The WSJ piece points us to Kyle Smith's piece in National Review: "Why Isn’t the Attack on Larry Elder the Biggest Story in America?"Breaking: A flying egg narrowly missed the back of recall candidate @larryelder's head after it was thrown by an activist wearing a gorilla mask in Venice. A scuffle broke out and the candidate was escorted into an SUV.
— Kate Cagle (@KateCagle) September 8, 2021
Here's the raw (pun intended)
CW: f-bombs@SpecNews1SoCal pic.twitter.com/FeFx3wnuSD
If Elder were a Democrat, the attack would have been instantly and with good reason dubbed racist. It would not only be front-page news, it would be just about the only news you were hearing about today on CNN and MSNBC. Charles Blow, Perry Bacon, and Jamelle Bouie would each be writing the first in a series of angry columns about it. So would Gail Collins, Jonathan Capehart, Jennifer Rubin, Michelle Goldberg, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Dana Milbank, and Ezra Klein. We would be treated to multiple news analyses about the history of the usage of gorilla tropes against blacks. Joy-Ann Reid, Rachel Maddow, and Don Lemon would be doing hour-long broadcasts on the attack, convening panels discussing just how the attack pulls the scab off racism in America, and proves we have so much work left to do in dealing with the problem. Vox would commission a series about California’s grim history of racism dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Asian-American and Latino writers would hasten to explain that California’s historic hostility to all sorts of persons of color is as traditional as its Tournament of Roses parade. Three-thousand-word essays about the brutal, unknown history of lynchings in the Golden State would be published in The Atlantic and/or The New Yorker. Al Sharpton, exhibiting a combination of exhaustion and despondency, would be a guest on half a dozen cable TV shows. The woman who threw the egg at Elder would find her picture, her name, and everything she’d ever said on social media scrutinized at great length and on the home pages of the leading news sites. Her appearance would be mocked by late-night comedians. Dozens of reporters would be sent out to learn this woman’s story, to check out where she lived, where she worked, and where she went to school.
ADDED: There is one element of context that is missing. There is a long tradition of women wearing gorilla masks in protests, and it ought to be taken into account before locking in your opinion that the mask had to be racist. Here's the Wikipedia article "Guerrilla Girls":
Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group employs culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption. To remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists.
According to GG1, identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities, "Mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work."... Despite sporting gorilla masks to downplay personal identity, some members attribute Guerrilla Girl interests to the fact that de facto leaders "Frida Kahlo" and "Kathe Kollwitz" are both white. ("Frida Kahlo" has also been criticized for her appropriation of a Latina artist's name.)...
Despite the Guerrilla Girls' stance against tokenism, some artists of color abandoned Guerrilla Girl membership due to tokenism, silencing, disrespect, and whitewashing. As a woman of color, "Alma Thomas" describes having felt uncomfortable wearing the Guerrilla Girls' signature gorilla mask.
"Thomas" recalls little effort being devoted to understanding the challenges of artists of color. "Their whiteness was such that they. ... didn't understand that blacks were being put in a completely separate world in the art world, that black male artists and black female artists are completely separated, completely segregated to this day." Ultimately, this widespread antagonism led to many "artists of color [leaving] after a few meetings because they could sense the unspoken hierarchy in the group."
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62 comments:
She throws like a girl.
And why wasn't she (presuming pronoun) arrested for attempted assault?
It's not a huge story because liberals are all cocksucking hypocrites.
That is all.
Would it be covered differently if Elder were D? Absolutely! Is this "attack" a racist thing? Not necessarily. She probably has heard a thousand untruths about Larry Elder that help her justify the egg toss. Do you really think that much thought went into the mask? I don't.
This divining racism because that's what the media would do if Elder were a D is stoopid. I don't want to live in that world, please resist the urge.
Am I the only person who remembers all the hubbub when a rodeo cowboy in Missouri wore an Obama mask? How this doesn’t make more news outlets reinforces my, perhaps unfair, prejudice towards media outlets. MACACA!
Does no one in Elder's posse know how to form tackle? Would she keep swinging her fists if she lost some teeth?
