Listen, my children, and we shall sing, of the ignorance of Peter King

Is Deroy Murdock rehearsing for April Fool's Day? The National Review contributor called New York Republican Congressman Peter King a "modern Paul Revere" for his nonsensical and time-wasting hearings on Islamic radicalization. A closer description might be H.L. Mencken's memorial summation of William Jennings Bryan: "A charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity."

Never mind the fact that King has loudly defended Irish Republican Army terror in Northern Ireland and compared the slippery Gerry Adams to George Washington(!) Begosh and begorra, if the damn'd Mooslims would just hoist a glass or two and act as if they longed to return to auld sod, they might find a soft spot in the Congressman's heart and he'd forget the whole thing. But it at least makes you wonder how the man decides who his enemies are.

Does Islamic radicalism exist among some middle-class westerners and is it preached by some irresponsible imams? Yes and hell yes. Nothing has amazed and exasperated me more, in frequenting message boards and chat rooms peopled by atheists and agnostics, than to discover a certain type of skeptic of religion who, when he loudly objects to God, really means Christianity: Buddhism is enlightened, Hinduism is exotic, Taoism is nonjudgmental, and as to violent manifestations of Islam, well, who are we to judge—anyway, ever heard of the Crusades? As long as no one in their neighborhood is being beaten, stoned, or beheaded, they don't want to talk about it. That kind of two-facedness disgusts me.

Yes, there is Islamic radicalism, and I would say it has certainly shown its problematic face in Britain and other parts of Europe, though not so much here. (The Times Square bombing attempt, Ft. Hood shooting, and attempted "underwear bombing" were reprehensible incidents so far isolated, in the U.S.; in Britain, there is more of a trend.) King says that Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano lie awake nights worrying about it, and insofar as the nature of their assignments is to anticipate events and head off terror before it could happen, I don't blame them. When I worked at Memphis's City Hall and was in the anteroom of the Mayor's office one day, I was amazed at the fact that we were in the direct line of sight of any sniper wannabe who cared to park himself on the walkway to Mud Island, but it never occurred to me to try to get the Mayor to convene hearings on the risk of psychos posing as tourists. Holder and Napolitano have their quite valid concerns, which include wondering about the next Anwar Al-Awlaki or Nidal Malik Hasan, while King has his tawdry search for the limelight, which includes exploiting an aggrieved dad from Memphis who mourns for the son who became radicalized and is now dead. His grief for his son is as real as was the tragedy, but isolated instances do not make a trend, and King has shown nothing to prove otherwise.

Can a single Al-Awlaki exercise a dangerous influence? Certainly. Could 50 Al-Awlakis sow the seeds for hundreds of Fort Hood shootings? I have no doubt of it. Does King have any evidence that such vipers are being nurtured in American mosques? Thus far, as the Washington Post noted today, there is a large ratio of drama in his hearings to real substance.

Meanwhile, the likely effect of his hearings is to needlessly demonize the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live peaceful productive lives in the United States and are as horrified by bombings, female genital mutilation, and the like, as you or I. Does King have facts and figures to show that the other kind of Muslim is somehow in the ascendant in our country? If so, let him cite them. If not, let him remember the lamentable example of a certain United States Senator of 50 years ago who went down to everlasting and richly deserved disgrace.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Color me spiritual

When will the President-elect and Mrs. Obama entertain Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Morgan Freeman at the White House? He owes a great deal to all three. His gifts and achievements are his own, and he ought to have won his office without reference to race, but racial prejudice made it necessary for these men to quietly assure fearful whites for years that African-Americans were reasonable and civilized and that your well-spoken black dinner guest would not suddenly cast away his necktie and begin an orgiastic dance on your coffee table. (When I Spy aired, National Review honored Cosby with the label, "Super Spade.") Of course, prejudice lingers still, as Memphis journalist Wendi C. Thomas sardonically noted with her pre-election column in TheRoot.com, “Will White People Riot [if McCain loses]?”

