The speaker actually said it best himself: “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.”
Rick Santorum
I have no idea why Rick Santorum was being given airtime. By objective apolitical standards, the man is a loser. He lost his last senatorial campaign by eighteen points. When people think of Pennsylvania, they think of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But it’s a huge state, and there’s a lot of real estate outside those cities filled with Republicans. The rest of that shit is practically Alabama. He even lost there.
He’s crazy, vicious, and just not a bright guy. He’s like Richie Cunningham, only carrying a switchblade. I can’t imagine any world figure talking to Rick Santorum. Is there any other country in the world where someone that unsophisticated becomes a leader? That’s what makes a national leader: They are sophisticated and knowledgeable, not just about their own country but about the world around them.
At this stage in America, being unsophisticated is practically a choice. We don’t have a monarchy or an aristocracy, where people are born and bred to be some sort of ruling class. Barack Obama is the son of a single mother. Bill Clinton is the son of a single mother. Both men educated themselves past their circumstances. Bill Clinton was as country as you got. Now he might be the most respected politician, certainly in America and maybe the world. He’s still greeted like a hero no matter what nation he goes to. Let George W. Bush land in certain other countries and see if he doesn’t get arrested at the airport. It’s a good thing he never wants to go anywhere, because he can’t. That motherfucker is practically trapped here in the United States.
Santorum has Bush’s lack of sophistication, but he lacks Bush’s political finesse—or at least Bush’s finesse via Karl Rove. It’s cynical and it’s a dirty trick, but Karl Rove very effectively used gay marriage to turn out his people to vote. The way Rove figured it, if people came to the polls to vote against gay marriage, they’d probably end up pulling the lever for the Republican candidate as well.
But things have changed a great deal since those days, even though it’s been less than a decade. When the Pentagon took an internal poll of the military, a majority of servicemen and women had no problem serving alongside gays. When President Obama kept his campaign promise and repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the only person who had a problem with it seemed to be John McCain—and I’d wager that’s as much a function of McCain’s age as anything else.
When Governor Cuomo passed marriage equality in New York State through the legislative process, not one national Republican politician attacked it. Not even politicians in the South, who one would think would be free to speak their minds on the matter. This country is in the process of accepting legal rights for gays and lesbians. The issue is a political loser—and the only politician left fighting against gay marriage is Rick Santorum. Everybody got the memo but him.
Santorum claims his opposition to gay marriage is based on the fact that marriage means one man and one woman, and it has meant that for thousands of years. That is a lie. There are many cultures on earth today where polygamy is practiced. Even the Bible, that book that Santorum claims to love so well, has many instances of polygamy. King David had several wives, and Jewish people revere him so much that the necklace they wear is called the Star of David. I’m not saying I’m for polygamy. I’m saying that to claim marriage must mean one man and one woman doesn’t gibe with current events or the historical record.
But no one even cares about Santorum’s anti-gay message anymore. The Republicans are so worried about this black man in the White House that they’ve put the gay hatred on pause. A majority of servicemen were in favor of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell”—and Santorum wants to bring it back. That doesn’t make sense even given his theology. If the gay soldiers were being shot in lieu of moral, straight Christian soldiers, shouldn’t he consider that a good thing?
Poor Rick Santorum. I just can’t understand what he does well—except put his foot in his mouth. He said, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” Let’s substitute a group that gets far more from the government: senior citizens. How would that sound? “I don’t want to make seniors’ lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” The difference, in the mind of Santorum and those like him, is that black people choose to be unemployed and want to be on the dole. We are the “undeserving” poor. The argument would be that old people can’t really be expected to go out and work. Well, how in fuck is a person in the inner city supposed to find a job when unemployment is approaching 50 percent? The level of unemployment is systemic—and Santorum knows this. He admits to it every time he attacks President Obama on the issue. Systemic means it ain’t your fault.
One of the worst qualities of Rick Santorum is his absolute inability to learn from history. Conservatives like to claim that they look at the historical record and apply those lessons to the present day to solve problems. Okay, Senator Shit for Brains, let’s pull up a chair and have ourselves a history lesson. What Santorum and the lunatics really want in the Middle East is another Crusade. During the Crusades, Christians kept sending men to try to recapture the Middle East—and they got slaughtered. One would think that conservative Rick Santorum, someone who allegedly looks at the historical record and applies those lessons to the present day to solve problems, would have learned from the lessons of the Crusades—not to mention 2003 and Iraq. But not only will he not learn them, he downright denies them. Here he is in his own words: “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom.” And by “American Left” he means “every history book ever written on the subject ever.”
Santorum, who worships the Prince of Peace, is front and center in beating the war drums for invading Iran. He claims that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons or is about to have them, and that they will unleash them immediately upon civilian targets. He argues that there is no dealing with Iran because they will start this war for bizarre religious reasons, according to obscure prophecies intended to presage the end of the world.
