And I thought Bush’s lie that he gave up golf in solidarity out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war was the winner of the dumbassery remark of the year. Boy was I wrong.
PZ Myers at Pharyngula points to an incredible statement by the movie critic, right-wing Clown Hall writer and radio show host. First, I love PZ’s opening.
Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved’s latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.Oh yes, Medved did, friends. I guess the best thing we can say about the following statement is that he probably wasn’t emitting the spittle Pat “A Brief for Whitey” Buchanan did yesterday when he was on Hardball. Medved even makes the gutsy move of explaining that the DNA shaped by our borders and risk-taking requires governing by Republican policies:
The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.Wow. Talk about junk science — so now Americans are a “race”? Holy smoke, this is incredible. Actually, Medved’s working from the same playbook as Buchanan — slavery was a good thing for the darkies, after all, those bringing the slaves over as cargo didn’t have genocide on their minds, they needed that cargo alive because good hard money was paid for them.…Senators Obama, Clinton and other leaders who seek to enlarge the scope of government face more formidable obstacles than they realize. Their desire to impose a European-style welfare state and a command-and-control economy not only contradicts our proudest political and economic traditions, but the new revelations about American DNA suggest that such ill-starred schemes may go against our very nature.
Estimates remain inevitably imprecise, but range as high as one third of the slave “cargo” who perished from disease or overcrowding during transport from Africa. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean. By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse.H/t, Oliver Willis.
63 Responses to “Michael Medved and ‘American DNA’”
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I consider that, among the major GOP pundits (in other words, not minor bloggers like Ace of Spades, TIDOS Yankee, Yoshida, etc.), Medved is absolutely the dumbest of the bunch. I know Dave Neiwert thinks he’s an OK guy, but Medved’s starting to turn tributes-to-slavery and outright racism into his own specialty.
You can add Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel to that list with her apologia of the thinly veiled new euphemism for racism “full-blooded American.’ Gag.
Wait, wait, wait. So…. immigrants have better genes, and personality traits, than folks who don’t choose to travel? So, we should be encouraging lots of immigration, and all those Latinos crossing the border are genetically superior to us whiteys? Well, this is certainly unexpected coming from the Right Wing.
Also, isn’t Michael Medved with the Discovery Institute? Couldn’t he lose his fellowship if he starts talking about genetic determinism and whatnot?
You know, I didn’t think I’d see anything more stupid than Bush’s great golf sacrifice, but….I should have known.
I wonder how this tool calculates in those Anglo-Saxons who indentured themselves for years for a shot to come here…
Or is he getting his info stright from “American History for Dummies”?
(Dubya loaned him his unopened copy… no pretty pictures, you see)
I would be very interested in reading Medved’s thoroughly researched paper on the genetics of the American people…
Oh wait? You mean he’s being pulling these explanations out of his ass? Say it ain’t so!
“It’s a scientific explanation because I talk about DNA” doesn’t cut it, Medved.
I wonder how this tool calculates in all of the Anglo-Saxons who indentured themselves for years in order to come here…
Where is he getting his info from, “American History for Dummies??
Maybe Dubya loaned him his unopened copy- no pretty pictures, you see.
Speaking as a 23rd generation American, I feel justified in taking the risk of saying that Michael Medved is an unmitigated asshole. I would applaud anyone who lowers the risk of day-to-day life and expands the risk taking to the goal of achieving greater things than Medved’s small mind is capable of imagining.
Crap. Moderation. Sorry for duplicate when it comes around on the guitar…
no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean.
Not that this is the most egregious bit, but WOW, what a totally and completely incorrect statement.
In a lot of cases it was, in fact, perfectly profitable for slave traders to throw their cargo overboard, deliberately wreck fully laden slave ships, etc. Mainly for insurance purposes, not unlike the modern equivalent of landlords burning down unprofitable buildings. In fact it was just such an event that, when it came to light in the English press, helped fuel the fire of abolitionism in the UK.
