Althouse: Did WaPo's Dana Milbank just call Clarence Thomas an oreo?

March 28, 2013

Did WaPo's Dana Milbank just call Clarence Thomas an oreo?

No.

He called him a tagalong.

46 comments:

Ann Althouse said...: Photo source: here,; 3/28/13, 11:32 AM
edutcher said...: As long as he didn't call him a Swiss Creme.; 3/28/13, 11:37 AM
Moose said...: Sigh. I read that column and hoped it was just a typo. In any case it was clearly meant to be dismissive.
What a fine role model...; 3/28/13, 11:45 AM
edutcher said...: Black people are African Americans until they stray from the plantation.

Then they go back to being niggers.

Yes, the Democrats are always on the right side of history.; 3/28/13, 11:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Thomas is Filipino?; 3/28/13, 11:49 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: So that's chocolate on the outside, white bread on the inside and peanut butter in between.

Which racial group is represented by the peanut butter?

This would tend to indicate, at least, that Justice Thomas most identifies with the glorious, morally perfect black race.

Taking the metaphor further, since the black race encircles the white race, this would mean that blackness serves as a restraining and socializing force on the basic evil of whites.

For the life of me, I don't know how that fucking peanut butter got in there.; 3/28/13, 11:52 AM
Anonymous said...: I always thought of him as a bit of a jellyroll.; 3/28/13, 11:55 AM
Wince said...: The buying and selling of cookies may be the last vestige of free enterprise left in America.; 3/28/13, 12:00 PM
edutcher said...: Shouting Thomas said...

So that's chocolate on the outside, white bread on the inside and peanut butter in between.

Which racial group is represented by the peanut butter?

His white Catholic wife.; 3/28/13, 12:02 PM
Anonymous said...: lol. Like the Supreme Court has any respect.

Enjoy the decline, morons!; 3/28/13, 12:03 PM
Colonel Angus said...: It's hard to take seriously a man whose name is Dana.; 3/28/13, 12:06 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: is that a grrl scout cookie? So Dana is racist and sexist.; 3/28/13, 12:08 PM
ricpic said...: All official establishment Americans at the WaPo, including Milbank, agree that Thomas jettisoned his black identity when he quit the establishment plantation and rejected its official story and as such any and all insults directed at Thomas are deserved and in no way constitute racism.; 3/28/13, 12:11 PM
Saint Croix said...: Underage
Girlie
Lack of chocolate-center

and everybody knows girl scout cookies don't belong in the workplace! You should be out on the street or something.

That's a lot of subliminal insults right there. You bad tasting girl scout cookie.; 3/28/13, 12:13 PM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: "That's not your tagalong, that's a Tandy Take, baby!; 3/28/13, 12:17 PM
ricpic said...: Hey, I just googled Dana Milbank and guess what? he's a Yale graduate, natch, so just shut up peasants, 'kay?; 3/28/13, 12:18 PM
Peter said...: "Which racial group is represented by the peanut butter?"

The peanut butter is Jimmy Carter. He stands for micromanagement, malaise, and admiration for dictator-thugs the world over.; 3/28/13, 12:24 PM
Sam L. said...: Dana Milbank, lowering my opinion of the WaPo a skosh closer to zero than it was.; 3/28/13, 12:45 PM
pdug said...: Thomas is a bete noir for a lot of liberals

(see what i did there?); 3/28/13, 12:49 PM
Firehand said...: Hey, Toure called Dr. Carson a house negro for not having the 'proper' attitudes for a black man; so this is a surprise?; 3/28/13, 12:54 PM
President-Mom-Jeans said...: garage mahal said...
Thomas: What Scalia said!

Oh those tolerant liberals.; 3/28/13, 1:18 PM
MayBee said...: The peanut butter is represents when he said to Anita Hill, "want to see what comes out of my Georgia nuts?"; 3/28/13, 1:36 PM
Amartel said...: Infantilizing the black man.
There's precedent for that, and it's all in the Democratic Party.; 3/28/13, 1:40 PM
Cody Jarrett said...: Black people, no matter how accomplished, no matter how demonstrably intelligent and able (Thomas, Carson, Condi etc) are always considered house niggers and uncle tom's and whatever other insults can be thrown their way by the left in this country.

Meanwhile, I'm a racist because I'm a registered republican who voted for Romney and occasionally listens to Limbaugh.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Heh. Even certain Madison residents are guilty. Remember how Ben Carson couldn't have written his own speech? Why--he's only a neurosurgeon who'd written a couple of books (but they were published by a publisher who also publishes bibles or something or other! It doesn't count!).

Sigh.

At least he didn't call him a samoan. Hate those damn things with all the burnt coconut.; 3/28/13, 1:52 PM
JAL said...: Tagalong® is a registered trademark.

So. Wonder if they are going to poke Milbank for failing to identiy that -- and using it in a derogatory manner?

Interesting dilemna.; 3/28/13, 1:59 PM
WhatWasLost said...: This is what a race war looks like.

When someone from one race is accused of siding with members of another race, those doing the accusing are at war with this other race, in their own minds at least.

Anyone who designates a group of people as the enemy because of their race is a racist.

