The Speaker who cried wolf
Blaming sexism and racism for everything demeans the real struggles against prejudice
“I find it offensive as a woman, and as a Latina whois leading this legislative body, that somehow the impression is that I was forced to my position, that I couldn’t possibly have arrived at this position on myown, that it was others — predominantly menin this case — that got me to this point.”
That was Melissa MarkViverito, the speaker of the City Council, pulling the race and gender card on none other than Neanderthal Mayor de Blasio, who took the credit for the city’s deal to cap the number of Uber cars in the city.
While mayors and governors have bigfooted other officials since the dawn of time (think of Rudy Giuliani’s jealousy of Bill Bratton), it had to be something more for Melissa.
She joins the endless chorus of folks who cry racism or sexism whenever something makes them angry.
Like Nicki Minaj. When her “Anaconda” video was not nominated for best video at MTV’s Video Music Awards, she suggested it was because of racism. “If I was a different ‘kind’ of artist, Anaconda would be nominated for best choreo and vid of the year as well,” Minaj wrote to her more than 19.8 million Twitter followers. Not because of any taste reasons? Because Rihanna, Beyonce, Missy Eliot, Lauren Hill . . . they’ve all won video of the year.
“Black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely rewarded for it,” Minaj complained. This from a woman whose estimated net worth is $60 million. Modestly noting the tremendous influence of her video, Minaj continued: “Ellen [DeGeneres] did her own anaconda video and did the #choreo lol. Remember her doing that kick. Even mtv did a post on the choreo @MTV remember?” she wrote.
Ellen DeGeneres sent up your video and you still didn’t get a nomination? MTV must be run by the Klan.
The logical leaps you have to make in order to fathom these complaints of racism and sexism are nothing less than Olympic. But they are hardly new.
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg explained why he often dresses in a Tshirt and hoodie: “I’d feel I’m not doing my job if I spent any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”
So he’s sloppy? Nope, he’s sexist! As Allison Davis of New York magazine wrote, “Is it just meor does the mindset of the Silicon Valley Power-Schlub imply that caring about clothing or how you look invalidates your ability to work?” Her essay, “Zuckerberg Explains His Gray TShirts, Sounds Pretty Sexist,” explained, “Of course, male CEOs are far too focused on changing the world or building the next Big App to care about something as ‘silly’ or ‘frivolous’ as dressing professionally — they’ll just leave that to Marissa Mayer.”
It must be exhausting to be a liberal these days. No matter how progressive de Blasio or Zuckerberg think they are, someone will label them a bigot. Even Hillary Clinton was called a racist when she dared to say something as controversial as “All Lives Matter” instead of the more politically correct “Black Lives Matter.”
Consider the recent controversy at Ohio University, where students and faculty protested the construction of a mansion for the president — who happens to be black.
One of the school’s trustees, Steven Schoonover, offered some advice.
In an email sent in April, he told the administration to “handle it the same way the Democrats do every time Republicans attack President Obama . . . They label them racists . . . So if you are worried about the petition by the faculty just play the race card and call them racists and make them defend themselves!”
Schoonover meant it as a joke, but was correct nonetheless. In a world where victimhood is the trump card, it’s hard to imagine why you’d even go through the motions of making legitimate arguments rather than simply impugning the motives of your opponents.
Once every trivial slight is really about racism or sexism, those cries become so much background noise. When cases of real prejudice emerge, no one will care.