These are not good times to be a white man in the Democrat Party. Just consider the melanin-compromised fellow billing himself as “Beto” O’Rourke. Irish Bob the Mexicon, as some commentators call him (okay, it’s only me), is supposed to be all the rage in leftist circles. Yet now some liberals seem in a rage that a white man is sucking up so much 2020, presidential-prospect oxygen. A case in point is yesterday’s CNN piece “Beto’s excellent adventure drips with white male privilege.”
Outlining O’Rourke’s tempura-batter lightness, writer Nia-Malika Henderson laments:
Imagine this: A 46-year-old former congresswoman and mother of three, who just lost a Senate bid to one of the most despised incumbents, sets off on a road trip adventure to clear her head.
She instagrams part of her trip to the dentist. She gives a two-hour interview to The Washington Post where she shows no real knowledge of policy.
Like a first-year college student, she pontificates on whether the Constitution is still a thing that matters after all these many years.
And then she writes a stream of consciousness diary entry, where she is all in her sad and confused feelings, over … something.
Henderson then reprints this Irish Bob diary entry:
Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk. My last day of work was January 2nd. It’s been more than twenty years since I was last not working [I guess he forgot his time in Congress]. Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.
After presenting yet a second on-the-road offering, she then opines, “This is Beto O’Rourke’s navel-gazing, self-involved, rollout of a possible rollout of a possible presidential campaign. Oprah Winfrey’s couch is next.”
Yet Henderson sounds as if she’ll be on a therapist’s couch, bitterly lamenting next, “This could never, ever be a woman.”
Oh, I don’t know. Doesn’t Henderson’s set say it’s just a matter of self-identification?
Henderson’s assertion that a woman could never pass political muster with such a lightweight persona is fascinating. Has she ever heard the name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Cortez, famous for utterances such as saying, in essence, that her Medicare-for-all plan would save money because people wouldn’t die, has inspired headlines such as “VOTE ON THE DUMBEST THING ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ HAS EVER SAID” and “Has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reached Peak Stupid?” Yet it’s not just that she shook the political world, upsetting a longtime (white) Democrat powerbroker to become a congressman from New York’s 14th District.
It’s that the 29-year-old is perhaps the country’s most ballyhooed liberal political figure, boasts 2.5 million Twitter followers, and very well could be the top Democrat presidential contender were she old enough to run. (In fact, a writer last month, calling Ocasio-Cortez an “honest-to-goodness political superstar,” suggested she run, anyway.)
As for Irish Bob’s travel tales, they’re likely told for the same reason why a while back he rode onto a stage on a skateboard. Irish Bob is marketing himself as young, fresh, different and, you know, man, just too cool for school. Yeah, he’s in a funk traveling. He’s Jack Kerouac meets Holden Caulfield!
Don’t kid yourself, either. His shtick has worked so far.
Speaking of which, Henderson massages the facts to fit her conclusion. She complains that Irish Bob is lauded despite losing a Senate bid, but she must know better. He lost narrowly in deep-red (still?) Texas, where he was expected to get hammered worse than he was when drunkenly running from a DWI in 1998; and his vanquisher was Senator Ted Cruz, one of the nation’s highest profile politicians and a top 2016 presidential contender. It was a startling result.
But then there’s CWI — Commentating While Intoxicated — which is what one might think subscribing to white-privilege nonsense suggests. When ex-senator John Edwards vied with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the 2008 Democrat nomination, I said he didn’t have a chance: The liberal electorate would never choose a white man over a non-white and a woman. Was I crazy?
Well, consider what a 2008 Gallup study found during the general election, polling the more conservative general electorate, when Obama was running against the late and quite white John McCain: Six percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for Obama because of his race.
Nine percent said that factor made them more likely to vote for him.
White privilege?
Actually, the reality of white disadvantage is now even acknowledged by the Left — when it’s convenient. Just consider the Washington Post’s July 2018 piece “The worst thing to be in many Democratic primaries? A white male candidate.” The paper points out that Ocasio-Cortez’ slogan during her primary was “It’s time for one of us” — i.e., not the very white incumbent, Joe Crowley.
White privilege?
It’s all rather comical. Irish Bob’s actual name is Robert Francis O’Rourke, and were this 1978, he might actually have run as Robert Francis O’Rourke. Why is he going by a Spanish nickname, “Beto”?
It’s the same reason why Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren (D-Mass.) masqueraded as an American Indian all those years, even being billed in 1996 as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color.” Yeah, they’d feel guilty if they tried to benefit from their white privilege.
By the way, while statues of dead white guys come down from sea to shining sea because antebellum men often weren’t in step with third millennium fashions, Louisville, Kentucky, now plans to rename its airport after late boxer Muhammad Ali. That’s the same Muhammad Ali who said in 1968 that people in mixed-race relationships should be killed.
Yes, killed.
Oh, and by the way, Millennials, this wasn’t exactly a consensus view — not even in 1968.
But, then again, a black female CNN legal analyst just accused a black male radio host of having white privilege, too. So maybe Ali can now be an honorary white man — but only for the bad things.
Photo of Beto O’Rourke: Crockodile via Wikimedia
