Tag Archives: Newt Gingrich

"Yes, I don't know what I'm talking about. No, that doesn't stop me."

Some books  really have no  good reason to exist.   One example of this is The End of Racism, a poorly-written and ill-conceived example of reading history badly, drawing all the wrong conclusions and fooling a publisher into believing there is a vast audience eager and stupid enough to put down $25 for bullshit like this:

“The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”

That kind of dim-witted pronouncement could have been made by any over served happy idiot just before closing time, but it since it was vomited forth by pseudo-intellectual Dinesh D’Souza, it proved once again that there’s no idea so stupid that there isn’t a conservative reader happy to part with $25 to have their prejudices affirmed.  I say “pseudo-intellectual” because D’Souza is so clearly out of his depth attempting to decipher the complexities of American race relations that he comes as a total dumb-ass. At the time he wrote his pretentious bit of quackery, D’ Souza was only 17 years relocated from Mumbai, India.  Hardly enough time to be sufficiently informed on the subject, but pompous enough to throw his two cents in any way.

When D’Souza appeared on a local radio program in 1996, I called in to thank him.  Cheerfully, I informed him I had written a review of his book for an alternative newspaper trashing his arguments and had won a “Best Critical Writing/Analysis” award from the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.   Proving yet again it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good to someone.

Right-wingers taking cheap shots and potshots at President Obama is nothing new, but every so often they find particularly repulsive avenues of attacks.   D’Souza got in on the act in scribbling  an essay for Forbes magazine, a piece of shit publication nobody I know admits to reading, for his book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, suggesting the president is motivated by the dreams of his father in trying to weaken the country.

“Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman in the 1950s.  This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son,”  D’Souza writes, “The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream.  The invisible father provides the inspiration and the son dutifully gets the job done.  America today is governed by a ghost.”

“Intellectuals” like D’Souza and his dusky, like-minded soul brother, the irrelevant Thomas Sowell, are taken seriously only by their White patrons who flaunt them as examples of conservative “diversity.”

Newt Gingrich, the failed former Speaker of the House who hopes if America can choose a skinny Black guy named “Barack” won’t hesitate to replace him in 2012 with an ugly White guy named “Newt,” practically popped a woody proclaiming D’Souza’s ramblings as divinely inspired.

"FIVE! I said FIVE cheeseburgers, dammit!"

Newt said D’Souza provided a “stunning insight” into the character of the president and said, “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?   That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” the Newt babbled to The National Review.

Got that you nearly 70 million morons who actually voted for this con man in 2008?  You got fooled.  And it took a guy named after a small, slimy little amphibian that produces toxins in their skin secretions such as salmonella to figure it out for you.

There are some brothers and sisters holding’ it down as conservatives whom I like, respect and even admire.  Then there are those like D’Souza or Michele Malkin and their ilk whom are straight-up bastards, sore losers and divisive assholes.  What makes them particularly vile is the gleeful way they feel they must prove their conservative credentials by being even more intolerant to racial minorities than their Caucasian counterparts.

That sort of smug arrogance and cheerful willingness to victimize others is to be expected from a nerdy punk like D’Souza whom as the editor of The Dartmouth Review published the names of officers of the Gay Student Alliance including the names of those who were still closeted.

Happily, not every conservative of color feels obliged to be a lawn jockey for the White Right.  One of the most principled and respected men in America, Colin Powell, went on Meet the Press and put the Newt in check.

“I would just tell my fellow Americans: think carefully about what was just said, think carefully about some of the stuff that is coming across the blogs and the airwaves. Let’s make a couple points: One, the president was born in the United States of America. Let’s get rid of that one, let’s get rid of the birther thing. Let’s attack him on policy and not nonsense. Next, he is a Christian. He is not a Muslim. Twenty percent of the people see he is a Muslim, 80 percent apparently do not believe he is a Muslim.”

Moderator David Gregory noted even more Republicans (30 percent, roughly) bought the Obama-is-a-Muslim myth.

“Well surprise, surprise. But I bet you a dollar if the unemployment rate was not 9.5 percent but it was down to four percent then you would find only five percent think he is a Muslim. So they are attacking the president on this line. But he is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, and I think we have to be careful when we take things like Dinesh D’souza’s book, which is the source for all this, and suggest that somehow the president of the United States is channeling his dead father through some Kenyan spirits. This doesn’t make any sense. Mr. Gingrich does these things from time to time, with a big bold statement. He did it with [Sonia] Sotomayor, she’s a reverse racist; he did it with Elena Kagan, she ought to be taken off the nomination for Supreme Court justice; and he does it occasionally to make news and also to stir up dust.”

Thank you Gen. Powell for being a reasonable man in an unreasonable time.  Two years after the fact, D’Souza still can’t wrap his  tiny brain and oversized ego around the concept that a Black man named Barack Obama could actually be President.  Lacking the courage to attack Obama on his policies D’Souza digs up the corpse of his father to slap him around a bit as a philandering, inebriated African socialist.”

It’s a special kind of coward that attacks the son through his dead father, but that’s the dubious content of Dinesh Souza’s scummy character.

A reasonable man in an unreasonable time