Salon.com > Your Racist Uncle

Daily Caller genius: I don’t feel bad for black people anymore because I think a black person stole my bike

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Mark Judge would like the world to know that he no longer has any "white guilt" because his bike got stolen and the perpetrator may have been a black person, or possibly (the culprit is still at large!) black people in general.

Who is Mark Judge? He is some guy writing an opinion column for Tucker Carlson's online magazine, "Assumption of Trayvon Martin's Guilt Illustrated." (He is also the author of some awful-sounding book about being a right-wing Catholic who likes rock 'n' roll music, and he once wrote an unintentionally funny review of John McWhorter's book about hip-hop.)

What happened is, he had his bike locked to his car while he went to services on Good Friday, and when he came back, his bike was gone, and he doesn't think a nun stole it so basically his parents lied to him when they said "we are all the same" and his favorite movie is no longer "In the Heat of the Night." (The deductive reasoning on display is staggering: It couldn't have been monks, must have been black people.)

How to argue with right-wing relatives

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

There comes a time at most large family gatherings when a heated political argument breaks out. And by "heated political argument" what I mean is "someone just repeats something they heard on Hannity's radio show that you know to be completely untrue." You may be the lone liberal in a conservative family, or you may have one right-wing uncle in your left-wing family, but this will happen. What to do?

If you have a "smart phone," just bookmark Snopes now. That'll take care of the really weird stuff. (Well, not this level of weird, but "I read that airlines don't pair Christian pilots and co-pilots in case The Rapture happens" weird.)

But a right-wing myth generally lives on forever, no many how many times it is debunked. You are powerless to prevent its spread. All you can do is perhaps convince one person that one talk radio meme is completely bogus. But you will probably have better luck simply changing the subject. (Suggestions: Whether or not Peyton Manning will be a Colt next season, "American Horror Story," Jay-Z and Beyonce's baby.)