The New Republic

This bleech blond bubblehead is a complete nitwit, and worse, a bad writer:

But so-called ordinary Americans aren't so easily manipulated, and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off, and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend or tolerance (? where was the editor?) for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Sen. Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Mrs. Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to.

That woman is basically a piece of shit masquerading as a human being. My fathers side came 150 years ago, my mothers father from Germany, there is not a whit of difference in Patriotism or Americanism between my mother or my father.

I am sick of this elitism of the small town, it is belittling and stupid. Small town or big city, first generation or 100th (Native American) we are all Americans, and more importantly, all fellow humans. Except, as I noted, that dimwit POS

- blackton

May 19, 2008 at 12:11pm

"And, the truth is, Mrs. Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to."

Cobbled?

- boneill

May 19, 2008 at 12:20pm

blackton, I don't much care who and what Parker is, but terms such as "blood equity" have their own lineage and mission in the world (a meme resuscitated, this time in America's "traditional" nativist dress. Yuck!).

- tomeg

May 19, 2008 at 1:35pm

I agree blackton, except I'm not sure she's a dimwit because, grammar aside, that is some silver-tongued verbiage. I can easily see how people not accustomed to reading between the lines, or hearing what is not said, would completely miss the glaringly obvious holes in her thesis.

"Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America."

Exactly how are "race" and "heritage" different? Sounds more like changing emphasis from the color of a person's skin to the Continent of Origin of a person's ancestry; which would be great if it wasn't such a great predictor of skin-tone. Core values have never NOT been a part of politics, that is the Original Political Dichotomy, if there is one. And the phrase "Made-In-America" is obviously just being thrown into the mix for flavor because Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States of America.

And then there is this tasty morsel:

"But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice."

Black people can trace THEIR bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice, too: blacks have served in the Korean war, Vietnam, WWII, WWI, and Civil War. Why isn't their sense of America being included here?

"What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. "

What they really know is that their forefathers owned a bunch of other "Americans", who also fought and died for an America that had free reign to use and abuse them at will for more than 200 years.

'their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative"

I could accept what the author said here if it wasn't painfully obvious that White Culture has been anything but swept under the rug; in fact, the purpose of Black History Month is to keep White Culture from sweeping Black Culture under the rug, most of what black's know about black history today has not come from the standardized text-books of public schooling systems! The real problem is that those who've had a strangle-hold on power for over 200 years are loathe to share the power with others, especially not those over whom that power has been wielded for so long.

"Some Americans do feel antipathy toward "people who aren't like them," but that antipathy isn't about racial or ethnic differences"

So why do these feelings of antipathy manifest in derogatory statements regarding the other person's skin-tone or ethnicity?

"It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation."

Wow! That first part sounds like "illegal immigrant" to me. That second part sounds like she's dismissed blacks as being viable citizens because they've never sacrificed their lives for America.

Disgusting.

- GSpinks

May 19, 2008 at 1:57pm

You guys are just too shortsighted to see Parker's brilliance: "blood equity" will be the solution to America's foreclosure crisis.  Upside-down on your mortgage?  True Americans solve that problem with a knife!

- ratnerstar

May 19, 2008 at 2:02pm

"blood equity" - WTF?

You mean my sweat equity's not enough?

Can't these people leave our bodily fluids alone?

[don't go there, Mr Yard. Actually, on second thought, please do go there. Just turn the lights off when you're done.]

- teplukhin2you

May 19, 2008 at 2:57pm

My, my, little Kathleen Parker has evolved into quite the Aryan Princess, ain't she?  

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.  I need several stiff drinks.  

- cspencef

May 19, 2008 at 5:33pm

wow.  Chait, I don't think "somewhat" fascistic quite captures it.

"It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story."

Actually, Ms. Parker, it IS necessarily racist or nativist.  These "new" demographics ARE the larger American story---and always have been.  Whether or not she chooses to acknowledge the impact of Irish immigration during the 1840s, or German immigration during the 1860s, or Italian & Greek immigration during the 1890s, all those previous immigrant waves swamped the contemporary definition of the "larger American story."  Pretending this is a new phenomenon is profoundly ignorant of history.  Parker willfully ignores the reality this this cultural dynamism is the source of America's greatness, not a weakness.

- gea1434

May 19, 2008 at 8:47pm

I think that Kathleen Parker is just Pat Buchanan in drag.

- liberal reformer

May 19, 2008 at 9:00pm

Hmm. She seems troubled by this "dash to diversity."   Don't forget the nettlesome "march to mongrelization" and the overzealous "trot to tolerance."  Let's hold those non-racist feelings in check, shall we.