I have to say there’s a part of me that wonders if this sort of thing isn’t the real M.O. of this arm of the Right. You build this impossibly offensive screed on vaguely plausible “facts” that, while they don’t support your ridiculous statements, still sound vaguely plausible. Right-leaning people with brains will dismiss the screed but swallow the grossly inaccurate Facts ™ . Then it becomes “common knowledge” that can be trotted out to support all sorts of far more “reasonable” right-wing platitudes.
Acallidryas beat me to it. If risk-taking & aggressiveness are the measure of genetic superiority, why shouldn’t we be welcoming all the immigrants who boldly risk their lives to sneak into our country? Right wingers love to complain about how soft and liberal (read ‘girly’) America has become. Shouldn’t Medved & Co. welcome an influx of more aggressive stock into our gene pool? Never mind; that only applies to white people.
I guess what boggles my mind: how low can this go? Because this seems like the bottom of the barrel, but it’s not even summer yet. I am a little nervous about what may be coming down the pike.
But I think this is really a bad strategy for the rethugs. They are turning a vote for Obama into a transcendant symbolic act — not the act of “voting for a black man” that Buchanan aludes to, but the act of burying the hateful and ridiculous attitudes of the right one and for all.
Wonder where that leaves those of us who are descended from *Native* Americans.
Nevertheless, two respected professors of psychiatry have recently come out with challenging books that contend that those who chose to settle this country in every generation possessed crucial common traits that they passed on to their descendents.
Interesting, now what the fuck do the geneticists think of this idea? That it’s moronic claptrap akin to social darwinism? Yep.
From my own specialty, history, I must point out that these European nations were settled by immigrants… unless, perhaps, you’re a Basque. Does this fool not think the Anglo-saxon tribes that invaded England in the 5th century, the Danes who came in the 9th or the Normans who invaded in the 11th practiced the same sort of “self-selection” their later descendants did when they came to America? Or the Franks in France? The Huns, Avars and Bulgars in eastern Europe? Lombards in Italy? Celts, Goths and Arabs in Spain? Everybody and their mothers in Ireland?
Just the typical ethnocentrism practiced by all truly loathsome crypto-racist scumbags.
Opoponax’ last paragraph–spot on. Iran is killing our soldiers, Chavez murders his opponents….etc
It seems that this idiot is trying to argue that there is a genetic basis for being a conservative/Republican?
Imagine a group of humans living 60,000 years ago. One group decides that they dont want to move, while an other group decides it wants to trek for new lands. From an evoluntary point of view, its good that some people are conservative (small c) while others are not. It ensures that people spread and travel, but not everyone so that if something goes wrong, the original population is not wiped out!
If we transpose that onto what he is saying, then the conservative population stayed in Europe and the unconservative one left!
I am only saying this to point out the madness of what he is trying to say. In reality, people left Europe and other lands for a host of different reasons, not just because they hated universal healthcare or unemployment benefit.
Far to little time has passed for the genetic traits that he has talked about to be ‘encoded’ into a population. In India, after 4000 years of the case system they have been able to identify genetic codes that apply to that system. That is one thing, but actual personality traits..thats something else. (Apologies, but I am dragging up undergrad biology and its hard to rememerb and explain concepts like that fullstop let alone on a blogpost).
What he is ascribing to as genetic traits are actually cultural. The over arching philisophical ideologies that form part of US culture, Americans greatest gift to the world and now its greatest challenege. Just because someone has a different world view does not make them inferior, genetic or otherwise.
Of course, there is another way to read what he is saying….all those immigrants, espically from 19th century Europe where unable to hack the challenges and hard work in Europe and so ‘fled’ for an easier life in the USA.
“Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits. Among contemporary African-Americans, however, this very different historical background exerts a less decisive influence, because of vast waves of post-slavery black immigration. Some three million black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean arrived since 1980 alone and in big cities like New York, Boston and Miami close to half of the African-American population consists of immigrants, their children or grandchildren. The entrepreneurial energy of these newcomer communities indicates that their members display the same adventurous instincts associated with American DNA.”
