I'm late to this party, but, I had to make sure the ebogblog's search results included this bit from my dear friend Jane "Blackface Joe" Hamsher. As many of you know, I'm no fan of Hamsher's. To me she and her acolytes represent a revanchist strain of the Democratic party that was popular before the Age of Obama, where faux-muscular white Democrats / netroots types tried to prove their fitness for taking on the right by making a big show of reclaiming the Democratic party from the troubling grip of special interests, coloreds, political correctness and identity politics.

I think one of the under-discussed upshots of the Obama candidacy is that wannabe tough guy Democrats who, like Hamsher, dreamed of the day their precious progressive bodily fluids would no longer be contaminated by ethnicity, now find themselves forced to either commit to the victory of a black Democratic presidential nominee (i.e., ethnicity embodied) or committed in various degrees to his defeat. Of course, no one of Hamsher's stature is going to come out directly and say they hope Obama loses - what with the chance said loss offers to finally break the distracting back of African American political power in America. But make no mistake: Should Obama lose in November, a howl of collective, animal outrage is going to go up among some white Democrats that, loosely translated, is going to read: "You fucking nuccas broke my party! Again!" The next thing they say after that will be: "how do we insure this never happens again?"

How indeed, Jane? How indeed.

Anyhoo, this is the Hamsher quote that caught my admittedly biased, anti-Jane eye. Writing of the video she took of Harriet Christian, the racist Clinton supporter who called Barack Obama "an inadequate black male," Hamsher says in the Huffington Post:

The clip became a YouTube phenomenon; by the time I got home over 200,000 people had seen it. It's now been viewed by over a million people. It appeared on CNN, Fox News and the Daily Show. Within 24 hours, 10 of the top 20 political videos on YouTube were people's responses to it.

The comments section (which now stands at nearly 19,000, one of the most commented upon political videos on YouTube of all time) was filled with people arguing fiercely about the contest. Some calling Christian a racist who showed the true face of the Clinton campaign, others calling her a truth teller who speaks for them. She turned into a Rorschach test for a Democratic party divided. She was raw, but we were all raw. []

Leaving aside the obligatory, Hollywood-insider onanism incited by the boffo box office her clip did, what's notable here is the notion that Harriet Christian represents a legitimate point of view that Hamsher, if not necessarily shares, certainly, like Chris Rock talking about OJ, understands. ("She was raw, but we were all raw.") Just for the sake of clarity, let's review exactly the kind of person Hamsher feels that special kind of raw simpatico with:

[h/t Ta-Nehisi for that FOX clip.]

Harriet C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n again, written down, just so we're all on the same page:

Harriet: And I am proud to be an older American woman.

Q: Where are you from?

Harriet: New York City. Hillary's state. The best nominee that's possible and the Democrats are throwing the election away. For what? An inadequate black male!? Who would not have been running if it not been a white woman that was running for president. And I'm not going to shut my mouth anymore! I can be called white, but you can't be called black? That's not my America. It's equality for all of us, it's about time all of us stood up for it. I'm no second class citizen! And goddamn the Democrats!

("That's right!" and clapping from onlookers)

Q: Where are you from?

Harriet: I'm from Manhattan.

Q: What's your name?

Harriet: I just said what my name was. Why? Why would you like my name? Maybe you're from the CIA, the FBI? We couldn't even find out where this convention was being held!

Q: What's your name?

Harriet: Yeah? My name is Harriet Christian. C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n. I came here for the vote of every American. And our Democratic party threw us down the tubes. I was a second class citizen before, now I am nothing. Why? Because they want to do what they want to do. And they think we won't turn and vote for McCain. Well I got news for all of you. McCain will be the next president of the United States!

Jane Hamsher calls all that "a Rorschach test for a Democratic party divided." But, if that's the case, I guess Jane's Blackface Joe was an inkblot, too:

as was this:

and this:

According to the progressive Democrats in good standing who produced ALL those images, their handiworks, much like Harriet Christian's rant, were all value-free ciphers upon which people of goodwill could legitimately disagree.

Of course, that's complete, tendentious bullshit, as technically, this is what a real Rorschach test looks like:

see the racism?

Which is to say, (and not to endorse what seems to be the contested science behind the tests) the above image was generated according to a semi-random process designed to make it largely content and context free. An inkblot is something "empty" that test subjects are invited to interpret in the hope that their response opens a window to their inner life. To the extent that are emblematic readings of a given inkblot, this isn't because the inkblot itself has any inherent, fixed meaning, but because human beings tend to fall into statistically significant groupings whose random responses ain't so random. So if you're a paranoid personality, the record of paranoid people looking at inkblot contains a pattern of responses, while schizophrenics see something else and so on.

