Some Historical Echoes Really Undermine Your Own Case

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
— George Wallace, 1963

Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever.
— Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Yesterday

Yes, apparently he really said that. They have video and everything.

The echo is so strong that I have to admit to wondering whether he was trying to subtly signal that he thinks he's on the wrong side here. (Although if so, he ought to remember that "Hell's just a place for kiss-ass politicians who pander to assholes.") Or maybe his unconscious is working overtime?

'cause really, if this is an honest attempt at pro-Israel hasbara, I kinda got rate this a big 'ol FAIL.

Wallace didn't recant as much as quickly as he was given credit for (there's a whole chapter of my dissertation on this), but he did start shifting positions to some degree within a decade. I wonder how long Rep. Jeffries will take?

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

...the only reason we will care about this case 10 years after, 20 years after, is what it told us about race in this country. The rest is passing entertainment.... The case represented a referendum on what we [thought] about race in 1995.

— Jeffrey Toobin (2005 interview)

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

The jurors had discussed the merits of the case against O. J. Simpson for about two hours—less time than most other adults in America.

— Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life: The People vs. O. J. Simpson

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

There was another man not too long ago in this world who had those same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views, and ultimately had power over people in his country. People didn't care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked painter. And they didn't do anything about it. This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people didn't care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and his anti-religionism. Nobody wanted to stop him....And so Fuhrman. Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them or bomb them. That's genocidal racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying this man's salary to espouse these views...

—Johnny Cochran, summation to the O. J. Simpson Jury

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

OJ is in massive denial. He obviously did it. He should do a diminished-capacity please and he might have a chance to get out in a reasonable amount of time.

—Johnny Cochran, in private, prior to being hired as Simpson's lawyer

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

I'm not black, I'm OJ

—O. J. Simpson, 1968

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ

OJ, Monica, Iraq war runup. 3 media events impossible to explain to The Kids Today. had to have been there

—Atrios (Duncan Black) on Twitter, March 19, 2014

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

I can't think. I can't act.... I can't focus on a thing but the next fund raiser. Hillary can't. Al can't — we're all getting sick and crazy because of it.

—Bill Clinton, speaking to Dick Morris, during 96 re-election campaign

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

The era of big government is over.

—Bill Clinton, 1996 State-of-the-Union address

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

Any Republican urge to negotiate a “least bad” compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president “do something” about health care, should also be resisted. Passage of the Clinton health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent an unprecedented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy–and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security. Its success would signal a rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment we have begun rolling back that idea in other areas.… But the Clinton proposal is also a serious political threat to the Republican Party. Republicans must therefore clearly understand the political strategy implicit in the Clinton plan–and then adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal and defeat its partisan purpose.... But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse–much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.... The first step in that process must be the unqualified political defeat of the Clinton health care proposal. Its rejection by Congress and the public would be a monumental setback for the president; and an incontestable piece of evidence that Democratic welfare-state liberalism remains firmly in retreat.

—William Kristol, Memo to Republican Leaders, December, 1993

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending you can love your country but despise your government, How dare you suggest that we, in the freest nation on earth, live in tyranny?

—Bill Clinton, May, 1995

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

Powerful forces [are] threatening to bring down [Clinton's] administration. I think that they are called "hormones".

—Jay Leno, The Tonight Show, 1994

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996

[With their health care plan, the Clintons] were going against the entire tide of Western history. I mean, centralized, command bureaucracies are dying. This is the end of that era, not the beginning of it.

—Newt Gingrich, 1994

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

[Reply to question about Democrats in Congress:] We're owned by them. Business. That's where the campaign money comes from now. In the nineteen-eighties we gave up on the little guys. We started drinking from the same trough as the Republicans. We figured business would have to pay up because we had the power on the Hill. [pause] We were right. But we didn't realize we were giving them power over us. And now we have both branches of government, and they have even more power. It's too late now.

—Marty Sabo, Chairman of House Budget Committee, to Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, 1993

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

I cannot believe you could live on this earth and know that you were responsible for electing a slime, a scum, a philandering, pot-smoking, draft-dodging pig of a man. . . . You make me sick. I hate your guts.

—Bush Campaign Manager Mary Matalin to her future husband, Clinton Campaign Manager James Carville, after Clinton's election

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

[It's] the economy, stupid.

—Sign in W. Clinton's campaign headquarters, 1992

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995

Friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side.... And as those boys took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, my friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country. God bless you, and God bless America.

—Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican National Convention

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

People used to think that television was aimed at the mind of a 12-year-old. Now it seems aimed at the hormones of a 14-year-old.

—Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (1998)

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

Thomas had effectively walled himself off from embarrassing questions about his private life. Hill would not be so lucky.

—Jane Mayer & Jill Abramson

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

You all have a much tougher rode to travel. Not only do you have to content with the ever-present bigotry, you must do so with a recent tradition that almost requires you to wallow in excuses. You now have a popular national rhetoric which says that you can't learn because of racism, you can't raise the babies you make because of racism, you can't get up in the mornings because of racism. You commit crimes because of racism. Unlike me, you must not only overcome the repressiveness of racism, you must also overcome the lure of excuses.

—Clarence Thomas speaking at Savannah State College, 1985

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.