Arkansas Blog

What if one of those Norwegian wetbacks opens a restaurant called "Knulle" in Rogers?

Having had the "pleasure" (?) of eating lutefisk, I have a typical Norwegian response: "fuck dette, jeg vil gjøre noe annet", ("fuck this, I want to do something else").

I'm willing to bet that you can count the transplanted Norwegians who live in Arkansas on the fingers of just one hand. Wonder if any of them are bjorn again. Anyway, click on my name and you'll see why anyone moving from Norway to the U.S. is taking a step backwards in their quality of life.

Wow, I have a dream every few nights just like that scenario you describe with tall, blonde, scandinavian waitresses, And sometimes it even starts off with me checking them for proper documents.

Except, as of yet, it has not included lutefisk. But I'm open to it.

Brummett was extraordinarily charitable but totally wrong to write this. Shorter column: "Denny's just too dumb to hold this against him." Sorry, I'm not inclined to cut that much slack to a state office-holder. We may chuckle that he's too dumb to know c'mere from sic 'em but isn't that just another "he's just a good ol' boy" excuse? How pathetic that Brummett's other argument in Denny's favor is that he's too ineffectual to pass anything in the Legislature. Wrong! He's one more vote for bad ideas when they come along! He's NOT harmless.

Obviously it behooves the people of this district to select and elect a better representative. We're getting what we deserve. But the scary part here is that Denny is writing a letter to a colleague - to someone who agrees with him! Bill Vines should be held to a public accounting for his remarks, as well. Thank goodness that someone (who obviously had to be on that list of addresses) has outed this shameful email. I still think that's the story here. Someone who knows both Vines and Altes got this letter and shone the light of public scrutiny on the sordid mess. Good for him or her! Good for them!

"Aw shucks, cut the dumbass some slack" is not going to cut it here. This story went AP as another bad mark against our state. Then anyone who investigates further will find a prominent state columnist basically defending him! And we wonder why we can't attract new business and new people to live here. Even though a corporation might want to exploit Arkansans for low wages, no unions, obscene tax breaks and condoned environmental rape, maybe their last scruple is that they just don't want to do it among bigots.

Brummett needs to back away and take a harder look at his role as a columnist. He may know Denny personally and think he's a nice (if dumb and ineffectual) guy. That's not a reason to excuse him. Denny may be an inarticulate bigot who writes poorly but I think we see his attitude quite clearly. And he has friends who agree with him.

Get em mag! Haven't we spent the last 7 years making excuses for people who should be tried, convicted, deported or hung? Haven't we shown a million times more charity to people who wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire? Why is it we jail the hell out of everyone else, but let every politician slide? Vitter's still got a job, Wide-stance Craig still has a job, about everyone Abramoff slid money too still has a job. Impeachment is a bad word like saying shit and Jesus in the same sentence.

Go drink 3 beers and drive home with your radio blasting and see if the guy with the blue lights lets anything slide. Though I have never hit anything on my way home from the bar, let's suppose I did. At the slow rate I drive down Fort Baptist's main street, ain't no one going to be killed. So say I hurt 3 people on the way home. Is it OK? No! Do I wanna do it? No! Would the world go on? Yes! Should I be punished? Yes!

Dimmy Altes hurt 449,739 Arkansans with his KKKish email. That is how many black folks live in Arkansas according to the last census. He in effect was saying...I'm so damn sorry we can't flush 449,739 American citizens down the drain....apparently....because they fuck too much, they're fucking more than whitey! How dare they! What give them the right? Don't this dusky race know we're without a head football coach in Fayetteville???

For a change, let's do the right thing and bounce Altes racist, ignorant ass out of our State government. Then those of you so inclined can pat on him at the grocery store, lean over the pew at church and say I don't like niggers either Dimmy. But why on earth should such insensitive remarks directed at 449,739 Arkansans by a man in a position to FK them good, be forgiven? If Brummett feels so charitable towards Dimmy, let him send him a check. Publicly writing that we should forgive such an ass can't help but make us wonder the content of John Brummett's own heart in this matter.