In contrast to an inkblot, though, Harriet Christian's rant and the racist images above are completely familiar compendiums of thoroughly legible and established racial signs, memes and dogwhistles that any (good, honest) student of American politics should be able to identify in two seconds flat. When I say "Blackface Joe is racist" I'm not "projecting" a reading onto a empty cipher based upon my identity, I'm telling you what that shit actually was. We can argue about it, but here's a newsflash: I'd win, not because I'm a politically correct bully or a mind-reader, but because the "Blackface Joe is racist" argument better describe the image itself, the political and personal contexts that produced it, and the historical record of how such images have been used previously than the "It's just a random image" argument describes them.

The same logic applies to Harriet Christian, where "Harriet Christian is a racist" is being set against what Joan Walsh incredibly described as "a wail worth hearing." In the case of Christian's comments, the words themselves, the political and personal contexts that produced those words, and the historical record of how such words have been used previously all point to a fairly standard set of racially specific memes. These include:

• political correctness is a weapon to shut white people up - "I can be called white, but you can't be called black"
• affirmative action anti-meritocratic and dangerous tool that keeps white people down - "The best nominee that's possible and the Democrats are throwing the election away. For what? An inadequate black male!?"
• things like identity politics and special extra-constitutional "rights" are creating a new hierarchy where whites are at the bottom (and white women are below that because of sexism) - "I was a second class citizen before, now I am nothing!"
• craven Democratic elites and special interests conspire in back rooms to the detriment of the white working class - "Why? Because they want to do what they want to do." Also, my favorite: "Why? Why would you like my name? Maybe you're from the CIA, the FBI?"

In short, this woman is basically a Republican, or in the misty eyed nostalgia of Sean Wilentz and the revanchist Hamsherite Democrats, she's a salt-of-the-earth Reagan Democrat who represents an authentic, traditional wing Democratic party.

Although the Great Randomizer In the Sky produced Harriet, her statements aren't a random, mechanically produced series of value free notions that team A interprets as "Yip!" while co-equal team B says "Yap!" Instead, they're a set of political assertions that team A calls "racist" and team B calls "true." Unlike an essentially unknowable inkblot, though, about Christian's rant there are, if not absolute right and a wrong answers, certainly better and worse descriptions.

Still, I dunno if some people look at Harriet Christian and see their elderly relatives (thereby immediately taking leave of their faculties), but the Harriet Love is in full effect. Take a gander at this sloppy, barstool kiss delivered to Harriet by Will Bower:

I hope you will all take the time to get to know Harriet as I have. Harriet is salty. Harriet is a firecracker. Harriet is many things. But Harriet is not a lunatic. She is a life long New Yorker who has worked for civil rights for over forty years. She's a woman full of life and passion. She's a woman who gave her emotions free reign for a few well-televised minutes. [h/t full Bower wet kiss][h/t Ta-Nehisi again]

First off, just for kicks, compare that "I hope you will all take the time to get to know Harriet as I have" above with this comment I once got from a Firedoglake frontpager. (Totally creepy, right?) Second of all, I would really like to know from Bower exactly what civil rights work Christian has been doing for "over forty years." I just flat out don't believe that claim. But, on the off chance it were true, it would make a fascinating story - not about how Christian's racial do-gooder bona-fides legitimize her POV, but about the contrast between her POV and those bona-fides. (If you ever want to see a nice arc of white liberal racism, find a middle-aged white public school teacher who went into the profession "during the 60s" in order to do the Lord's work and now votes Republican because of all they "learned" from interacting with poor and distressed black parents and youth. I could totally see Harriet Christian being a completely serviceable teacher of unruly inner city 10 year olds - this while deeply hating them and their parents' guts. I could also see her typically misinterpreting 40 years on a public payroll in the wrong part of town as "civil rights work.")

But from the standpoint of better and worse readings, there actually are plenty of completely fascinating things to say about Harriet Christian that don't involve shitting on her. (He we enter that admittedly de-partisanized, hand-holding place where the combat between "racist" and "true" is pushed into a time out corner, but you do what you gotta do to win elections, right?) For example, someone credible could have made a thoughtful parallel between defenses of Christian and defenses of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. That parallel doesn't assume a Wright-Christian equivalence, but I do think it might be used to say something (maybe!) about what the Obama campaign is doing to private racial spaces, or about how certain racially derived notions and points of view become offensive, untenable, and difficult to defend when they jump the tall hedge that separates demos. The prospect of a black president strikes me as tossing a lot of stuff over that hedge, and (to go onanistic like Jane) I actually wrote about aspects of this issue recently in The Root. (Albeit about Wright and... Tyler Perry, but I think the underlying dynamic still works.)

