Aaron McGruder ("Boondocks") Vs. White Liberals

[wellst0nev0ter]

I'm far from being a Ralph Nader fan, but sometimes these people have just got to GROW UP!

-------------------------------------------------------

He told the guests that he’d called Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser, a mass murderer to her face; what had they ever done? (The Rice exchange occurred in 2002, at the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, where McGruder was given the Chairman’s Award; Rice requested that he write her into his strip.) He recounted a lunch meeting with Fidel Castro. (He had been invited to Cuba by the California congresswoman Barbara Lee, who is one of the few politicians McGruder has praised in “The Boondocks.”) He said that noble failure was not acceptable. But the last straw came when he “dropped the N-word,” as one amused observer recalled. He said—bragged, even—that he’d voted for Nader in 2000. At that point, according to Hamilton Fish, the host of the party, “it got interactive.”

Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, was sitting in the back of the room, next to Joe Wilson, the Ambassador. He shouted out, “Thanks for Bush!” Exactly what happened next is unclear. Alterman recalls that McGruder responded by grabbing his crotch and saying, “Try these nuts.” Jack Newfield, the longtime Village Voice writer, says that McGruder simply dared Alterman to remove him from the podium. When asked about this incident later, McGruder said, “I ain’t no punk. I ain’t gonna let someone shout and not go back at him.”

Alterman walked out. “I turned to Joe and said, ‘I can’t listen to this crap anymore,’” he remembers. “I went out into the Metropolitan Club lobby—it’s a nice lobby—and I worked on my manuscript.”

Newfield joined in the heckling, as did Stephen Cohen, a historian and the husband of Katrina vanden Heuvel. “It was like watching LeRoi Jones try to Mau-Mau a guilty white liberal in the sixties,” Newfield says. “It was out of a time warp. Who is he to insult people who have been putting their careers and lives on the line for equal rights since before he was born?”

By the time McGruder had finished, and a tipsy Joe Wilson took the microphone to deliver his New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps half the guests had excused themselves to join Alterman in the lobby. A Nation contributor estimated that McGruder had offended eighty per cent of the audience. “Some people still haven’t recovered,” he said, sounding thrilled.

“At a certain point, I just got the uncomfortable feeling that this was a bunch of people who were feeling a little too good about themselves,” McGruder said afterward. “These are the big, rich white leftists who are going to carry the fight to George Bush, and the best they can do is blame Nader?”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040419fa_fact2
-----------------------------------

I don't know of a more apt or prophetic term for a woman engages and defends the killings of thousands of people based on conspiracy theories, and I'm not sure how his traveling to Cuba makes him a Communist, but did Alterman really have to declare in an unequivocal manner that McGruder's vote for Nader placed Bush in office? While I personally believe that Democrats who blame the loss of the 2000 election solely on someone who only had 3 percent of the vote will doom this party to failure, you had to understand that at the point, McGruder committed an entire story arc to this issue, with one of Huey's neighbors, the DuBois, having a falling out because the wife voted for Nader to the shock and horror of her husband. I think McGruder learned his lesson and is certainly ABB, but the grudge that some liberals have not only against Nader, but for those who made that mistake FOUR YEARS AGO is just embarassing.

[DenverDem]

1. Blaming Nader is a cowardly cop out.

If Democrats had a more credible platform on trade, taxation, education, and, most importantly, foreign policy, then the election would have not been close enough to steal. If the Democratic Party had mounted a more courageous attack on the Florida election fraud, then the election would not have been stolen.

Neo-liberalism is a cancer on the Democratic Party and is anti-American.

If the Democratic Party had the courage to mount a credible opposition to the whitewash of the 9/11 black operation of the bushler administration against America and the prevarications that led to the criminal war then the Democrats would not have been beaten down in the 2002 election and would be running Congress now, and would be checking and balancing the wretched excesses of the bushler regime and, further, would be able to impeach the administration for their treason. The Democratic nominee would also be decisively in the lead for the 04 election.

None of this, however, has happened and the "third way" of capitulating centrism has resulted in the debacle that American national politics has descended to now.

