minneapolis upside down

As you know, Keith Ellison crushed Republican Alan Fine in the election for the 5th CD seat last Tuesday. The supposed juggernaut of the Tammy Lee campaign was an illusion created by a handful of people on the web. If you hopped off the computer and moved around the district, and it was easy enough to see that she had little support. She finished third, just behind Fine.

Ellison ran a brilliant campaign that used absolutely no television commercials, and as the remains of this election are sifted, it will be important to remember he won by organizing, organizing, organizing. And by having a message. That message was explicitly anti-war, pro-economic justice, and environmentalist.

Deal with it, "centrists."

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In my last post about Tammy Lee before the election, I expressed appreciation for American Hot Sausage's post called "Two-faced Tammy Turns Totally Truculant" that explored the racial overtones of the Lee campaign and the motivation of Lee's supporters. As an addendum to the actual blog post, Rahelio Soleil, the putative author of it at AHS, included a parody of the Tammy Lee campaign home page that preserved the basic look of the real Tammy Lee home page while altering some text and links.

Soon thereafter, as I expected, the Lee campaign went ape-shit, with Lee campaign treasurer and lawyer, George Soule, threatening legal action and IP partisan, David DeGrio, at Lloydletta whipping up the furor (see below).

It was all for not, electorally speaking.

Eventually, it became clear that the post's author, "Rahelio Soleil," is at the very least associated with Chris Stewart, an African-American who had just won a seat on the Minneapolis' school board. Did Lee's utter failure at the polls motivate the Tammy Lee Campaign (TLC) to keep the story alive? Soon, Steve Brandt of the Strib picked it up. Multiple related threads continue at the Minneapolis Issues Forum as of today with many posts calling for Stewart's immediate resignation.

My guess is that Stewart didn't think much about it, whatever his role in creating the blog post and parody site. He was naive if he thought that a piece that lampoons sacred tenets of Minnesota liberalism so blatantly would pass without controversy, particularly when it has to do with race and (and in the words of those paragons of racial sensitivity, the Anti-Stribees) Brother Chocolate Keith Hakim Muhammed X Ellison, our newly elected Congressional Representative.

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"Rahelio" pulled everything, no doubt because "they" were threatened legally by Mr. Soule. Then, the TLC posted the parody site, theoretically so offensive that Ms. Lee, herself, refers to it as a "vitriolic hate piece."

What the fuck? Has anyone asked the Lee campaign directly why they posted this "offensive" site thus perpetuating its supposed hate speech? At this point, who is more responsible, Chris Stewart or Tammy Lee?

I recall that the parody of Tammy Lee's website played very differently when one read the accompanying blog post, which makes clear that "Rahelio" felt that Tammy Lee went from running a respectable campaign to race-baiting.

But even without its proper context, the parody of the Tammy Lee website is hardly the scandalous hate site that the TLC would have it to be.

It fairly drips with irony and gets digs in at Tim Penny's poltical misfortunes, the Green Party, and "weed smoking Independents" as well as Tammy Lee's coded appeal to whites uncomfortable with Ellison's race. I described it as delightfully crass, and that it is. But to anyone who watches Comedy Central--South Park, Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and--more to the point--Chapelle show, this is fairly tame stuff, and not so simple as to be a "hate site."

When you click on the "Association of House Negroes" endorsement link, you go to "Black People Love Us," a fairly old site that makes fun of liberal American racial attitudes using a heap o' irony (recommended to Doug Mann). Another Lee endorsement comes from the "American Blackface Society," and the link is to the Nizkor Project web page on "The National Socialist White Peoples Party." What is the "Nizkor Project"? Five seconds of research reveals that it is "Dedicated to the 12 million Holocaust victims who suffered and died at the hands of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime."

A hysterical George Soule cites this link in his sabre rattling letter, posted by David DeGrio on Lloydletta. Soule, a Republican donor to Norm Coleman and Mark Kennedy, goes fucking ballistic in this letter to "Rahelio Soleil," threatening "all legal remedies available for these egregious violations." Apparently, he didn't do a spell check, twice misspellin' malicious (did Soule write this, or did DeGrio?). Apparently he didn't take the time to actually explore the links on the parody page to determine some of the ironic juxtapositions behind them.

What do you make of the endorsement of Lee by "The Alan Fine Institute for the Study of Domestic Violence" when the link takes you a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School site on the O.J. Simpson trial?

Seems to me that this parody site might cut a number of ways. Now, that the TLC hosts this page and the Strib links to it, the irony is even more delicious.

