Beautiful Horizons

Nixon's Racist Views on Abortion

As Hilzoy points out Nixon's views towards abortion post Roe v Wade are horridly racist:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white," he told an aide, before adding: "Or a rape.""

One can only wonder at how horrified he would be to know that a biracial man was now President. It's almost enough to make me wish he were still around.

Back tomorrow with more.

Clinton Follies

I'm loathe to post too much stuff on the primaries because I'm far from neutral and I don't always trust my "gut" as things heat up. But, as Kos has shown in two posts, here and here, the Clinton camp has crossed a line, delving in tactics that I doubt even John McCain would want his operatives to stoop to. Using footage from their debate, Clinton's people have not just darkened Obama's face but have "broadened" his features. I work in media production and I know (a) how easy it is to do this stuff and (b) that it doesn't "just happen." Forget that the content of the ad itself was distorted - that's to be expected in rough-and-tumble politics. The manipulation of Obama's picture - with a clear exaggeration of his "blackness" is out of bounds and, without casting any aspersions on folks with darker complexions and broader features than Barack, utterly cynical.

Today the Clinton campaign has charged Obama with engaging in "Karl Rove" tactics because he's asked for her recent tax returns to be disclosed. Frankly, I don't doubt for a minute that Karl Rove would do something on the order of this image manipulation to any opponent, but I have a feeling he'd not want his fingerprints on it. I welcome tough tactics on the part of both candidates for the Democratic nomination because they'll have to face worse in the fall. Obama, in particular, needs to show that he can deal with this stuff - not necessarily by stooping as low, but with a sharp and effective response that neutralizes it. But it's sickening to see a "fellow Democrat" do stuff that's so demeaning and such stark evidence of a "win at any cost" attitude in our own primaries. Combined with comments like Hillary's "I've got a lifetime of experience - John McCain's got a lifetime of experience - Obama gave a speech in 2002", she seems willing to do whatever damage she deems necessary to her opponent and the party, with her personal ambition becoming the central rationale. Hillary lost me with her war vote, but I've never "hated" her. At this point though, I have absolutely no respect left. She may be a "fighter" but so is Karl Rove. I'll vote for her as a "lesser evil" in November should she become the candidate, but rarely has that term been more descriptive of my feelings.

Update and "correction" - The Clinton campaign actually accused Obama of using "Ken Starr tactics", as he was asking that she release her tax returns (something she made a big issue against Rick Lazio in her Senate campaign.) Ken Starr - Karl Rove - distinction without a difference. FURTHER UPDATE: "Bystander" has provided some useful links that raise questions about the degree to which this Obama image was manipulated. Check them out in the comments, along with my reply. Short version is that there's reasonable evidence that the "widening" was an artifact of a shift in "pixel aspect ratio" when the ad was uploaded to Youtube, but it's impossible to believe that the "darkening" effect wasn't deliberate.

Republicans and racism

Bob Herbert has a good column today - The Ugly Side of the GOP - on Republicans and racism, which I'm linking to here. But there was another Herbert column in October of 2005 that touched on the same issue and gave one of the most succinct and damning explanations of where the GOP stands on racial issues and how they got there. Remember that this is the "party of Lincoln" which once claimed the hearts of black voters - and as late as 1964 Republicans could muster a signficant bloc in Congress that allied with liberal Democrats to pass civil rights legislation. No more. As Herbert laid it out clearly in his 10/06/05 column, all that was soon to change: Ronald Reagan, the G.O.P.'s biggest hero, opposed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960's. And he began his general election campaign in 1980 with a powerfully symbolic appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three young civil rights workers were murdered in the summer of 1964. He drove the crowd wild when he declared: "I believe in states' rights."

Herbert quotes Karl Rove's mentor and close friend Lee Atwater to explain the political "logic" of Republicans embracing white racism.

The G.O.P. has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies and outright anti-black policies...Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' "

Atwater, who would manage George H. W. Bush's successful run for the presidency in 1988 (the Willie Horton campaign) and then serve as national party chairman, was talking with Alexander P. Lamis, a political-science professor at Case Western Reserve University. Mr. Lamis quoted Atwater in the book "Southern Politics in the 1990's."

The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks.

The payoff has been huge. Just as the Democratic Party would have been crippled in the old days without the support of the segregationist South, today's Republicans would have only a fraction of their current political power without the near-solid support of voters who are hostile to blacks.

When Democrats revolted against racism, the G.O.P. rallied to its banner.

When Everything Looks Like a Nail . . .

This just makes me ill:

The family of a mentally disabled man who was recently deported to Mexico sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Monday, claiming the agencies mistakenly removed an American citizen and that the U.S. government should help find him.

The family said it has been searching for Pedro Guzman in Tijuana for a month, and fears that he's living in the streets or possibly worse.

"My worst fear is that he is no longer living," said Guzman's brother, Michael Guzman. "He doesn't know how to read. He often can't remember the family phone number. He even gets lost if he gets off the main street in Lancaster."

The easy response is to say that this is an honest mistake, but I'm not buying it. This comes from the sort of mentality that simply ignores the fact that people who are different are something less than human. The authorities efforts to find Mr. Guzmán are, in a word, lackluster. Of course there is an ugly, ugly precedent for this.

What was Guzmán's crime? A misdemeanor trespassing arrest. Who knew that it may carry a death sentence? You can hear more about it on this NPR report from  Thursday's All Things Considered.