Normal people don't look upon human beings from other branches of the human family tree as the enemy. Only vile, evil assholes do that.; 3/28/13, 2:02 PM
Bob Ellison said...: It reminds me of that government guy who used the word "niggardly" on video. Shouldn't be offensive, but stupid people think it's offensive, so it's a problem.

A professional writer like Milbank should have known that. I doubt he's smart enough to have realized his mistake.; 3/28/13, 2:37 PM
Balfegor said...: He might be being sly and trying to turn "tagalong" into a racist epithet. But he was probably just being insulting by assuming that Thomas can't think for himself because he doesn't gab on during oral argument and the word "tag along" popped into his head.

Straining to find racism under every stone is just not helpful. It's harmful to the body politic and -- even in jest -- people ought to refrain.; 3/28/13, 2:39 PM
Bob Ellison said...: BTW, the accent in "Tagalog" is on the second syllable, not the first. Wikipedia has that wrong, but I'm too lazy to correct it. It's an interesting defection from standard spelling+pronunciation rules in western languages.; 3/28/13, 2:40 PM
Anonymous said...: And the leftward 4 associate justices are independent thinkers? Aren't they just tagging along with the liberal bandwagon?

Could someone please point out where Milbank has ever had an original idea?; 3/28/13, 2:56 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @balfegor of course, that's the cover story. That's the only way he can get away with it. But many readers heard a racist vibe in the first post and they were not making the cookie connection, which is my joke.

Most people using the term to refer to someone who tags along -- the ostensible meaning-- woul put a hyphen.

Some people saw the hyphenless word as evoking "Tagalog" -- and it made me think of "golliwogg."; 3/28/13, 3:23 PM
MB said...: The Tagalong cookie is named for the younger siblings of Girl Scouts who would sometimes tag along during scouting activities.; 3/28/13, 3:30 PM
jr565 said...: I think it was more a statement on how Thomas doesn't do a lot of questioning in the court room, and so seems to tag along to the rulings of other justices.
However, since the left can find code words and buzzwords that prove that conservatives are racist, lets go with the buzzword code word theory for mill bank. He's a racist bastard. Clearly tags long is racial code word for the n word.; 3/28/13, 3:31 PM
MB said...: They were originally called Peanut Butter Patties. They're my favorite Girl Scout cookie.; 3/28/13, 3:32 PM
Titus said...: So say you received a job offer and the job responsiblities were to sit in meetings all day and make decisions.

But you don't talk in those meetings ever, but you do make decisions but no talky walky whatsoever. Not for like 25 years.

In the realy world that new employee would be fired in 1 week.

I know it is so cool and amazing and unique and incredible and ground breaking that PubeCan never ever speaks at work (which is fine with you because how he votes, if he voted the other way and never spoke you would have a field day)

Very few people have actual jobs where they don't ever have to speak about the actual work they do.

I know it's all in his "writings". His writing speak about his work-he aint writing anything.

And he needs to go-term limits on all of them-and that face, my God, God was not nice to that man. His face conveys a very strong view of his mind and heart-bitter, anger, hateful, resentment and likely constipated.; 3/28/13, 3:48 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Ann Althouse said "But many readers heard a racist vibe in the first post..."

The vibe was there. Didn't you hear it?; 3/28/13, 4:16 PM
Cody Jarrett said...: Gee Titus--that reads like a post you should've made under your Andy R name.; 3/28/13, 4:18 PM
Dante said...: titus:

I wish the wise latina would shut up and learn from her superiors. But, by opening her trap, she is not called a buffoon, but merely wise, or something.; 3/28/13, 4:31 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Am I racist if I always notice what a badass nose Clarence Thomas has? I admire it because it reminds me of my son's. His sisters have freckled little European button noses and his (he is biracial) is large, wide, flat and commanding. The noses of my son and of Justice Thomas are awesome, and that's all there is to it.; 3/28/13, 5:37 PM
eddie willers said...: I think of him more as a chocolate mint.

Smooth and cool at the same time.; 3/28/13, 6:04 PM
ken in tx said...: I thought Tagalog had something to do with Michelle Malkin. That evil anchor baby.; 3/28/13, 6:55 PM
rcocean said...: Isn't funny when some white bread nerd like Dana calls a black man - who grew up poor AND black - a Tagalong?

Like matt Y, dana is no 'oreo' he's a piece of white-bread who thinks he's soul food. No doubt his white bread Georgetown buddies discuss how Justice Thomas is a "traitor to the black race" over their Starbucks latte.; 3/28/13, 7:44 PM
rcocean said...: BTW why are your old comments infected with "Malware"? Every time I try to read your old 2007 comments on Vonnegut, I get a "Malware" warning.; 3/28/13, 7:45 PM
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Unknown said...: It was a typo he meant tag-along.; 3/28/13, 9:37 PM
Anonymous said...: Well Thomas did grow up in the segregationist South, gave up on the church partly because of the racism, then went to Yale and eventually put his diploma in the basement because no one really gave him a fair shake.

I doubt he listens to the likes of Milhouse.; 3/29/13, 6:37 PM