If Only Erick Erickson Actually Knew How to Talk About Race, Without Being a Racist
Fox News contributor Erick Erickson is notable for two reasons - he was the only high profile right winger to offer a full-throated defense of “Barack, the Magic Negro,” and for being the 65th most influential conservative in the United States.
What Erickson is not notable for, however, is the ability to speak about race with nuance, clarity, or self-awareness, his latest ‘gem’ notwithstanding:
“”If only President Obama weren’t black, maybe he would realize that people don’t dislike him because he is black, they dislike him because he is a self-absorbed ass.”“
A self-aware person is capable of self-censorship, an acquired immunity to ‘foot in mouth’ disease, and usually, a hedge against falling victim to irony. Not so, for Erickson, who has, in the past provided such quotables as:
“A while back, Glenn Beck called Barack Obama a ‘racist.’ Given all the terrorists, thugs, and racists Barack Obama has chosen as close personal friends (see e.g. Rev. Wright), it’s not a stretch to say it.”
“Gay Rights Proponents Act Like the Third Reich.”
“Is Obama Shagging Hookers Behind the Media’s Back?”
“The nation loses the only (David Souter) goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court.”
“At what point do the people … march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp?”
To name but a few. So, while obvious he has no natural nor acquired immunity from ‘foot in mouth’ disease, he appears also immune to recognizing irony - without Barack Obama, Erick Erickson would likely not be the ‘65th most influential conservative in the U.S.” :
Erickson’s “Morning Briefing” e-mails grew from 498 subscribers when they began in February 2009 to nearly 70,000 by January 2010.
If Barack Obama were not ‘Barack Obama’, it is fair to surmise, Erick Erickson would not be ‘Erick Erickson’. That stunning lack of irony, then, to lament an immutable fact of the man who made the ‘manboy’, is delicious in it’s lack of any awareness at all.
However, irony is not Erick’s greatest personality deficit: racism is.
So - why you ask, is Erickson wishing Obama not be African American? Well, simply put, in his desire to not be criticized for racism for criticizing Obama, he in fact makes the fact that Obama is black, an inherent and immutable fact, the problem.
To wish away a foundational characteristic of a person, such as race is, is to place the issue unavoidably on that very foundational characteristic. If one were, in a moment of insanity perhaps, to wish your adversary were not female, so you could strike her, makes the fact that you want to strike her part and very parcel of the fact that she is in fact a woman. More-so, the fact that you hesitated to strike her, is also inseparable from the fact that she is a woman.
And so it goes.
Which brings me to another what if:
What if, Erick Erickson, were not a polysemetic homophone???