I’m sure you remember John Derbyshire, the National Review columnist who was fired after he wrote that you should avoid black people.
Ole John is at it again and, frankly, I’ve been at a loss on how to convey how racist and disgusting he is.
via RightWingWatch
In his latest racist column, Derbyshire calls 12 Years a Slave “Abolitionist Porn” and chides the film for not including what he sees as the happier instances of slavery, such as one slaveholder who only doled out beatings “once in a while.”
“Plainly there was more to American race slavery that white masters brutalizing resentful Negroes,” Derbyshire writes. “Slavery is more irksome to some than to others; and freedom can be irksome, too.”
Aw shucks, slavery was “irksome” to some people, perhaps those people who were whipped, beaten, and killed, but freedom can also be irksome to people who can’t be trusted to make the right decisons for themselves. That’s where honorary Klansmen like John Derbyshire come into play. He knows best.
Derbyshire admits that he hasn’t actually seen 12 Years a Slave, which he refers to as “porn,” but, you know, he’s a brilliant white man so he doesn’t need to see it to know that it’s biased against wholesome slave owners.
It seems I’ve picked up an interest in the Civil War just as America is undergoing a revival of Abolitionist Porn. That, at any rate, is what I take this much-talked-of new movie 12 Years a Slave to be.
No, I haven’t seen the thing, but I’ve read reviews. Also I’ve seen (and reviewed) a specimen of the allied genre: Civil Rights Porn.
This idea that there are different degrees of slavery is ridiculous.
Slavery is slavery. Whether some slavers were more brutal than others may be true, but they’re still slave holders. The men they owned, men they bought and paid for, were still slaves even if their master only beat them “once in a while.”
They only beat them “once in a while?” Well shit, I guess life isn’t so bad.
If Derbyshire were alive at the time, he would have been a slave owner. A noble, sympathetic slave owner one who only beats his slaves every now and then. And his slaves would have been appreciative that he gave them scraps to eat and a barn to sleep in at Candieland, all out of the goodness of his heart. After all, freedom is for suckers.
If you don’t find Derbyshire revolting I’d say you aren’t human.