( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Speaking Tuesday to the New York Post’s Fred Dicker, whose show airs on Albany’s Talk 1300 radio station, Cuomo said of the early primaries: “It’s not a TV-crazed race. Frankly, you can’t buy your way through.”
He added later, “You have to sit down with 10 people in a living room. You can’t shuck and jive at a news conference; you can’t just put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you, saying ‘answer the question.'”
Meanwhile, at the internet cafe . . .
White Male Idiot #1: “Shucking and jiving” wasn’t meant as a racist comment. In context, Cuomo was talking about all the candidates. He was making a general point.
White Male Idiot #2: Cuomo knew what he was doing. He was trying to make race an issue in the election.
White Male Idiot #1: I don’t think so. In fact, you’re the one making race an issue by interpreting Cuomo’s words that way.
White Male Idiot #2: Oh sure, that’s nice. Cuomo says “shucking and jiving” — a phrase about African Americans — and I’m the one making it about race. I’m just responding to what the Clinton camp has put out there.
White Male Idiot #1: Cuomo’s not in the Clinton camp. It’s not fair of you to hold Clinton responsible for what everyone who supports her says about her or her opponents.
White Male Idiot #2: Ah, so you agree that Cuomo was talking about Obama?
White Male Idiot #1: No. I mean even if we choose to interpret Cuomo as race-baiting, which I don’t but you do, it’s still unfair to lump Cuomo into “the Clinton camp”. Let’s get back to the point.
White Male Idiot #2: Yes, let’s.
White Male Idiot #1: “Shucking and jiving” is a perfectly neutral expression. It just means “trying to get past something” or “dodging a question”.
White Male Idiot #2: No, it’s not neutral. It’s part of the language of racism. Cuomo could have used any number of phrases to make his point. He chose to use one with a history of racial overtones.
White Male Idiot #1: Oh, as if he has a rolodex of phrases, and another rolodex of warnings about insensitivity to crosscheck before he opens his mouth. Come on, you’re attributing too much intention, here. Even if I agreed with you that “shuck and jive” was a racist comment, sometimes, it still wouldn’t be fair to call Cuomo a racist just because the phrase slipped out.
White Male Idiot #2: I don’t mean to say Cuomo is consciously a racist. Unconsciously, yes. His word choice reveals an unconscious racism.
White Male Idiot #1: Wait a minute. If the choice was unconscious, then it can’t have been intentional. And if it wasn’t intentional, then it wasn’t race-baiting.
White Male Idiot #2: Hmm, that’s a good point. I shouldn’t have said it wasn’t intentional. I do think it was race-baiting. Cuomo was trying to dog-whistle to white America that they should vote for Clinton.
White Male Idiot #1: Oh, I see. So now you’re arranging evidence to suit your conclusion. You want it to be race-baiting, so therefore it must have been intentional, no matter what Cuomo says.
White Male Idiot #2: No, not at all. Cuomo’s a politician, he’s on television. He knows words have power. It can’t have been just an accident that he chose “shuck and jive” to describe a the first election season in history where an African American candidate has a good shot of winning the Presidency.
White Male Idiot #1: Let’s back up a bit. I think we lost track of where we were. Did we decide “shuck and jive” is racist at some point? I don’t think I agreed with you about that.
White Male Idiot #2: OK, lets. It is racist. “Shuck and jive” comes from a particular history and has a particular use and tone to it. You can’t get around that. It refered to African Americans trying to get out of stuff.
White Male Idiot #1: Oh I realize it used to mean that. All words have histories. “Lady” used to mean “baker of the bread” . . . does that mean if I call Hillary Clinton a “lady” that I’m saying she should be home baking bread?
White Male Idiot #2: Of course not. You’re talking about a meaning for “lady” that is centuries and centuries old. I’m talking about an expression from last week, by comparison.
White Male Idiot #1: Oh, so there’s an offical expiration date on old meanings, after which they’re fair game. Is there a newsletter I can get on this? I would really like to keep informed.
White Male Idiot #2: Don’t be sarcastic. I’m not saying there’s an expiration date, I’m saying that some terms clearly still have their old baggage and some don’t.
