Mesmeric power of 'white racism'

A black American reflects on the Imus affair By Joseph C. Phillips (joseph@josephcphillips.com)

When I was a boy, my father charged me with cleaning up a mess in the bathroom. Thoroughly disgusted, I tried every way I knew how to avoid touching anything. The delay angered my father until finally in exasperation, he hollered, “You are going to touch much worse than that in your life!” He was correct. I have in my life touched much worse. The lesson learned was in all things we must keep our perspective.

Following an off-color joke about the Rutgers women’s basketball team that fell terribly flat, radio host Don Imus was fired from his program at MSNBC and a short time later was also released from his contract with CBS radio. One need not like Don Imus or approve of what he said in order to wonder if perhaps the punishment and the accompanying hysteria didn’t exceed the crime. On the other hand, we are living in a nation whose moral equilibrium has been turned topsy-turvy. And the culprit is not hip hop music or the hypocrisy of the post civil rights establishment. The moral offense that supersedes all other considerations is white racism and the guilt and victimhood that accompany it.

A woman in Seattle is caught on video tape in a drunken, profanity laced tirade in which she calls an Arab convenience store clerk “un-American” and “Gandhi.” She then grabs him by the throat committing a battery. Once sober and facing charges, she releases a statement assuring the witnessing public that she is not a racist. No matter that she is a sloppy drunk, with a mouth like a sailor and a batterer, she must make it clear that she is not a racist.

A sitting United States senator must defend himself against charges that 20 years ago he used the N word. Imus hasn’t changed his act in 15 years. For Leslie Moonves, CBS CEO, to feign surprise at the content of the Imus in the Morning program strains credulity. What did change is the now very public possibility of being tagged with the label of racist.

The exploitation of that fear is what is known as the race hustle and few are as adept at it as the reverends Sharpton and Jackson. But hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game! Both men are free to pass judgment on issues of race in spite of their own transgressions because their blackness makes them immune to charges of white racism. This immunity along with the amazing ability to be in front of every microphone in sight is the only source of their power.

A nation blind to race and focused on character and virtue is frightening to men like Sharpton and Jackson. The only virtue they possess is their rather deft wielding of the sword of white racism. Disaster for Sharpton and Jackson would have been if the Rutgers team had issued a statement along the lines of, “We don’t know who this clown is, but we are not going to allow his ugliness to distract from the beautiful women we are and the positive things we are doing.” But the power of white racism was too strong and they were lulled into victim hood replete with emotional hand wringing, claims of lives scarred and seasons ruined and appearances on Oprah.

They will in their lives experience much worse.

This sword, of course, cuts both ways. The Teflon that shields the race hustler offers similar protection to the rap artist. The real irony is the very thing that accuses whites is the same thing that makes the identical language in much of the popular culture intractable. As deplorable as we may find the language, our protestations gain little traction because they do not carry with them the weight of white racism. The black community cannot bring to bear the same deadly weapon on members of its own community. That is the real sad and unfortunate realization of this entire affair.

For our own sake, the conversation that will happen following the fall of Don Imus must at some point include the end of white racism. At some point, we must find a way to assuage our guilt over America’s original sin without destroying the foundations of our culture and falling further into the multi-cultural abyss. That is not an argument in favor of incivility or ugliness. It is, however, a plea for some perspective. ----------------------------- Denver native Joseph C. Phillips is a Hollywood actor, a syndicated columnist, a regular on Backbone radio, and the author of He Talk Like a White Boy, available wherever books are sold.

Saturated with video violence

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) (April 20, Hitler’s Birthday, and the Columbine anniversary) I am appalled by commentators who ask silly rhetorical questions such as “Why do such things happen?” or “How can we understand these events?” or “What’s wrong with our society?” It’s not rocket science. All they have to do is look around! We have wall to wall violence on TV, in movies -- and in video games.

