A recent Blogcritics article contended that, "Today’s abject blanket of silence placed on anyone of a conservative or Republican voice is something new, and rather terrifying." I think that statement is pretty far over the top. Lots of voices from the right, middle and left are available, and I have seen no evidence of such a blanket of silence, abject or otherwise. Perhaps we don't listen to other voices as often as we should, but they are there. If platoons of brown-shirted thugs were burning media outlets because of their presentation of obnoxious opinions, we would notice it. I think those on the right would come to the defense of those on the left, and vice versa. At least I hope so.
However, there is a form of silencing which is less noticeable. The on line version of the National Review posted a fascinating article on 16 March pointing to a form of voluntary silencing which may well happen fairly often but is rarely addressed — perhaps because it is not noticed.
On 5 March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th circuit published an opinion, announced a few days previously, dealing with egregious attempts in Mississippi to disenfranchise minority voters. The opinion affirmed the decision of the trial court that such had happened, blatantly, and held that the remedy provided by the trial court had been proper. The National Review article tries to explore why this decision was overlooked by the media. I Googled the case, and couldn't find any report concerning it either, aside from the National Review article and a few quite marginal sites with which I am unfamiliar, plus other conservative sites with which I am familiar. There may have been something else after the National Review article appeared.
Why would there be such a loud silence about the blatant disenfranchisement of minority voters in Mississippi? Such disenfranchisement is supposed to be quite rare nowadays; a Court of Appeals decision concerning these matters is rare as well. One might imagine that when such things are found, the "man bites dog" rarity alone would grab the attention of the press. Apparently not.
Admittedly, the facts of U.S. v. Brown are unlike those commonly associated with voter disenfranchisement: Black disenfranchisement of White voters was at issue. As the article notes,
When the Fifth Circuit issued its decision on February 27, there was complete silence from Justice. The department typically issues a press release after any significant litigation victory, and the Civil Rights Division trumpets every success. But not here. The silence from the nation’s leading news outlets was also deafening: Not a word was published about the case by the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other major publication. Why? Because the offensive conduct at issue did not conveniently track with the Left’s view of race discrimination.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Dan,
Excellent job! When Crow Jim raises its ugly head, and the guv'mint has to do something about it, they are almost ashamed to admit that blacks are just as racist as whites in the States. So are all the guilty as chaerged limousine liberals who are happy to keep Americans hooked to dumbed down media (check out AOL.com), while they lecture everyone on political correctness.
The liberals will not show up here except to condemn you, Dan (remember, leftist that I am, I am not a liberal and damned proud of it!).
When it comes to admitting the hatred of Jews manifested by Arabs (particularly the Wahhabi-flavored kind) they are equally sensitively silent. North American campuses have turned into a hatefest for condemning Jews and an indoctrination camp for the bullshit of one ideological camp - that of the mellow merde post-hippie Feminazis, the hateful garbage of the Infantile Left, and the Jew-hatred (and self-hatred) called "Middle Eastern Studies".
Have fun down there in Panama. Watch out for the horseflies - they can leave a nasty bite!
2 - STM
It's not dirty great, noisy horseflies you need to worry about in the tropics. You can see them coming.
It's the mozzies.
Bloody pricks of things they are, and among the best in the insect world at disappearing into the background.
Now you see 'em, now you don't.
A bit like some commentators on BC :)
3 - Joanne Huspek
Taking the race card out of one's sleeve is always a show stopper. They use it here in Detroit all the time. Take our wonderful convention facility Cobo Hall. It needs major reconstruction (roof leaks) or to be plowed under and built anew. Anytime the governor or other nearby county execs suggest something to improve it, the cry of racism is raised. No. The city is poorly run, and that's not based on the color of one's skin.
I've been wondering if the media isn't fawning over Obama and not asking tough questions because they don't want to be accused of being racist.
4 - Clavos
We call 'm noseeums...
