A while back I read a column by George Will that demonstrates how blind conservatives are to their own prejudice and hypocrisy. After citing the civil rights era lunch counter sit-ins as an example of a minority group demanding its right to accommodation by businesses that serve the public, he goes on to defend the Supreme Court decision favoring a would-be web designer. She cited her right to “free speech,” which increasingly in law is confused with illegal actions, to express her belief that she is “commanded by God” (isn’t it interesting that God speaks exclusively to conservatives?) to proclaim marriage is only between a man and a woman. And how does she choose to go forth and proclaim unto the masses the Will of the Almighty? She “speaks,” by imagining that she will some day create wedding web sites and refuse to create an imaginary site for an imaginary gay couple. She then takes her imaginary “case” to the Supreme Court.
The fact that this non-case was treated as if it ever had any standing is an exercise in illogic in itself. The Justices, of course, were not to be deterred from their own reactionary crusade by attending to the little formality that no one had inflicted any damages against her. Silly me. I thought a person needs to have been harmed in some way in order to go to court.
Further into the the article, Will asks why, since there are plenty of other web designers who would be glad to accommodate them, those pesky gay couples would insist on service from one who refuses it.
Duh, George. If you are really so dim as to not understand this, every single one of my readers and their fifth grade kids would gladly explain it to you.
People who insist on service from bigoted service providers do so to protest discrimination, just as the protestors at the lunch counter you just cited did. Not because they need, or even really prefer, to use that particular designer’s services. People who sat in and ordered at the segregated lunch counter could have gone into any number of Black establishments. There they would certainly get a better meal. Their kids could go to any Black only school, drink from any Black only water fountain, use a (filthy) Black only rest room, see a movie if they sat in the Black only section of a theater, ride the bus if they sat in the back, vote (maybe, if they could recite the Constitution from memory word for word), etc., etc.
Hey George, get this: They were not there for the grilled cheese sandwiches.
Here is a guy who is supposed to be smart enough to warrant a column in our most prestigious news publications. Yet, when his bias blinders are on, (read that “always”) he becomes a babbling imbecile.
I’ve seen this kind of illogical logic used time and time again by conservative columnists, and, frankly, I cannot understand how any legitimate publication would waste its limited budget paying these guys for their irrational scribblings.
The problem is these mostly White Christian writers have lived their whole lives without experiencing what it feels like to be discriminated against simply because of some fundamental aspect of their being.
Will and his cohorts should read the book “Black Like Me” that came out when I was a kid. The author, a White man, used some substance to darken his complexion and documented how his having the appearance of a Black person changed the way people treated him.
Unfortunately, Will and his ilk have millions of readers who see nothing inconsistent in his line of “reasoning.” That includes several Supreme Court Justices and, assuming they are capable of reading, would include many Republican legislators.
Sorry George. As they say just a little south of my neck of the woods, that dog don’t hunt.
An Author's Inner Mind 