Today's Worst Person In The World: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
If he wins the GOP nomination for President, it will be the first time Republicans have ever picked Cotton
Here’s a little Saturday bonus before I head home tomorrow….
Don’tcha just LOVE watching how Republicans deal with race? In this case, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) issues some garbage platitudes about Jackie Robinson without saying a word about the institutional racism that made it all necessary. Robinson broke the “color barrier” because the Lords of Baseball refused to allow Black players to sully their game. And White players refused to play against Black players. It was as much White obstructionism and racism as it was Robinson’s heroism…and there was a LOT of heroism involved on Robinson’s part.
It wasn’t until the late ‘40s that owners realized that Black money spends just like White money. So if they wanted to grow the game (and their profits), they had to find a way to (grudgingly) include Blacks. Now, of course, Black players are everywhere in baseball, but Jackie Robinson faced a tough road, and his trail-blazing was no easy feat.
As lawyer Max Kennerly noted, Cotton references the "color barrier” Robinson broke without acknowledging the institutional racism that erected it. Cotton, like most conservatives, promotes the white supremacist American myth that the first member of a marginalized group to make a significant achievement was the first who deserved it. But Black baseball players weren’t cluelessly holding their bats from the wrong end before Jackie Robinson came along.
The critical racist reality is that white players refused to play against Black players in the major leagues for decades. White fans weren’t thrilled about watching integrated teams, either. Republicans are passing "critical race theory” bans in schools that would prohibit any honest examination of Robinson’s “last legacy."
The times may have changed, but 75 years later, the racism is not altogether different. The battles have changed, as have the standards for Blacks vis-a-vis Whites. For example, the fight to get a highly qualified Black woman onto the Supreme Court sounded in many ways like the arguments used during the ‘30s and ‘40s against allowing Black players into Major League Baseball.
Happy Chandler from Kentucky signed Robinson in 1945, knowing this might cost him his job as baseball commissioner. Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager Branch Rickey reportedly chose Robinson because he believed he had the strength of character to endure racist taunts and bigoted cruelty without losing his composure. (It’s probably not a coincidence that Robinson died at 53, old before his time.)
Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson faced a similar gauntlet at her confirmation hearings. Cotton, who insinuated that Jackson was a liar and a Nazi lover, was only slightly more subtle than the white players who hurled racial epithets at Robinson.
Cotton, who’s a horrible, miserable, awful person under the best of circumstances, is as racist as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO). But, unfortunately, he lacks the subtlety and the rhetorical ability to cover his bullshit in flowery oratory, something at which Cruz and Hawley excel.
Sen. Cotton is representative of modern Conservatism in that he lauds the accomplishments of a dead Black person while denigrating a highly-qualified LIVING black person in Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Insinuating that she was a Nazi lover was highly offensive and thoroughly beyond the pale, but it was also the norm for Cotton, who lacks a functional sense of decency. When it comes to Democrats in general and Blacks in particular, Cotton will do and say whatever it takes to demean them, smear them, and impugn their character.
So, here’s Sen. Cotton’s Worst Person of the Day award:
There’s little doubt that Sen. Cotton is the embodiment of blurring the line between “class” and “ass.”
Of course, Tom Cotton’s racism is hardly new and is, in fact, quite prevalent in today’s GOP. It has a long and inglorious history, something Jackie Robinson recognized almost 60 years ago.
The GOP’s “Southern strategy” helped Richard Nixon win the Presidency in 1968. The “Southern strategy” was intended to win over the same virulent racists who objected to Jackie Robinson integrating baseball in 1947…and it worked. More than 50 years later, most southern states continue to trend Republican in national elections. To say that racism has nothing to do with it would be the height of naivete.
All one has to do is look at the boatload of voter suppression laws on the books in the south to get an idea of how entrenched White supremacism continues to be. Statehouses continue to be dominated by Conservative White males willing to do whatever’s necessary to maintain the status quo. If that means cheating and rigging elections…well, y’all best get out of the way.
It’s all about creating a permanent Republican majority, don’tchaknow??
Sen. Tom Cotton spent the confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson trying to impugn her character and qualifications. He failed to derail her nomination, and the full Senate approved her- but not before Cotton got his shots in.
How anyone could twist Judge Jackson’s record to the point where he could, in all seriousness, call her a Nazi lover defies rational understanding. Yet, that’s precisely what Cotton (along with Cruz and Hawley) did. If he were a Democrat, he would’ve been censured by the Senate. As a Republican, though, he has free reign to behave in the worst, most inhospitable manner possible- and he took full advantage.
Man, how I’d love to dump those tons of horse shit in Tom Cotton’s Senate office.
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