I managed to miss this great letter from Charles Pierce to Eric Alterman:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newtonville, MA
Eric —
“THE NEGROES ARE STEALING OUR CHILDREN!”
Sorry, I’ll start again.
I know that you and Mickey Kaus occasionally run into each other in the fleshpots down by the docks in Blogistan, so maybe you could ask him what’s, ah, going on with this passage from last Monday:
“You don’t have to be on welfare, or poor, or black to be influenced by the welfare-conditioned culture of the urban poor — any more than you have to be poor or black to be influenced by the ghetto-based ideas of NWA and other rappers whose music fills headphones in Scarsdale or Montecito.”
OK, so let’s cut him some slack because there’s no earthly reason why Mickey Kaus should know that NWA hasn’t released a record in a decade, or that it hasn’t been a viable band since Ice Cube left in 1989. But what’s this other swill? “Welfare-conditioned culture?” “Ghetto-based ideas”? And what is the affirmative difference-rhetorically, critically, or morally — from what, say, the White Citizens Councils used to say about Ray Charles.
Personally, I’m more worried that my kid may one day meet Al From.
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Saw over at MKUltraWatch.
