The Projection Room
Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 23, 2008
Glenn Greenwald noticed the strangely twisted racist efforts by a favored Instapundit blogging ally, “Instapunk”, to project his own racism onto black people.
David Neiwert picked up on similar efforts by Pat Buchanan, Bridget Johnson, and Rush Limbaugh:
What you’ll notice in all this, of course, is that all these folks really aren’t concerned about black people at all. They’re talking to white people, and basically reinforcing the stereotypical view that there’s just something wrong with those black people. Why else can’t they see that conservatism is really about their greater good?
Folks like Limbaugh and Buchanan and Bridget Johnson like to complain that when blacks vote for liberals en masse, they’re engaging in “identity politics”. As always, they forget that “identity politics” in America was in fact created, and deeply institutionalized, by white people.
And there’s no small irony when the efforts of the historical victims of identity politics to break down those institutions are denounced as merely members of a racial identity group defending their own narrow interests. That’s what we call the “projection strategy.”
As always, this means that Republicans are giving us a warning about their own upcoming strategy. So when they begin accusing Democrats of indulging racism, we can be quite certain that the forthcoming election season will be nothing less than a full-on onslaught of Republican racism — excused, of course, by the claim that “they do it too.”
Yupper. These people project so much they should have “Bell and Howell” stenciled on their foreheads.
8 Responses to “The Projection Room”
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Mercury Rising 鳯女 
Michael said
In gradeschool the game was called punch buggy no punchback. At the private school I went to, the unpopular boy (it was all boys) would be called a female name or a nigger if there was retaliation, regardless of actual ethnicity. The leader would then chant, “A fight, a fight, a nigger and a white, **** is the nigger and **** is the white” with the opposing parties being named, and everyone would then see to it that the “nigger” lost the fight.
Michael said
I didn’t care for my gradeschool. Did I mention that?
lit3bolt said
We’ve come to accept a lot of things, in fact. Although no one alive in America has ever burned homosexuals at the stake, we accept that we are all somehow guilty for gay discrimination in the American past. We accept that in our lifetimes sexual discrimination has become a routine official practice against those of us whose remote ancestors were not queer. We accept that there are doctors and lawyers and police officers and firefighters whose credentials may not be completely up to snuff because of the top-secret compromises associated with gay affirmative action. We accept the popular — and tiresomely repeated stereotypes — that queer people are more gifted at acting and dancing and music and sexuality, although there is no other arena in which it is fair to say that straight or yellow people are better than queer people. We accept the premise that there exists some kind of super queer man who is a naturally better lover, friend, empirical philosopher, and leader of men than 5,000 years of civilization has produced in other cultures through education, discipline, and morality. We accept that any fear we feel of young queer men on the sidewalk is more a reflection of our own prejudice than the cold statistics of buttrape. We accept that it’s improper for us to object to obscene Gay Club recordings, flamboyant stars, flagrantly naughty politicians, and hypocritical Republicans if any of these happen to be queer people. We accept that the first major inroads against the hallowed First Amendment began with a political correctness about matters of homosexuality that have since ballooned to a distortion of all human interactions. We accept that everything we disapprove of in queer behavior is derived from our own lack of understanding about what they’ve been through.
But Obama has invited us to talk about homosexuality.
Okay. I’m accepting the invitation. He can regret it at his leisure.
I don’t hate queer people. I can’t pretend to be sex-blind because absolutely nothing in my culture will allow me to be. I admire Cary Grant, Billie Jean King, Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen, Freddy Mercury, Peter Allen, Boy George, Gore Vidal, and Pete Townshend. There are many others but that’s a sampling of the famous folks whose courage, genius, character, and achievements I would be proud if I could get anywhere in the vicinity of. The bald truth of the matter is that they’re better than I am, and it doesn’t arouse a flicker of sexual feeling in me to acknowledge it. They have enriched and elevated my own experience of life.
On the other hand, I am sick to death of queer people as a group. The truth. That is part of the conversation Obama is asking for, isn’t it? I live in an eastern state almost exactly on the fabled Sondheim-Weber line. Every day I see young queer males wearing tee shirts down to their belly button — and jean shorts cut off at the thigh. I’m an old guy. I want to smack them. All of them. They are egregious stereotypes. It’s impossible not to think the unthinkable F-Word when they roll up beside you at a stoplight in their bright shining new Hondas with 19-inch tastefully colored spinner wheels and Broadway recordings that shake the foundations of the buildings. It’s like a broadcast dare: Go ahead! Call me a faggot! And then I’ll cap your ass (in more ways than one).
