Wicked Sensitive

Check out the latest scandal:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain waded into a new controversy involving rival Rick Perry, saying it was “very insensitive” to have a racially offensive term painted in stone at the entrance to a hunting camp the Texas governor and his family had leased in West Texas.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the word “Niggerhead” had been painted in block letters on a rock at the gated entrance to the ranch, but that the word was now painted over and the rock was lying flat.

Cain, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” told moderator Chris Wallace that “that’s just very insensitive.”

There “isn’t a more vile, negative word than the ‘N word’ and for him to leave it there as long as he did, before I hear that they finally painted over it, it’s just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country,” he said.

Okay, sure, nigger's an ugly word, unless the speaker's a negro or an African-American or a person of color or black or whatever, and the context is cinematic, in which case it becomes both Authentic and really funny. I guess. Whatever. I suppose I must be developing some semi-Marxist leanings, because when I read that Rick Perry "and his family" lease a hunting camp in west Texas, that tells me what class the Guv is a member of, whether the camp's entrance is decorated by a rock with "niggerhead" painted on it, or "tax serf," or "taser target," or "Walmart peon," or whatever. People who lease hunting camps are members of the ruling class. I'm guessing the same is true of Herman Cain, the godfather of Godfather's Pizza (hmmmm, speaking of ethnic "insensitivity" ... Mr. Pot, may I introduce Mr. Kettle?). If Mr. Cain doesn't lease hunting property somewhere, it must be that he doesn't enjoy hunting, or boozing in a "hunting" milieu, or whatever. I bet I'm not welcome wherever it is he plays his golf, anyway.

The whole thing is grotesque beyond all possibility of parody. Here we are, in a country in which we're boasting about the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, who happens to be an American citizen of whom our wonderful somewhat-black president disapproves, which is enough to have him killed. I'm sure there's nothing new about that; I'm sure that, for most of American history, presidents have been able to have inconvenient people murdered. What's new is that all pretense of legal due process has been dropped; no one's bothering to pretend any more, and that complete lack of pretense really is pretty alarming. So, as I say, here we are, happy little consumer-subjects in the United States of Murder, Inc., and all the "realistic" candidates for Godfather (oh, man, now I'm insensitive, too!) are tossing feather pillows at each other over who's being more sensitive than whom.

Check out Candidate Cain's Official Website. O-bomb-a, early on, thought it necessary to lie to us about being a warhead, much as his predecessor, George the Stupid, did before achieving the office. But anyone who votes for or otherwise "supports" Cain won't even be able to claim to have been lied to: the Godfather's nothing if not up-front about "National Security" (the turr'rsts hate us 'cause we're so good, and want only to kill us all ... and, actually, he may have a point there -- if I pay much attention to contemporary American electoral politics, and what succeeds in that arena, I pretty much want to kill us all, too).

So, we can all be happy remote-control drone murderers together, but you don't want to say "nigger," because some things are just beyond the pale. They affront our exquisitely-refined sensibilities. Perhaps whoever the pathetic redneck was who just had to paint "niggerhead" on a rock out in west Texas should have polished up his act a little. He could've painted "sand-niggerhead," and that might have been perfectly okay. After all, they're THE ENEMY.