White Male Idiot #1: And you get to decide which is which? Where I grew up, “shuck and jive” didn’t mean anything racist. We all said it about each other.
White Male Idiot #2: Cuomo wasn’t speaking where you grew up. He was speaking on television, to everyone.
White Male Idiot #1: So? Cuomo grew up somewhere. I’m assuming it was somewhere where “shuck and jive” wasn’t racist.
White Male Idiot #2: Oh, so now you’re the one making assumptions to interpret Cuomo the way you want to. Just a minute ago you accused me of that.
White Male Idiot #1: I’m being charitable. I’m not out to assume the worst about people, like you are.
White Male Idiot #2: In a political campaign you have to assume the worst about everyone. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it just means they’re in a political campaign and want to win.
White Male Idiot #1: So, as a general matter, you would not assume that when a white person said “shuck and jive”, like hanging out with friends at the bar, that he was being racist?
White Male Idiot #2: It would depend on the context. I can certainly imagine contexts in which it wouldn’t be racist, but sitting in front of a TV camera, as part of a political campaign, is not one of them.
White Male Idiot #1: So Cuomo was being “insensitive” because of the context, according to you. Does he have to walk on eggshells all the time, for fear that there might be someone, somewhere in the whole TV audience, would be offended by some possible interpretation of a word choice that, I stress, you just admitted is not racist when you’re talking to friends?
White Male Idiot #2: Suppose one of the friends you’re sitting around with at the bar is black. Would you say “shucking and jiving” to him?
White Male Idiot #1: Oh, give me a break. You mean like “Hey did you see Romney shucking and jiving on TV today?” Of course I would.
White Male Idiot #2: Suppose your black friend had been slacking off at work and you wanted to criticize him for not taking responsibility. Would you say, “Dude, you gotta stop shucking and jiving about it, just get your act together.”?
White Male Idiot #1: Hmm. See, we’ve gotten into this whole conversation that’s got this phrase so charged up, that it’s giving me pause. But in a normal situation I wouldn’t think about it like this, and yes, I would say it to a black friend. Yes. Like I told you, where I grew up it just didn’t mean anything racist. If my black friend got offended I might have to explain that.
White Male Idiot #2: Would you apologise?
White Male Idiot #1: Sure, if he was really offended. But I would also want to make sure that he understood that I didn’t mean it that way.
White Male Idiot #2: See? Cuomo should apologise.
White Male Idiot #1: He did. Or at least he clarified. Look at this here from the Politico:
“Barack Obama is a beautiful symbol. He’s a powerful speaker. He’s a charismatic figure. And what he has to say is important for the Democrats,” Cuomo says in the interview, with the New York Post’s Fred Dicker.
“It was never about Obama in the first place,” Cuomo told me of the use of the phrase, which he said he was using “as a synonym for ‘bob and weave.'”
White Male Idiot #1 (continues): The Politico also notes: “(Cassell’s attributes the phrase to a specifically African-American – though not racist – origin.)” So, see? Cuomo clarified he wasn’t talking about Obama, and he even complimented Obama, and Polico gives evidence that the expression isn’t racist. What more do you want?
White Male Idiot #2: It’s good that he clarified. But he doesn’t seem to be owning up to offending people.
White Male Idiot #1: And look here at the Times Union Blog.
(We’ve been getting calls from the Cuomo people on this who want to point out, correctly, that the AG was not referring to Barack Obama when he used the phrase “shuck and jive,” but to what politicians in general do with the media. Cuomo’s point was when candidates meet a substantial proportion of primary voters or caucus goers in person, such as in NH or Iowa, there is a certain genuineness that can be avoided in a big-state media-heavy campaign)
White Male Idiot #1 (continues): See? There’ nothing here for your outrage to latch onto. Cuomo didn’t mean “shuck and jive” to even apply to Obama in particular, but to all politicians.
White Male Idiot #2: Again, I’m glad he clarified. But he isn’t owning up to saying something racist, at all, there.
White Male Idiot #1: Oh my God. I don’t see you demanding an apology from Jesse Jackson Jr. about his comments about Clinton’s tears.
