The Maureen Dowd Two Minute Mock

Racism Peers out from the Frappucino

June 25, 2003

Ms. Dowd’s latest offering, “Could Thomas Be Right?”, is extremely valuable as it demonstrates that the real racists in our society are members of the liberal anti-intelligentsia.  Maureen takes issue with the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas in the University of Michigan case, Grutter v. Bollinger, whereby the Court upheld the practice of affirmative action in America.

Justice Thomas is a brave man to say the least, as it seems that in America today a black man or woman is only allowed to have one political view and that view has to be a leftist-socialist one.  Whenever a black deviates from the ten degrees of political latitude they are granted, liberal Democrats deem them untouchables or Uncle Toms. 

Today Dowd wastes no time in attacking Thomas.  It should be recalled that the Justice has never received mercy from the leftists who oppose him.  Indeed, one caring liberal [sic] on NPR even expressed a hope that he’d die young from a coronary.  Dowd wrote that Thomas made a psychological argument against affirmative action as “He knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.”  Where does one begin with such a statement?  She offers no evidence that he got into Yale or was appointed to the Supreme Court due his race alone.  This accusation is entirely unsubstantiated.

Ms. Dowd exclaims that there are no powerful legal arguments against racial preferences but I’ll give her one: it’s a racist practice.  Racial preferences treat Caucasian males like myself and, many of our readers, as second class citizens.  We pay taxes to our government and then our government, in turn, discriminates against us in its hiring practices.  Affirmative action certainly is sick and wrong but it’s also illegal.  It runs contrary to all civil rights legislation that has been passed in the last forty years and is a permanent statement to the people of the United States that racism and discrimination are acceptable provided one does it to the appropriate people. 

The “diversity” angle is also fallacious.  This decision suggests that leftists like Dowd want blacks to be museum exhibits at our universities as a way to promote the ethereal diversity concept.  Blacks are enrolled to provide scenery for the young and the sensitive.  John McWhorter argued in Salon: “First of all, black students do not like being used as pawns of diversity and class. You hear this from black students again and again, that it's a burden to be sought for your views on race in classrooms.”

Our friend the “Liberties” columnist then attacks, ala Politburo, her adversary’s mental health: “The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received.”  I see no evidence that the Justice is mad or illogical in any way.  Holding that the state should not discriminate against its citizens is a sound and sane belief.

Then Ms. Dowd displays her devotion to leftist dogma with the words, “It's poignant, really. It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race.”  How does she know?  Has she given him an intelligence test?  Has Ms. Dowd just completed a thorough research of his life and concluded that there is no way this man can function in such an arena?  Unfortunately for her, he has functioned very effectively as a Supreme Court Justice.  If she is desirous of an intelligence test being administered I’ll be happy to oblige her– but she gets tested first.

Besides, why has she not mentioned Mr. Blair or Mr. Boyd within the body of this slanderous paragraph?

More assaults are then proffered, “Justice Thomas relies on his id, turning an opinion on race into a therapeutic outburst.”  No, his opinions are not a therapeutic outburst but Ms. Dowd’s columns certainly are.  If Mr. Thomas were relying on his id he would not be writing lengthy judicial opinions.  Most probably he would be writing columns for the New York Times under the title “Liberties.”

Then she takes an opportunity to attack our president through the Justice’s use of the phrase “racial aesthetics” which she says applies to “the Republicans put[ing] on a minstrel show for the white fat cats in the audience” at their 2000 convention.  Of course, Mr. Bush has placed black Americans in very real positions of power.  Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and Secretary of Education Rod Paige, have more power in their little fingers than a non-affirmative action fellow like myself has in his entire body (and also in my ancestral line).  Clinton, the great inclusionist, had Ron Brown before he died.  President Bush has given the black community much more.  His appointees are magnificent role models.  Maureen Dowd and her ilk have given them nothing.

She then says that the only reason Thomas became a Justice was due to his “getting past the Anita Hill sexual harassment scandal by playing the race card, calling the hearing ‘a high-tech lynching.’”  Gee Maureen, Anita Hill was black.  I don’t think Clarence Thomas got confirmed due to his reference to lynching.  It was more due to Ms. Hill continuing to work for Thomas long after the sexual harassment allegedly occurred.  Further, no member of United States who was not a devotee of radical feminism (like Dowd or Hill) would have found her accusations to be believable or damning.

Dowd’s question, why “does he come across as an angry, bitter, self-pitying victim?” is inaccurate.  Thomas does not come across that way but the political correctness rampant in the universities today crafts minority students to become angry and bitter and to despise the USA [see http://toogoodreports.com/column/general/chapin/20030625.htm ].  Anger and bitterness are the byproducts of today’s identity politics and identity politics are exactly what Maureen Dowd and the Supreme Court are validating with the current cases. 

More mind reading then transpires as she bellows that Mr. Justice Thomas, by going “from a Democrat to a conservative as a young man…knew that he would be a hotter commodity in politics.”  Yawn…How does she know this?  She doesn’t.  He, just as I did, probably saw that there was much to conserve in this nation and wisely came over to the side of Western Civilization. 

Her statement that “blonde conservative pundettes flash long legs and sneer at feminism” is an understatement.  Somebody ought to tell her that everybody these days, outside of the leftist islets of Blue America, laugh at radical feminists and gender feminism.  As far as skirts go, I’d say that most attractive women show off their bodies.  She should consult Matt Ridley’s Red Queen if she wishes to learn more about evolutionary psychology.  I’m sure that she shows off anyway whenever she visits one of the local retirement homes to troll for available bachelors (okay I made that up).

Ms. Dowd concludes with “President Bush and Justice Thomas have brought me around. I don't want affirmative action. I want whatever they got.”  Good, let’s end discrimination today then.  As to “whatever they got,” it’s called character and hard work, but I should warn Maureen that if one hasn’t developed good habits by age 50 one probably never will. 

The real story behind this column is that columnists like Ms. Dowd are the real beneficiaries of affirmative action as it is impossible to imagine a person making bizarre assertions and accusations like this were they not women and feminists.  They’ve always had a lower level of proof applied to them (witness the Super Bowl scam about increased domestic violence and the lie that 100,000 anorexics die each year when in fact the number is less than 100).  If she did not write for a malicious cabal of yuppies, otherwise known as the New York Times, Ms. Dowd could not get away with Borking a fine man like Clarence Thomas or anybody else for that matter.

Bernard Chapin