(Why is the World Jewish Review publishing Nazis?)

- stgla

May 20, 2008 at 12:17am

Maybe she hopes McCain's priority will set up breeding camps populated with Appalachia's finest blue eyes blong haired residents to guarantee that we are still populated by full-blooded Americans.  

I don't know Parker's background but she is beng reprinted by World Jewish Review which might cause "full blooded Americans" like Josh Fry to say "what do you mean we, kemosabe".

- alexmh

May 20, 2008 at 9:53am

The comment section after Kathleen's idiotic column is page after page of mocking, angry and often amusing put downs of her writing.

As usual at WaPo, the comment section is better written, more informative and more fun then the original column...

- wagonjak

May 20, 2008 at 11:16am

Born in Kansas. Full American.

- cthulhu2008

May 20, 2008 at 12:39pm

Obama is an internationalist.  That doesn't make him "un-American".  

But, I prefer my presidents be nationalists, and a bit more soaked in the soil, thank you.  All you urbanistas can point and laugh as much as you like.  I don't give a damn.  And there is a large segment of the population that feels the same way.  

the only question is, how large a percentage?  I have no doubt it has been diluted under a thirty year media and academia and CW siege of "multi-cultural," "we're not exceptional," "don't make value judgements" propaganda.  All of which originated in the cosmopolitan Left (and that is not code for Jewish).

So, one of the big questions of this election is whether this propaganda onslaught has taken a serious toll on what, as far as I'm concerned is healthy nativism, chauvinism, and unapologetic Americanism.  

We already have a Europe, thank you.  One unalloyed beacon of freedom and exceptionalism is going to be needed again, just as it was in 1914-18, 1939-45, and 1946-89.  Otherwise, there will be no cowboys and cavalry to ride to the rescue when the world is occupied by tyranny.

Obama is making it clear he doesn't have the stomach for it.  And that with all his education and intelligence, he can rationalize doing the hard stuff just as the Left has been doing for nearly two generations.

- ChanRobt

May 20, 2008 at 3:38pm

liberal reformer, I don't know what your bitch is with Buchanan.  He is by far the most articulate and convincing voice against the Bush Doctrine that there has been out there.

Far more convincing than any hysterical Leftist has been.

- ChanRobt

May 20, 2008 at 3:40pm

Kathleen Parker: Full-of-It American.

- teplukhin2you

May 20, 2008 at 3:43pm

ought to have read, "...Obama is making it clear he doesn't have the stomach for it.  And that with all his education and intelligence, he can rationalize NOT doing the hard stuff just as the Left has been doing for nearly two generations."

- ChanRobt

May 20, 2008 at 4:52pm

By the way, I told you so.

As I have posted here regularly over the last several months, like it or not, fair or not, right or not, Obama's "exoticness" can't help but be an issue.

And, it has little to do with his race.  Or even foreign parentage, per se.  Colin Powell, whose family is recently from the Caribbean, would not have been subject to this.

But, Obama is a cocktail of influences, which either singly or in combination, or totally unprecedented for anyone ever elected president, or perhaps even nominated as a major party candidate.

He is, at least paternally, first generation American.  Unless you count the first several presidents as Englishmen, this is new.  We have always liked our presidents to have American ties that go back several generations.

He's got the several childhood years in Indonesia, taken there by an Indonesian stepfather, and attending local schools.  He has a Muslim name, of course.  An African father who abandoned both Obama and family, and America.  That father was also a Marxist with ties to a Marxist African government.  Certainly exotic and unprecedented for an American president.

And, frankly, just as exotic for the Oval office are Obama's roots in the Leftist sectors of the Ivy League.  

When you add to this his wife's ill-considered remarks about her very belated pride in being an American, Obama's anthropological observations about small town Americans (meant for a Latte Lefty SF audience), plus his stem winding anti-American preacher of 20 years, and, uh, yeah, people might wonder a little bit about his commitment to the country.

Doesn't mean their right.  Doesn't mean it's true.  But, can anyone really, truly, honestly say there is nothing about Obama to give pause to those benighted among us who aren't as sophisticated as posters at TNR?

- ChanRobt

May 20, 2008 at 5:07pm

I just read the Kathleen Parker piece.

How puerile of Chait and the other posters who called what she wrote "fascistic".  

You obviously didn't bother to read it, or if you did, to stop and think.  You just reached right for the handy "fascist" thing.  What college dorm have I walked into?

- ChanRobt

May 20, 2008 at 5:29pm