April 29, 2004

A White Liberal Family And Their “Diversity” Toy Box

By Sam Francis

In one of its rare adventures into the no man's land beyond the Beltway, the Washington Post last week served up a series on What America Is Really Like, concluding with an extended scrutiny of what is now called "Blue America" (actually, red or pink America), namely, that part of the country that voted for Al Gore, loves Bill Clinton and remains proud of it. [A Liberal Life in the City by the Bay  By David Finkel, Washington Post, Apr 27, 2004]

Not surprisingly, the Post focused on California's 8th Congressional District in San Francisco, home of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whom the Almanac of American Politics describes as having a "perfectly liberal voting record.”

The country remains almost evenly divided between the Blues and the Reds (the latter being, in the curious codewords the media have recently crafted, more or less the "conservative" side), and while Mr. Gore in 2000 received more popular votes than George W. Bush, he won only 42 percent of the white vote.

This is of some relevance because it was a white family in San Francisco that the Post profiled for the purpose of finding out What White Liberal America Is Really Like.

What they're like, in case you can't guess, is frightening. The Harrison family, the Post reports, "describe Bill Clinton as 'intelligent,' 'charismatic' and 'a good representation of America.'" The sort of issues Blue Americans think about include such questions as “ ‘Is the United States to be guided by the rigid morality of the Ten Commandments, or by something more elastic?’”

The answers they come up with are odd. Tom Harrison, the head (sort of) of the family,

"thinks that 'politicians tend to be good people' and that government isn't too big, and even though a third of his paycheck goes to taxes, he pays them gladly and would willingly pay more because of what he sees around him every day."

Tom, you see, tells the Post that "life has taught him that you can't have one hard-and-fast rule for everybody. There are grays."

Actually, most people seem to learn that sometime around the age of 15 or so, but if it took Tom his whole life, that's OK. Compared to wife Maryanne, Tom is Nobel Prize material.

Maryanne, she explains to the Post, grew up in "a small, safe, shy, insulated, very Catholic, stay-in-the-neighborhood life," but the liberating excitement of marrying Tom taught her too all about the importance of not having the same rules for everybody and being elastic—especially about "diversity."

"Her world got wider and wider," gurgles the Post, "until she became the person she says she is now: someone who thrives on, rather than insulates herself from, diversity. She has been to a Chinese wedding. She has been to a Buddhist wedding and a Buddhist funeral. She has Passover Seder every year with the neighbors next door. 'See, I love that,' she says. 'I love that. People interest me. They fascinate me.'"

Well, you have to admit, people like Maryanne and Tom and the whole vast intellectual La Brea tar pit where Blue Americans like them live are fascinating too. They think living by rules that forbid murder, theft, lying and adultery is "rigid" and favor a more "elastic" code under which sometimes murder, theft, lying, and adultery are OK. 

You can't have one hard-and-fast rule for everybody, you know.

And then there's Heather, the Harrison's daughter, who does not have two mommies like the other, more famous Heather but does have the misfortune of having two bubbleheads as parents.

You have to feel sorry for Heather because her dad is perfectly happy to fork up a third of his income to the government every year when it could have gone to supporting Heather or somebody else to whom he actually has some obligations.

But Heather seems happy enough, except when faced with lack of diversity.

"When she and her fiancé went house-hunting over the bridge in 83.9 percent white Walnut Creek," the Post reports, "she couldn't wait to get back to San Francisco.’ I don't like just white people,' she says."

No sir, back to those good ole Buddhist weddings and the annual Seder in the 8th District (which happens to be about 49 percent white, incidentally, perhaps not quite as "fascinating" as the Harrisons would prefer).

The diversity at which Heather and her two bubbleheads love to play so much is just as much of a fraud and a fake as all the rest of the gooey liberalism they believe and pretend to embrace.

They can drag diversity out of its toy box anytime they please or stuff it back in if it starts boring or threatening them.

For millions of other Americans who have to live with the consequences of the guilt, sanctimony and sheer shallowness that Blue Americans like the Harrisons help impose, it's not so much fun.

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