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Berkeley Humor II

A little over a week ago I posted a discussion of Berkeley Humor, based on a report by some Berkeley professors that race-baiting would emerge as a serious issue during the 2008 presidential campaign. My post took off from a posting on a Chronicle of Higher Education blog by Peter Schmidt, and now Schmidt is back with a follow-up that also deserves additional comment here, since it adds yet more fuel to the burning fire of Berkeley humor.

The race-baiting predicted by the Berkeleyans, of course, was to be by Republicans against Democrats.

... David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy who was one of the report?s lead authors, said in an interview with Campaign U. that he did not expect the Democratic candidates to use such tactics against one another in the primaries. ?At this point,? he said, ?it is unlikely we are going to get serious race-baiting until the election itself.?

What, Schmidt wondered, did they think about the recent racial imbroglio that has engulfed the Democrats?

Mr. Kirp was unavailable for comment today on the widely publicized, racially charged volleys exchanged by the Clinton and Obama campaigns over the past week. But Joshua A. Green, a doctoral student in Berkeley?s political-science department who helped produce the ?Race Bait ?08? report, argues in an interview today that neither the Obama or Clinton campaign has done anything that should be called ?race baiting.?

Of course not. Only Republicans can race-bait. Democrats discuss issues or, at worst, engage in rough and tumble politics as usual.

Asked about allegations from Mr. Obama?s supporters that Mrs. Clinton made remarks downplaying the Rev. Martin Luther King?s Jr. role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mr. Green says she made a simple ?verbal gaffe? that was leapt upon by the news media, which ?really needed some conflict between these two candidates.?

?What is interesting to me is how quickly the media decided this was race-baiting,? Mr. Green says. Reporters have been so highly sensitized to the potential of race-baiting that ?it does not matter if it is race-baiting or not?the candidates are going to be called on this,? which ?I actually see as a positive thing.?

What about the reminders coming, on several occasions, out of the Clinton campaign that Obama was a youthful drug user and insinuating that he may have been a dealer? For Green, ?just part of the rough-and-tumble of presidential politics.?

What about the New Yorker article (discussed in my post, cited above) by a Clinton pollster that the bias Hispanics held toward blacks would provide a fire wall for Clinton?

... Mr. Green says there is nothing unusual about a campaign focusing on certain racial or ethnic subsets of the population. ?Campaigns are looking to get any edge they can,? he says.

So, what we have here is a budding political scientist from Berkeley denying that the Democrats have been engaged in race-baiting but saying it?s ?a positive thing? that reporters, who have become so ?sensitized? to the issue, have been accusing them of it anyway. I guess Green believes that if there is a frenzy of accusation and denial of race-baiting that does not in fact exist, people in general will become much more ?sensitized? to the issue.

I?m not sure whether this ?analysis? reminds me more of crying wolf or of the McCarthyite frenzied fear of communists under every bed, but it is at least reassuring to learn that Berkeley humor will not become extinct when the current generation of deans and senior professors passes from the scene.

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 16, 2008 (boomark / email).