Herman Cain and the Art of Victimhood |
So, Herman Cain’s out of the GOP race for the nomination.
Let’s be clear. Anyone whose votes are policy driven was not surprised by this. No one with critical thinking skills didn’t see this coming. If anything, it’s more surprising that it took as long as it did. However, there’s a significant portion of the Republican party that actually believe that not only was Cain qualified to be President, but that he’s also been unfairly vilified by the “mainstream media” because he’s a black conservative. What bothers me most about Herman Cain is his overt willingness to play the victim, and the fact that his supporters enable this behavior. He has repeatedly gone on camera, time and time again, portraying himself as some kind of visionary, persecuted by the left because of his AMAZING ideas. And when these ideas are revealed to be poorly thought out and fall considerably short of the hype, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.
Cain supporters like to trot out quotes from other prominent black figures to back up this fervent claim of victimhood, like this one from Cornell West:
“I think he needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe.”
Republicans were quick to jump on it, linking the comment to the crack/cocaine epidemic without actually analyzing the comment for its meaning and intent–a common theme in crafting GOP talking points. In an interview with Elon James White on the award-winning podcast “Blacking It Up”, Baratunde broke the metaphor down for those who didn’t get it, explaining that the Republican party was “addicted to poisonous ideas”. Considering the obstructionist nature of the current GOP electorate in Congress, it’s hardly a stretch. Newt Gingrich wants children to turn America into one large real-life production of Oliver Twist, for instance. Republicans all over are willing to allow the sick and disabled to twist in the wind–even veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s kind of environment of discussion that would be synonymous with the word ‘poisonous’.
Another Republican ‘example’ of what they consider to be ‘black-on-black crime’ is a quote from Al Sharpton:
“So I would assume he is either socially ignorant or playing games to get votes.”
First of all, it’s not ‘black-on-black crime’ for one black person to criticize another. Clearly, someone needs to re-evaluate their definition of criminal activity and take another run at quasi-punditry. Then again, there really isn’t much to be expected from the same group of people who think that ‘high-tech lynching’ is a perfectly acceptable term to use when Herman Cain (and for that matter, Clarence Thomas) are anything but worth that sort of incendiary, race-baiting language.
Herman Cain constantly puts himself in the spotlight, simping and pandering to the right while saying absolutely nothing of substance. That has, in fact, been the foundation for his entire bid for the nomination. His and his supporters’ wailing about the media’s portrayal of him rings hollow when one considers how much face time he’s willingly put into crafting that image. If it’s not the narrative that he wanted, then that’s a serious referendum on his own political savvy and that of his staff. It also paints him into a disadvantageous corner when it comes to the national election; if the media was as left-leaning as the GOP would lead one to believe, they’d more than welcome someone as policy-ignorant as Cain as an opponent. Libya, China, Uz-beki-beki-stan-stan… The GOP would have a field day trying to work damage control with a candidate like Herman Cain, considering they’re supposed to be the party of national defense.
Never mind the fact that he genuinely thinks all left-leaning black voters are ‘brainwashed’. One has to consider for whom that particular statement was made–leading anyone hearing it and actually listening to one of two conclusions: either Cain is woefully unaware of the GOP’s war against poor and middle-class Americans in this country or he’s simply tap-dancing for the nomination. Socially ignorant or playing games to get votes. Nothing racially motivated about it–it’s fact, plain and simple. Most of the GOP nominees fall pretty neatly into the category of the socially ignorant, so it’s really not that far a leap for Herman Cain to be in their number.
It’s especially interesting how, in this article, the writer repeatedly admonishes President Barack Obama for being a ‘community organizer’. I would much rather a President treat the American people like members of a community than employees in a business. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly has never worked as an employee in a large business before, and doesn’t have the faintest clue as to how a business is run. Republicans have this romanticized notion of large businesses being ‘job creators’ when the fact of the matter is, they’re all more than willing to slash payroll in the sake of their bottom lines. At the end of the day, an employee can be replaced, and their lives mean very little to the company as a whole. It’s the sort of detached mindset that many liberals see as par for the course in the Republican agenda–something that transcends color, despite GOP talking points.
Going out the way he did is probably the smartest thing he’s done since emerging onto the national political scene. It’s an easier pill to swallow that he was ‘viciously attacked for being a black conservative’ than to believe he was a terrible candidate with more holes in his ideas than Swiss cheese.
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