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Ohhhh…White liberal Joe Biden’s gonna catch it for calling Barack “He speaks so well!” Obama “clean.”
It’s not that big a deal really (he probably meant clean as in scandal-free), but unfortunately, people (bloggers?) will jump all over it. Some blacks will be offended because Biden’s statement implies that “articulate” and “clean” (hygienically speaking) blacks are unusual.
Obama has been all over the press. Mainstream media have got him running for the presidency in 2008, and he’s the great black hope of white liberals everywhere. Last year — and in 2004 when he ran for the U.S. Senate — I speculated that white folks were fawning over Obama because he was one of those articulate Negroes. His publicist is also responsible for the hype, I’m sure. Obama recently wrote a second book about his life. If I had the money, I’d hire his publicist. 
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Thursday, February 8: Ward Connerly responds to commenters’ accusations of hypocrisy.
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Note: How could I have forgotten to link to Heather Mac Donald’s must-read article, “Elites to Anti-Affirmative-Action Voters: Drop Dead”? She writes:
After Prop. 209’s passage, UC Berkeley, like the rest of the UC system, “went through a depression figuring out what to do,†says Robert Laird, Berkeley’s pro-preferences admissions director from 1993 to 1999. The system’s despair was understandable. It had relied on wildly unequal double standards to achieve its smattering of “underrepresented minorities,†especially at Berkeley and UCLA, the most competitive campuses. The median SAT score of blacks and Hispanics in Berkeley’s liberal arts programs was 250 points lower (on a 1,600-point scale) than that of whites and Asians. This test-score gap was hard to miss in the classroom. Renowned Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle, who judges affirmative action “a disaster,†recounts that “they admitted people who could barely read.â€
The downward trajectory of those students was inevitable, Searle says. “You’d be delighted to find that your introductory philosophy class looked like the United Nations, but that salt-and-pepper effect was lost after six to eight weeks,†he recalls. “There was a huge dropout rate of affirmative-action admits in my classes by mid-terms. No one had taught them the need to go to class. So we started introducing BS majors, in an effort to make the university ready for them, rather than making them ready for the university.†Searle recalls a black studies class before his that was “as segregated as Mississippi in the 1950s.†One day, Searle recounts, the professor had written on the blackboard that a particular tribe in Africa “wore colorful clothing.â€
Read it all, and applaud measures like Proposition 209 and Proposal 2.
Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity put in a freedom of information request and found out what’s really going on at the government-supported University of Michigan.
Yes! Ban racial profiling…including racial profiling in government hiring and admissions. (Hat tip: Discriminations)
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No More Raid; Roaches Reportedly Happy
Last month I wrote about the federal government’s raid on Swift & Company, a meatpacking business that knowingly hires illegal aliens in violation of the law. It was showy theatrics that made for good photo ops.
The raid was the result of an identity fraud investigation, a new strategy in the “fight†to curb illegal “immigration.†The feds have decided, apparently, since they can’t round up and deport illegal aliens and penalize companies that hire them, going after select illegal aliens for identity theft is the next best thing.
Well, I can’t argue with that. Even if I did, the effort would be pointless. The United States is not interested in expelling its cheap labor force, an underclass that commits a disproportionate share of crimes and dicatates who can come and go in certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles County.
Having your identity stolen is unpleasant, I’m sure, and getting illegal aliens for identity fraud is killing two birds with one stone.
This morning I found out about a new program called “ICE (which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Mutual Agreement Between Government and Employers” (IMAGE) via an Associated Press story. (Pet peeve: It’s bad form to use abbreviations and acronyms without writing out the entire name first, which the AP neglected to do.)
It seems the feds are “quietly†trying to “persuade†businesses that hire illegal aliens in violation of the law to “spare†themselves from “embarrassing federal raids†by cooperating and voluntarily handing over employee documents, including employees authorized to work in the U.S. An excerpt from the AP:
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Last week I told you about a cool four-disc special edition of the movie The Chronicles of Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I mentioned what was included — two featurettes called “Creating Narnia†and “Creatures, Lands and Legends,†a documentary about the film’s production, a 75-minute documentary on C.S. Lewis, author of the fabulous stories, additional scenes, and a 10-page companion guide — and how much the collection costs: $33. (Last week it was $30.)
Disney will discontinue the four-disc special on January 31, 2007, but Amazon and other retailers will continue selling it while supplies last. Don’t miss out! (Am I subtle or what? Disney isn’t paying me [wish it were], but I am an Amazon Associate.)
For more info about the movie, see the post “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Four-Disc Special Edition.”
