- Point III: What an un-surprise that one of America’s most frequently called upon “neutral” commentators on political events was caught in a lie this morning, according to a news source. Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor, was enlisted by liberals to join their increasingly dirty campaign to defeat Mr. Allen. Newspaper, magazine, television and radio reporters routinely call on the Virginia professor to sagaciously comment on the hot story of the day. Please note, dear reader, that Mr. Sabato is of the same cowardly color as The New York Times. He is not too shy to impugn a man’s reputation. But he is way too shy to say the word nigger because white liberals have agreed not to say nigger in public anymore. In the process, the disingenuous Mr. Sabato has stuck a knife in the heart of his own reputation. Please note Mr. Sabato’s tap-dancing in an attempt to maximize the harm to Mr. Allen: “I’m simply going to stay with what I know is the case, and the fact is he used the n-word, whether he’s denying it or not.” Turns out that Mr. Sabato, eager to embrace rumors, is the one of questionable character. He admitted today that he never heard the senator use reprehensible language. He acknowledged that he never has heard Mr. Allen ever say nigger. The claims Mr. Sabato made were received were second- or third-hand and passed along. “People I know, and who are very credible, contacted me,” Mr. Sabato said. “I didn’t know these things until the past few months. They shared the stories.” What a stunning retreat. Since he was not a reporter, the professor added, he bore no responsibility for verifying the veracity of what he claimed in public was incontestably disgustingly factual about a U.S. senator. There is inordinate irony in the cases of The New York Times and of Mr. Sabato. Mr. Allen’s opponent in his re-election campaign is himself a Democratic candidate demonstrably complicit in racist incidents. If you ever have attempted to unbreak a window, you know how difficult it is to repair an honorable reputation once it has been ripped open by lies.
A Poor Thinker Who May Be Right
Let us return to the matter of the genetically angry Ms. Kaplan. She may be partially correct in resisting the full brunt of criticism directed at King/Drew. But her endemic problem is that she argues the way a girl plays sports, clumsily. In recent years, no self-respecting black or white sick person who is conscious should have allowed himself to be checked into King/Drew’s Quack City. It’s like consulting with the Marx Brothers for a stomach disorder. Unless you are new to Los Angeles, you probably have digested dozens of stories over the years of how King/Drew is run like a crack house. A kid’s lemonade stand has more sophisticated management oversight. Somewhere inside her little heart, Ms. Kaplan realizes that the cumulative damning judgments rendered against King/Drew by medical and financial inspectors are accurate. Between malfeasance and medical incompetency, King/Drew was useless to the black community it was intended to serve. But Ms. Kaplan plies her living as a professional black victim of everyone on earth who is not black. Such a collective diagnosis does not fit her cultural paradigm of eternal victimhood. She loathes accepting responsibility. The first commandment of victimhood is to point at someone else. At least once in every essay in which she complains about being black, she uses the phrase “black folks” to show she has not forgotten her roots, just moved way beyond them.
Postscript
Ms. Kaplan raises three arguments, unfortunately none of them cogently. Regardless of how badly King/Drew is run medically and financially, she says, it should stay open to serve the poor, who would be left without a reasonable option if it closed. She asks, interestingly, “Are federal inspectors being more exacting than usual because this is King/Drew,” a racial lightning rod? Excellent question. Her third argument is that black people are fully able to run a business by themselves, but the County Supervisors, the proprietors of King/Drew, have the ultimate responsibility, which they have abrogated. Instead of ranting like a hothead, Ms. Kaplan would have been far more persuasive to a yawning valley of readers if she had chosen one single point and intensively plumbed it. Instead of assembling valid arguments that are available, Ms. Kaplan wasted the essay on spewing her unfocused emotions. Ranting felt better than reasoning.
