Jewish World Review November 21, 2002 / 16 Kislev, 5763

Tony Seton

There was a time, not so long ago, when there was a shortage of white male television news anchors. That's right...white males. For the longest time, all there were behind the desks were white males, who differed only in age, posture, and talent. But then came the diversity movement, and women and peopleofcolor were in such demand that no-talent stutterers were hauled off the street if they had breasts, a dark tan, or a missing limb.

After a while, television newscasts featured more colors than a Trinitron explosion, all garbled and prosthetic, and having little to do with the news. White males needed not apply. Until they became such a minority on the air that stations actually had to hunt for them.

All of which goes to show that people of all shapes and sizes and colors have their ups and downs, and that if we paid less attention to the packaging and more to what's inside, we'd save a lot of unnecessary hassle. Indeed, on that premise, I'd like to suggest a new campaign to dehyphenate Americans, and get us back to being one nation, indivisible again. Because we suffer from an epidemic of self-separation by myriad groups seeking to better themselves through victimhood. I'm thinking of the disabled, Indians, the self-inflicteds, and the multi-hued, all crying -- nay, demanding -- a larger share because they are different-Americans. Pshaw.

While I think it makes sense to lower the curb the next time the corner pavement is poured, it makes no sense to spend trillions immediately retrofitting every bathroom and installing elevators at every staircase. First, there aren't that many people in wheelchairs. Second, not everyone gets to do everything and go everywhere.

Here in California, the most powerful political group are the native Americans, or more accurately, longer-term-immigrant Americans. They have multi-billion dollar clout because they have set up an enormous and virtually unfettered gambling industry. They have bought slews of politicians who have permitted them through special legislation to fleece stupidos, and that's as morally bankrupt as what the early settlers did to their ancestors.

A while back, we decided to define drug addicts as sick, so that we could give them money so they wouldn't turn to crime. So now they use our hard-earned tax dollars to buy more drugs. That's sick. We should facilitate their drying out, but if they prefer to rob and burgle, we should toss 'em in the pokey.

Shelby Steele had a fine piece in a recent Harper's in which he noted that our society has gone from white racism to white guilt, and non-whites are taking full advantage. Suckling the pity-tit is a doom-ward spiral. We should end affirmative action, in fact and in attitude, restore the higher standards we once held, and apply them to everyone. Those standards worked because they weren't about white America, they were about America America, a nation for which many people seem to have lost regard, perhaps because we have knelt in our standards.

The point is that we should help the minority up, not bring the majority down, and that help should be in the form of education and training, not reparations. Yes, there is racism in our society, and other forms of discrimination, but tremendous advances have been and continue to be made. Viz, women already make up the majority of law school students, and a headline yesterday noted perceptible widening in the cracks in the glass ceiling. Let us not slander those who have climbed to greater heights, by providing step-stools to the whiners. We would pull our nation down from greatness were we to offer excuses for some, and to accept less than excellence from any who would call themselves American.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2002