I guess this means that Caribbean blacks aren’t descended from slaves. Wow, you learn somehing new every day.
It is possible that Michael Medved doesn’t know his own immigration history all that well. Jews who were fleeing persecution in Europe, or who were forcibly kicked out of their homes in Czarist Russia or elsewhere, cannot really be said to be to be “risk takers.” Yep, me and the Medveds have wimpy, running-away DNA.
The sniveling shit.
Social Scientists have been toying with this sort of thing for generations, and applying to every population that moves (Americans, Achaean Greeks, horse-riding Central Asians). The first time I ever heard this idea was in seventh grade when my Latin teacher applied it to the Achaeans. Its a tempting and appealing hypothesis, but it does not work really work. Moving to another place is not the only form of risk-taking behavior, just a particularly dramatic one. Behavior like risk-taking can just as easily be culturally inculcated as genetically inspired. Psychologists and neuroscientists who study behavior are not even sure (as I understand it, the consensus is for a blend of nature and nurture).
Let me add, in mind of my own accusations of ethnocentrism, that population migrations are a constant throughout the history of humankind wherever we have inhabited, certainly not just Europe.
My Cherokee ancestors, for instance, spoke a form of Iroquoian rather than the Muskogean based languages most other southeastern tribes spoke which almost certainly indicates they migrated from the Great Lakes area at some, fairly recent, point.
And, as Flying Fox points out, this is hardly the only form of risk-taking a people can perform and, as Deborah notes, many of these migrations are forced rather than chosen.
Suiting punishment.
MAKE the guy take seminar class of Statistical Genetic Evolution and maybe… Thermodynamics of Biomolecular Systems
or just make the guy clean the entire biology dept building using a toothbrush . maybe while being chased by all the vet. dept animals
ahahaha…..
I love how they excuse the slavers by saying, hey, at least they weren’t practicing genocide! Because, you know, there just weren’t any other choices (like “treating Africans like people” or “just leaving them alone”). So the good Christian slavers chose the lesser of two evils, out of the goodness of their hearts, donchaknow.
And this argument is especially great coming from folks whose ancestors had such great slogans as
- Live free or die
- Better to die on your feet than live on your knees
- Thy songs were meant for the brave and free/they shall never sound in slavery
So do these think a better slogan would be “Slavery: Better than Dying”?
Somebody should steal Medved’s DNA, scan it and post it on the net. Warts and all.
lol. (anybody want to collect a couple hundred K? we might be able to do it.) We might be able to cure wingnut genes defect! Think of how this will advance humanity.
Every time Medved spouts off something this stupid, I shed a tear, because the book he wrote with David Wallechinsky in the 1970s, “What Really Happened to the Class of ‘65?” is extremely good.
It’s funny, of course, how Medved is claiming that (white) Americans are genetically superior bceause of our immigrant roots, while Barack Obama isn’t a “full American” because his father immigrated here.
The “risk taking” of Americans is overstated (not to mention blunted by tighter bankruptcy laws). The individuals who went in covered wagons over the mountains or packed themselves in ships to land at ellis island might have been risk-takers, but most Americans who’ve been here for several generations are not particularly big entrepeneurial risk-takers. It’s just that we feed our country with a new crop of immigrant risk-takers to keep ourselves going.
[blockquote]Let me add, in mind of my own accusations of ethnocentrism, that population migrations are a constant throughout the history of humankind wherever we have inhabited, certainly not just Europe.
My Cherokee ancestors, for instance, spoke a form of Iroquoian rather than the Muskogean based languages most other southeastern tribes spoke which almost certainly indicates they migrated from the Great Lakes area at some, fairly recent, point.[/blockquote]
Yep. The people I work for (Inuit) are actually rather recent arrivals to the New World, and the current Canadian Inuit population, descendants of the Thule culture, only spread out of northern Alaska 1000 years ago, replacing the Dorset (1000-3000 years ago), who themselves replaced the Paleo-Eskimo (3000-5000). In fact, Inuit and Vikings were colonizing Greenland at the same time, Inuit moving south along the west coast and the Norse moving north.
