Paul Ryan’s worthless attempt to save face: Why he’s still an overrated fraud
From Ayn Rand to Charles Murray, he thinks the rich deserve their wealth and the poor are to blame for their misery
JOAN WALSH
Beltway writers have recently tried to outdo themselves with breathless profiles of a new Paul Ryan, deeply concerned about the poor.
Ive warned repeatedly that
Ryans views on poverty are just warmed-over-Reaganism, and now we have proof.
McKay Coppins piece Paul Ryan finds God should have revealed that his God is no longer Ayn Rand but Charles Murray, the man who put a patina of (flawed) social science on
Reagans lyrical lie, We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.
But let me explain all of what it means to cite
Charles Murray in 2014. Murray is so toxic that Ryans shout-out must be unpacked. First, Rep. Barbara Lee is absolutely right: Ryans comments about inner city men who are not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work are, in fact, a thinly veiled racial attack, in the congresswomans words. Lets be clear, when Mr. Ryan says inner city, when he says, culture, these are simply code words for what he really means: black.
Ryan denied that Wednesday night. This has nothing to do whatsoever with race. It never even occurred to me. This has nothing to do with race whatsoever. On Thursday morning, he issued a statement saying he regretted being
inarticulate in trying to make his point.
A tip for Ryan: if the racial subtext of your remarks never even occurred to me, as you cite a writer who has been repeatedly charged with racism, who is categorized as a
white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center (Im not sure Id go that far), well, that in itself is a problem. As Murray himself told the New York Times about his landmark book Losing Ground: A huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. Its going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say. Apparently Ryan is one of them, if we give him the benefit of the doubt and call him well-meaning.
more
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/paul_ryans_worthless_attempt_to_save_face_why_hes_still_an_overrated_fraud/