ANOTHER WHITE GUY TELLS AFRICAN-AMERICANS THAT THEY'RE DOING THIS BLACK THING WRONG

This is Nolan Finley, editorial-page editor of The Detroit News.





Mr. Finley has written an op-ed about right-wingers' new flavor of the month -- Dr. Benjamin Carson, an African-American who's retiring as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, and who gave a wingnut-delighting speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this year. Carsongrew up in Detroit, and Finley thinks Carson would be an interesting candidate for the U.S. Senate seat that's opening up in Michigan in 2014 ... that is, if fascist black people didn't brutally crush him underfoot with their jackboots:

Dr. Ben Carson is a Black History month staple. Each February, schoolchildren hear the story of the impoverished African-American boy from Detroit, a struggling student whose mother made him read two books a week until he bloomed into a scholar.

Leaving Detroit for Yale, Carson eventually found his way to John Hopkins, where he became one of the world's most preeminent neurosurgeons, gaining international acclaim in 1987 for performing the first separation of twins conjoined at the head. He is held as an African-American hero.

But some are calling him a token, an Uncle Tom, a traitor to his race. Why?

Because he came out of the closet. As a conservative. Maybe even a Republican. And African Americans aren't allowed to be Republican and keep full membership in their race.

Now that you've declared yourself as an expert on other people's racial membership requirements, please proceed, Mr. Finley.

The furor over Carson's politics began in February, when he was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The doctor told an audience that included President Barack Obama that the president's policies are hindering economic growth and opportunity in America.

Liberals screamed that Carson was parroting right-wing talking points and disrespecting the president.

That's because he was parroting right-wing talking points and disrespecting the president. He denounced "PC." He advocated a flat tax. He railed against Obamacare. Not talking-points-y enough for you, Nolan? And he did it at the National Prayer Breakfast, where, a year before, the president himself was denounced for allegedly politicizing the event -- one congressman walked out, and he was attacked by Orrin Hatch on the Senate floor -- merely because he advocated closing certain tax loopholes, invoking Christian principles. (But of course there's a double standard for disrespect in this country, and it runs along ideological, not racial, lines.)

But back to Nolan Finley's notions of black fascism:

Carson said at the prayer breakfast that "in this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression."

Blacks have never fully enjoyed that freedom, first because of slavery, then Jim Crow, and now due to self-imposed sanctions on what African Americans can think and say politically and still keep their street cred.

Yes, Finley actually wrote that. He actually compared black criticism of black right-wingers to slavery and Jim Crow.

And finally:

If he got in the Michigan Senate race as a conservative Republican, Carson would test whether blacks are willing to extend to an African-American icon the freedom to think for himself.

You know what, Nolan? Dr. Carson has the freedom to think for himself. (Or, for that matter, to let Fox News and talk radio do his thinking for him, like most of his fellow right-wingers in America.) He has freedom of speech -- why, I believe the event that put him on the political map was a speech, that very National Prayer Breakfast speech to which you alluded, which did not result in his arrest and imprisonment. As I recall, he followed that up with another speech at CPAC, which also did not result in the deprivation of his liberty. He has the freedom to write -- he's published quite a few books, one of which, America the Beautiful, was recently on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestseller lists simultaneously, and none of which, as far as I know, has been legally removed from bookstore shelves by either the fascist Obama government or roving gangs of fascist brownshirt black people.

What Carson does not have is the right to be exempt from criticism if he makes controversial public statements. That is not the same thing as freedom of speech. If you think it is, Mr. Finley, you obviously went to the Sarah Palin School of Constitutional Law.