I actually think it's totally fair for someone to argue that Harriet Christian represents a private or internal white understanding of the Clinton-Obama primary that needs to be read in context. I might (personally) roll my eyes when you said that and change the channel, but I wouldn't accuse you of lying or being a racist just for doing some 'splaining. Yes, I'd totally think that you were a certain kind of predictable bore who had enough time on their hands to waste precious life-hours on the umpteenth, repetitive analysis of throughly well-explicated white angst. But that would just be my somewhat asshole-ish riff and we would call it a day. Although the word "racist" very often short-circuits conversations, I also believe that racism has underlying drivers beyond, say, human evil: economic, social and memetic forces that shape society. And I'm invested in understanding those forces, first as a writer and second as a self-interested human interested in seeing that racism reduced or eradicated.

But contrast that notion of analysis with the veiled threats issued by Hamsher on the HuffPo. As one of Christian's co-ethnics/sisthren Hamsher makes no effort to de-escalate the incident, instead using her to wave the bloody blouse one more time while carrying water for a Hillary Veepery. The founder of progressive blog Firedoglake and the netroot heavyweight, who once accused those who complained about the racism of her Blackface Joe Image of playing into "ginned up controversy ... with these absurd charges of racism" isn't interested in the big picture here. Hamsher doesn't bother to make a counter-argument to her own constituency in the name of the greater good of defeating McCain, instead saying this:

[I]n John McCain's speech last night, he made it abundantly clear he would make a play for these voters.

Would they be satisfied with another woman on the ticket, not Hillary? Would Kathleen Sibelius or Patty Murray fit the bill? If Harriet Christian is typical, it would be somewhat akin to abusing your wife then trying to make it up to her by giving a ring to your new girlfriend. As Harriet herself indicated on Fox News -- not bloody likely.

But how typical is she? When Hillary Clinton signaled yesterday that she'd like the VP position, and chose not to concede last night, the only way for Obama to keep her off the ticket is to openly reject her. It will be a clear statement to many of her female supporters -- culled from one of the largest voting blocks in the Democratic party -- that she is unwanted.

Obama is now on the spot. Will Clinton's supporters stick with her, or will they get over it?

I guess we'll find out. [full Hamsher threat]

Although lots of ink and pixels were spilled putting Wright "in context," the underlying feeling in the black community (from my admittedly limited vantage point) was that he was a distraction who needed to step back from his beloved microphones and let Obama do his thing. Moreover, if Obama had lost the primary fair and square - fewer pledged delegates than Clinton followed a predictable swing towards Clinton by superdelegates - I believe that black folks would have, in the main, ended up voting Democratic in November. Why? Because we're actually more surprised than anyone that he won. A loss would have only confirmed what we thought we already knew.

In contrast, Christian's white female defenders in the media (Hollywood producer Hamsher, Salon editor Joan Walsh) clearly expected their candidate to win from jump, which, to me, suggests a somewhat distinct wound born not of historical deprivation but in recent privilege. The idea that, in the aftermath of an Obama loss, black people would fill the blogosphere with dire threats of a nascent "BLACK DEMOCRATS FOR MCCAIN" movement is absurd on the face of it. Sure a Clinton presidential run would have faced the possibility of black apathy, but vote McCain for revenge? Harriet, please.

Indeed, among Democrats, half of all African Americans actually want Hillary to be the Veep:

Surprisingly, even among all women polled, only 36 percent favor her as a vice-presidential candidate, with 41% opposed and 23% undecided.

Forty-five percent (45%) of African-Americans support Mrs. Clinton for vice president, with 35% opposed and 19% undecided. Among white voters, 47% oppose her being on the ticket; 32% think it's a good idea, and 21% are unsure. [full poll]

Look at that again. A higher percentage of black Democrats want Hillary to be Veep than Democratic women do. (It'd be great to see that parsed white women vs black women. Anyone have a Rasmussen subscription?) And yet, in the face of that kind of focus on the big picture, that grace and generosity from black voters who overwhelmingly supported Clinton's opponent, Jane Hamsher continues her established pattern of unapologetically spitting in the faces of black progressives by defending Harriet Christian. Nice work, Jane!