Joan Walsh on Matt Welch's "strange slur" and "racial nuttiness"
In my column about Barack Obama's health care speech yesterday, I described the president's "we will call you out" warning to lying Republicans as "a nearly Snoop Doggesque display," linking to a great new Snoop video whose chorus is "we will shut you down."
DING! DING! DING! We have a racial nut! Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh is on the case:
Every time I think I'm exaggerating the nature of the racial nuttiness that Obama faces, an ostensibly tolerant, smart guy like Welch does something boneheaded like this. What in God's name does Snoop Dogg have to do with Barack Obama (besides the obvious). Snoop's chorus is some variation on, "I run this town, act loud, get wild, we'll shut you down!" Oh, I get it: Obama runs Washington, and he threatened to call out people who lie about his proposals, and…that's the same thing?
Appreciate that "ostensibly," Joan. Probably even more than Michael Steele appreciated you schooling him on hip-hop.
You can find my response in Walsh's piece. Short answer: WTF? And since she quoted my e-mail to her, I'll quote her initial query to me, which is hilarious:
I think that line in your piece will go down in history as one of the dumbest white-boy outbursts in the history of covering Obama. Then I clicked on the video. Are you thinking about walking it back, as they say in DC?
I also recommend her highly entertaining white-girl Twitter outbursts on the subject, such as:
Twitter poll: Is "We will call you out" a black phrase? Kind of a black phrase? Urban? Street? Or Snoop Doggesque? (Someone called it that.)
Final bonus irony link: My last published Salon piece, in which I encourage Democrats to embrace the "viciously profane yet pragmatic demonstrations of tolerance" embodied in the great HBO series Deadwood.