Do Mexicans and black people make Brummett feel a little icky inside too? America sucks because the press fails to do its time honored job and instead has become partisan hacks and defenders of those least deserving a defense. Anyone can lick boots, it takes only a tiny bit of courage for someone with 55 gallons of ink at their disposal to stand up for half a million black Arkansans and who knows how many honest, hard working Mexicans against a trash talking trash hauler with an R behind his name. Grow some balls Mr. Brummett and save your defense for the people who deserve it. Must it forever be 1957 in Arkansas?

I spent the first half of my life doing much of what Brummett suggests.. Stay quiet when the bigots utter vile hatred. When you hear such egregious talk.. forgive, but most of all forget about it, that's just the way it is.

That old way doesn't work.. It's is much better to confront people when they utter bigoted statements in the school, church, office or any other public setting.

We have a mess of bigots and capitulators running our world. Lieberman and Pryors, may or may not be bigots themselves but they love to be just like Brummett.. whine for bi-partisianship to the point the bigots get their way and we all lose our dignity, we all lose Liberties such a woman's right to determine her own life's path, Habeas Corpus, our 1st and 4th amendment and we all torture and slaughter millions of innocents around the world just so we can get along with our fellow imperialistic wealthy bigots. (and that is the very short list.)

It all starts and gets out of control when we as members of this society do not call out bigots immediately after they say or write such madness.

So I have one thing to say to Mr Brummett and Sen. Denny Altes.. Wrong! You are now and have been wrong... no amount of lipstick on a pig makes bigotry pretty or even slightly more acceptable. At this day and age you are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution.

As several folks pointed out.. Altes did not really apologize.. he parsed it in a way to say he was sorry if his words offended anyone..not sorry for being a bigot.

Brummett earns a paycheck acting like this.. promoting bigotry in a soft apologetic manner with a barrel of ink is about as infuriating as Altes original email.

To be fair, Brummett is not the only apologist in the American press by a long shot..

Cokie Roberts, WalMart's little helper in the press says Trent freaking Lott had to
leave congress because it was too hostile and partisan for his
delicate spirit. Also the racism stuff's not all that bad.

snip

As a student leader at the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s, Lott fought to keep his fraternity lily-white. As a young lawyer and budding politician, he pioneered the Republican Party's "Southern strategy," playing on racial fears to drive conservative whites away from the Democrats.

His first job in Washington was for a rabid racist, Democratic Rep. William Colmer, but when Lott won Colmer's seat in 1972, he ran as a Republican. His voting record on civil-rights legislation was consistently terrible, and he even admitted in a 1997 interview with Time magazine: "Yes, you could say I favored segregation then. I don't now."

Still, Lott's propensity for race-baiting politics should not stand for his entire career. For one thing, he seemed truly contrite after the Thurmond incident and repudiated his past policies. "I've said things and done things on race-related issues that weren't intended to be hurtful but that I now realize were hurtful," he told Time.

Moreover, Lott's legacy should include his card-carrying membership in a rapidly shrinking species on Capitol Hill: professional legislators. Sure, he's a conservative, but he can also be a pragmatist, working across party lines to find reasonable solutions to pressing problems like immigration.

snip

So if you are a racist and you coddle the old school racists such as Thurman all of your life... we should all just overlook such bigotry as something trivial and praise him because he was effective at legislating as a bigot...

"...Cokie Roberts, WalMart's little helper in the press says Trent freaking Lott had to
leave congress because it was too hostile and partisan for his
delicate spirit. Also the racism stuff's not all that bad."--Eureka

What the F***...I can't believe anyone outside of Trent's family would utter such crap...much less a so-called journalist. My gosh, saying Trent is too sensitive is like saying President Shit for Brains is a gifted speaker.