White Male Idiot #2: We weren’t talking about that. Remind me what he said.
White Male Idiot #1: TPM Central quotes him like this:
…there were tears that melted the Granite State. And those are tears that Mrs. Clinton cried on that day, clearly moved voters. She somehow connected with those voters.
But those tears also have to be analyzed. They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45% of African-Americans who participate in the Democratic contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama.And:
We saw something very clever in the last week of this campaign coming out of Iowa, going into New Hampshire, we saw a sensitivity factor. Something that Mrs. Clinton has not been able to do with voters that she tried in New Hampshire.
Not in response to voters — not in response to Katrina, not in response to other issues that have devastated the American people, the war in Iraq, we saw tears in response to her appearance. So her appearance brought her to tears, but not hurricane Katrina.
White Male Idiot #1 (continues): So is that sexist? Or what?
White Male Idiot #2: Why would that be sexist? It might be Jackson reverse race-baiting, in reference to Katrina, but it’s not sexist.
White Male Idiot #1: Of course it’s sexist. He’s saying Clinton was crying because of her “appearance”. That’s pretty sexist.
White Male Idiot #2: Well, isn’t it a fair point? She was crying over her appearance. It’s ridiculous for her to cry about that, of all things, in front of a camera.
White Male Idiot #1: Dude, she didn’t cry, for starters. She didn’t even need to wipe her eyes. Look at the video.
White Male Idiot #2: Well, I think “welled up” might be a better description, sure. But it was over her appearance.
White Male Idiot #1: Noooo. The question she was responding to was “How do you keep so upbeat and so wonderful?”
White Male Idiot #2: Okay, fine. You’re splitting hairs again. So she cried about —
White Male Idiot #1: She didn’t cry.
White Male Idiot #2: She welled up over how it’s so hard to be wonderful. Well cry me a river. She doesn’t have to run for President. If it’s so hard she can just stay at home.
White Male Idiot #1: Stay at home? She’s a United States Senator. She’s hardly going to be “Staying at home,” even if she loses the election.
White Male Idiot #2: You know what I mean.
White Male Idiot #1: And you know what Cuomo meant. More to the point, Jackson knew what Clinton meant. Every knows what everyone meant. This is just a bunch of nonsense we have to go through because it’s election season and a woman and black man are running.
White Male Idiot #2: Well I won’t argue with that! But I can’t believe you’re comparing Jackson’s comment to Cuomo’s. Jackson was being, or pretending to be, hyper-cynical, maybe. But Cuomo made an out-and-out racist remark.
White Male Idiot #1: And I say Cuomo made an innocent mistake on the spur of the moment, while Jackson’s comment was clearly thought-out, extended, and calculated. And it was sexist. He wouldn’t have said that if Clinton weren’t a woman.
White Male Idiot #2: I don’t see how that makes the remark “sexist”. Maybe Clinton was being sexist, trying to get women to vote for her by crying — a play for the woman vote. And —
White Male Idiot #1: She didn’t cry.
White Male Idiot #2: — and it worked, didn’t it? Women came out in droves to vote for her, after that.
White Male Idiot #1: You think women voted for women because she welled-up?
White Male Idiot #2: I think that was part of it. I think women like the idea of a woman in the White House. And I think Clinton showed emotion, “welled up” as you so carefully keep putting it, to highlight that she’s a woman and she can be an everyday kind of woman and everything. It was a show of femininity. And look, I’m all about the feminism here, I can see how women would want that female sensibility to be in charge, for once. It’s no bad thing to say about women that they want someone who thinks and feels like they do, finally to be in charge.
White Male Idiot #1: Well, fair enough. As long as you agree that the female point of view is legitimate.
White Male Idiot #2: What’s not legitimate? They want to see a woman in the White House. Blacks want to see a black in the White House. And more power to them both. I just don’t like the manipulation of women’s minds with that tearing up stuff.
White Male Idiot #1: Lookit. Was Jackson being sexist or not?
White Male Idiot #2: I suppose, if you look really deeply, you can find sexism in Jackson’s remark. It’s in the assumption on Jackson’s part that women’s wanting to see a woman candidate act like a woman, thus validating the female sensibility, isn’t legitimate. But you’d practically need a degree in Women’s Studies to see how that’s sexist.