In many of these games, your avatar is walking down a hallway, shooting to the right and left. Is it much of a stretch to see the connection to the killer walking down a hallway in a school, shooting students to the right and left, exploring the rooms and shooting those he finds therein? Just like a video game! What age and gender group are the largest purchasers of violent video games? The same age and gender group that were the killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech.

Of course the media moguls and their lawyers will huff, “There are no studies connecting media and societal violence,” and they will hire expert witness pimps who will confirm it. But common sense tells us that if society wishes to decrease the violence, it might start with major self-restraint in the media.

To the groups that howl for more gun control, that in itself is too small a piece of the puzzle to be effective. It’s like calling for a ban of table knives and forks to combat obesity. Think what the difference might be if movies and video games were more oriented toward non-lethal sports or constructive problem solving?

Irresponsible VT news coverage

April 18, 2007

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net)

It’s unseemly to be holding candle light vigils and to be squabbling over memorials even before the bodies are cold, to say nothing of the tedious 24 hour TV news coverage. But the most outrageous is the national airing of the demented killer’s diatribe!

It is a fact that in sports TV, cameras will NOT cover a streaker should one jump out and dash across a basketball court or baseball field. Why? To discourage others from following suit! Should not this common sense precept be applied to VA Tech style situations as well? The message the media is sending: “if you want your views broadcast nationwide, all you have to do is make a video tape last will and testament and create mayhem!” The killer did follow the publicized Hamas example to a tee.

If the Columbine count was around 15 and the VA Tech count was around 30, does this mean that the next number in the series needs to be 60 in order to get on TV news?

Freedom of speech does have a dimension of responsibility, something the media has apparently cast aside for expediency.

Can America recover its sense of mission?

By Hilmar von Campe (institute4@gulftel.com) It is about time that America and the Western world go back to their roots in order to understand the nature of our organized enemies, and in order to defeat them. Such enemies include the Islamic terrorists. The shallowness of our so-called leaders is appalling in that they do not acknowledge this necessity.

Christian teachings include the concept that mankind’s history is a moving process which culminates in the second coming of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Eschatology is the doctrine concerning the ‘last things’ – the final consummation of God’s purposes in creation and the final destination of individual souls and all of humanity.

This Christian concept was stolen by the fabricators of materialistic ideologies who replaced the divine link to eternity with a secular culmination in their hate-driven ideologies. The National Socialists, generally called Nazis, had a vision of a German national community and a world run by the master race – themselves. The final destination for international socialists, the communist Marxist-Leninists, was defined as a global Socialist and classless society which, however, would be a totalitarian system run by godless functionaries. The destination of radical Islam is a Muslim world where the Muftis rule and no other religion exists. Those who kill unbelievers refusing to convert to Islam are promised awards in paradise.

Followers of these three godless ideologies consider themselves part of a process in which they change the direction of history to reach the final destination. They are groomed to invest their whole existence and life into achieving victory for their ideology. This is also a perversion of the Christian teaching that Almighty God wants the whole person and not just some part.

The West has lost the concept that history is meant to be a movement of humanity toward God. It has eliminated Christian teachings as irrelevant for the political process and has reduced the Christian message to a purely personal affair. American like Western Christians love their comfort and do not want to risk their existence. Western nations and their political and religious leaders therefore do not understand the purpose and motives of their ideological enemies, nor do they understand their mindset. They have their own mindset and mistakenly assume that others think as they do. They don't!

This ignorance leads to dangerous political concepts like believing that we have won the cold war and the Russians now are our democratic allies. The reality, however, is different. Gorbachev, Putin, Yeltsin and all the others are the same dedicated communists as always but have only put democratic labels on their outside.

Similarly fatal is to believe that the Arabic Palestians are the real owners of the land which is “occupied” by Israel, and that peace will be achieved if they get their own government and are given more of “their” land. Ownership and “occupation” is the other way around, Arabls live on land which already thousands of years ago was part of an Israeli state.