Hmm, come to think of it, my Scottish and Irish ancestry actually has a lot of Norse in it from the Viking days. Heading out across the Atlantic with lower tech than the later European colonists did, meeting with people who colonized the Arctic with bone and stone and skin.
Wow, quite clearly my people and the people I work for are far superior to Medved’s European stick at home until it’s safer to travel genetics.
But seriously, why would someone whose family is Jewish and from Europe even want to bring up the argument of genetic superiority? Did he forget the last time someone did that in a big way?
Well, that was lame-ass formatting.
okay, okay here is a much better idea. (cheaper to do)
You know how all these wingnut can create pseudo science and spin it to explain themselves?
WHY CAN”T we do the same?
come on…I am in for a nice pseudo science hackery just to make wingnut heads explode.
A couple scientific paper, bunch of handwaving, false conclusion, exageration, well written BS. ..
what we lack is hackery skillz! Somebody somewhere must be boring enough to write a fake paper ala Sokal.
The Sokal affair (also Sokal’s hoax) was a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editorial staff and readership of the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University). In 1996, Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, submitted a paper of nonsense camouflaged in jargon for publication in Social Text, as an experiment to see if a journal in that field would, in Sokal’s words: “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”[1]
The paper, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”[2], was published in the Spring/Summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue of Social Text, which at that time had no peer review process, and so did not submit it for outside review. On the day of its publication, Sokal announced in another publication, Lingua Franca, that the article was a hoax, calling his paper “a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense”, which was “structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics” made by postmodernist academics.
The resulting debate focused on the relative scholarly merits or lack thereof of sociological commentary on the physical sciences and of postmodern-influenced sociological disciplines in general, as well as on academic ethics, including both whether it was appropriate for Sokal to deliberately defraud an academic journal, as well as whether Social Text took appropriate precautions in publishing the paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Now, wait a minute. I thought American blacks were supposed to be so good at sports because they were bred to be strong so they could last in the cotton fields. Let’s get our crackpot genetic theories straight, people, hmmmm?
It seems that this idiot is trying to argue that there is a genetic basis for being a conservative/Republican?
Imagine a group of humans living 60,000 years ago. One group decides that they dont want to move, while an other group decides it wants to trek for new lands. From an evoluntary point of view, its good that some people are conservative (small c) while others are not. It ensures that people spread and travel, but not everyone so that if something goes wrong, the original population is not wiped out!
If we transpose that onto what he is saying, then the conservative population stayed in Europe and the unconservative one left!
I am only saying this to point out the madness of what he is trying to say. In reality, people left Europe and other lands for a host of different reasons, not just because they hated universal healthcare or unemployment benefit.
Far to little time has passed for the genetic traits that he has talked about to be ‘encoded’ into a population. In India, after 4000 years of the case system they have been able to identify genetic codes that apply to that system. That is one thing, but actual personality traits..thats something else. (Apologies, but I am dragging up undergrad biology and its hard to rememerb and explain concepts like that fullstop let alone on a blogpost).
What he is ascribing to as genetic traits are actually cultural. The over arching philisophical ideologies that form part of US culture, Americans greatest gift to the world and now its greatest challenege. Just because someone has a different world view does not make them inferior, genetic or otherwise.
Of course, there is another way to read what he is saying….all those immigrants, espically from 19th century Europe where unable to hack the challenges and hard work in Europe and so ‘fled’ for an easier life in the USA.
What about the prison colonies and the immigrants who came so as not to have to go to prison. Who has “that” DNA? What a crackpot.
Given that the best-supported theory of human development is known as the “Out of Africa” theory — ie, that all human life started in Africa and we all migrated from there — it’s awfully strange that Medved would try to claim that only people from a single country have that gene when everyone else on every continent did the same thing.
