For a while it was sort of interesting watching Victor Davis Hanson’s years-in-the-making fall from idiosyncratic conservative to frothing-at-the-mouth loon, but I gave up the entertainment of watching his descent some time ago. Today, though, Adam Serwer directs me to his latest bizarre screed, and I see that Hanson has just continued getting crazier even while I wasn’t watching.
Anyway, read Adam’s post for the whole story, but I’ll just highlight one little piece of Hanson’s latest. A couple of nights ago I was explaining to Marian that we liberals are terrified of Herman Cain because he’s a strong, conservative black man — an authentic black man, not some deracinated offspring of a Harvard-educated Kenyan — and that’s why we have to destroy him. She looked at me funny, and I told her I was just kidding — but that apparently a lot of tea-partyish conservatives are quite convinced of this. Don’t believe me? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Victor Davis Hanson:
Cain also wins greater scrutiny, not exemption, because he is black — or at least a certain sort of black. In addition to his conservatism, his voice, bearing, grammar, and diction, even his showy black cowboy hat, bother liberals in much the same way that Joe Frazier was not Muhammad Ali and Clarence Thomas was not Anita Hill. Black authenticity, as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism, earns liberal unease….The comparison with Obama is volatile: Cain is authentically African-American and of an age to remember the Jim Crow South; Obama, the son of an elite Kenyan and a white graduate student, came of age as a Hawaiian prep-schooler, whose civil-rights credentials are academic.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work destroying Herman Cain. Because I know that he’s the only man who could actually beat Barack Obama next year and I’m terrified of him. As Cain explained yesterday, the Democrat Machine is out to get him. But luckily for you, it’s no secret. To see our plans unfold in real time, just follow @DemocratMachine on Twitter.
