Beck, Dobbs Fear the Rise of Minorities: Rich

White elites too often succumb to 'Village People populism'

By Wesley Oliver, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 2, 2009 11:07 AM CDT

(Newser) – A nation bored by dreary, knotty debates about health care found relief in another National Conversation on Race. “This one,” as Frank Rich writes in the New York Times of last week’s ballyhooed Beer Summit, “ended with a burp,” but the hangover could last well over 30 years. Census counters say the US will become a white-minority country by 2042—a prospect fueling hysteria among the Lou Dobbs and Glenn Becks of the world.

“What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for,” Rich says. It’s no surprise then that the “birthers” resurfaced just as “Gatesgate” boiled over and Sonia Sotomayor cruised toward Senate confirmation. “We’re just at the start of what may be a 30-year struggle. Beer won’t cool the fury of those who can’t accept the reality that America’s racial profile will no longer reflect their own.”

[Images (7)]

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President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have a beer with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., second from left, and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley at the White House. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Glasses of beer sit on the table as President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have a beer with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and police Sgt. James Crowley at the White House. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Fox News host Glenn Beck labeled President Obama a racist with "a deep-seated hatred for white people." (Photo: Business Wire)

CNN's Lou Dobbs is a "birther enabler," Frank Rich says. (AP Photo/DMI, Sylvain Gaboury,File)

In this 2005 file photo provided by CNN, news anchor Lou Dobbs sits on the set of his show, "Lou Dobs Tonight," in New York. (AP Photo/CNN, Mark Hill, File)

This 2004 file photo from video originally provided by CNN shows Lou Dobbs on the set of "Lou Dobbs Tonight." (AP Photo/CNN)

In this May 5, 2009 file photo, Glenn Beck attends the Time 100 Gala, a celebration of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, file)

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White elites try to mask their anxieties by patronizingly adopting working-class whites as their pet political surrogates: Joe the Plumber, New Haven firemen, a Cambridge police officer. Call it Village People populism. - Frank RIch, the New York Times

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Beck, Dobbs Fear the Rise of Minorities: Rich