a lot of good liberals said, 'Oh, that's ridiculous. That's an infringement on the freedom of press.' And now you see a lot of liberals almost kind of applauding what the White House is doing to Fox News, which I think is distressing."

NPR listeners apparently flooded the network with complaints that Rudin had not just criticized their hero but likened him to one of their demon figures. The next day, Rudin published a groveling apology on his NPR blog, calling the comparison "boneheaded" as well as "foolish, facile, ridiculous and, ultimately, embarrassing to me." And maybe the comparison was inapt. As far as we know, Nixon never managed to extract this sort of confession from one of his critics in the media.

A reader passes along a July 2006 article from U.S. News & World Report about the Russian media. "Given the current Obama administration attacks on Fox News," he writes, "I thought it was somewhat topical. And fun." Excerpt:
Before Putin took over in 2000, opposition voices were often heard on the three dominant television networks, particularly on the then privately owned NTV channel. There were hostile interviews with officials, merciless political satire shows, and investigations of what human-rights groups call Russia's dirty war in Chechnya. Today, NTV is owned by the state-run natural gas behemoth Gazprom, and its output differs little from that of the two big state-owned channels Rossiya and Channel One.
A typical news broadcast on all three channels consists of showing Putin and government ministers hard at work, feel-good reports on life in the armed forces, and historical features related to the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. Opposition figures are rarely seen. The Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, a leading Russian press freedom group, released a study in April that found that 91 percent of political news on Channel One was devoted to Putin and the "ruling powers." Nearly three quarters of that coverage was positive, a quarter neutral--none of it critical.

Fun it is (unless you're a Russian journalist), though the comparison doesn't really hold here either. In U.S. News's telling, Putin remade the media in his own image. Obama is dealing with media that are private, independent--and fiercely loyal of their own accord.

First the Rams Dump Limbaugh, Now This

Couldn't help myself . . .

Blessings )o(