When, for that matter, will Obama invite comedian Dick Gregory who, after all, preceded the President-elect's successful campaign with his own White House bid 40 years ago? I remember listening to a recording of a Gregory routine around 1966, in which he described his fantasy of moving to a suburb and "raking the snow" while dressed in a jacket and tie, in order to be accepted by his white neighbors. Talking of his proposed residence in the White House, Gregory imagined himself answering phone calls to the Executive Mansion with a laid-back "Hey, baby!" He never got to move in, but in any case, would probably have avoided the burden about to descend on Obama, yet another subtle manifestation of race prejudice, the black man as wise spirit guide to confused and benighted whites. Bijan C. Bayne describes the phenomenon in another perceptive and provocative piece in TheRoot, "Magical Negro in Chief":

...there is something dizzying about the heights of Obama's other-worldly pedestal. And—if he continues to follow another narrative arc laid out in popular culture—the depths to which he will inevitably fall. Will this character rescue the world in the end? Or will he become consumed by an unseen, dark inner soul?

In the coming years, we will know soon enough. Until then, we can only look at the clues laid out in popular culture.

Negro Spirit Guides, magical helpers who have little interior life of their own, says E. Ethelbert Miller, literary archivist and director of the African-American Studies Resource Center at Howard University. "Their duty is to serve (whites) and to serve well. The hero of the movie often 'embraces' their blackness and comes to grips with the unknown."

Placing a feared "other" on a pedestal is of course a well-known technique for circumscribing his or her role, with a long history: men used it on women, and whites on blacks of both genders. Bayne continues:

There is a colonial tinge to this Negro Spirit Guide phenomena, according to Regina Longo, a University of California Santa Barbara film and media studies professor. Starting in the 19th century Romantic era, the spirit guide became "a way for white colonists to acknowledge a certain type of black power that is safe for the whites, that still keeps the blacks as something other than wholly human even if they are divine," Longo said. "The religion of that era said that we are all God's creatures, no matter our rung on the evolutionary ladder. That helps the whites to assuage their guilt over the institutions of slavery and racism, but rather than letting go of them, they institutionalize them through culture."

To be sure, some reasons for expecting great things of Obama are obvious. He is poised, thoughtful, articulate (and clean, as his Vice-President-to-be observed!), intelligent, prudent, pragmatic, but with principles, though his fortitude and tenacity in maintaining those principles against both Congressional barons and foreign despots have yet to be tested. And yes, we are entitled to expect capability, energy, wisdom, and sound governance, but from a mortal, not a Savior. Anyone too caught up in the current euphoria might do well to remember an example cited by Montaigne:

"The poet Hermodorus had written a poem in honour of Antigonus, wherein he called him the son of the sun: "He who has the emptying of my close-stool," said Antigonus, "knows to the contrary."

Meanwhile, beleaguered GM executives seem desperately bereft of spirit guides of any complexion; the Sun may be setting on Saturn, whose 1990 rollout was also supposed to represent "Change you can believe in." Apparently, some in GM and UAW alike really did believe:

True believers in Saturn insist the concept behind the division, which stressed respect, teamwork and communication from the factory floor to the auto showroom, could have kept G.M. from losing nearly half the market share it held when the first Saturns went on sale 18 years ago.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the Saturn way could have worked,” said Michael Bennett, the original U.A.W. leader at Saturn. “But what we had was never embraced or adopted.”

This year, Saturn sales will fall below 200,000 units for the first time since 1992 (sales have never achieved the half-million-unit annual volume that GM hoped for). Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that "General Motors has promised Congress that it can recreate itself as a different kind of car company — smaller, with a more cooperative relationship with its union, and a lineup of fuel-efficient cars to compete with the best of the foreign brands." But that is what was supposed to happen with Saturn! GM executives are hinting at "looking at alternatives"; Congress needs to do the same.

© Michael Huggins, 2008. All rights reserved.