I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up

by D. L. Hughley

  The Republican answer to the Democrats’ “black guy” is Herman Cain. When Cain was on John Stossel’s show—hardly a hostile environment—Stossel asked him what his opinion was on abortion. The exchange was so unbelievable it bears repeating, because it looks more like a Saturday Night Live sketch than an interview with a presidential candidate:

  CAIN: My position is I’m pro-life, period.

  STOSSEL: If a woman is raped, she should not be allowed to end the pregnancy?

  CAIN: That’s her choice. That is not government’s choice. I support life from conception.

  STOSSEL: So abortion should be legal?

  CAIN: No, abortion should not be legal. I believe in the sanctity of life.

  STOSSEL: I’m not getting it. I’m not understanding it. If it’s her choice, that means it’s legal.

  CAIN: No. I don’t believe a woman should have an abortion. Does that help to clear it up?

  STOSSEL: Even if she is raped?

  CAIN: Even if she is raped or the victim of incest, because there are other options. We must protect the sanctity of life, and I have always believed that. Real clear.

  Look at the accomplishments of the candidates that Obama defeated. You had Hillary Clinton and the entire Clinton machine; there was nobody on the Republican side even remotely close to that in 2012. The other Democrats consisted of a governor—Bill Richardson—and prominent national politicians like Joe Biden and John Edwards. Those were some major heavyweights—but note that nobody came from a private corporate background.

  I’m not saying any businessman is intrinsically unqualified to occupy the Oval Office. But Herman Cain is a fucking pizza salesman. His “business accomplishments” consisted of selling shitty food to people in Georgia. That’s the home of the fried pickle. How is that even remotely preparation for the White House? If you want to stick to fast food, there are plenty of better choices. At least Burger King has had to make executive decisions over his Burger Kingdom. Mayor McCheese has been fighting crime in the form of the Hamburglar for decades; he’s got a résumé. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Of course it does. And here’s the catch—Godfather’s Pizza is tenth in the nation in terms of sales. When Papa John’s is an aspirational figure to you, maybe the presidency is still a bridge too far.

  Everything about Herman Cain was a function of him being a pizza salesman. “I wouldn’t have any bill be longer than two pages”—which is as long as a fast-food menu. The reason the bills and contracts are so long is because they try to anticipate as many eventualities as possible. If a bill is not extremely specific, then what the bill entails has to be interpreted by one of two groups: federal bureaucrats, whom the Republicans regard as ominous oppressors, or federal judges, who would thereupon be branded as “activist” and accused of overstepping their bounds.

  The instruction manual to take some shit out of a box is longer than two pages. A school paper is longer than two pages. How are you going to fix the health care system in two pages? The fucking Constitution, which the Republicans wave around like a bloody shirt, is much longer than two pages. So does Herman Cain think the Constitution is bad law? Where should we edit that down, to get it to the two-page limit?

  The very first thing I thought of when I heard of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is that it sounded like a commercial for food. Not too long ago, Denny’s had ads that went, “One ninety-nine? Are you out of your mind?” to promote their $1.99 price. That’s why it sounded so catchy to Cain’s supporters. It’s sadly ironic that the rednecks who like simple shit can’t remember that they’ve subliminally heard this song, or variations of it, their whole lives. If you’d walk into Denny’s and think that any price is “a good deal” for the shitty food they serve, of course you think it’s a good idea for a tax plan. A black man singing about food? That shit is natural. It’s just too bad that Herman Cain can’t get a table at the so-called restaurant that inspired his economic policy.

  Cain said that “we need simple.” Yet the world’s not simple anymore. The world is complex, it is dangerous, and it is fluid. If you want to get fast, you race somebody faster than yourself until you can win. You don’t improve by racing someone slower—or by trying to pretend that complicated things are simple. Steel sharpens steel, much the way dumb begets dumb. We’re fat, we’re lazy, we’re ignorant—and we want somebody to make us feel good about being that way. It’s like we’re reverting to the animal level. When you bring a dog some food, that dog is like, “You’re in charge. You’ve got it figured out.” It’s the same thing with Pizzaman for president: “Oh, this guy brings food, therefore he knows what he’s doing.”

  Cain’s candidacy really did hit close to home for me. I’m sure for many Republican voters, he’s the closest thing they ever had to a black family member. He reminded me of one of my relatives. I have a cousin who could say some of the brightest things I’ve ever heard. He’ll sound bright and well thought out and then, when he starts to explain why he feels that way, I get the sense that this son of a bitch is batshit crazy. Everybody has one of them cousins or uncles or aunts, someone in their family. That’s what Herman Cain is.

  I can tell my relatives when they’re being nuts. But the Republicans wouldn’t say anything because Cain was black. His purpose wasn’t to represent them; it was to give them political cover. It used to be that racists would claim “some of my best friends are black.” Facebook has made it easy to disprove that assertion, so in 2011 it became “I was a Herman Cain supporter.” He’s every racist’s imaginary black friend. They didn’t care when the black guy started imploding in front of them. It didn’t matter that the onetime front-runner didn’t even come to Iowa or actually put an organization together there to try to win. It was of no importance that he didn’t have any offices or employees in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation state. Cain was just playing a role and serving a purpose for them.