Even more dangerous for America is the attempt to form a North American Community. It would destroy our sovereignty and uniqueness, make us a multicultural country with economic reasoning and cripple our mission to carry freedom to the last corner of the world. It is that task which links this nation to the historic movement of humanity toward God. But it needs more than military power.

Freedom without the absolute truth of God as a standard cannot last. Liars are on the wrong side of the ideological battleline. The battle for freedom must be the battle for truth to defeat the power of the lies penetrating our society.

That is the reason why Christians must enter into the ideological, political and moral battle for America, beginning with making the family again the center of our society. Pastor Thomas Merton pointed out that a person “who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time.” Author Richard J. Foster comments that this kind of meditation is best accomplished with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Amen! ------------------------------------ Hilmar von Campe is a former Hitler Youth and soldier in the German army. In America he founded The National Institute for Truth and Freedom. http://www.voncampe.com/

Not too late, say Easter believers

By John Andrews (andrewsjk@aol.com) Too late? No, it’s still early. The story is far from over. That’s the good news for a weary world, as Jesus’ followers once again commemorate his crucifixion and resurrection at Passover time two millenia ago. Time and again in this greatest of all dramas, the early returns were overturned. Think about it:

On Palm Sunday Christians remembered their Lord’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem where David once reigned. Was this the long-awaited liberator from foreign oppression? That early hope soon faded. By Good Friday, “King of the Jews” was only a mocking insult on the criminal’s cross where Christ died. But the early reactions that night, his disciples’ defeat and his enemies’ elation, were not the last word either. On Easter morning the tomb was empty and the report was: “He is risen.”

Even then the early expectations didn’t hold. Claims that Jesus’ body was stolen, the authorities’ attempt at a coverup, collapsed when he appeared to hundreds of eyewitnesses. On the other hand, his followers’ hunch that the end times were near didn’t prove out either. History went on and still does. Good and evil still battle, hope and hardship still contend.

But all to what purpose? As Holy Week comes round anew with the spring moon, repeating the cycle of 20 long centuries, skeptics feel justified in asking what’s different, what’s better after all these aeons of religion? Believers in turn feel, or ought to feel, the burden of proof in our assertion that the best is yet to come – it’s still early.

We begin the proof by noting that human experience has a story line. History is not, as some wag said, just one darn thing after another. What’s better in our day because Jesus died and rose in Caesar’s day, say Christians, is that forgiveness and love are in the world more fully. New beginnings are in the world; new life for persons who thought they were at a dead end.

Christ’s followers have a woefully uneven record of living out this promise. Yet he keeps fulfilling it himself, in spite of us. And he does so for the most unlikely people. Even as this suffering servant hung on the cross, when everyone watching thought it was too late, he showed it was still early – speaking with authority to redeem a thief, give his grieving mother a new son, and even forgive his murderers.

The unconditional love that Jesus of Nazareth lavishes on everyone, everyone, is the hardest thing about him for me to imitate, I’ll tell you for sure. The political opponents my column sometimes harshly condemns? He’s fine with them. Marxists and Islamofascists? He cherishes each one personally, err as they may. I am shamed by his gentle patience with each atheist, his tender heart toward each illegal alien.

My Lord is so far ahead of me in the forgiveness department that I blush to call myself one of his men; still I stumble on in his footsteps. He was harder on religious hypocrites than government hacks, tougher on temple profiteers than slum-dwelling prostitutes. Who knew? If we who claim to be his church don’t find ourselves startled and chastened by him every single day, we’d best wake up.

A second chance, a fresh start, a clean slate, the last made first, a new ballgame in the ninth, a God who believes in you even if you don’t believe in him – it sounds crazy, but that’s what Easter means. Yes, the Cross is foolishness, said Paul; but it’s also salvation. For all of us fools who thought it was too late, check the calendar. Holy Week this year began with April Fool’s – plenty early for everything a surprising Savior has in store.