Nader is not the problem, the DLC is the problem.

[Skittles]

4. nice defense but

the well-oiled republican attack machine had been in motion for over eight years - we simply did NOT need Nader and he did us all a disservice by allowing his ego to become part of the equation.

[DenverDem]

5. Where is the well oiled Democratic ATTACK BACK machine?

Nuts are needed. (Not the "crazy" kind, but the testicular kind.)

The wrong wing are LIARS, what we need are courageous truth tellers and The People will get on board.

[Skittles]

8. NUTS OR BALLS ARE NOT NEEDED

please CEASE with the RIDICULOUS notion that TESTICLES are needed for COURAGE. In case you haven't noticed the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF OUR GOVERNMENT DOES HAVE TESTICLES AND THEY F***ING SUCK.

[DenverDem]

9. Speaking metaphorically.

"Lighten up, Francis."
Sgt. Hulka in "Stripes"

[Skittles]

16. instead of you condescending to me

how about just coming up with a different "METAPHOR".

[DenverDem]

17. Red Herring.

Get over it.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. There Is The Case Of Not Seeing The Forest Through The Trees

If this isn't the first, this is probably the few times that an incumbent administration has failed to maintain their position despite years of peace and prosperity. If the Democrats had stopped playing in the defensive mode, then Nader would have been a minor irrelevancy.

I think it's already been established that Nader will run for presidencies and capture the radical vote, so there is no point dwelling on the past. What we have here is a black communicator that can help consolidate the young black vote for the Dems, and alienating him simply because of petty partisan differences will only hurt in the long run.

[PurityOfEssence]

23. The Democratic Party is what it is; Nader supporters are narcissistic

This is ridiculous. Raging at the wild wind that the Democratic Party isn't less corporatist or more confrontational is just plain silly. The Democratic Party is centrist, and the ONLY VIABLE OPTION against the cold-hearted and ugly right; this is reality.

The fact that Al Gore wasn't tough enough and bold enough is not in dispute here; he threw it away, starting with bringing Quisling Joe onto the ticket to distance himself from Clinton.

The whole premise of your argument falls flat on its face, because it's premised on a belief that it's the Democrats' fault for acting in a way that should be predictable to anyone with a scrap of sense.

Nader fucked the country; it's somewhat excusable to have voted for him--especially here in California--to show the nation that a third alternative is possible when the safe outcome isn't in jeopardy, but to do so now would be childish vanity and pompous perfectionism. Even in the most charitable view, the '00 vote for Nader was DANGEROUS AND RECKLESS; that was not a foregone conclusion of an election by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe some didn't see the INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS EXTREME REACTIONARY NATURE of the Bushies, but it's one's duty as a voter to have paid attention to his record in Texas, and to vote based on "feeling" without troubling oneself with pesky facts is folly.

This argument is ridiculous. The premise is that the Dems betrayed us all by not being vigorous fighters and "outsiders" bent on change, and that's an incorrect assessment: the Dems are an establishment party. If you don't like that, that's one thing, but if you can't see it, you've shown yourself to be imperceptive.

This "I'm-deeper-and-more-honorable-than-thou" crap is dangerous perfectionism, and it boils down to either naivete or unwillingness to join the community; the latter is something more befitting of conservatives.

Nader running now is indefensible by any standard of human comportment, unless one wants the country so ruined to prove a point that lives, health and peoples' futures just don't matter.

[ihaveaquestion]

2. I voted for Nader.

I used to have to defend myself continually to my mother who blames Nader for the shrub's selection. She didn't get it that the democrats didn't do their homework in the election and let it happen. They needed to be tough and nasty with the repukes, but they didn't get it. I was fed up with them being wimps! I finally had to tell her in no uncertain terms that I wasn't sorry and to leave it alone.

Thank goodness the Kerry campaign seems to get it!