  That’s why Herman Cain makes me more sad than anything. I don’t have an issue with him personally. I’m sure that Herman Cain does something really well. I’d like him if we never talked politics; I’d probably like him if we did talk politics, so long as he wasn’t deluded about his presidential aspirations. I like a lot of old black cats that make me laugh. At the family reunion, that dude would crack me the fuck up.

  But now that Herman Cain is done, the white people he appealed to have no more use for him because he didn’t win. He’s not bright, he’s not entertaining, and after the music’s off, why do we need to see this clown dance? Stop it, Benson. It’s just embarrassing for everyone. I saved Herman Cain for last because to me he was the most revealing by far of the Republican candidates. Cain demonstrated that, when it comes to Republicans, any black man will do … and I can prove it.

  THE Republican Party likes to adopt the mantle of Abraham Lincoln, one of the only Republican presidents who gave a fuck about black Americans. They acknowledge that blacks vote overwhelmingly, 90-plus percent, for the Democratic Party. Republicans contend that their policies would be better for black voters but black voters don’t see it. Which is another way of saying: Black Americans don’t know what’s good for them. Yet isn’t that the “elitism” that conservatives decry, when allegedly practiced by the left? Why are we brainwashed when certain white segments of the Republican Party, like the Southerners and evangelicals, aren’t? Why do they not give the Democratic Party a chance? Why is the same question never asked of them?

  I’ve been on Bill Maher’s show a number of times and talked to these conservatives. They always think that if they talk slower, or if they’re really precise with their explanations, that I’ll draw the same conclusions that they do. I don’t see the world the way they do, no matter the cadence of their speech or the precision of their language. All I am is what I’ve seen; we’re all the sum total of our life’s experiences. I knowingly disagree with them, and millions of other black people do too.

  One political party is the most selfish, most narrow-minded, most hateful group of people that I’ve ever seen.
The other wears rose-colored glasses and believes government can do everything and should be involved in every aspect of our lives. Neither one of those perspectives is true, but those are my only options. The former is motivated by a place of evil and selfishness. The latter comes from a sense of altruism and wants things to be better and fair. So who do I go with? It’s like getting a ride home from a party. I’d rather go with someone who gets lost when they’re driving me back than go with someone driving me with no regard to my wishes—or even intentionally driving me in the opposite direction. The Republicans want to drive me where they want to go. My values, and the values of people who look like me, are illegitimate to them.

  To be a Republican, you really have to be more selfish and downright mean. It’s a very small way of thinking. It’s all about me, my, and ours. But that kind of approach necessarily means that minorities are you, they, and theirs. We’re not going to have a place at the table. The Republicans are pragmatic businessmen and dwell on efficiency. Sometimes people feel that they need that type of approach. But when you look at inspirational political figures, can anyone name one contemporary GOP operative out there that would inspire people like a Kennedy, or like Clinton, or now like Obama? One person who makes Americans feel like something could be different, even though oftentimes we’re disappointed?

  The Republican Party doesn’t even try to get the black vote. Anyone who wants to become president has to be able to glad-hand and persuade people on a personal level. Yet the Republicans obviously think that these black people are so fucking gone that there’s no point in wasting five minutes trying to charm us, to say nothing of persuading us. George Bush never came to black functions because he automatically assumed that he wouldn’t be welcome. He assumed he’d be wasting his time because we’d never vote for him. How can he never step into a room with one of our organizations, and then expect our vote? What would be his message? “Give me your vote even though I won’t do anything to get it. The Democrats just use you, so let me use you too.”

  If we had two bright black men running for president who were ideologically opposed, all of us would be proud. It would be a real choice. One administration changed black people from Republicans to Democrats, the same way that one administration made us Republicans. Neither was necessarily in love with black people. Lincoln said time and again that abolishing slavery wasn’t his priority, yet he still ended up doing the right thing. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t FDR who brought the black vote into the Democratic Party—at least not in a unanimous way. There were still many blacks who voted Republican after he was gone because the Democratic Party was still the party of Southern racism. It took Kennedy, with his conceptualization of civil rights, and Lyndon Baines Johnson, with his political courage, to make it happen.

  The reason the black community is such a lock for the Democrats is because Kennedy and Johnson took huge political risks for us. Pushing civil rights wasn’t the politically expedient path for them to take. Their actions were detrimental to their political futures, so detrimental that Lyndon Johnson wasn’t assured of being nominated in 1968 despite winning one of American history’s biggest landslides in 1964. “We have lost the South for a generation” is what LBJ said as he was signing the Civil Rights Act into law.

  Republicans have won seven out of the last eleven presidential elections. That’s a pretty good record for a party that always had a disadvantage when it came to national voter registration. The reason was race. In 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater came out against the Civil Rights Act, calling it unconstitutional. But if that were true, legally, then why did he not propose a constitutional amendment to effect the same change? Because the act alienated enough racist Southern Democrats that their votes were up for grabs. They used to be called yellow-dog Democrats before that, since they would vote for a yellow dog before voting for any Republican. Over the following fifty years, they became the base of the Republican Party. The party based its strength on Southern racists, on those who switched party because of their opposition to civil rights.