White Male Idiot #1: I’m sitting here trying to figure out if you’re being sexist, yourself. Aren’t you kind of saying all women think the same way?
White Male Idiot #2: Oh, if you want to call that “sexist”, okay. And I don’t mean all women think the same way about everything. I mean, as a general point, most women think differently than men on certain issues. They engage the emotions more. I don’t think it’s sexist — the bad kind — to point out men and women think differently. Different brains.
White Male Idiot #1: Different brains. Well, okay. I can’t argue with science. I admit I’m kind of being influenced by the wife, on this one. She wanted to know why no one seemed to be getting the point of the media reaction to Clinton. She thought everyone on TV was going a little nuts.
White Male Idiot #2: Well, of course. It’s normal from her point of view. You have to think like a woman.
White Male Idiot #1: [Laughs]. That reminds me of Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets when he said to think like a woman you just think like a man and take away reason and accountability. [Pause.] Look, that’s sexist.
White Male Idiot #2: When you put it that way it’s insulting to women, sure. But from a male way of thinking it’s not like there’s nothing to it.
White Male Idiot #1: So, do you think all women think the same way?
White Male Idiot #2: I don’t think all women think the same things. But the same way? Look, I don’t want to say something about all women everywhere, but most, sure. Patterns. Look, not all men think the same way either, but it’s not being sexist against men to say we’re goal-oriented and think in insturmental terms. How to get things done.
White Male Idiot #1: Most men, sure.
White Male Idiot #2: So take the crying thing, with Clinton. Had nothing, nothing to do with any political point at all. But all of the sudden all these women are voting for her. What changed, as a matter of politics? Nothing. Crying doesn’t get anything done. It doesn’t make anything different. But here all these women vote for her. Men don’t think like that.
White Male Idiot #2: Point taken.
White Male Idiot #1: [laughs] It’s a good thing we didn’t try to cover black women.
White Male Idiot #2: [laughs] No, that was hard enough as it was. But I think we got some ground covered.
White Male Idiot #1: What did we decide about Cuomo?
White Male Idiot #2: I think we agreed to disagree. You say he’s not intentionally talking about race. I say he is.
White Male Idiot #1: And Jackson?
White Male Idiot #2: I say he’s not being intentionally sexist. You say he is.
White Male Idiot #1: [Laughs] So I’m enlightened on women and you on blacks.
White Male Idiot #2: Looks that way.
White Male Idiot #1: Wait’ll I tell the wife. Looks like I’m gettin’ laid.
[Both laugh.]
[End scene.]
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Both of these guys are being idiots, on both topics.
…if it will bring down the other candidate, what does it matter if there is any truth in what is said…or even if the person who says it believes it to be true.
much time listening to talk radio… 😉
I am starting to just be a politician ‘hater’ period. I feel more manipulated by the Clinton supporters because I am a woman. A lot of the reasons I don’t want her have to do with being a woman, am I then sexist? I don’t know what Obama stands for as he’s just talks in beautiful generalities, so as he says at least with him I get to hope he won’t be a corporatist war monger and maybe do something to end this shit. Edwards I like but he is invisible and so called angry, who’s not? Then again why work myself up the powers that be seem to have chosen our candidates and where right back to Mc Cain and Hillary/Bill, what a surprise!
I just don’t like the race baiting. I wouldn’t call you an idiot, though. I just think you’ve been had on this issue.
You left out Chris Mathews’s commentary. I miss Howard Cosell reporting on this as a sporting event.
race… seems to me we can’t seem to talk honestly about it. especially when the energy of our outrage is largely spent on the language we use; ie, “shuck and jive” and “nigger”, and not the disparity between something like this: As a group, Black Americans have shorter life expectancies than the national average and often higher mortality rates for certain disease conditions. They suffer disproportionately from heart disease, AIDS, hypertension, stroke, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes.