And the perceived differences between African-Americans and immigrant Africans and Carribean peoples have less to do with genetics and more to do with the difference between being born in the US and immigrating to the US. The immigrant’s experience is different than that of someone who was born here, and trying to claim that there’s something qualitatively different between people of the similar genetic backgrounds is just fucking stupid. It’s like trying to argue that someone who immigrated from Italy last month is clearly genetically superior to me because my ancestors immigrated from Italy a century ago.
I’m trying to think of something to say about this and I’m at a loss.
Ignoring the many comments that are obvious Godwin’s Law examples, I’ll just say that I’m sure Medved has many nice Jewish relatives, living and not, who would probably love to have a shot at giving him a good whack upside his malfunctioning head…
mnemosyne May 15, 2008 at 9:57 am
Given that the best-supported theory of human development is known as the “Out of Africa” theory
I refuse to accept medved is actually inside the human evolution tree.
I bet he is one of the last of those extinct hominid. He is actually closer to mushroom or an oak tree.
Who has “that” DNA?
Southerners, mainly. Georgia started as a penal colony.
I’ll be tactful and not make any crackpot claims about that particular genetic legacy.
It’s obvious that Medved thinks “American Dad” is a reality show. After all, he does mention the “American Race”.
Medved’s a hack. He’s starting out with his conclusion (Americans is teh best!!3!) and working back from there. I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of coming up with some rationale for why the classes of immigrants Republicans don’t like are inferior.
I’d argue anyway that the greater risk-taking/entrepeneurial spirit of immigrants is a learned behavior (with cultural and economic elements to it as well). The children and especially the grand-children of immigrants are usually pretty well assimilated.
Oooooh boy, this one’s so easy to turn on its head…(parody incoming) after all, most 18th- and 19th-Century European immigrants were people who couldn’t hack it in their native country, therefore white Americans are a collection of Europe’s losers. Thanks to the winnowing process of the American frontier, the lamest of those losers died, leaving the craftiest and sneakiest to survive and propagate, thus leading inevitably to the slackers and lazy couch potatoes who now populate this glorious nation.
Isn’t junk science fun!
Sounds like somebody is reading that ivy league craptacular sociology religion, except with added DNA BS. heh
(I wonder if people like medved realized they are a total disgrace of their ethnicity. Hey…let’s start ‘real race war. I am all for it.)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
” The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide – between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits. Among contemporary African-Americans, however, this very different historical background exerts a less decisive influence, because of vast waves of post-slavery black immigration. Some three million black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean arrived since 1980 alone and in big cities like New York, Boston and Miami close to half of the African-American population consists of immigrants, their children or grandchildren. The entrepreneurial energy of these newcomer communities indicates that their members display the same adventurous instincts associated with American DNA. “
I wonder if Medved’s been reading The Bell Curve, since Herrnstein and Murray say something similar in the book.
After all, most 18th- and 19th-Century European immigrants were people who couldn’t hack it in their native country, therefore white Americans are a collection of Europe’s losers.
Hey, I’m descended from a long line of drunken micks and anarchist dagoes, and I’m proud of it!
Well, okay, I do have a few Pilgrims on my mother’s side (including William Bradford, the first governor of Virginia), but I think we’re a little embarrassed about them.
(Which reminds me, I keep meaning to pay my $100 to National Geographic’s genome project and see what mix of mutt I am. There’s no possible way that (part of) my family has been in the US for 300 years and stayed all-European the whole time.)
I’m sworn to point out every time Michael Medved comes up that he believes in Sasquatch. I’m not sure how this affects his theory, but Harry from “Harry and the Hendersons” was a pretty big risk taker.
http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/About.aspx
“Dan Sytman, Michael’s producer and partner on the radio show, once saw Bigfoot at the edge of a summer camp in the woods. Even before meeting Dan, Michael was a passionate believer in Sasquatch”
Does he perhaps or rather imply that this cargo
was like most such carriage..inert, relatively passive and
lacking in this whole will thing the current crop of Americanist authoritarians are just so crazy about.