Ever see Dave Chapelle's skit on "The Black White Supremicist"? Ms. Lee, Mr. DeGrio, Mr. Soule, may I recommend some Paul Mooney?

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The TLC outrage is selective, of course.

Kennedy vs. the Machine is the classy act that posted this recommendation that condolences be sent to Ellison headquarters when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in June. I have pointed out that the TLC foregrounded KvM's endorsement of Tammy Lee on her own website for a time before thinking the better of it.

No big deal, you say. Let me go on.

Try out this statement from one Bill McGaughey, an ardent Tammy Lee supporter, in his bizzare screed called "Straight Talk on Race":

. . . . Most workers are still white males. If you can demonize these people, then you can abuse them with impunity, you can cut their pay; for it's easy to kick a racial bigot.

An explanation that I have seen for the racially "self-hating" streak in white society has to do with "competitive altruism". According to this theory, social elites have always been focused on exhibiting "altruistic" behavior. In the 19th Century, their "good deeds" consisted of endowing churches and sending missionaries to convert the heathen in Africa. In the second half of the 20th century, the altruistic elites of America have been conspicuously fighting white racism and helping disadvantaged blacks. Having racially "tolerant" attitudes and doing related good works is one of the essential requirements of belonging to today's meritocratic ruling class. You do not become upwardly mobile in America by joining the Ku Klux Klan or expressing racial opinions thought characteristic of poor Southern whites. That is beyond the pale of what socially enlightened suburbanites will tolerate.

I, however, am a white-male graduate of Yale who will shout from the roof tops that this kind of politics is wrong. Call me a racist. Call me low class. I am interested in getting better leadership for this country. I'm therefore running for President on a platform which calls for ending the politics of gender and race and supporting the dignity of all persons. Yes, if there are vestiges of institutional segregation or discrimination directed against blacks, then by all means let's discuss what needs to be done. If not, I refuse to engage in further racial browbeating of my white brethren, albeit in a low class. To them, I say: Be losers no more. Rise up against this shame-based politics. It holds nothing for you.

To my African American friends, I say: We may have more in common than our different skin colors would suggest. . . .

McGaughey is a busy man. He ran for president, writes self-published books, is a landlord, and now leads the Metro (Minneapolis) Property Rights Action Committee . On Halloween, Tammy Lee appeared with McGaughey on MPRAC's first broadcast of their infamous cable access show in over a year , promising to work with this group.

My point here is this--I find McGaughey's twisted views of racial politics problematic at best, racist at worst, far more disturbing to me as an apparently "white-hating" white man than Dave Chapelle's biting attack on American racial attitudes or the Tammy Lee parody site. McGaughey is a prominent supporter of Lee, and now he is advocating for Chris Stewart's removal from the school board using the same logic found in the quote above. "You white-hating liberals would be advised to drop this because, in the long run, decency will prevail and you won't win," says Mr. McGaughey.

Hey, fuck you buddy.

This is part of Tammy Lee's base of support, someone I would characterize as a barely closeted white-supremacist, Minnesota stylee. Scroll through Ms. Lee campaign photo album--a few brown faces pushed to the front are looking as awkward as those on "Black People Love Us!"

I felt like I had been to the Republican National Convention.

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Chris Stewart's explanation of his involvement in American Hot Sausage's shockingly effective flushing out of Minnesota racial parochialism now seems to be that he--well I am not sure. I think he is saying that he'll take responsibility but that that work was not his alone--and that the parody was a joke not for public consumption that was posted by one of his friends from Stewart's computer without his approval. The blog post's authorship seems to be left open.

Is Chris Stewart Rahelio Soleil? It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

Do I care?

No not really.

This is all about a blog post and a parody of Tammy Lee's obvious use of racial politics in her own campaign. That her people deny that race played a part in her appeal and continue a crusade to flush Chris Stewart from the Minneapolis School Board, Stewart who will likely work in their class (and corporate) interests, only proves Rahelio's original point about the racialist underspinnings of her campaign.

It's the return of the repressed. The hatred of Ellison, barely held in check during the campaign season but expressed in coded language so as to not alienate those ascribing to Minnesota's liberal self-image, comes flowing out as soon as the election is over, particularly since Ellison won.

To attack Keith would be bad form, sour grapes you know--particularly since he now holds a good amount of power.

Wait. Entering, stage right, Chris Stewart.

Too bad he ain't a left-leaning Muslim.

--Loosestrife