June 16, 2010
I live in Georgia. My congressional representative is Hank Johnson, a Democrat whom I am unafraid to call stupid. In April at a House Armed Services Committee hearing, Johnson expressed genuine concern that sending more personnel to Guam would cause the island to “tip over and capsize.” After watching that comment issue from Johnson’s lips, I was certain he was the most mentally impaired politician in recorded history.
Since I live in Georgia, I can see South Carolina from my kitchen. After last week’s Palmetto State primaries, it is now apparent that Hank Johnson was merely John the Baptist announcing a frightening new idiocratic covenant”a dim-witted little voice in the wilderness prophesying the arrival of a figure whose cognitive deficiencies are so vast that they transcend mortals” understanding.
Unemployed Army vet and accused sex offender Alvin Greene (D-SC) burst onto the national political scene last week with all the wit and charisma of a musk ox, trouncing his more-established and melanin-deficient opponent Vic Rawl. Greene had run little or no campaign on what apparently was little or no intelligence, yet he clocked 59% of the votes and will face Republican Jim DeMint in November.
Greene reportedly has served as an Army intelligence specialist. He is also South Carolina’s first black candidate for US Senate from either major party since Reconstruction. Despite all that, his epically stammering and not-all-there TV appearances since winning the nomination have revealed a man for whom the term “intelligence specialist” might not be entirely appropriate…a man with, at best, a very cloudy and heavy-lidded awareness that he’s in a room somewhere, answering somebody’s questions.
In fact, Greene appears to be so undeniably under-endowed in the brain-cell department that even those who”d normally support him are scrambling for ways to explain away or even invalidate his candidacy.
Greene seems so monumentally stupid that even Keith Olbermann couldn”t pretend everything was hunky-dory. When CNN’s visibly flustered Don Lemon mentioned that some politicos had suggested Greene was mentally impaired, all Greene could muster was a defensive, “They”re the knuckleheads.” Well, nyah-nyah to you, too, mister.
Greene evinces a once-in-a-lifetime stupidity that is so in-your-face, there is no explaining it away. When Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asked whether the Mars Pathfinder took pictures of the flag that Neil Armstrong had planted on Mars, the story was gently buried. When Hank Johnson worried about Guam capsizing, that embarrassing li”l blast of “brain fog” was quietly blamed on his Hep-C treatment regimen. But after Greene fathered countless pregnant pauses live on national television, it’s absurd to deny it”Alvin Greene is, as Fred Sanford would say, a dummy. He “takes it to that ‘nother level,” as the blacks are fond of saying.
He even breeds stupidity, because now I feel like an imbecile for being incapable of figuring out why he comes off so stupidly.
Alvin Greene is so inexorably, unavoidably, ineluctably stupid that even liberal-leaning people are doing what might have been unthinkable a decade ago”calling him dumb although he’s black. They”re demanding investigations to unearth the shady redneck Republicans who planted this black idiot as their stalking horse. They speculate about dark conspiracy theories wherein cruel and guffawing white hatemongers set up this mentally handicapped black man to run for the US Senate as if they were high-school pranksters asking Carrie White to the prom.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) went so far as to suggest that “shenanigans” are afoot. One blogger hinted that “skullduggery” may be to blame. There are also whispers that chicanery, double-dealing, hanky-panky, and a fair degree of furtiveness may somehow be involved. However, Gavin McInnes insists that Greene is not a plant”he merely has the IQ of one.
In a week we”ll probably know more answers, but for now all the unanswered questions are what make his case so compelling.
The most obvious question is one that I”ve seen no one come straight out and ask:
What if he’s simply very stupid and the South Carolina voters were sufficiently stupid to nominate him?
What if there are no strings being pulled, no back-room deals, no subterfuge, and no Manchurian Candidates in this equation? What if Machiavelli sat this one out and the blame lies squarely on a lot of very, very dumb people?
There are some simpler explanations for Greene’s nomination that don”t involve intrigue, manipulation, and electronic fraud:
“¢ His name was the first one on the ballot.
“¢ His opponent was the demonstrably Caucasian Vic Rawl, and, as impolite as it may be to suggest, black voters tend to vote with their skin.
“¢ At least one voter says she picked Greene because she thought he was singer Al Green.
Is it too much to think that maybe Alvin Greene and his supporters can”t think too much?
What if he and his supporters are simply a bunch of simpletons?
What appears to be the most ghastly and imponderable scenario may also be the least complicated and most sensible: Alvin Greene became South Carolina’s candidate for US Senate not due to a handful of smart people pulling strings, but because of a hundred thousand dumb people pulling levers.
