> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> John Strausbaugh has a column, called "Don't Call Me N-word, Whitey,"
> in this week's New York Press defending Horowitz
> <http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=254&author_id=2>. His
> lead: "How far can a white guy go in criticizing black culture before
> Time declares him a racist? Salon's conservative columnist David
> Horowitz found out last week."
> Just what is "black culture"?
What pisses me off is not really Horowitz's viewpoint (which we have all heard many times) but the hypocrisy of the guy. Here we have the man who has led crusades against political correctness and been part of the movement that has denounced the idea that racist language can contribute to a bad climate for intellectual community, then turn around and say the word "bigot" is a libelous hate crime that everyone in sight should protest.
Horowitz is obviously a mental basket-case given his radical jag from Stalinism to authoritarian conservatism - but the pure acting out of "political correctness" in attacking another person's speech by someone who helped coined the term is almost too perfect psychological projection.
It reminds me of one of the Senators who denounced the Smithsonian for daring to indicate that Christian missionaries might not have been welcome additions to the Indian communities in the Southwest. I believe the quote was something like "Christianity has never been an invading force." The political correctness of the Right is so strong that it takes a pure case like Horowitz to really explode it.
--Nathan