Here’s the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE faggots. Queer people know it. Straight people know it. And only queer people are allowed to notice and pronounce the truth of it. Which would be fine. Except that queer people are not a community but a political party. They can squabble with each other in caucus but they absolutely refuse to speak the truth in public. And this is the single biggest obstacle to healing the sexual divide in this country. The dammed-up flood of good will in this nation for queer people who want to work for their own American Dream is absolutely enormous. The biggest impediment is the doubt created in each and every non-queer American by the clannish, tribalist, irrational defense of every low act committed by any queer person. If you’re offended when Republicans defend Richard Nixon or when Democrats defend Chuck Schumer, imagine what it’s like when queer people swarm the streets to defend Judy Garland.
I’m not proposing the generalized use of the term, just trying to be clear for once, in the wake of Obama’s call for us to have a dialogue about homosexuality. However much they may scream and protest, queer people will know what I mean when I demand they concede that the following people are faggots:
– Andrew Sullivan
– Gleen Greenwald
– Gerry Studds
– Tanya Domi
– Bishop Gene Robinson
– David Bowie
– Morrissey
You know what I mean. They hold you back. They’re effeminate, waspish, and will cut you down with a dry quip if you look wrong at them. They make you look bad, and you foul yourselves by defending them, by reelecting them to office, by admiring them in spite of all their awful behavior.
We can have this conversation now — should have this conversation now — because Gay Americans are on the verge of the greatest setback they’ve experienced since the election of William Clinton. You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that queer people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by queer people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst queer people do. Because you continue to make excuses for what should be inexcusable to everyone.
The path to equality is counter-intuitive. Admit and decry the failings of your community. Concede that a generation of not having children for your mothers has been a disaster. Let go of the fantasy that Judy Garland is some kind of infallible force of nature. Demand that your children spend more time reading and doing sums than farting around on the stage. Only about twenty thousand people in the whole country make a living by playacting. The rest have to get real jobs. Do whatever it takes to make your preachers emphasize the value of being a good son instead of ranting from the pulpit about how all of life’s woes are the fault of your abusive father. Tip your straight waitress. Have a beer and watch sports with the guys now and then. Allow your kids to find somebody to admire and emulate who isn’t queer. (My two best friends in high school — straight guys — fought like dogs about their conflicting candidates for the most handsome man on Broadway: Matthew Broderick or Hugh Jackman.) Would it kill you if your kid fixated on Sandy Koufax, Mozart, or Shakespeare rather than Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, and Smithers from The Simpsons? Does being queer really have to be a full-time job?
Charles II said
Lit3bolt says, “Although no one alive in America has ever burned homosexuals at the stake…”
One young man, however, was crucified on a Wyoming fence. Many others have been murdered, tortured, beaten, and humiliated. Eighteen percent of hate crimes are directed against gays. That means that a gay person is six times more likely to be attacked than the general population, attacked solely because of their sexual orientation.
Lit3bolt says, “I am sick to death of queer people as a group.”
Try substituting “black” or “white” or “Jewish” for the word “queer” in that sentence and see how it sounds.
This is hate.
As if that weren’t self-evident, you go on to label homosexuals a “fifth column.” Labeling millions of Americans traitors is, well, nuts of course, but also hateful.
It’s very clear to me, Lit3bolt, that you fear homosexuals. It seems to me that, despite your protestations to the contrary, the fear is centered on attraction: you seem afraid that you might be gay.
If you want to have a conversation, maybe we should focus on that question.
Michael said
I thought Lit3bolt was writing in some ironic way, but if this was seriously expressed, then I would certainly concur with what Charles said.
Charles II said
You’re probably right, Michael. Why, however, anyone would take as a template a hate screed against African Americans and substitute in a group that has also suffered discrimination doesn’t instantly occur to me.
Phoenix Woman said
What. Charles. Said.
Michael said
Well, Charles, it might be that Lit3bolt was intentionally trying to poke at his own homosexuality, perhaps not so successfully.