All the things that Santorum alleges against Iran have been perpetrated already by the United States. One nation and only one nation has used nuclear weapons in a military context, and it’s us. We nuked Hiroshima, a civilian city. Three days later we nuked Nagasaki, another civilian city. Nagasaki was also known for having the largest Christian population in all of Japan. We didn’t make specific demands on Japan. We asked for unconditional surrender—and we got it. All the Japanese could hope for was that the nation that had nuked the fuck out of them would be nice when we took over. It wasn’t a negotiation. This was fear, pure and simple.
Now let’s fast-forward to 2003. President Bush was trying to get support for an invasion of Iraq. He was using almost verbatim the arguments currently being used to try to get us into Iran, at least at home. Abroad, it was a different matter. Bush got on the phone with Jacques Chirac, the president of France. Bush told him that “the Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled” and that “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East.” I can only imagine the poor French translator sitting there, thinking that President Bush was having a stroke. There was no way Frenchie had ever heard the terms “Gog and Magog” before in any language. Chirac similarly had no idea what the fuck Bush was talking about. Only later did he learn that Gog and Magog feature in Revelation, the Biblical account of the end of the world, and that these two mythological nations presage the emergence of Antichrist. So who is the real religious zealot here?
Class dismissed, motherfucker!
Jon Huntsman
Utah is a red state, but people don’t realize how red it is. It’s the most Republican state
in terms of party registration. So why the hell did Jon Huntsman, who is telegenic and conservative and experienced, fail to gain traction? In certain circumstances, I could even see myself voting for him. And in general, knowing that the Democrats are going to lose once in a while, I would hope that they lose to Republicans like Jon Huntsman.
By any ostensible standard, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China should have been a front-runner. So why is serving your government a sin, in Republican eyes, and being a diplomat a disgrace and an embarrassment? It’s not because he worked for a Democrat; Texas governor Rick Perry campaigned for Gore, and that wasn’t a disqualifying issue. Clearly, Republicans can wrap their head around something like that happening, and then having the man switch teams. It’s when you’re working for this president that you have a problem, as Jon Huntsman discovered. You would think that they would regard him as trying to mitigate Obama’s “damage.” Huntsman’s failing is another example of the irrationality that has surrounded President Obama, an irrationality largely driven by race.
Ron Paul
Conservatives like to claim that progressives are opposed to listening to their arguments, and that black progressives especially are completely hypnotized or brainwashed or delusional. Whatever the mental condition is, we all seem to have it. But I would argue that I have never seen a conservative admit that there’s any truth to the progressive position, whereas many times I can see an element of truth on the other side. In fact, I’ve had my mind brought around because of my conversations with Ron Paul.
I’ve met Ron Paul twice. The first time was when he and I were both guests on Bill Maher’s show. Ron Paul basically said that the Civil War never had to be fought. This of course sounded completely crazy to me at first. “Thank God it was,” I said, “or I’d be the only black guy here, serving tea.”
But Ron Paul went on to point out that we could have freed the slaves and saved ourselves a lot of blood and national treasure and life. Many other countries around the world had slavery, and they didn’t have to kill each other to free the slaves. What the British did, for example, was buy all the slaves from the slave owners, set them free, and then pass abolition laws. It was peaceful and it was cheaper. I had never heard it explained that way before, and I thought it was reasonable.
Then I had Paul on my CNN show, where we had a wide-ranging conversation. The clip is still on YouTube, and I challenge anyone to watch it and categorize the way I spoke to Ron Paul as anything other than respectful, if not downright deferential. At the end he confessed that he supposed he’d get in trouble for being on my show, but it wasn’t bad. Had I gone on some of the Fox News shows, I would not have gotten anywhere near as polite of a reception.
If anyone doubts how far off the deep end the Republican Party has gone, take a look at how Ron Paul is regarded. His political positions have not changed for decades. He’s got some very nuanced views, and I think that he’s a principled man. But in 2008, when he ran for the nomination, he was regarded as the crazy person in the Republican Party. In 2012, Ron Paul isn’t looked at as crazy anymore. He’s almost an elder statesman, and his coherent, calm philosophy is being shouted out by people foaming at the mouth with anger and rage. Ron Paul obviously hasn’t changed. It’s his surroundings, the Republican Party, that have changed—and the thing that happened between 2008 and 2012 is that we got a black dude in the White House.
It’s funny to me that I can freely admit that I would feel comfortable voting for a Ron Paul or a Jon Huntsman. But all the people on the right who view progressives as brainwashed plantation slaves can’t name one Democrat that they would support. Ain’t that a bitch?
Mitt Romney
I met Mitt Romney in May of 2007. We were both guests on Jay Leno’s show one night, so the two of us sat backstage and talked for a long time. I thought he was going to get the nomination. He was perfectly tan, with sparkling white teeth. He had all his kids with him, a lot of kids, and a beautiful blond wife. Ann Romney was naturally beautiful; she didn’t look plastic. They genuinely looked like they were a close family. Whoever was running against this dude was in trouble, in my view, because it looked like they had cast a president.