So, I was wrong. Yes, forethought went into the mask...but not because of racism. That makes more sense.
Hope Elder wins...that would be awesome.
Newsom supporters stepping on their own narrative, so of course the establishment press ignored the event.
They wanted images of Elder being run out of the black community by blacks in the community. Instead we got images of deranged, violent whites running a black candidate out.
Even the black guy heckling had to resort to arguments about Elder's limited effectiveness in a swamp full of Democrats if he should be elected to the remainder of Newsom's term in the recall.
Larry Elder is an apostate to the narrative of the Black Experience as told by "the Cathedral", and has no ability to leverage his Black identity due to his unwillingness to pay homage to that narrative in his life to date. This is only one small facet of the ways identity groups keep their membership in the attitudinal fold - remember how Kanye had his black card revoked for not reviling Trump?
"Nothing to see here, move along now..." - the Cathedral
Joe Smith said...
And why wasn't she (presuming pronoun) arrested for attempted assault?
There were multiple actual simple assaults.
GG should have exactly zero to do with this. It wasn’t protest. It was assault. My first reaction was where the fuck is LAPD? You know, the same LEO the DANC-Media has been calling RACIST for 30 years. Any attack on a Black candidate is de facto racist violence according to the established rules. All we will get from this sorry episode is a “Republicans pounce” story from Joe’s PR department. If Elder is lucky he’ll survive to voting day. No thanks to the kkk-like Femicrat Media.
So this was a practice run for a future assassination. Or am I missing something?
What next, burning crosses on Larry Elder's front lawn, warning him to leave town or face fatal consequences? Do the Democrats never develop new tactics?
As for me, if an object-thrower attacks while wearing a mask, I will attempt to stop the attack using all means available, under the very reasonable presumption the attacker is trying to kill me. A stick through the spokes for a start. Pour encourager les autres.
Who cares what the woman's intent was, her actions were racist by Leftist standards. But then one of the perks to being a Lefty is that you don't have to live by the standards you impose upon others.
"There is one element of context that is missing. There is a long tradition of women wearing gorilla masks in protests, and it ought to be taken into account before locking in your opinion that the mask had to be racist. Here's the Wikipedia article "Guerrilla Girls":"
OFFS, this is bullshit and you know it. If a white woman was wearing a guerrilla mask throwing eggs at Obama it would be absolute proof of racism and be all over the news for weeks. But because Elder is not the right kind of black person, then these are the explanations.
The best thing about double standards is that you get two of them!
A white leftist is racist. No coverage on MSM.
The conservative media seems to have a problem with outrage of the wrong thing. A month ago, it was pointing out Biden's "come on man, that was 5 days ago" as if it showed his dementia in not remembering events from the day prior, but the bigger outrage should have been his casual dismissal of human lives that then continued over the following weeks. Now it is a woman wearing a gorilla mask as a supposed racists symbol, but she is wearing the mask. She is being the gorilla. The outrage is her throwing objects at a person walking down the street, which is assault that she continued to do to others. I'm tired of white progressives assaulting people in the street and the media calling it mostly peaceful.
... little effort being devoted to understanding the challenges of artists of color. "Their whiteness was such that they. ... didn't understand that blacks were being put in a completely separate world in the art world, that black male artists and black female artists are completely separated, completely segregated to this day."
Most artists earn little or no money from their art.
Do colored artists imagine that their own art would make them successful and rich if only their own human skin were not so dark?
Exactly how are colored artists "put in a completely separate world in the art world"? Draw us a picture showing how that happens. Make a movie. Sing us a song.
What good is your art if you can't even illustrate how you yourself personally have been put in a completely different world in the art world?
Larry Elder is not Black. He supports White Supremacy.
However, his HS yearbook picture shows him in blackface. Thus, he is ineligible for public office.
Of course they know how to form tackle, but then the coverage would be on that. Remember when Ds do something, the story is the R response. No different here. Good call to let her flail.
"There is a long tradition of women wearing gorilla masks in protests, and it ought to be taken into account"
The same way extenuating circumstances are always taken into account when someone attacks a Dem, or when any other black person gets attacked any other way. Sure.