Exactly the same sort of opprobrium…sort of bigotry of soft expectations thing was levied against and was or has been internalized by the victims, survivors and offspring of those sweet little exercise-in-passivity train trips to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
Jewish people all over the place still suffer from some of
of the aftereffects of all that.
And some of the current Israeli patriarchal sh*it also goes down reactionarily from all that history.
The residuals are substantial and understandable…in either case.
Is Alzheimer’s contagious? First Saint Ronnie, then McSame, Rush NAMBLaugh, and now Medved.
Gahhh, charter skool science. His fantasies wouldn’t pass 9th grade science in the rural, poor school district in Whitesylvania where I work.
It’s not Alzheimer’s. It’s a side effect of spending too much time in the echo chamber; eventually they forget that they have to carefully couch their bigotry in code so as not to offend those outside the circle jerk.
One correction. The figures I’ve seen suggest that 12-15% of slaves on average died during the middle passage (which means, of course, that on some ships the number was higher). HOWEVER, up to 50% died during the entire process from being seized until they ended up at their final destination in the Americas. A great many died during the initial transit, during time in holding pens both before and after the voyage, etc.
And if you ended up in a sugar plantation somewhere, say Jamaica or Cuba, your life expectancy was very, very short even if you survived the voyage.
I covered the Middle Passage yesterday in my intro US class. After discussing the economics of slavery in the 1600s and 1700s I wanted my students to see the human cost and showed the Middle Passage scene from Amistad. I wanted them to see the human cost. I thought one young woman was about to get sick. Good. Then she’ll remember what was done to slaves the next time some RW pinhead like Medvid starts with the “the slaves were the lucky ones because they ended up in America” bullshit.
and any discussion of immigration needs this quote from Stripes..
We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi, we’re not Spartans, we’re Americans. With a capital “A”, huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts.
Interesting. Which chromosome carries the “American Race” gene? Could we use gene therapy to produce homo uber-Americanis? Or perhaps homo sub-americanis the way paleo-geneticists are focing chicken embryos to redevelop archeopteryx’s tail and teeth?
Now, if the amped up Americans were more like hippies and less like John Wayne, would the create-your-own-reality folks allow the reality-based facts out? Or would the mere attempt at reality-based science cause the create-your-own-reality universe to go all explodey?
uh…that’s “forcing” chicken embryos.
Why are people who don’t believe in evolution allowed to spout off genetic hackery anyway? Shouldn’t someone call Medved out on this?
Medved:
Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.
The risks taken by members of the Underground Railroad or those who faced beatings, imprisonment, and death in the Civil Rights movement far exceed the risks taken by any European immigrant.
Medved’s ignorance is mind-boggling.
Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.
Jesus…that’s some serious wanking right there.
So, using Medved’s schema, Africans who survived the long slave voyages and subsequent enslavement (and their descendants) should be psychologically and physically superior, right?
After all, only those who are mentally and physically superior could have survived those horrors.
It’s equally as ludicrous, but God forbid nuts like Medved ever use their fucked logic for any conclusions that paint us black and brown folk as anything other than shiftless layabouts or barely restrained savages.
Holy Fuck. By his hypothesis, Medved should never breed because that level of stupid should never be passed on.
And apparently, I’m some kind of genetic anomaly. Because I’ve got 300 years worth of pasty white northern European immigrant blood running through my veins, and it does not incline me in the slightest to this Republican utopia of fuck-you policies he espouses.
Clearly there’s a gene for saying really stupid not-even-pseudoscience crap like this that gets expressed only later in life. A sort of intellectual version of Huntington’s. We should trace the lineages of every wingnut pseudo-intellectual to find what alleles are responsible, and then offer genetic testing…
Wow, Medved is a racist wanker who talks pseudoscience out of his ass?
Who knew?