[LoZoccolo]

3. Try these nuts.

http://www.beernuts.com/beernuts/home_f.jsp

http://www.foodlocker.com/maunaloa.html

http://www.diamondwalnut.com

http://www.planters.com

[Room101]

6. I agree with McGruder

It still boggles my mind that a lot of Democrats aim more anger at a person who was participating in Democracy as opposed to choice point/Katherine Harris/Jeb Bush who hijacked Democracy. Emotions triumph there rational. If the left had spent even half the anger and energy devoted to vilifying Nader on the Black Box issue we might already have paper trails.

[ithacan]

10. agreed

McGruder is amazing. He was out there right after 9/11 calling it like it was. I heard him. This was when so many white liberals were rallying around "president" bunnypants...

I'll take mcGruder over the rest of those guys any day of the week.

[Dookus]

19. But the mistake you make

is in assuming we DON'T blame Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, Teresa Lapore, and a corrupt Supreme Court as much. We do.

BUT... nobody here has the gall to defend them. People here defend Nader all the time. Furthermore, we always knew that Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, Teresa Lapore and a corrupt Supreme court were NOT on our side. Nader pretended to be, which is why his actions are seen as a betrayal.

[Cat Atomic]

7. Those people were way out of line.

I can't stand Democrats blaming Nader voters for Gore's defeat.

If he hadn't been such a fucking milquetoast Republican-lite moderate, maybe he would've garnered enough support to overcome the Nader votes and Bush's fraud.

[bicentennial_baby]

11. Good for McGruder!

I've always thought he rocked, but now even more! :thumbsup:

[Bombtrack]

13. McGruder is such an ass in my opinion. He ranks with people like Ted Rall

and Ramsey Clarke as leftists I dislike to loathe. I don't dislike him as much as them, but he has the same conspiratorial believes-everything-that-fits-his-worldview bent to justify mean spirtited and outlandish statements. And the same unconstructive anti-moderate mantra is regurgitated by him as the other Naderites.

I guess he's so much more noble because he's a rich black leftist than the rich white leftists he believes so worthless

[DenverDem]

18. Moderation in defense of anti-American neo liberalism

is what is destroying the Democratic Party and America.

[ithacan]

22. very well put!!

You put your finger on the problem, exactly.

[PurityOfEssence]

24. Nothing like a toxic extremist to mess up your day

The left needs to learn this: when you tell everyone that they're assholes, they don't necessarily like you. Since this is a Republic, we need people to vote our way, and by telling the heroes who fight it out in the compromised seats of power that they're lily-livers is not the way to garner support.

I don't like people barking at me and telling me how much more of a human being they are regardless where they come from; this was what turned me off to "Democratic Wing" Dean at the outset: these people claim the right to dismiss people who work within the system when they don't have to. People like this also presume to know all that their targets have ever done and said, when they NEVER do, and they simultaneously tend to claim privilege for their own missteps.

I like Magruder and he's fun on talk shows, but this was a childish and vain display of idiocy.

[Elidor]

26. Yes.

It's not just the Nader thing. McGruder is an egocentric prig. And this isn't the first audience he has delighted in antagonizing. His comic is often very good. But he's still a jerk who enjoys pulling people's chains. He loves the attention.

[President Jesus]

14. McGruder campaign contribution

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=CA&last=McGruder&first=Aaron

[DemLikr]

15. Sounds like Magruder shook things up...usually a good thing

in general, whether or not he was "right" on every point.

I think maybe the bar ought to be closed a little earlier at some of these political dinners. Sounds like they were all drunk.

People get all fucked up and argue and it makes the headlines. :eyes:

[robbedvoter]

20. Joe Wilson has 100 times more courage than McGruder

Alterman is only going so far. (misses it when it comes to the media)
Nader who? Intelligent liberals should concentrate on W rather than fight over historical oddities.
McGrudder will be a great guy when he grows up.

[Shakespeare]

21. Woohoo! Let's attack each other some more!

Shame on both of them. The enemy is Bush. Focus on that, don't fight with each other. For crying out loud, people.

This internecine bullshit is one of our biggest problems, and we'd better find a way to put it aside, at least for this general election.

[Nlighten1]

25. He was far too kind to them.

And he was right about many of them.