Last Call: Hate Is Enough
Carnegie, M.D.
"Last Call: Hate Is Enough" by M. D. Carnegie IHAD COME TO NEW YORK to do a television show about race relations, and race relations were the very first thing I saw: an Arab cabbie beating the...
...The crowd crowed with delight...
...You were terrific," he said...
...With race such a big preoccupation of late, one ad really caught my eye: a McDonald's commercial featuring a black woman entering what seems to be her own art gallery...
...I'm dead serious...
...You CAN TALK ABOUT RACE easily enough, as long as it's your own...
...I hope I don't get fired...
...In the Deep South, we couldn't go nowhere...
...And after the show, the host asked her to appear again...
...His name was 'Jimmy the Greek.' Down South, they were breeding all those brothers and sisters, they were breeding the best to the best...
...ONE THING I'D FAILED TO ANTICIPATE, though, was how hostile a reception I would receive from the "live studio audience...
...Was it supposed to be uplifting, in that it showed a successful black woman in an unusually demanding career...
...LAST CALL by M. D. Carnegie Hate Is Enough IHAD COME TO NEW YORK to do a television show about race relations, and race relations were the very first thing I saw: an Arab cabbie beating the stuffing out of an African colleague while he called him all sorts of names...
...Nate Newton, the 3oo-plus-pound guard of the Dallas Cowboys, attracted some media attention when he was asked, at a pre-Super Bowl press conference, why so many great football players hail from his home state of Florida...
...When I suggested that blacks and whites should work together on the problem, a braided black journalist swiveled in her chair to challenge me...
...People up in Georgia, they could run up north very easily...
...One idea I was capable of expressing in the roughly two minutes I actually had to speak—that the Million Man March was a tragedy in the history of American race relations, marking the first time whites were actively excluded from trying to ameliorate our nation's racial morass, and the first time blacks had rallied en masse around so obvious a bigot—was treated with unimaginable disgust...
...when somebody else does it, that's a hate crime...
...They were screaming throughout the program, shouting down those with whom they disagreed and hollering especially loudly during the down time between commercials...
...Looking on was a white American, also a hack, who had about five teeth and looked as if he couldn't spell his own name...
...We had to go through a whole lot of states to get up there, so we decided to stay in Florida...
...The gallery sells only African art, natch—and once the woman sets down those tasty Mickey D's fries in front of some small stone carvings, the artwork comes to life and starts dancing and singing along to some hack producer's idea of authentic tribal music...
...Newton's reply: "First of all, a man got fired for what I'm going to say...
...When you do it "in house," that's ethnic pride...
...Stay tuned...
...This is our own problem," she shrieked...
...as a motivation to face down one of the head charlatans from Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam on national TV, it was even better...
...Was he kidding...
...82 March 1996 • The American Spectator...
...But who is prepared to say, in 1996, that the racial sensitivities that divide us—pace, Ms...
...Was it racist, in that it suggested the only type of art blacks appreciate is the folk art of the motherland...
...There are people who will protest about whales and vivisection and the plight of the Nicaraguan worker, and now even a hearty group refuses to drink French wine since Chirac ordered another underground test of the atomic bomb...
...As a piece of Manhattan street theater, it was a brilliant welcome back to the city...
...But I wonder how long it will be before there is a backlash by whites against such blatant target marketing...
...Our columnist Mark Steyn refers to America's as the lunch-counter culture—in which all styles and motifs are equally available, lined up next to each other like pies at a diner—but this ad was something else...
...Jimmy the Greek got fired for similar comments, but he's white...
...I knew there would be other kooks on the panel besides Farrakhan's lackey, but I had no idea the people watching the taping of the show would be so uncivilized and barbaric...
...Or was it "a celebration of diversity...
...Now all the best athletes get down there...
...It doesn't have anything to do with you...
...Braided Journalist—are everybody's problem...
...Was it condescending, in that it implied such a woman would still be eating junk food anyway...
...OF COURSE WHAT THE AD DOES primarily is peddle hamburgers to black people —those other questions are the dumb kind that befuddle academics and lefty journalists...
...THE COWBOYS, IN ANY EVENT, ended up losing the Stupor Bowl, which has become more watched for its ridiculously expensive commercials than for the quality of the football game itself...
...I hate these people," the guy screamed out, and then he started swinging, too—at his own taxi...
...No, Nate, you won't get fired...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 3