TJ said...
Would it be covered differently if Elder were D? Absolutely! Is this "attack" a racist thing? Not necessarily. She probably has heard a thousand untruths about Larry Elder that help her justify the egg toss. Do you really think that much thought went into the mask? I don't.
This divining racism because that's what the media would do if Elder were a D is stoopid. I don't want to live in that world, please resist the urge.
I don't want to live in a world where my employer gets fined if I don't take a vaccine.
I don't want to live in a world where Corrupt Generals and Politicians get Armed Service members killed and shit on the families afterwords.
I don't want to live in a world where stoopid people determine who is president.
But we live in that world.
We also live in a world where the Democrat party is implicitly racist. There are numerous examples of policies that are the definition of racist. Most democrat voters think Black people are too stupid to get a voter ID. Democrats built our education system that is purposely under serving Black students.
Buck up and deal with it. Democrats are racists. This woman supports a racist party and supports racist policies and is a racist whether or not she meant the mask to be racist.
Because Progressives are the RACISTS and White Supremacists they see behind every tree and bush. Seriously. They get away with RACIST stuff all the time. See....Joe Biden. Who on the right could have gotten away with "If you didn't vote for me, you ain't black" or "They're gonna put you all back in chains" never mind his quote about his kids growing up in a RACIAL jungle.
Imagine if anybody did this to Stacey Abrams. Just imagine.
Why are Republicans always so dumb? Look at the video, some old guy with Elder (bodyguard?) goes to confront Gorrilla female leftist and she takes a swing at him. Take her mask off, I said at that point. Take-her-mask-off. That's what she doesn't want. So do it.
But of course, he doesn't. He's just some ol' conservative boomer who probably told her mind her manners in the future, or told her "We're better than this".
If Elder was a Democrat and gorrilla girl was a trump supporter, this would be DOMESTIC TERRORISM, and this woman would be arrested and kept in jail without bail for six months, just like the Jan 6th protesters. And no one on the center-right would say boo. Hell, ben shaprio and Erick Erickson would be calling for gorrila girl (Rightwing version) to be shot.
That's why we are where we are. Sorry, but I don't take a "Smart take".
I have serious doubts that the woman in the gorilla mask was thinking about Guerrilla Girls. I doubt that any of today's 'feminists' know much of anything that happened before 2000. That said, even if she did, it does not lessen in any way her actions. But I have to tell you, her actions don't bother me nearly as much as the refusal by our media cover anything that reflects negatively on any Democrat, anwhere, at any time. Unless that Democrat has become so much of an embarrassment that nothing- NO THING- that they do can cover it any longer or make it right.
Think: Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Andrew Cuomo for starters. Joe Biden is hanging on by a thread. If his poll numbers continue to plummet, he will become disposable because he's dragging the entire party into the abyss. At that time, Joe's long standing corruption and groping/rape issues will suddenly see the light of day. (It'll start with articles about Hunter's laptop- as if they just discovered it).
But back to California. This state is more famous now for shit in the streets and people fleeing than it is for cranking out quality movies or new exciting ways to eat abalone. It is a tax hell, the worst place in America to try to start up a new business that is not tech related and therefore boosted by ridiculous amounts of cash from VCs. And believe it or not- we need businesses that are not tech. You all use them every day.
Newsom oversaw all of this. From the communist DAs who release criminals and created a state of free shoplifting policies, to the plummeting education system in a state that for years, boasted the best education in the nation. Fires from unmanaged forests, droughts from lack of reservoirs, filth, corruption, and crime that is skyrocketing.
How in the name of sanity can any breathing adult vote for more of this? That a gorilla masked nut-job tosses something at Larry Elder is not even a story to me. I expected more from the unhinged Left. That Newsom might beat this is a stunning death knell for the state. If Newsom wins this? You can kiss off California as a livable space for at least 25 years.
Even more than the racism is the inherent violence in the Democrat party.
They have been getting more and more overt with their physical attacks and their threats against political opponents.
BLM spent 9 months trashing thousands of businesses. Pure political violence.
