BREAKING NEWS: Frank Rich still exists and he is still a colossal moron.
I don’t think I’ve thought of Rich since he departed the New York Times for New York magazine in 2011, but his recent interview with Chris Rock suddenly propelled him into my media universe. The interview is largely innocuous until we get to this question, which Rich surely included to prove that he remains a total idiot.
“We still have some white people taking the Sarah Palin line about blacks and immigrants alike. They want to ‘take back the country’ — and we know from whom,” Rich said, asking a question of Rock through a diatribe. “I find it depressing. The increments of change seem to be so much tinier than we wanted to believe when the Civil Rights Act passed 50 years ago, or when Obama was elected in 2008.”
The “from whom” Rich referred to were obviously “blacks and immigrants,” when in actuality conservatives and tea partiers who use the phrase “take back America” mainly mean from smug white imbeciles like Frank Rich. As I pointed out in the Washington Examiner back in 2010 when people like Chris Matthews and David Remnick were first suggesting conservative calls to “take back America” or “I want my country back” were racist, the Democrats used the very same word combination when George W. Bush was president.
Indeed, there were even conferences in 2006 and 2007 entitled “Take Back America” where one Sen. Barack Obama gave a couple speeches.
Vice President Joe Biden used the phrase “take back America” as recently as this past September.
“So folks, it’s time to take back America, as we say,” he said at a rally. ” It’s time to change the tax code. It’s time to make sure you get equal share.”
Sure, “as we say” at Ku Klux Klan rallies, right? Right? Frank Rich?
So despite the fact that “take back America” has been shown to be a much utilized slogan by both parties, Frank Rich still wants to pretend such calls by Republicans are racist, either because he is illiterate, a simpleton or a liar — or probably some combination thereof. But what’s perhaps most humiliating for Rich is that Rock didn’t take the bait. He doesn’t think the country is as racist and retrograde as the voices in Rich’s head tell him it is.
“Yeah. The stuff you’re talking about is pockets though,” Rock responded. “There’s always going to be people that don’t know that the war’s over. I’m more optimistic than you, but maybe it’s because I live the way I do. I just have a great life, so it’s easier for me to say things are great. But not even me. My brothers drive trucks and stock shelves. They live in a much better world than my father did. My mother tells stories of growing up in Andrews, South Carolina, and the black people had to go to the vet to get their teeth pulled out. And you still had to go to the back door, because if the white people knew the vet had used his instruments on black people, they wouldn’t take their pets to the vet. This is not some person I read about. This is my mother.”