Here’s the thing about Mitt Romney. If you grow up in the streets, you’ll sound like the cats you grew up with. If you grow up in New York, you’ll sound like a fucking New Yorker. If you’re around all rich white people and you hear them talk and you go to school with them, then, when you grow up, you’ll just talk like them. You would sound pretty bright even if you weren’t. It’s like how Americans think all British people are smart just because of their accents.
That’s the impression I got from Mitt Romney. He was entitled bright. It’s the kind of bright that you get because you attended the finest learning institutions in the world. You can get some of that shit just by osmosis. He had that white-guy “I’m superior” kind of vibe about him, that feigned kind of modesty. He seemed shallow to me. The things he was saying just weren’t particularly resonant. It was all clichés and talking points. He reminded me of a very highend used-car salesman. I didn’t go away thinking, “Wow, what a bright guy.” I went away thinking, “Wow, what a rich white guy!”
There’s a thing Mitt Romney said that was quite telling, and everyone pounced on it. I want to quote him exactly so that it doesn’t seem like I am caricaturing: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine.” A lot of people brought up only the first part to assert that Romney, as he said, didn’t care about poor people. Romney says that’s out of context and not what he meant. I am going to give Mitt Romney something that he doesn’t give poor people: the benefit of the doubt. Let’s pretend that statement is not an example of utter callousness. Even so, it is clearly a statement of a man completely out of touch.
When he says he is not concerned about the poor because there is a safety net, he is really saying that their lives are taken care of because they aren’t starving. That’s what the purpose of a literal safety net is, to keep you from dying—and that’s it. The idea that poverty is a trap, that some groups are more affected by poverty than others, is foreign. To use language familiar to Romney, a helping hand to the poor is an investment that will reap dividends in the future. But he doesn’t see it that way. For him, in his own words, it’s “Problem solved!” and let’s move on to the next issue.
Rick Perry
I think Rick Perry is a complete idiot, but I think some of the criticism of him is misplaced. Rick Perry’s idiocy is not a function of his poor debate performance. I know a lot of stand-up comedians who are spectacular on the stage and deliver their material with precision timing. But once the lights are off, they’re dumb-asses. To me, it seemed that Perry’s inarticulate nature was more a function of a man who had never been challenged and never had to defend himself in the art of debate.
A big criticism of Rick Perry came when it was discovered that his family owned a camp that had the word “Niggerhead” painted on some rock. But historically, presidents have hated black people. The number of presidents who liked black people and cared about their interests can really be counted on one hand. A president who is prejudiced isn’t racist; he’s retro. He’s just keeping the American tradition alive.
What I found most compelling about Rick Perry is his subtle attempt to go after Mitt Romney’s (and Jon Huntsman’s) religion. Rick Perry always talked about President Obama’s war on religion—while he let one be waged on his behalf. When pastor Robert Jeffress called Mormonism a “cult,” Perry refused to denounce him. Despite what some news accounts portrayed, Jeffress wasn’t being a fire-breathing nut. He described Mitt Romney as “a good, moral person, but he’s not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity.” This is a theological point that a Christian pastor has every reason to believe. A “cult” is just a minority religion based around a man who claims to be a prophet—and that’s exactly what Jo
seph Smith portrayed himself as being.
The thing is, there are questions about Mormonism that I genuinely have. I don’t know that Rick Perry would agree with my specific questions, but surely he’s not down with their whole thing. The issue I have with the Latter-day Saints is this: Up until the late 1970s, the Mormons viewed it as a sin to be black. This was during my lifetime. I was in high school when they changed that. But if this was part of the revelation given to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni, you can’t change that just because it’s politically correct. Revelation is revelation. One thing Christians won’t do is change their beliefs to be popular. They believe what they believe, it’s in the Book, and that’s that. You can’t change your theology because the United States government and society at large is uncomfortable with some of your ideas. The idea behind faith is that if you believe in something past yourself, this deity will make you a better human being—except for us black people, in this case. There are things even God can’t do, apparently.
But if the God that you believe in, invest your life in, spend your life serving and proselytize for, believes that somebody’s inferior, then you always will believe that. Always. You’ll hear Christians say, “God said it; I believe it; and that’s it.” So when it comes to Mormonism, I don’t know which it is: Are they Christians who will believe in what the scripture says, no matter how unpopular? Or are they a cult who change their views to fit in with the larger culture?
Herman Cain
Let me compare Herman Cain to Barack Obama by objective standards. When Obama was running for the Democratic nomination, he was facing a very impressive field of rivals. When you watched them debate, Obama always looked bright. We never saw him get asked a question that he couldn’t answer. He always seemed to be abreast of what was going on.
I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up Page 6