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White Backlash, Part Deux
During the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, segregationists like Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Boston anti-busing rabble-rouser Louise Day Hicks whipped up what was then known as “the White Backlash.” It was nothing less than an all-out effort to use mob rule to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement and drive blacks back…
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The Danger of Prayerful Candidates
Lawd, have mercy upon us! There’s not a religious bone in my body, but the field of Republican presidential candidates has me crying out to Jesus for relief. If the Creator intends to punish America for its multiple transgressions, it might be by inflicting one of these bozos upon us. That would truly be a…
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Can the Left Regain Its Passion?
It may be a while before we learn whether the agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling really is as awful as economists like Lawrence Summers fear, but one thing about it is certain. The Tea Party’s remarkable victory reminds us that a radical splinter group can seize control of the issues and impose its…
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The Debt and the Planet of the Dopes
As I write, it remains uncertain whether the superpatriots who make up the Tea Party will send the nation they claim to love so much hurtling into the abyss of default with consequences that no economist or politician can totally foresee. Nor is it completely clear which planet these extremists have been living on as…
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What Would Reagan Do?
While we wait for the arrival of that miracle worker whom my colleague David Swerdlick calls the black Ronald Reagan, it’s worth asking, WWGD? What Would the Gipper Do to resolve the extraordinary crisis over the federal budget and the national debt ceiling if, by some miracle, he had been resurrected and were still our…
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Exorcising Eric Cantor
My congressman is none other than Eric Cantor, the leader of the House Republican majority. In fact, the house in the Richmond, Va., suburbs where I live was once owned by one of Cantor’s relatives, and he played here when he was a child. Thinking about that gives me the willies. It’s creepy to be…
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Handicapping the GOP 2012 Field
As I vowed when The Root inaugurated this column, there ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from delving into the foibles of the political right wing. Thus, at considerable risk to my mental health, I subjected myself to the entire two hours of…
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Exposing Weiner Doesn't Vindicate Breitbart
It’s a pity that the 19th-century Austrian novelist Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was not still around this week to witness a spectacular vindication of her most famous aphorism: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That old adage applies to Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing-media hit man previously best known for manufacturing a charge of…
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The GOP Presidential Candidate Speaks to Blacks
My old pal Paul Delaney, a fellow contributor to The Root, recently asked me what kind of speech I thought Barack Obama’s Republican challenger would make to a mainstream black audience during next year’s presidential campaign. It’s a good question because every four years, the GOP and its standard-bearer reaffirm their determination to go after…
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Forecasting a Nasty 2012 Campaign
As many a would-be prophet can attest, predicting the future is one surefire way of making yourself look ridiculous. When your prognostication goes wrong, the only ones who look sillier than you are those who believed in the forecast. Take, for example, radio Bible thumper Harold Camping, who whipped legions of evangelical Christians into a…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