5 - STM
What, liberals or mozzies?
6 - STM
Clav, I just watched a show about Colombia. Interested to know, listening to a couple of educated people speak Spanish on the program, whether some accents in South/central America/Mexico are close to that spoken in Spain.
They sounded very similar, ethpecially with the "th" sound, but others seemed to be saying the same stuff with an "e'h" kind of sound.
The show was subtitled, just in case you're worried that I haven't got anything better to do on a Tuesday night than watch shows in Spanish on the ABC and am losing my marbles completely.
7 - Dr Dreadful
The liberals will not show up here except to condemn you, Dan...
Sorry to disappoint, Ruvy. I have immense respect for Dan and while he can be infuriatingly cynical at times, I take his opinions seriously - especially in a cut-and-dried case like this.
Perhaps this is un-PC as well, but my initial reaction was, 'Well, what do you expect from Mississippi?' ('In the land of the boll weevil/Where the laws are medieval...'*)
I do see that it might not exactly have been constructive to make a song and dance about the racial aspect of this case. A possible way to take the high road would have been for the prosecutors to adamantly refuse to discuss race - pursuing the case purely on the matter of voter disenfranchisement, no matter what the defense tried to say or do to set the agenda.
Like Dan, I'm not sure how much of this goes on. If it was seriously widespread, though, I think we would hear more about it - if not in mainstream media channels, then on blogs and 'nationalist' ;-( websites.
* Tom Lehrer.
8 - Dr Dreadful
Interested to know [...] whether some accents in South/central America/Mexico are close to that spoken in Spain.
Dunno about that, but in Argentina they speak Spanish with an Italian accent.
9 - STM
Doc: I work with an Argentinian girl who was born in Uruguay - to an Italian-born father and Argentinian mother. I think I've got that right.
She grew up in Australia, though. At home, she spoke spanish, italian and english. Lol. Just a typical Aussie, really. Nearly everyone's from somewhere else not that far back.
I also sit near a Lebanese-born girl who can often be heard arguing with her father on the phone, swinging backwards and forwards between heavy Aussie-accented arabic and pure strine.
One would have to assume that Dad is doing the same thing.
Then there's the Pommy bloke opposite ... don't me started on him.
He's the only one out of the three I can barely understand.
10 - Cindy
lol Stan. I had an interesting marriage to a political refugee once, who spoke English, Italian, French, German and Romanian all fluently. It was funny when a group included him and two to three people, each of whom only spoke one of those languages. He'd get so confused with translating for everyone he'd start talking to each of us in the wrong language.
One thing he always maintained was that he understood the Brits, but sometimes he just didn't understand what Americans were saying.
(Usually after I'd say something like, "cut it out".)
11 - Christopher Rose
I'm not familiar with all the variations of Spanish in the Americas but all of those I have heard have had one thing in common, which is the pronunciation. They all sound like Spanish but with English pronunciation of the letters, particularly vowels, which is very different to the Spanish spoken in Spain. Most Spanish people find that kind of Spanish a bit common sounding and I kind of know what they mean.
12 - Cindy
I remember when he got his driver's license here and asked to take the test in Spanish (even though he didn't speak Spanish), because he just couldn't make the written English work for him with such a specific topic.
The woman at the department of motor vehicles gave him a dirty look and a snide remark (for presumably not knowing English).
How ironic.
13 - Cindy
They don't just pronounce all of them as long vowel sounds in Spain?
14 - STM
Cindy: "Usually after I'd say something like, cut it out' ".
Lol. Boys will be boys, eh Cindy?? Nocturnal deafness is the other one, according to my wife ... especially when the baby was crying.
Ears that could pick out a single chink of a beer glass at 100m remained strangely unable to hear the wailing of a small, hungry child in a cot less than a metre away.
15 - Cindy
I wonder what Clav knows about Spain.
