Thursday, May 20, 2010

Dog Whistle or Tuning Fork?

Or simply ideological blindness?

As you may have heard, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul made a complete ass of himself last night on The Rachel Maddow Show.

I enjoy Rachel Maddow and think she is brilliant. But I often find Maddow's show annoying in the sense that she is too deferential to her guests in the moment—even when she's being aggressive—and too often relies on follow-up after the fact. As in the next show. Correcting the record or declaring "Gotcha!" too late is usually exactly that: Too late. No matter how thorough or clever.

But this segment does such a good job cutting past the “he said” or race card bullshit and dealing directly with the real world ramifications of actual policy vs. hypothetical ideology and tying it all together that I think it's worth everyone's time.

(You could watch the entire Paul appearance if you like, but it's twenty stomach-churning minutes of Paul running from giving a straight answer on whether he supports the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The key moments are excerpted in this brilliant follow-up:)

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