People Are Crazy, Mike Huckabee-Edition

In the middle of a long and mostly sane Q&A with Slate, man-of-the-moment Mike Huckabee has this insane moment.

Slate: Why is it unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon?

Huckabee: They've already announced their intention to destroy Israel. They've already announced that they would love to invade Iraq and take its oil... This is not a nation building up nuclear arms to defend against somebody, because there is no one threatening them.

I guess Mike Huckabee isn't aware who our vice president is. Or who our president is. Or who Rudy Giuliani, a man vying to be the next president, is. Nobody here is saying Iran should have a nuke, but pretending that Iran isn't threatened by the rhetoric of the United States, when that rhetoric is expressly designed to threaten Iran, is an act of willful denial.

And there's also a moment where Huckabee, as a Christian evangelical, demonstrates the illogical reasoning people of his ilk use to justify discrimination against gays while professing to oppose discrimination against racial minorities.

Slate: Barack Obama has been criticized for campaigning with a gospel singer who has called homosexuality a curse. Critics have claimed it's as if a white candidate campaigned with David Duke. What's your view on the equivalence of homosexuality with skin color in the civil rights debate?

Huckabee: Most of the African-American leaders with whom I'm familiar are very, very unhappy with tying the two together. First of all, because a person is black and discriminated against by sight. It's not a matter of a relationship. It's not a matter of even getting to find out that someone has a sexual preference other than hetero. If a person walks into a room and is black, you know it. You don't necessarily know that a person might be homosexual. There is a different level of bigotry and discrimination...

What? Because you can't immediately tell if someone is homosexual, it's okay to discriminate against them? Does Huckabee mean that if someone makes a nasty joke about homosexuals, he or she shouldn't be held to account if they offend a homosexual in the room because the joke-teller couldn't have known the offended party was a homosexual? That's the best I can do at deciphering this, and that's a pretty ridiculous argument. Shouldn't someone who claims to stand up for civil rights (as Huckabee does) be advocating the end of nasty statements about homosexuals instead of protecting those that make them?

Comments

Can Mike Huckabee identify a Jew as soon as he walks into a room? How about a Catholic? Or a Buddhist? Does that then make it all right to make a Jew joke, since 'no one in the room looks Jewish'? Let alone cases in which an African-American, or a person of mixed heritage, might 'pass' for white. Does that then free you up to make a joke containing the n-word because that person doesn't 'look black'?

Bigotry and discrimination do not depend solely upon sight, and to suggest so is frankly laughable. The interviewer Dickerson really should have called Huckabee on this. Even if it did depend on sight, there are many gay men who are 'identifiably' gay because of their manner, habits of speech, etc. (Or is it only we queers who have any kind of gaydar? Judging by the history of gay bashing in this country and elsewhere, I would guess not.)

The fact is, Huckabee and others are all too willing to pander to and play upon certain individuals' fears and prejudices if it means conjuring up votes. In a case like this, it is immaterial if Huckabee is, himself, a bigot. The use of bigotry, or ludicrous arguments that one family of bigotry is "on a different level" from other types of bigotry (and therefore okay or excusable) is itself offensive and ought to be enough to keep anyone from assuming the presidency of one of the most culturally diverse nations in the world.

Posted by: Mike on 10/26/07 at 8:38 AM Respond

No, you don't understand the gist of this line of thought. He is probably alluding to a thought that homosexuals need to be identified - maybe branding them with a capitol "H" on their forehead? This would make simple people like this Baptist minister "know" who they could then openly discrimiate against- if they were white. As opposed to the ones they openly discriminate against-those "others" who are not white males. Gosh!

Posted by: Jay Coleman on 10/26/07 at 11:36 AM Respond

I am from AR, where Huckabee was gov. I don't love the guy but.. he did get health care for all needy children in place and working in here. And he left the state with a budget surplus that allowed his successor to reduce sales tax on food. He may not be eloquent on the issues tained by his background but for a republican he has done a lot of social works improvement in this state... can you say veto SCHIPS.

Posted by: LANE HAGOOD on 10/26/07 at 12:02 PM Respond

By the way, you sound like your are discriminating on the basis of his religious beliefs and unlike sexual preference is explicitly protected by the constitution. and no I never voted for for guy. only those with(D). I dont want him for pres. but you have more of a rant that a point.

Posted by: LANE HAGOOD on 10/26/07 at 12:08 PM Respond

The last thing America needs is another evangelical Christian in public office.

Posted by: Erin Williams on 12/31/07 at 2:36 PM Respond