The far-left's racially-tinged paranoia and hatred of black conservatives rears its ugly head from time to time, often without the notice let alone disapproval of the liberal mainstream media.
Herman Cain is just the latest target.
The businessman, radio host, and potential 2012 presidential aspirant was the "minstrel show" entertainment of CPAC 2011, according to Alternet's Chauncey DeVega.
[For full disclosure, Cain serves as the national chairman for the Business & Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center, NewsBusters.org's parent company]
DeVega opened his Feb. 12 blog post with a passing swipe at all black conservatives before focusing exclusively on Cain:
As you know, I find
black garbage pail kidsblack conservatives fascinating not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they entertain and perform for their White Conservative masters.
When race minstrelsy was America’s most popular form of mass entertainment, black actors would often have to pretend to be white men, who then in turn would put on the cork to play the role of the “black” coon, Sambo, or Jumping Jim Crow. Adding insult to injury, in a truly perverse and twisted example of the power of American white supremacy black vaudevillians would often pretend to be white in order to denigrate black people for the pleasures of the white gaze.
Herman Cain–an ironic name if ever, and one more suited to a tragic figure in a Harlem Renaissance era novella–is not “blackening twice” as some race minstrels chose to do.
[...]
Instead, Herman Cain’s shtick is a version of race minstrelsy where he performs “authentic negritude” as wish fulfillment for White Conservative fantasies. Like the fountain at Lourdes, Cain in his designated role as black Conservative mascot, absolves the White racial reactionaries at CPAC of their sins. This is a refined performance that Black Conservatives have perfected over many decades and centuries of practice.
[...]
In total, CPAC is a carnival and a roadshow for reactionary Conservatives. It is only fitting that in the great tradition of the freak show, the human zoo, the boardwalk, and the great midway world’s fairs of the 19th and 20th centuries, that there is a Borneo man, a Venus Hottentot or a tribe of cannibals from deepest darkest Africa or Papua New Guinea on display. For CPAC and the White Conservative imagination, Herman Cain and his black and brown kin are that featured attraction.
We always need a monkey in the window, for he/she reminds us of our humanity while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of our own superiority. Sadly, there are always folks who are willing to play that role because it pays so well.
Fortunately for his readers, DeVega included the full YouTube video of Cain's CPAC speech.
Watching it in its entirety shows by contrast that it's truly DeVega who's the irrelevant political sideshow:
