Patrick Frey Attempts Walk-Back of Racist Insinuations Against Robert Stacy McCain

Well, as more and more bloggers make a stand against the smears, it's no surprise that Patrick Frey's trying to weasel out of his insinuations of racism against Robert Stacy McCain.



You can see the screencap from Patrick's entry tonight, "Please Do Not Put Words in My Mouth." And he writes:

I think if people are going to address what I said then they should address what I said. Not some fictional account that somebody made up and tried to put in my mouth.

Funny thing is, no one's putting words in Patrick's mouth.



Note this passage, from Patrick's post on Sunday, "That Quote Most of You Called “Racist” Was Written by Robert Stacy McCain":

I am placing the full quote in the extended entry below. The reader can judge for himself or herself whether the context renders non-racist McCain’s observations about the “natural revulsion” that many people feel upon seeing images of interracial marriage.



By the way, I found the Founding Bloggers post linked at this very lengthy and thorough post that is very harsh to McCain. But the author also has plenty of evidence to back up much of what he has to say. It’s worth a click and a read.



I have much more discussion of the evidence at this page, but I think it’s too lengthy to include here. I think the evidence set forth there is quite compelling and interesting — and shows how McCain has made sort of half-assed attempts to deny, or implicitly deny, the quote. But when he was finally asked the question quite directly by the sympathetic site Founding Bloggers in the link above, he admitted it. And claimed he was taken out of context.

So let’s turn to the full context of the quote.



To be sure, McCain says some other stuff here that is not racist, and some stuff that is less racist than the part quoted above. But I keep coming back to his claim that “the media now force interracial images into the public mind” that that “a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion.”



And that “[t]he white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sisterinlaw, and THIS IS NOT RACISM.”

You can put as much context around that as you like. It still sounds like racism to me.

We don't need to parse word meanings to see that Patrick's calling out Robert for racism and bigotry. It's a stupid yet sleazy semantic dodge for Patrick to highlight one quote away from the rest of what's he's written. It's especially dishonest, since Patrick -- who's all about "context" -- is the one trolling around the web searching for evidence of -- wait for it! -- Robert's racism. Oh, but of course, he's only scouring the web looking for evidence of WHAT ROBERT SAID, so he'll have evidence to support HIS INSINUATIONS IF NOT OUTRIGHT ALLEGATIONS of Robert's racism. I mean, the post cited by Patrick's not a giveway, eh?, "Meet Robert Stacy McCain, a neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire." And note that's a leftist blog, so no one would find anything favorable to conservatives there. Clearly, Patrick is comfortable searching for smear sources in the radical left's hate dumps.



But wait! It turns out that Little Miss Attila's written a post, and Patrick's responded there in the comments with the same kind of stupid semantic legerdemain. Referring to Robert's "altogether natural revulsion" quote, Patrick writes at Attila's:

Calling a statement racist and calling the speaker racist are not the same thing.



I am comfortable that the statement is racist.

Well, nope, Patrick. That's not working out too well for you. And you can't accuse me of not reading your posts -- which is your play here, to plead you're a just soul who's intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood! Sorry, but that's not going to fly.



In fact, I'm pretty sure it's like I said a couple of nights ago:

I'm reminded of Mean Girls, how Rachel McAdams had so much power over others, but then became a victim of her own Machiavellian charms when the gunsights were reversed. Regina George deserved it, because, well, she's mean. But the example is the campaign itself, how Lindsay Lohan besmirched herself just as much by sinking to the pits of scurrility and evil. And so it is with racism. No one wants to be called out as racist, but since so few of Americans are genuinely racist today, if it appears the left really has a genuine one, then, BAM, they pounce like a big game cat. But ultimately it's the accuser who's damaged, most recently Charles Johnson, now having to announce his own exile into puritanical ideological purgatory.

Yep, the heat's warming up under Patterico's feet, and he can feel that isolation building. Kinda like C.J., in fact, when the blog becomes a battle station for the blogger, who's surrounding by braindead sycophants just as intent to spew slanders as the proprietor.



Anyway, check Jeff Goldstein's piece, "Language Lessons, Revisited [Updated x2]":

I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. If you believe the statement is racist, you believe that it was uttered with racist intent. If you don’t believe it was uttered with racist intent, the statement is not racist, unless the intent to see racism comes from another source, in this case, from some agency who imbues the statement with a meaning that he doesn’t attribute to the original utterer.



That’d be Patterico.

See also, Robert Stacy McCain and Saber Point.