The Racist Card

Having been called a racist, a bigot or a homophobe more times than I can count, such accusations have no sting. Long ago I recognized them for what they were: ad hominem attacks by those who had run out of logical arguments. They’re still used often - most recently by President Bush against his own political base who oppose his illegal alien amnesty plan. Instead of quelling opposition however, Bush’s accusations inflamed it. What looked like a sure thing after Democrats won control of Congress is going down to defeat. Pundits are shocked. What’s going on?

Ordinary people are getting smarter as the mainstream media loses its power. That’s what’s going on. The New York Times doesn’t define political debate exclusively anymore. For decades, CBS, NBC and ABC followed the Times and broadcast the same stories the paper had on its front page and gave them the same spin. Now Pinch Sulzberger, owner of the Times and The Boston Globe, is losing circulation so fast he said he isn’t sure there will even be a New York Times in five years. What happened? Two things: the internet and talk radio, but especially the internet.

It used to be that if the Times ignored a story, so did the major networks and so did the weekly newsmagazines. The story died. People figured that if they didn’t see it on TV, it didn’t happen. Now however, The Drudge Report will publish an internet link and tens of millions of grassroots Americans will know about it within hours. Talk radio hosts keep a close watch on Drudge and they broadcast what he posts to millions more as they drive home from work. People exchange linked stories via email with relatives and friends after dinner. Now, the mainstream media may ignore a story but Americans still know about it.

And that’s not all. If the Times and their MSM cohorts deign to cover a story they consider distasteful and put a negative spin on it, they may find themselves objects of ridicule by millions of ordinary Americans the very same day. If you don’t believe it, ask Dan Rather. This is quite a comeuppance for our media elitists who for decades considered themselves sole arbiters of what people should know. They didn’t realize how insular they’d become attending the same cloistered universities and cocktail parties as our political elite. They didn’t comprehend how far out of touch with ordinary Americans they were.

To them, illegal aliens were not a drain on expensive social services or a tax burden. They were those nice housekeepers and gardeners for their McMansions. They were nice nannies for their children and nurse’s aides for their aging parent(s) whom they employed at low wages and without benefits. They felt all tolerant and multicultural and diversity-celebrating as they waved goodbye and drove to the office in their Volvos tut-tutting about the racist bigots who want to deport their nice “undocumented immigrants” and build a fence on the Mexican border.

They didn’t socialize with people who own small businesses trying to compete with outfits who keep an illegal alien workforce off the books and underbid them for roofing jobs and building contracts while had to pay minimum wages, social security taxes, workmen’s compensation and liability insurance. They didn’t socialize with tradesmen whose wages plummet because illegals work for less than half of what they were getting. They didn’t sit for hours in the emergency room listening to their kid moan as they wait for an X-ray on his arm while legions of illegals go ahead of them, knowing all the while that they’re paying astronomical health insurance premiums because illegals don’t pay anything. The elite didn’t send their kids to public schools mobbed with illegals who required expensive special services at $15-20,000 per kid per year. They didn’t stand in line behind them at supermarket checkout lines to realize they’re paying not only for their own groceries, but for the illegal’s groceries as well.

The elite don’t go to barbecues with cops who routinely stopped illegal drivers with no licenses, no registrations, no insurance and with stolen plates and be forced to let them go when federal immigration officials say they’re too busy to pick them up. They haven’t suffered property damage when illegal aliens ran into them with their uninsured junkers, then ran away. They didn’t seethe with anger viewing emails from relatives with pictures showing hundreds of thousands of illegals with Mexican flags on streets of American cities demanding their “rights.”

Ordinary Americans do this stuff every day. They know it’s not racist or bigoted to resent invaders who cut in line and expect a free ride in their own home towns. Our elites played the “racist card” thinking it was still a trump, but it isn’t anymore. Grassroots Americans have their own media. Times have changed.