• Here is a white man, an elected official in the year two-thousand freaking nineteen, defending his city’s refusal to consider black applicants by saying this:
“I’m a Christian and my Christian beliefs are you don’t do interracial marriage. That’s the way I was brought up and that’s the way I believe,” he said. “I have black friends, I hired black people. But when it comes to all this stuff you see on TV, when you see blacks and whites together, it makes my blood boil because that’s just not the way a Christian is supposed to live.”
This man — Hochston, Georgia, City Councilman Jim Cleveland — is not ashamed of the gospel of White Jesus. He did not explain to reporters where, exactly, he learned this gospel. He boasts of being a Christian with Christian beliefs and of being someone who thinks he lives “the way a Christian is supposed to live,” but I wonder if he even belongs to a church.
If he does, that church has some explaining to do. There would seem to be a pastor in need of a good defrocking.
• Speaking of old white men who think old white men are superior to everyone else …
Here’s a brief look at now-withdrawn Federal Reserve nominee Stephen Moore’s horrible statements about women.
And here’s Moore forgetting to stop digging in trying to explain his fondness for racist jokes.
Moore is a lifelong lobbyist for anti-government, anti-regulation corporate interests through their “Club for Growth.” That’s been his entire career and his entire portfolio. He’s a class warrior whose job it has always been to fight against any notion of responsibility for the wealthy.
And Moore sees civil rights and legal equality as obstacles for his class warfare. He sees white supremacy and patriarchy as necessary, essential pillars of his class struggle on behalf of the wealthy. Like all oppressors, he has always been intersectional.
Moore, fortunately, is a bit of a clown and not a terribly bright guy. But I give him credit for understanding something that the disproportionately loud-on-Twitter “leftists” fail to see when they argue that civil rights and feminism are mere distractions from economics.
• Now let’s get back to “Christian” racists …
Right-wing “Christian” radio personality Dave Daubenmire would be a QAnon guy except he isn’t quite sharp enough to follow the twists and turns of that outrageous conspiracy theory. So Daubenmire is planning to protest outside the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua to … well, that bit’s not clear. He may be planning a citizen’s arrest or an exorcism. I suppose it depends on who else shows up and how long the Secret Service allows them to loiter there with hostile intent.
I don’t think Daubenmire is a widely influential figure, but he’s a good representative of the rabid fringe of the white-/”Christian”-nationalist religious right. He’s targeting Hillary Clinton because Fox/Rush/Hannity told him to, but also because she represents — to him and to many other Charismanews-addled Christians — the “Jezebel Spirit.”
This has been a Big Deal for Steve Strang’s suckers for a while now. Daubenmire is enough of a loon that I’d guess he actually believes it in earnest — to whatever extent someone like him remains capable of believing anything in earnest. But the cadre of bylined grifters at Charismanews surely know the nonsense they’re selling here is nonsense.
Thanks to them, the phrase “Jezebel Spirit” is now a useful indicator. When you see someone using that phrase, you know you’re dealing with either a con-artist or their mark. In either case, you’ll want to give them a wide berth.
• This is awesome: “How Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Ended Up Writing for the Veronica Mars Revival” (via Charles Kuffner).
I can’t wait to see the photos of Kareem with 5′ 1″ Kristen Bell.
• But here’s a story about photos I hope I never, ever have to see:
Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what [Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael] Cohen described as racy “personal” photographs — the sort that would typically be kept “between husband and wife,” Cohen said in the taped conversation.
… The Falwells wanted to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public, Cohen told Arnold. “I actually have one of the photos,” he said, without going into specifics. “It’s terrible.”
• The title of this post comes from Lyrics Born’s “Is It Worth It?” which is something like a party song about despair.
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