Democrat voters accept and endorse this violence. Even if they are individually cowards they are part of a violent movement.
It is part and parcel with censorship that they also endorse.
And Joe Biden has just announced that employers are going to be fined if they don't force their employees to be vaccinated.
Democrats are openly fascist. This includes the average democrat voter. They are not even beating around the bush.
The Joe Biden administration is going to be the end of the democrat party because it is removing the mask completely.
Nah, it was racism. Gorilla Girls were taught that lesson a long time ago, and it’s pathetic that they had to be taught it in the first place. They have always been idiots. It makes her doubly culpable. The question is this: why wasn’t she arrested for at least simple assault?
A question that could be asked about the millions of leftists and Democrats who obstructed public spaces without permits, rioted, attacked police, shouted obscenities, and so on, consequence-free except in extremely rare cases.
In this brave new world we live in it doesn't matter if the mask was intentionally racist because it was functionally racist. Or it would if the target of the egg had been Obama or someone in the Congressional Black Caucus.
Joe Smith: "It's not a huge story because liberals are all c***sucking hypocrites.
That is all."
In terms of Althouse blog "contributors: It's not a huge story because liberals/LLR-liberals are all cocksucking hypocrites. That is all.
FIFY
Could Gorilla Girls be a NY local thing? I've lived in California all my life and have never heard of it.
I think it's hilarious that the LA Times describes it as "a small white object". That's some prime reporting there. Eggs are like obscenity to Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it". But apparently not to the LA Times.
Black Lives Matter!
Except for Black Republicans.
Standards, y'know.
Hilarious. Not the incident itself; I know nothing about it, apart from what I have read. And all of the reports of the facts are largely identical. And I have been looking at reporting that has continued nonstop since the incident occurred.
What is hilarious to me is Kyle Smith’s hyperventilating at NRO. To listen to Kyle, nobody would have heard about the incident, because so much of the media has ignored it. He’s furious that MSNBC has not covered the story in the way that he would like. Insufficient outrage. I’m betting that a sophisticated news consumer can find as much “Larry Elder hate crime” outrage at Fox, Newsmax, the Federalist, NRO and all of the other outlets in conservative talk radio and the right wing blogosphere.
What this really is, is more “right wing” (it’s not much conservatism) victimology. Republican victimhood in the Trump era. It’s surely one of the signature features of Trumpism; they are victims, just like PDJT is a never-ending victim.
Achilles, the act is the event, not the perceived racism. That is my point. Let's think back to the "hanging" from the helicopter...the point was the use of the equipment and it was completely lost because they focused on the perceived hanging. IMO this is the similar.
I am concerned about all of the things that you listed, I just don't think that the use of perceived racism in this matter changes any of those.
WHERE the hell is Newsome?? This just let's me think that Democrats like he and his Aunty Nancy really don't care about RACISM. When HIS kids were getting attacked by media for going to a school that they weren't forced to wear masks...Larry Elder made a statement immediately, calling out the people going after the kids, and telling them to stop. WHERE is Newsome. The adult needs to be put in office, and Nancy's nephew needs to go.
Why do we have to take into account that decades ago there was this thing called the Guerrilla Girls who wore gorilla masks? It has nothing at all to do with the observation that the media coverage would be dramatically different if Elder were a Democrat. Personally, I don't think of black people when I see monkeys or references to Africa--I have to be told, every time, that the person making monkey sounds or whatever was engaging in a racial slur. I bet I'm not out of the mainstream in failing to make that connection.
Well, good. The liberals are halfway reasonable, I guess. If only they were so reasonable on the other half.
I think it's hilarious that the LA Times describes it as "a small white object".
Over fifty past and present intelligence officials say it was a breath mint.
it's not a bigger story because left-wing racism is so ubiquitous in our society that hardly anyone notices anymore. It's a "dog bites man" story.
She only had an egg to toss; saving the blood for Texas.
LAPD is doing the minimal on arrests per an ex lapd officer:
Police Work in 2021: When You Don't Arrest Anyone, No One Gets Hurt
The local Black Power players are all part of the local Democratic Machine, that is how you get Maxine Waters.