/snark
What are Meved’s genes? He is on pretty shakey ground to argue this way.
There is a program presented on BBC a few years ago called “100% English”. The producers as several different people who thought they were all English to give them DNA samples. Needless to say, all the participants were more than surprised.
http://www.walltowall.co.uk/catalogue_detail.aspx?w2wprogram=146
There’s a fascinating series of documentaries that floats around PBS (comes on around here every February for Black History Month, but I’ve seen it at other times of the year) which traces the ancestry of about a dozen prominent African Americans. I think it’s related to that BBC program. About 5 minutes of it would be enough to thoroughly debunk just about all of Medved’s screed, not to mention countless other stereotypes about slavery and its legacy.
Here is a link to a new installment which seems to be airing soonish, there’s also a link on this page to info about the original series.
Wow.
So, if pimps and human traffickers keep prostitutes, sex slaves, and labor slaves alive these days, they should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for not being serial killers instead, right?
The risks taken by members of the Underground Railroad or those who faced beatings, imprisonment, and death in the Civil Rights movement far exceed the risks taken by any European immigrant.
Not to mention the Black Americans who served in the Union Army during the Civil War, knowing full well that the Confederacy would execute them if they were captured. Or the Tuskegee Airmen. Or Crispus Attucks. Or ad infinitum.
Let’s face it, this is just more conservative masculine anxiety on full ugly display. I’d wager that Medved has never done a bold or courageous thing in his lifetime; but lo, here’s a way for him to be courageous-by-proxy: by claiming he comes from noble stock, by jingo. Now watch as he bravely defends his bold missive from the liberal hordes as they point out he’s full of shit.
STFU, Medved.
Speaking of “noble stock”, isn’t Medved descended from the same sorts of people who have been stereotyped by people of his political persuasion as being anarchists, labor organizers, communists, and crazy-ass leftists of all stripes? Eastern European Jews who migrated to the US Northeast at the turn of the last century?
So according to his own logic, he should probably be deported. I mean, it was good enough for Emma Goldman, wasn’t it?
Funny how, a century later when we have a new set of immigrant “others” to vilify, Medved is suddenly the descendant of brave and noble capitalists who, with their natural risk-taking ways, helped make America the great country it is today.
Once again, Medved writes something that leaves me wanting to string him by his feet from a tree and whap him on the head like a pinata until all the stupid falls out.
I’m always amazed at how people use/hear the term “dna” and suddenly turn off their brains and act like we’re talking about magic.
Here’s my problem with this:
First, it’s Medved. I can’t stand him.
Second…way back in the Depression era, when social programs were really starting to catch on in this country, most American black people were Republicans. Not only were Republicans the party of Lincoln in those days (as opposed to the party of Reagan), but the Republicans were purportedly the party of personal uplift—”purportedly” in a sense that had yet to become flatly satirical. (Well, it was a long time ago.) African-Americans didn’t transfer their loyalties to the Democratic party until about 30 years after that, when the Republican hierarchy let it be known that they could do without the support of the members of an lowly servant class. (The rest, as they say, is history.)
(Back in the ’30’s, BTW, my Dad’s almost-nearly 100% pure Nordic Wisconsonian extended immigrant family were pretty much all Democrats. Just so you know.)
So my question would be: (assuming for a moment that genetics actually do determine politics, which I doubt) has everybody’s DNA profile switched around completely during the last three-quarters of a century? Because seventy-five years ago my Dad’s Scandinavian immigrant relatives were erecting little shrines to FDR in their parlors while the descendants of slaves refused to budge from the Republican ranks.
And if genes can rethink their political alignment, shouldn’t that be the focus of Medved’s attention, rather than this barmy notion of his that Americans (but only the white ones of course) possess in the veins some ichor of the gods which Europeans lack? Because the first possibility is by far the more interesting possibility. Wouldn’t you say?
My eyes are actually making the o_O face right now. That’s actually a first, despite all the crap these nutbags spit out.