16 - STM
Rosey: "Most Spanish people find that kind of Spanish a bit common sounding and I kind of know what they mean"
Hmm, Australians mangle their vowels too ... although not as badly as kiwis.
Better than the pommy version though ... mangling your bowels.
17 - Cindy
Stan,
I think I was talking to a pet with a cold nose when I said that. lol
(girls will also be girls Stan :-)
18 - Clavos
A guy who surfs at your age lost his marbles long ago, mate. :>)
The speaking of Spanish varies widely throughout Latin America; in Brazil, it even turns into Portuguese. :>)
Seriously, the Spanish spoken in Colombia is considered by most folks to be among the most pure in LatAm. Mexican Spanish is pretty good as well, though we tend to put a sing-song cadence and tonality into ours. Among the worst are the Cubans and their close cousins, the Puerto Ricans.
As to the lisping you heard: that actually is Spanish from Castille, in Spain. It was/is considered the purest form of Spanish, and was what was taught in schools, particularly in Europe and the UK. All along, however, it was only spoken by a limited group of people, even in Spain: the Castilians, so nowadays, especially here in the Nuevo Mundo, other dialects(?) are taught, such as Latin American.
Differences around the world are minimal; mostly in accent, and to a lesser degree, vocabulary.
19 - Dan(Miller)
Ruvy and Doc, thanks for the kind words.
Do find a few minutes to read the 5th Circuit opinion. It's pretty well done and only about 25 pages long. The court had to go into race just a bit to establish the minority-majority thing, and that's about all the court did with it. Substantially the same would/should have been done if it had been White against Black disenfranchisement.Doc says,
I don't remember where I found the National Review article which discussed the Ike Brown decision. It was probably an aggregator, such Breitbart or Lucianne. As far as I know, there was nothing on Fox or Drudge. I hadn't heard about the decision until yesterday, which surprised me.
Dan(Miller)
20 - Ruvy
Everybody got away from Crow Jim real quick, I notice. Let's talk about anything but how blacks are racists just like whites are, eh?
Awright, I can talk a bit about Spanish myself. I grew up hearing Puerto Ricans and assumed that the Spanish they spoke (dropping the "s") was the proper Spanish. Imagine my amazement at hearing the Argentine "zh" (the way they pronounce "ll" and "y"), and the relatively slow speech in Spanish of Argentines and Uruguayans as opposed to Puerto Ricans who seem to run at 90 miles an hour in their speech. Even Mexicans don't talk as fast as Puerto Ricans do.
But what really floored me was the time I visited this country and traveled to Eilat for a couple of days, taking a bus back to Jerusalem. It's a three hour ride and being a tourist and curious as all hell, I tried to speak to the folks next to me. Most of the passengers had come from Tangiers and were talking in Judeo-Spanish, Ladino, which was the "Yiddish" of the S'faradà Jews.
To this day, I understand Ladino better than I do regular Spanish, and have little trouble understanding the Voice of Israel news broadcasts in Ladino, and have more trouble with Spanish - which I took six years of in school.
21 - Baronius
Ruvy, there may be some sensitive silence on the commenters' part, but I for one don't know what else to say. The outcome of the case was right, the article is great, and I'm vaguely irate that a Panamanian is better-connected than I am. Not much to build an insightful comment on.
22 - roger nowosielski
Don't build him up too much. He's too egocentric as it is.
23 - Clavos
He's too egocentric as it is.
Roger,
Is your personal motto "Open mouth, insert foot?"
Once again, Rog:
Grass houses.
24 - Baronius
Roger, I'm already on record as a huge Dan fan. (But when he's wrong, I pounce on him. There are no teammates online.) In fact, I was pondering a question earlier today, about whether it would be legal for the administration to de-bonus the AIG executives. It sounds like a bill of attainder to me. I like having a lawyer around who will comment on my crazy political theories.
25 - Deano
Speaking of dealing with accents, I was tutored in calculus by a Glaswegian...
Needless to say, I failed calculus.