The decline in the Black population is a huge issue in LA, but is being ignored. Blacks still have an outsized political voice in LA, especially with the rise of Blm and the George Floyd martyrdom. Compton, formerly Majority Black, is now majority Latino.
The current LA mayor, soon India Ambassador, has done his best to upset no one, and the result is has gotten little done. The visit to Venice Beach by Larry Elder was to highlight the homeless catastrophe there. It’s so bad that Hunter Biden moved. Venice Beach is a super trendy area, with canals, very expensive, that is not a Black Area. Just south of Santa Monica. I avoid going into la city now days, the amount of homeless, trash, and graffiti is unbelievable.
There is a recall attempt got the local LA DA, Soros Backed, I hope is successful.
I just saw a mail in ballot for an ex tenant that is a convicted felon. My parents tried to help out the lady by giving her a place to stay, homeless, and later I figured was a convicted felon, and had drug issues (along with her posse). I got her evicted years ago, but what a nightmare.
There is also a long history of people wearing Hawaiian shirts, making Pepe the Frog memes, and making the O.K. hand gesture, but that doesn't stop the left from screaming racism whenever they see those used by people.
Althouse: There is a long tradition of women wearing gorilla masks in protests, and it ought to be taken into account before locking in your opinion that the mask had to be racist. Here's the Wikipedia article "Guerrilla Girls":
Wiki: Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community.
Were the "Guerrilla Girls" violent destructive thugs, like the woman attacking Elder?
If it was a white male instead of a white female, would that cause you to switch from "oh, she's just re-doing the Guerrilla Girls in a completely different time, place, and context" to "he's a racist pig doing a racist trope"?
Did the "Guerrilla Girls" get attacked for wearing Guerrilla masks, and told they were acting racist? yes, I believe they did.
If a white female was throwing eggs at Candidate Obama in 2008, 13 years closer to the "Guerrilla Girls", do you thin people would say "oh, she's immolating the "Guerrilla Girls"? Or would she be attacked for being a racist?
The defense seems incredibly weak here
The casual willingness that seems to be emerging with women indulging the Hollywood/Disney Princess fantasy that they can engage in combat with men is deeply concerning. As these antifa/leftist protests grow violent, there will come a point where women like this will learn some very unpleasant physics lessons.
It is not a big story because leftists being overt racists is everywhere.
It's not racism. It's about money. Billions of dollars. Elder's presents a risk to turn off the spigot to these state workers and teachers union if he gets elected. Much like the harassment of Walker here in Wisconsin.
I'll bet that fat gorilla bitch is a teacher or works for the DMV.
"According to GG1, identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities, "Mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work."
--
How's that goin'?
Poor white gal has to endure the added shame of throwing a WHITE object at a black man.
While we're at it:
ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler still paying for absurd racist accusation
We have been taught over the past 10 years that, with any racial incident, our first thought should be "hoax".
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned that since it seems like an ideal out to excuse the incident. The woman was in the gorilla mask because they did not want any chance of anyone identifying her as an Elder supporter.
The real question that should be asked is whether she was on her own or paid by the Elder campaign.
This worked bigtime for Chik-Fil-A. When they ginned up the homophobia campaign they surged ahead of KFC even though they have fewer stores and are only open 6 days a week.
Or the small mom & Pop pizzeria in Indiana. Memory Time ginned up the homophobia story and got an $800m payout.
This is good publicity for Elder, especially in the black community if he can get the story out there.
I'm rooting for Elder and sent his campaign $50 a month or two back. Will the election be outside the margin of fraud? That's the real question, I think.
John Henry
To remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists.
The Gorilla Girls are probably a smaller than usual cabal, otherwise they'd quickly run out of pseudonyms.
Obligatory snark having been duly dispensed. In my state such an assault while wearing a mask is a felony.
"Hilarious."
Yes because commiting violence (on par with what the knuckle heads on Jan. 6 did) against your political opponents is always funny in a liberal democracy. Here's a pro tip, if they are actually attacking you, you actually are a victim.