Or savage facts like this:
Black men nationally are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate about 13 times that of White men, the study said. On average, 482 of every 100,000 Black men sentenced to prison are sent there on drug charges, compared with just 36 of every 100,000 White men. Human Rights Watch reports the numbers are especially striking because of federal studies that show White drug users outnumber Black drug users 5-to-1.
that we talk trash about each other, well… i can’t get that crazed about it. i use the word theocrat with the utmost disdain, disrespect i can infuse into that word. or rethug. it’s that first strike… language. once we objectify our target, it’s easy to not be moved by their problems.
for me, I’m angry that there are kids in Newark NJ who go to school hungry every day. Now that pisses me off. That is worth my outrage.
Defending my fellow citizens, who are black, against insensitive language isn’t much. Having a tough conversation, where it may get a little bloody, about why whites continue to objectify blacks (and the poor in general) is more relevant. Not the words, just the wrapping, the veneer… but what is underneath them. What is the purpose of using language like that…
because once we get there… we start to face what is buried, deep in our cultural subconscious, about each other. we need to get the poisons out. until then, we will continue to feel uncomfortable around each other. we will continue to compensate. instead of just being… fellow creatures, humans, americans…
insturmental should be instrumental
(don’t mean to be an ass and wasn’t looking for typos, but it jumped out. after all that work (and if you re-post), thought you might want to know)
let’s judge people based on what’s between their ears instead of what’s between their legs; and by what’s in their hearts rather than what’s on their chests
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at DailyKos.
Aieeeee, please wake me up when it’s over.
The part about racism and sexism dialog that I find frustrating is how defensive people get when called on it.
I am sure I am guilty of resorting to that my position as well but I WANT people to tell me when my position is coated in racism or sexism. I might be embarrassed, I might worry the person I am talking to thinks I am a moron which I frequently am, but I need to know if I am stuck in destructive patterns. I want to be a more open and perceptive person and the only way to achieve that is to be willing to listen when I am not. Learning isn’t pretty sometimes.
I haven’t quite sorted out my own feelings on this yet, so I haven’t really posted anything by way of a response. I think you’ve got a refreshing approach to this, I think skymutt’s not entirely wrong either, and I haven’t been able to detach myself enough to figure out what I think just yet (just a lot of vague, contradictory feelings groping each other in the fog). And of course, the whole conversation is spoiled by the fact that it’s sometimes honest, sometimes not, once we throw candidate affiliations into the mix. I’ll have to get back to you.
telling in its dynamic and lack of assumptional uncovering……
yet so typical…..
very well done….
human communication is extrodinarily multimodal….
most people must reduce the complexity and inherent contadiction of life to a smaller set of domains……
they adopt a set of simplifying reductions aka assumptions…..
these become un or barely conscious beliefs and form thought and perception from there forward with out ever resurfacing again…..
so much of this may well be a product of a world which is growing in complexity at a rate greater than the ability of its members to keep up……
part of the post modern myth is that we aka humans have no limit with regard to dynamic complexity, other than the ones we place upon our self…….
we may well have a very limited adaptive (genomic) range with regard to the envelope of dynamic complexity we can engage…….
and we may be able to create far greater ranges than we can accurately engage……..
again I deeply appreciate the way in which you share insight……
thank you…..
in an essay I wrote a while ago, but I think it does a great job of demonstrating what you’re talking about.
are there white female idiots, black male idiots, black female idiots, idiots outside of those racial or gender categories, as well? (The question answers itself.)
Yes, there is a white male privilege not to have to see the world through unaccustomed lenses. But there is also a white privilege, and a male privilege, and an educated privilege, and an able-bodied privilege — and, depending on where one happens to be, privileges the opposite of all of those as well. We all have to make assumptions, in understanding the world, that take us beyond our own experience.
In this circumstance, we have to do so because we are now in a bitter primary race, and these sorts of things may matter to people in deciding whom to choose. Sorry — and this is why I dislike the appellation “idiot” in this diary — but the best thing we can do at moments like this is give everyone maximum slack and then wait out the storm. This isn’t the time to be discussing such basic issues — not because they aren’t important, but because the chances of achieving anything are so low.
That said, while I disagree with the conclusion of the diary (expressed in the tip jar), I wouldn’t call it “idiotic.” Valiant attempt and all that.