Fraters Libertas

Liberals Say the Darndest Things

Today’s Minnesota Site of the Day Using Racial Slurs is ... Cheek. All for this charming description of Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell:

I hate to say it, but Peter Bell is just a repulsive human being, an Oreo of the first water. Oh, I don't want to tangle with his skin color, but he's not a working man, he never was. "Bell's upbringing was comfortable," says right there in the article. Drank some, shot up some, then he got tangled in the thicket of rehabilitation and came out a sober Republican who dissed the very programs that... well I was about to say "lifted him up" but he was already lifted, sounds like. Bell's got a typical born-on-third-base ideology, with no connection to the bitter struggles, the economic drownings, lynchings, and scourging that preceded his comfortable upbringing.

Peter Bell is an intelligent, educated, man of accomplishment. He happens to have taken a principled, reasonable stance for fiscal responsibility (in re: the bus drivers strike). And he also happens to be black and a Republican. And those are all the conditions necessary for Mark Desrosiers to refer to him as a “repulsive human being” and an “Oreo.” The latter of which a vicious insult to level at a black man. I think it’s possible Mark is cleverly slipping in a second vicious racial slur with the “tangled in the thicket” allusion to the Uncle Remus stories. But I don’t want to overestimate this guy. Anyone who uses the term “Oreo” in regard to a black man he has a political disagreement with has no acumen for subtlety.

So apparently Peter Bell isn’t black enough for Mark Desrosiers. Obviously, I don’t know Mark Desrosiers personally, nor do I know his race. But I do know that he’s an angry, childish freelance punk music writer. (In fact, one of his music pieces was the first “That’s Entertainment” post in Fraters Libertas history.) And he’s an occasional contributor to our own City Pages. The correlation with being a childish, angry punk music writer for the City Pages and being white is approximately 100%.

But the African-American Chairman of the Metropolitan Council, Peter Bell - not black enough for Mark Desrosiers! I’m sure all the kids down at the Triple Rock Social Club and on the City Pages editorial staff will be duly impressed. Mark Desrosiers is keeping it real!

But I suspect independent-minded, middle-of-the-road voters won’t be impressed. And I ask them to remember this example come November when deciding which party is the one of irresponsibility and extremism. The one that can claim a great man like Peter Bell as one of its members. Or the one who has Mark Desrosiers carrying their flag.

UPDATE: For another episode of "Liberals Say the Darndest Things" and a prime example of the Moderation of the Left, check out this Mitch Berg post.