Well, this was not easy---finding out how to post under the secret identity I have established for myself.  As I have explained elsewhere this assumed identity is necessary only because of how and by whom I am employed, and the need to protect that officeholder from being held responsible for opinions that are those of Barth, and nobody else.

I do not expect my secret to remain intact.  It would take very little effort to identify the human being masquerading in this guise but that guy may not necessarily own up to Barth's views in any event.  Barth is his own person, y'know, even if he does not exist away from a computer.  Here's what he has to say this week:

There was a week in May when two stories appeared in what we used to call "the press" that captured the source of my sadness and fear for the world my daughter and whatever other twenty-somethings that might be available will have to try to fix. One story talked about school districts being forced into draconian cutbacks and the other about Texas politicians and other useless fools requiring schools to teach things that are not so: sort of a might makes right for education.

Just as Clark Kent, seeing people in danger, will take his glasses off and leap into action, a blogger will publish and for this blogger that meant, in May, yet another version of virtually the same post repeated over and over about the country that is increasingly stupid and proud to be so.

Now, the New York Times chimes in with this little number. Coming after a few weeks of mosque hysteria, and while people collect under the banner of one of the most prolific of the many mean spirited among us to take advantage of our growing ignorance who has fooled the easily fooled into thinking that their hope to destroy the New Deal's safety net is somehow akin to the speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. forty-seven years ago today, it is impossible to resist posting more of the same today.



During the 2008 campaign, The New Yorker magazine famously published a cover that made light of the numerous lies and nonsense being peddled to scare the public away from the candidate whose father was black and who considers himself to be so, as well. Many ostensibly progressive web sites were filled with the gnashing of teeth and screams of betrayal that generally ran along these lines:

Out here in the heartland, not so many folks read The NewYorker, but they have seen the drawing on this week's cover.

Bingo. They now have a visual image to justify all the rumors about Barak and Michelle Obama. This is "Willie Horton" in cartoon form.

or

Sure, you and I would understand the intention of the cover, but if we think that Mr and Mrs. America out there pays attention to this kind of subtle attempt at humor and won't just accept the cover at face value, well, we have not been paying attention.

But that was, of course, missing the point. The "heartland" or "Mr. and Mrs. America" who saw proof that the Obamas were un American in a New Yorker cover were not going to vote for President Obama, and, in their racism and ignorance, resent the idea that they are ill equipped to have a voice in the affairs of this republic.

Yes, the same New Yorker, in the voice of Henrik Hertzberg, made the point very well a week or so back in discussing the mosque kerfuffle:

A couple of weeks before the last election, the Republican nominees for President and Vice-President granted a joint interview to Brian Williams, of NBC. "Governor," he asked, turning to the distaff half of the ticket, "what is an élite? Who is a member of the élite?" Sarah Palin replied, "Anyone who thinks that they are, I guess, better than anyone else--that's my definition of élitism." "It's not geography?" Williams pursued. "Of course not," she said. The ticket's other half blinked and smiled a tight smile. John McCain had something to say.


MCCAIN: I know where a lot of them live.
WILLIAMS: Where's that?
MCCAIN: Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there.

These élitists, he went on to explain, "think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves."

Te resort to reason and education makes someone an elitist who should be reviled or at least pitied as a deluded member of the reality based community, snide winking and conspiratorial asides are far more worthwhile:


Psst, did you know the previous Democratic President had his wife's lover killed?

Psst, did you know that President Kennedy had a secret relationship with a mafia boss named Sam Giancana?

Psst, Saddam Hussein was really behind 9/11...

...and he has weapons of mass destruction

And that's where we are today. They last time there was a president who they did not want, they impeached him. This time they not only did not want this President, he is black and in their racism and ignorance that's all they need.

What is it about Dr. King's address they believe they are celebrating today. Surely not this passage:

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the colored person's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for white only."

We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote

or this

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interpostion and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

But if you want government to keep its hands off your medicare, or use your social security checks to support your campaign against the government, the fact that Dr. King stood for almost the exact opposite of what your demented leader "teaches" you on what is laughingly called "FOX News" is hardly worthy of note either.

They are winning. They are stupid fools coddled by a news media afraid to call them that, and permitted to occupy a field by others who cannot rouse themselves except in support of candidates who believe exactly the same thing they do and would rather cede the government to forces of craziness than work against it on behalf of a candidate who disagrees with them on one issue or another.

So maybe they are right in one way: too much education can be a dangerous thing, too, in the hands of the wrong people.