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Order Robert Spencer’s new book, Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It: HERE.
Graham Platner is running for the U.S. Senate from Maine, and since he is a socialist and Maine’s far-left large cities have disenfranchised its patriotic hinterlands, he will likely win. Platner is running into a bit of flak over the fact that he has a large skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest that strongly resembles the Totenkopf symbol of the National Socialist SS, the feared paramilitary force that ruthlessly enforced Hitler’s ideological line.
Platner has attempted to laugh off that controversy, but now he is entangled himself in a related controversy by using a forbidden word when dismissing concerns over his tattoo. Fox News is seriously reporting on this by saying that Platner used “the R-word,” and actually blanking it out in its report. What is this, fourth grade? That is about the maturity level of much of the nation’s political discourse these days.
Fox’s headline on its story Friday was “Maine Democrat Graham Platner apologizes for using ‘R-word’ in interview on tattoo scandal.” I was trying to figure out what the dreaded R-word was, and the story itself was no help. It quoted Platner as saying this about the charge that he had a Nazi tattoo: “I was like, ‘Well, that’s the f—ing most r——- s— I’ve ever heard in my life.’ ‘No, I don’t have a White supremacist tattoo,’ and I never thought about it again. And then it came up later on, and I was like, ‘God f—ing damn it.’”
“R——- s—”? Would Fox be so kind as to give us a hint? No. But Fox’s source, the Maine Monitor, was far less punctilious, and gave us Platner’s quote in its full obnoxious and pugnacious pungency: “I was like, ‘Well, that’s the fucking most retarded shit I’ve ever heard in my life.’ ‘No, I don’t have a white supremacist tattoo,’ and I never thought about it again. And then it came up later on, and I was like, ‘God fucking damn it.’”
Now Platner has apologized. Not, of course, for having a Nationalist Socialist tattoo, which he has never adequately explained and should cause far more concern about his actual positions than it has already. Not for saying “fuck” or “shit,” which everyone says nowadays in full voice in crowded public places, without the slightest hesitation.
No, what Platner did that really crossed the line and forced him to issue the thing that politicians hate most in this world, a public apology, was that he said the word “retarded,” which the left has decided sometime since people in the 1970s and 1980s took up collections for retarded children is an outrageously offensive word that must never be uttered, read, or apparently even thought. Once again, are we in fourth grade here? It looks as if we are.
Platner, says Fox, “faced backlash from disability advocacy organizations that condemned the Maine Democrat for using language that ‘diminishes dignity.’” Kim Moody of Disability Rights Maine said: “For decades, people with disabilities and their allies have fought to eliminate the use of the R-word — an ableist term rooted in discrimination and exclusion. This language is not harmless; it reinforces stigma, diminishes dignity, and undermines the value and contributions of disabled individuals in our communities.”
“Ableist” is the idea that it’s better to have full intellectual capabilities than to be mentally retarded. Those who are retarded would thus likely be ableist themselves, and choose, if they could, to be as cognitively capable as most people. Certainly all people of whatever capacity, and with whatever disability, should be treated with respect and dignity. But getting angry at a man with a Nazi tattoo for using a word that no one thought was offensive just a few years ago is a spectacular instance of moral myopia.
Nevertheless, Platner apologized and promised to be a good boy from now on: “I am sorry. I’m sorry that I said it. I am endeavoring to improve every single day. I am not a perfect person, and I continue to try to be better. I will say that my politics is one of inclusivity and one of showing up for everybody, and I will continue every day to represent that in our policies and in our campaign.”
Fox goes on to note that this was one of the least important things for which Platner should be apologizing: “Along with the controversy surrounding his tattoo, Platner faced backlash for old Reddit posts where he made several inflammatory and offensive comments. In his posts, he referred to himself as a communist, praised Hamas’ military tactics and suggested people concerned about rape should not ‘get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.’”
To be sure, Platner “has apologized for his comments,” but then he offered a lame excuse: He “cited his combat deployments and struggles in the aftermath of his service for influencing him at the time.” Okay. His combat deployments made him call himself a communist and support Hamas?
From the looks of his public positions now, he is still a communist who supports Hamas. Platner needs to issue more apologies, and more important than apologies, some real indication that he isn’t a fanatical, antisemitic far-left ideologue. Since that seems to be exactly what he is, no such indication is likely to be forthcoming.
Martin Luther King, the greatest and most authentic and inspiring civil rights leader in our history, always used “Negro” in reference to his own race; now, it’s “offensive” and never allowed.
Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”–the greatest and by far more effective and compelling condemnation of slavery and racism in American literature than the treacly “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” because the book’s hero is Jim, and its villain is the openly racist, white trash “Pap”–has been removed from school libraries because in Huck’s narrative in the novel’s text he (accurately, in his own dialect) uses the word “nigger” 256(?) times…by present-day race hucksters who can (maybe) count “offensive” words they’re looking for, but who cannot read, think, or understand the powerful message of the book.
Until just now, I couldn’t have imagined that the idiotic Left’s newest fashion and Demand is “The R-word” ????
Years ago, when I was a Senior Copywriter at a major advertising agency, one of my colleagues–with whom I’d always been on good personal and professional terms–was a “Liberal.”
One day (the Devil must have made me do it!) I decided to troll and tease her.
“Pam,” I asked her with a straight face, “I’d like your advice on how to pronounce this word–with the accent on the first, or the second, syllable….”
“What word?” she asked. “And how do you spell it?”
“It’s spelled ‘R. E. T. A. R. D.’ ” I replied. “So is it pronounced “reTARD,” or “REtard,” or does it depend on whether I’m using it as a verb, or a noun?”
Being as smart as I was, she called me an asshole; then the two of us starting laughing together.
P.S. Just an afterthought: Why shouldn’t Tesla, Space-X, and “X” be eligible for special preferences, tax exemptions, and even billions of dollars in “Reparations,” since their owner and founder, Elon Musk, is provably, undeniably, and literally an African American, and they are all “African American-owned businesses”?
but the word “retard” is a good and usephul one.
Back in the days prior to our modren computer operated retarded messes, when your car’s engine would knock or rattle when you accelerated, simply retard the spark a couple degrees… problem solved. See? retarding is a usephul thing .’
Jusr exactly how have Maine’s far left cities disenfranchised its patriotic hinterlands?
The same way they do in every other state, by consolidating power in urban centers through fraud and corruption importing a shitload of foreigners.
This is right out of Lionel Shriver’s wonderful, and sobering novel “Mania.”