You can always tell a black man’s politics by the way the 99 percent of the black community that is liberal — and white liberals — treat him.
Pull up a chair. This gets grisly.
I see where Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has written an autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” which becomes available on Monday.
Not many Americans are more important than Judge Thomas. He forms one-ninth of the chief legal interpretation forum of the most powerful nation in the history of the world.
He is scheduled to appear on “60 Minutes” this evening.
Mr. Silbiger’s Warren Harding-like 5 1/2 years in office is a punch-in-the-face reminder to casual Culver City voters to know your candidates before marking your ballot.
How They Are Alike
Like Mr. Harding, Mr. Silbiger is an aimiable fellow. At worst, he would be a co-favorite for the title of Nicest Person on the City Council.
Like Mr. Harding, Mr. Silbiger invites plump, nearly irresistible, criticism because each gaffe sounds as if the Councilman has struck bottom. Again.
A Notable Feat
Almost halfway through his second four-year term, he remains an enigma, an unenviable accomplishment. If Mr. Silbiger prepares — beyond a glance — for the Monday night Council meetings, there is no evidence in his performance.
Inevitably, this leads him to pose embarrassing questions, both to his colleagues and to City Hall staffers. Some evenings it looks as if he were tourist in Culver City.
No Evidence
If he knows more about the infrastructure and the operation of City Hall than the occasional visitor to Council Chambers, he is keeping it hidden.
Routinely, the highest profile agenda items are treated like strangers knocking on his door — there is a whiff of curiosity. That is all. Insight and a fundamental grasp of the issue often are absent.
Basic information that other Council members learned in their first months continues to elude Mr. Silbiger.
How Did They Do That?
At last Monday night’s Council meeting, he asked a staffer how traffic consultants are selected to review conditions at prospective development sites. If the staffer had replied “the Man in the Moon,” the Councilman could not have been more surprised with the answer.
Help Wanted
Otherwise, you would have to drive to Wal-Mart and buy a magnifying glass, bring Sherlock Holmes back from the Rest Home for the Permanently Resting or implore the FBI to conduct a search.
Authors of the dozen or so most virulent anti-Bush Administration volumes of this year have showed up hourly on “Today,” on “Cute Katie Couric,” “Oozing with Oprah,” on “59 Minutes of Why Can’t We All Get Along as Liberals?” and other quality television fare. By the darnedest coincidence, each one of them slammed conservatives.
An Invisible Jurist
Judge Thomas, meanwhile, is treated as if he is in the government’s witness protection program. Where is he?
I keep forgetting.
Wrong color, wrong politics.
Iraqi extremists get better press in America than black conservatives.
You see, black and white liberals concluded for keeps 16 years ago that any black man who dared to identify with the conservative movement was acting uppity. Uniformly, they have treated Judge Thomas worse than an oldtime slaveowner because his politics are of the wrong color.
They used to call this racism. No, say liberals, we are just being honest.
Among the Worst
The shameful treatment of Judge Thomas by the mainstream American media and their lockstep lackeys since 1991 rates as one of the two or three most unforgivable, unwarranted character assassinations of the past 25 years.
Normally — if the judge had had the sense to be born white and liberal — this would be the day to roll out reviews, the last hours before his new book goes on sale.
Darn. Those free-speech heroes of the Left caved again, crawling under the desk again and cozying up with the retired Police Chief Ted Cooke.
Reviews, Reviews, Where Are They?
I opened my Sunday Book Review in The New York Times this morning. Not a whiff of Judge Thomas. I opened my Sunday Book Review in The Los Angeles Times. Couldn’t find the judge.
The only significant review I have discovered was yesterday on Page 1 of the Washington Post, the Democratic Party’s principal hometown propaganda arm. The review was scathing because Judge Thomas is black and conservative.
Speaking for the effete liberals who run like barking puppies after the Rev. Jackson and the Rev. Sharpton, the Post spat upon Judge Thomas in its opening sentence, and then grew seriously critical.
Three Against One
The same crowd that coddled the Dictator of Iran last week, and that later hosted him at a private dinner, mocked Judge Thomas for claiming that he was victimized by racists.
The heavy-breathing Post gentlemen who crafted the review — Robert Barnes, Michael Fletcher, Kevin Merida — fault the judge for using his book to “settle scores.”
Conclusion in an age of inflated manpower: It takes three bigoted journalists to hang a black man in this century, down from 20 in the last century.
The ridiculing tone of the Post review made it worthy of being studied at the next white supremacist meeting over which Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), the “former” Klansman, presides.