Waited to see if someone would bring Trump into it and our local favorite did not disappoint. Like I said last week, it's the only thing he ever discusses.
But staying on topic, as others here have noted dutifully and repeatedly over the years, this is another example of partisans telling you who/what they fear. Elder violates the narrative and must be suppressed. I don't think there is any real evidence that the woman throwing the egg is racist, but covering the attempted assault (and yes, that's what it is) as straight news with no editorializing after 8 years of anything said in opposition to any Obama policy being immediately called racist shows that the usual suspects in the media do not want to provide sympathetic coverage to Elder. They aren't obligated to do so, of course, but the cognitive dissonance and inconsistency are staggering.
If I may be so bold to presume what really makes it so outrageous to those who disagree with the way this is presented...I don't think it's really about how awful the people in the media are at even trying to main intellectual consistency. It's really that we can't understand why so many people continue to accept it. Why does anyone still treat the NYT, WP, network news, etc. as purveyors of information and not opinion? Why do we treat them as the news organizations of the nation rather than the local mirrors of Manhattan and DC that they are? Why is something so obvious to at least half the country so grossly unencountered by the other? Personally I could care less what those "news" rooms produce, but I can't reconcile why anyone would be unable to see the naked emperors.
Listening to her yell at the body guard she took a swing at I would say that she is more likely to be a light skinned black woman than white.
Long traditions showing how a particular incident does not stem from racial bias doesn’t matter if the offender is a conservative. Just think of how the OK sign, a common and accepted gesture for decades if not centuries, all the sudden became a horrible indicator of racist right wing bias.
Correction to my own comment at 9:07 AM
----------------------------------------
I inadvertently wrote the wrong expression colored artists.
I meant to write Artists of Color.
Please make the mental correction.
Wasn't a member of the security team also shot with a pellet gun? As MMQ, I would say the security team needs to improve their scans and threat assessments, someone pedalling toward you in a gorilla mask with one hand on the handlebars is probably not a good risk.
The assault was intended to provoke a violent and disproportionate response, and it failed to. They should have pushed the woman off the bike before she threw the egg, and they should have ripped her mask off as they did so.
For an example of utterly dishonest coverage of the incident, see the LA Times story, "LAPD is investigating altercation involving Larry Elder at Venice homeless encampment". The accompanying picture makes it look like he's slapping a redhead, so casual readers would think he's the perpetrator of a crime, when in fact he's the victim. The redhead whom he did NOT slap has a pissed-off tweet, visible here along with the picture she's reacting to: link. As the tweeter notes, the LAT (and most of the press) is evil.
after a few such incidents I have to say Republicans are physical cowards ...
Larry Elder looked quite befuddled >>> I wish he had stopped and engaged the group in conversation >>> they seemed angry about Democrats controlling everything and probably rightly so judged R's as ineffective and opportunistic.
I wish we could return to the far more civilized protests of attractive young topless women.
How far we have fallen.
Based on the Urban dictionary, she was not wearing a "Gorilla Mask".
"Republican victimhood in the Trump era. It’s surely one of the signature features of Trumpism; they are victims, just like PDJT is a never-ending victim."
Chuck. Forever tilting at windbags.
TJ said...
"Of course they know how to form tackle, but then the coverage would be on that. Remember when Ds do something, the story is the R response. No different here. Good call to let her flail."
It's not clear to me that you yet understand the road we are on. The "coverage" was never going to be favorable. You don't need a counterfactual. This is what actually happened: no form tackle, and still no honest coverage by the Democrat propagandists in the media.
As Achilles said, the bigger problem than the apparent racism of wearing a gorilla mask is the violence of the Democrat party. This is not going to change by taking the high road and hoping for fair "news" coverage. But there is a way to make people like this woman think twice about initiating physical violence.
This reminds me of Arnold getting kicked in the back while his bodyguards stood around gawking. (Soon after I became a regular here.)
A simple shove or grab on to the bike would have sent the crazy bitch sprawling and bawling.
The only principle in politics is whose ox is being gored. She was throwing an egg at a Republican, which was OK with the media, because he's not their guy. That he is black is incidental.
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