That’s the gist of Erin Aubry Kaplan’s op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, in which she uses the felony theft arrest of former Bush administration domestic policy adviser Claude Allen to lay blame where blame is due: on his political beliefs:

It’s hard to imagine that such compromises and cognitive dissonance (of being a black Republican — ed.) don’t exact a psychological toll at some point, and Allen’s alleged dabbling in crime might have been that point for him.

Wow. So black + conservative = psych case. Obvious, no?

But that’s toward the end of Kaplan’s jeremiad. Earlier on, she lets us know that it’s OK to judge a person based on their race:

“I don’t support conservatism in its current iteration, and I support black conservatives even less …”

It seems Kaplan believes the color of their skin is supposed to be more important than the content of their brain. The next time we read or hear something by an ultraliberal (this is LA, so that’ll be in the next five minutes), should we discount their argument further if their skin is the ‘wrong’ color?

This abuse of blacks who stray from The One True Liberal Way is nothing new. A few weeks ago Tom Hayden launched an attack on Joe Hicks because Hicks, a longtime black community activist, dared suggest that life in Los Angeles wasn’t quite the low level race war presented in the movie Crash.

Kaplan piles on, demeaning the achievements of black Republicans:

“Bush is fond of this kind of symbolism: putting black faces in key positions in order to appear racially progressive.”

Colin Powell? Condoleezza Rice? Didn’t they earn their offices? Kaplan ignores the possibility that they were not symbolic of anything other than Bush appointing people he’s comfortable with.

But now she drags out the heavy artillery:

(Loyalty in the Bush administration) has unfortunately, but not always unfairly, invited comparisons to slave times, when the most loyal blacks were those who worked in closest proximity to their white masters — house Negroes, as they were derisively known.

“unfortunately, but not always unfairly” — which is it? And it sure sounds like the comparison is being made by Kaplan herself, despite the disingenuous “invited comparisons” phrasing.

When wealthy Democrats like Martha Stewart and Charles Kushner are accused of crimes, would Kaplan have us extrapolate that the root cause is “cognitive dissonance?” After all, they vote against their economic self-interest every election, so their confusion must be every bit as Kaplan would have us believe Allen’s is.

Or, perhaps, political beliefs have nothing to do with theft, lying to investigators, or fraud. But then there would be no way to create the linkage from race to political belief to criminality — and then there would be no column!

Technorati Tags: LA Times, LAT, Los Angeles Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Claude Allen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 3:58 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Loons, Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.