Brummett long ago lost his writing edge. And it was tellingly ironic when he recently commented about how Max's beliefs seem to grow stronger with time while he's becoming more unsure of his...no duh. DBI's right...we're where we are now because no politician's responsible for anything anymore...they're all 'good people,' of course. Ford/the rest of the country should NEVER have allowed Nixon to walk...the Cheney/Bush evilness began there.

Cokie Roberts and Brummett have obviously paid off their mortgages and are feeling very comfortably bigoted. Now they just want to make sure nobody walks across their grass.
.

Brummett sucks.

But Mr. Brummett, according to Sen. Altes's website, the company he built strictly from hard work and discipline, Fibresource, Inc., is the largest paper recycler in Arkansas and Oklahoma, and has a 10 trucks and 50 trailers.

I fear I would have a hard time, now, convincing a rejected employee that Sen. Altes has no power.

It's a good time to talk about race, for anyone who is interested. I don't know the context in which Mr. Brummett heard the "racism requires power" theory, but I have heard it from black people who think blacks in the United States can *never* be racist (at least as to whites) because we don't have institutional or historical power. I don't buy that. My reasons are too lengthy to post here. Suffice to say I know some unrepentend, died-in-the-wool, Class A racists who are African-Americans, and I fear that configuring the definition of racism to exclude them (because, says the theory, they are only reacting to a reality) works long-term harm and may confuse issues.

But I am only one person. And, again, I don't know the basis for the theory Mr. Brummett cites.

But if we limit racism to *official* power, then the white guys who tied a black man behind their truck and dragged him until he died were . . . bigots?

I suppose the "racism requires power" theorists would say that both Sen Altes and the truck-murderers were "socially empowered" -- imbued with a sense of entitlement and arrogance that has been socially ratified over time.

But the fact that Mr. Brummett confuses this with official, legislative power, shows how difficult iit can be to gerrymander the definition of racism in ways that can be readily applied.

Yikes! Before somehow points out that "those people" can't spell --

". . . unrepentant, dyed-in-the-wool . . . "

Keep after it TAP, I'm with ya all the way.

"...One can mistype just as one can misspeak. It could be that Altes is simply so spectacularly ignorant on such matters as to have no awareness, much less sensitivity, to the dreadfulness he was expressing.

He said tearfully that he was sorry and wasn't a racist. So let us be generous and forgive what he said. Let us not judge what he is or might be."

________________________

Are you freaking kidding me? I gay-ron-tee you Altes wouldn't have been so tearful and *sorry* had his e-mail remained in its intended realm.

This guy has no business being in the Legislature. Y'all put someone else in next time, okay?

Okay... Sen. Altes says he's not a "racist," and Mr. Brummett seems to be willing to buy that, mainly on the basis that the businessman and legislator has no "power."

For the moment, let's put aside trying to put the right label on Sen. Altes or his comments.

What he did, it's pretty hard to contest, is express regret that the white forefathers did not have the will or wherewithal to expel the blacks before it got too late -- before they got numerous and sullen. Then he laments that, likewise, it is too late to boot out Hispanics. Therefore, he suggests, his Aryan....errr...*Arkansas* constituents (apparently there is not one non-white soul in his district) are at risk, being polluted every day.

I don't know if that is racism or not by various definitions, but I know this: everywhere in the world this kind of thinking has taken a toehold . . . misery has followed.

One more thing -- I love the First Amendment more than I dislike Sen. Altes's comments.

Unless his conscience or his constituents force him out . . . I'd say the government has no role to play as intervenor.

TAP, you're right - the government has no role to intervene. We can only hope democracy works and a better candidate defeats Denny Altes in the next election. I'd prefer that widespread public disapproval influenced him to feel he should step down but I don't think that will happen. If members of his own party were to judge him a liability and ask him to resign leadership positions, I'd also think that was a good thing, because it would show his peers signalling that they disagree with his remarks and attitude. We began this thread opposing Brummett's soft-pedaling and efforts to reduce the damage Altes has inflicted on himself. Because of free speech, Brummett has the ability to write what he did and we have the ability to disagree with him. Let's hope the dialogue does not die down so that perhaps Altes does not choose to run again.