The Axelrod Test
The
saga of the painted-over rock on the Perry family hunting grounds will
roll on a few more days before it's displaced by some other invented
scandal -- but give this one its just due. The to-do over the rock --
with its racial epithet visible or not visible, turned over fully or
halfway, soon enough or not soon enough and who knows where or when --
has spawned solemn reflections on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's character and
so much other mind-boggling discourse that the whole affair may set a
standard hard to equal in the election season to come. No small
achievement. You can't get blood from a stone, true, but you can, it's
now clear, get plenty of political -- and other -- pathology.
And
entertainment, too, however grim. There were the panelists on ABC's
"The View" this week holding forth on the rock, on GOP presidential
candidate Perry and, with haunting consequences, on the unspeakable word
itself. The N word, that is, whose prohibition -- even in a quote or
description of its utterance -- has, instead of ridding it from
language, of course, only imbued it with special status.
In
a broadcast of exchanges regularly interrupted by bleeps, Whoopi
Goldberg allowed that she had no trouble using the word, but the show's
creator and host Barbara Walters learned immediately she could not do
the same. Her co-host Sherri Shepherd duly informed her that while she
could listen to Ms. Goldberg say the word, she couldn't bear hearing it
from Ms. Walters -- it was, explained Ms. Shepherd, something about "the
way you say it." That something about the way Ms. Walters said the
word, it soon turned out, was Ms. Walters' race. That's just the way it
was, Ms. Shepherd explained.
Things would go
downhill fast from there. No one on that panel of practiced chatterers
could do or say anything to diminish the paralysis in the air. Not to
mention the obvious raw anger in Ms. Walters, who had apparently never
before understood that even a long life spent as one of the most
liberal, progressive and avowedly anti-racist sensibilities in the
entertainment world was not enough to claim any special dispensation. To
her co-host, she was in the end just a white skin. This came as a bad
shock to Ms. Walters -- one that she did not conceal.
Meanwhile,
word of the rock epic had not eluded political consultant David
Axelrod, who is currently busy planning strategy for President Obama's
re-election campaign. Interviewed about the Perry story, he explained in
a New York Times report carried yesterday that "campaigns are like an
MRI for the soul -- whoever you are, eventually people find out." Having
introduced the clear insinuation that the rock affair signaled dark
secrets, like racism, yet to be discovered in Mr. Perry, Mr. Axelrod
proceeded to add that time would tell whether "this [the rock] comes to
reflect him or not."
It's too bad, if not
altogether surprising, that Mr. Axelrod didn't make his views on
campaigns as an MRI for the soul known to the world when news came of
candidate Barack Obama's 20 years contentedly spent imbibing the
America-hatred and assorted racist preachments of his mentor, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright. This was no ignored, painted over rock. This was a
live, steady connection.
What did 20 years
under the spell of the Rev. Wright's "goddamn America" sermons -- until
an election run and Rev. Wright's own unwillingness to grasp the
necessity of disappearing, caused Mr. Obama to sever ties with his old
mentor -- reveal about candidate Obama? Now there was an MRI whose
reading we'd have enjoyed hearing from Mr. Axelrod.
-- Dorothy Rabinowitz
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE / POLITICAL DIARY
Wednesday, 05 October 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment