I have a confession, gentle reader. I can snark endlessly about the right-wingers who are fawning all over Dr. Ben Carson; but as for the man himself, I have a lot of trouble disliking him. I also think that when it comes to Dr. Carson, Fox News and their friends are like someone who buys an expensive designer outfit without trying it on first. Some of the things he said during last night’s interview with Greta Van Susteren sounded suspiciously like a Compassionate Conservative – in fact, maybe a bit of an interventionist..? A “we helped you build that” kind of guy…?
Purportedly Greta Van Susteren’s interview with the doctor last night was about the Congressional Black Caucus’ criticism of President Obama for lack of diversity in his cabinet - the title on the transcript reads, "Has President Obama Betrayed the African-American community?" In fact Carson passed up the opportunity to condemn anyone: “It doesn't mean that he is not interested in diversity. It just means that that's not one of his greatest priorities right now.” Later he added "One of the things ... in terms of the president and whether his cabinet looks diverse or not, one has to actually set goals and say we want to make sure that we have a society and a workforce that's reflective of the society." (Really? Are you advocating affirmative action, doctor?)
The conversation quickly turned to how to break the cycle of poverty and unemployment in the inner cities. Don’t give them free things, he replied, but do give them opportunities. “We need to make sure that they want to escape and then provide them with a mechanism to do so, reward them when they do so. More and more people will begin to see that there is a way out, that a lot of it has to do with their own work, but also the fact that people are willing to give them opportunities.”
How do you do the nuts and bolts of that, Van Susteren asked. By encouraging employers to hire people from the inner city, he replied. Make employers aware “that they're actually doing themselves a favor when they create opportunities for people to escape from poverty, because those are people that don't have to pay for it in the penal system or the welfare system.. So they have to be the ones who really buy into this, so there's some education there.”
And who is going to do all that, Doctor? Create the educational campaigns you’ll need to encourage the poor to better themselves? Improve inner-city schools? Convince employers to hire inner-city kids? Improve upward mobility, which has stagnated in the US? Who's going to "reward" people for seeking to escape the poverty trap? That’ll probably take lots of money. And a government program or two. Won’t it?
There are quite a few ways in which Dr. Carson doesn’t toe the Tea Party line. He thinks semi-automatic weapons should be banned in cities. He's expressed doubts about going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Right-wingers have embraced his recipe for health system reform because it’s Not Obamacare, but it actually raises lots of questions that only a few are asking. In short, gentle reader, I think some of Dr. Carson’s views would make the Tea Party faction very uncomfortable if he should actually run for office. And the talking heads at Fox are so desperate to find their knight in shining armor that they're not asking the difficult questions. Maybe the doctor should offer them all brain surgery.
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Well, he can only offer “surgery” if the patient has a relatively functional brain. As far as I’m concerned, every time the FoxNoise kkkrew come on the air, the accompanying music should be “If I Only Had a Brain” (as sung by the late Ray Bolger).
Then again, the GOP ran Mitt Romney on the same “IOKIYAR” health care argument, so the problem isn’t Obamacare… it’s that it’ll be remembered as being given to us by Democrat. Wonder if they mind people remembering that they fought to repeal it just so that they could repackage it with an® on the credit. Multiple times.
They know 1) he’s black, and 2) he made a mild criticism of President Obama at a public event.
They’re so happy with that, they don’t need to know anything else . . .
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