February 20, 2009

If this is a nation of cowards

How did it manage to elect a black president?

Eric Holder has just taken upon himself a whole lot of explaining to do, and that probably shouldn't be his main administrative concern following on eight years of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

Attorney General Holder clearly chose those words deliberately and while there may be more nuanced and supportable views underlying them, it's hard to imagine a national political figure making a less well-advised statement, particularly at the outset of a new regime.

Aside from whether or not this really is "a nation of cowards," what I'd like to know is why the hell Holder would even say such a thing.

If he intended to cause a ruckus and a howl, then he accomplished that. But it's surely not going to be a very beneficial kind of ruckus.

Journal-Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane thinks AG Holder is "right":
Holder is right when he talks about some people simply refusing to seek any sort of meaningful interaction across racial lines.
Well yeah, obviously, "some people." But that isn't what Holder said.

Plus, he's this country's friggin' attorney general.

Attorneys should be careful about sweeping generalizations, not publicly uttering the ne plus ultra of sweeping generalizations.

3 comments:

Mike Plaisted said...

Over a thousand posts, and you finally got one wrong. Sorry, brother. Race is America's original sin and Holder is right -- as a people, we still can't deal with it. Every time someone like Holder brings it up, he gets shouted down like a naked guy at a wedding. Bad timing, maybe, but it's never a good time around here. It's always inconvenient, always in the closet, always under the rug. Always festering.

illusory tenant said...

I don't disagree with any of that. I guess I'm more puzzled by his deliberately inflammatory choice of language. I'd like to think that for every "coward" there's at least one other with the courage to not only address the questions but try and do something about them.

Anyway, I look forward as usual to your own forthcoming blog essay.

Mike Plaisted said...

I think a one-to-one coward-to-courage ratio is off by a factor of about 50. And, yes, this weekend is for the three Bs - blogs, billing and (my) boy. Cheers.