John Derbyshire is a Blithering Idiot

Please stand by for one of the most racist and ugly things you're going to see this week--courtesy of our friends at the National Review Online. The link might be broken soon--I can't see them keeping this column up for very long. John Derbyshire decided one day to try to write about race, Barack Obama, and America. All I can say is, wow. Somewhere, a lonely village is missing its Derbyshire.

He’s black, and so is God. Working in combination with other factors that I’ll get to, Obama’s négritude will help him with a lot of politically vague types who are neither black nor distinctively liberal, but who have been oriented the Obama way by decades of watching Numinous Negro types saving the world, or defying it with a supernatural level of dignity and gravitas, in the movies and on TV: characters played by Will Smith, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Michael Clarke Duncan, Denzel Washington, and of course the numinousest of them all, Morgan Freeman. There is probably now an entire demographic cohort of young Americans whose mental image of God is Morgan Freeman.

[SNIP]

He’s black, in an exotic way. This can’t be underestimated. If the candidate was George Obama, or Barack Washington, he would be twice as acceptable to the voting public. Cast your eye back down the list of U.S. presidents. “Exotic” is surely one of the last words they bring to mind, even a tad behind “black.” (There is, after all, an excellent chance that on the one-drop rule, Barack Obama will not be our first black president.) Our country has always had a scattering of high-achieving exotics, but none of them ever got close to the White House. In their presidential preferences, Americans of all parties are conservative. Other things being equal, we prefer boring white guys.

Obama’s East African origins don’t help. Most black Americans take their African descent from West Africa. The distribution of physical types in East Africa is considerably different. (As we shall no doubt see in the upcoming summer Olympics, where runners of West African ancestry will take all the sprinting awards, while East Africans will sweep the long-distance events.) There is of course a lot of overlap, but enough difference in physical types to give Obama a tinge of strangeness. The minds of many nonblack voters — and perhaps some black ones, too — will contain, at some level well below the surface, a thought like: He’s a black guy, but is he one of OUR black guys?

It's okay--my jaw hit the floor, too. It's alright--I'm as mad as you are. And it's fine--you can stick your head out the window and scream obscenities--I understand.

Please bear in mind--this was written and published in the National Review Online. Yes, it's a real publication and website. It really is. And Derbyshire was paid money to write that. YES! It's true. Can you think of anything--anything--that is stupider than what I just quoted to you? Anything?

John Derbyshire--vehemently challenging Douglas Feith for the title of "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth."

--WS

Derbyshire in Repose

An intellectual contemplates things mere mortals should never attempt to understand:

After my son's football game yesterday I was sitting round with a bunch of Dads. This was at one of their houses, outside on the deck, which he has fitted up very nicely, with a TV and all. It was cold, so we got a log fire going in the firepit and sat around the fire drinking, watching the football game on TV, and b-s-ing. The wives were inside doing whatever wives do when away from their men—exchanging recipes, who knows?

Well, eventually we got into one of those dumb arguments you get into in these situations. The point at issue was: Will an empty beer bottle melt in a log fire? We've all seen it done, of course, but one of the guys claimed there's been some change in bottle manufacturing techniques so that a bottle nowadays won't melt. He: "It just goes CRACK! and that's it."

Derbyshire proceeds to take us through the entire process of dealing with squealing, fearful wives and heated glass...and I gotta tell ya, the whole thing gave me goosebumps. Then, I realized--I'm not a man. John Derbyshire is a man. He's a buff, manly man who probably wanted to stick his hand in that fire and hold it there to show everyone that he, John Derbyshire, is a master of the universe.

Note how he dismisses the social and intellectual life of women with a bold stroke--surmising that they, being possessed like so much property by the men, probably go off with other women and exchange recipes, for all he cares. After all, they simply couldn't be doing anything more thought-provoking or productive than melting a glass bottle while partially shit-faced, could they?

Damn, Derbyshire. When you navel gaze, you bring your "A" game.