  It is impossible to name one modern Republican who took a risk like that for black people, one person who put it all on the line simply for the sake of doing the right thing. It is impossible to name one modern Republican who ever did one thing in the last fifty years that was transformative for us—or even tried to. Reagan only made things better for rich, white people. The black community during that time was reeling from the crack epidemic and its subsequent addiction, crime, and incarceration.

  Most important, it is impossible to name one modern Republican who is comfortable among the black community. Any such man or woman would be welcomed with open arms. Why would we choose to be around people who simply tolerate us or seem to have an aversion to us? Why would we go out and vote for them? How can they speak for us when they won’t even speak to us?

  In the Republican Party, anyone who’s brown or yellow or other than white is treated differently. J. C. Watts got a House leadership position simply because of his race. Marco Rubio was touted as a vice-presidential nominee before he was even elected—literally, before he accomplished anything other than being a Latino. Minorities in the Republican Party are used like a spectacle. It’s like the modern-day equivalent of the freak show. They think of blacks as accidental, freak Americans, and if they have one brown freak on the stage, maybe the rest of us will hop under their alleged “big tent.”

  All humans want to be surrounded by what they’re comfortable with. The black community is no different from any other in that regard. We are naturally drawn to what we can relate to. We like the idea that someone has our same hue of skin, comes from experiences that we can relate to, has a cadence that we can recognize. Let’s suppose you’re interviewing two people for a job. One reminds you of your son. The other is just as qualified, but you have no kind of connection to him. Who gets the job? It’s silly to pretend that’s not what happens.

  Bill Clinton was not literally black—but he went to our churches, talked to us, ate our food, and knew our culture. He made a concerted effort, even though it’s political and it’s glad-handing, to relate to us. I might only have a GED, but I still know a thing or two. One of the most basic things they teach in marketing courses is to match your product to your audience. McDonald’s can’t go into India, where the cow is revered, and have its menu be the same as it is in the U.S. There are entire websites dedicated to foreign companies that make unintentional jokes in English because they didn’t translate things correctly for the American market. That is what the Republican approach to the black community is like. They’ll make a political ad for their white voting base, and then use that exact same ad for a black audience. Maybe they’ll change the announcer to have a deep, black voice. But their entire argument amounts to “our philosophy works for us, so it’ll work for you. Not that I know anything about you, but I’m pretty sure it will.” They are not tailoring their message to their audience whatsoever, so of course no one is buying their product.

  Sadly, it’s a simple fact that there are so few prominent black Republicans that I can easily discuss each one individually. One of the reasons I was so revolted by Herman Cain was his assertion that blacks hate those who stray from the Democratic plantation. Leaving aside the despicable choice of words, that’s demonstrably untrue. Speaking only for myself, I never hated Colin Powell. I have always liked and admired Condoleezza Rice, personally. I vehemently disagreed with the way she did things and with the outcome, but you’ll never hear me say things about Condi the way I said things about Herman Cain.

  I very much dislike what Colin Powell did. He mortgaged his reputation at a time when few other people could have gotten that war started. That’s how high he was held in esteem by everyone in the country. As a result of his actions, lives were lost. I think that part of him knew that it wasn’t right. Some people say that, well, he was being a good soldier and a good soldier falls in line and falls on the grenade. But that’s a myth. A good soldier, especia
lly a good American soldier, is supposed to be a setter of truth. Soldiers have an obligation to refuse an order they know to be immoral. If a higher officer gives an order that’s illegal or immoral, a soldier can say no. If he does follow through and gets caught, he can still be prosecuted.

  When all is said and done, Colin Powell is still very respected. I may not agree with him and I didn’t like who he worked for: I’ve wondered why on earth he allowed those things to happen. But he is still an extremely accomplished man who will always be held as a historically important figure. Every February, the one month when people care about blacks and their accomplishments, Colin Powell’s face will be on those place mats.

  Condoleezza Rice is the same. If I had a question about an international issue, there might not be a single black person who would give me a better explanation than Condi Rice. There definitely wouldn’t be a black woman who understands world politics the way that she does. I probably would break with her when it came to her conclusions and her chosen response to an incident, but I know that her grasp of the technicalities would be, literally, world-class. She might be a Republican, but she is not a Bachmann or Palinesque lunatic. I would bet money, in fact, that she voted for Obama. She met with him and she’s talked to him, and she never says anything bad about him—even though she’s probably received a phone call or two suggesting that she do so for the good of the GOP.

  None of their most vituperative opponents ever claimed that Colin Powell and Condi Rice got to where they are because of race. They were both extremely accomplished people and supremely qualified at what they did. Frankly, given who they were in cahoots with, I would argue that they were overqualified. They deserved better than what they got. So this idea that black people hate black Republicans in general or that we hate them disproportionately to the rest of the Republican Party is a lie.