In an lengthy New York Times story about Herschel Walker -- the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia and a football legend in the state -- multiple black Democrats from Walker's childhood community are quoted, effectively calling him a sellout. One particularly stinging quote comes from a man who declares that Walker, who is black, is nevertheless "not part of the black community." There's very little balance in the story, unsurprisingly. The election cycle is coming down to the wire, and the Georgia race may very well determine control of the United States Senate. Again. The Times is dutifully doing its part for its preferred party, dispatching a white reporter to report the story of Walker's alleged non-blackness:
Amazing. If Herschel Walker had a "D" next to his name, this piece would have never even been proposed, let alone written. Instead, the NYT sends a white reporter to Georgia to write a story about how Walker is "not part of the Black community.”https://t.co/nfCUQ3NV6J
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) October 2, 2022
In a predominantly Black neighborhood of small homes about a block from where Mr. Walker went to high school, nine people, including a man who said he was Mr. Walker’s cousin, gathered on a steamy Saturday in July to eat and talk in the shade. No one planned to vote for Mr. Walker. Most scoffed at the thought. Around the corner, a retired teacher named Alice Pierce said nice things about Mr. Walker’s mother and family, as most people do. “But I’m not going to vote for him, I’ll be honest with you,” she said. Fearful of repercussions in a small town, and out of respect for members of the Walker family who still live in the area, many Black residents in Wrightsville spoke only under the condition of anonymity...“Herschel’s not getting the Black vote because Herschel forgot where he came from,” Mr. Dixon said. “He’s not part of the Black community.” Such feelings toward Mr. Walker have been present for decades. They are flowering ahead of November’s elections.
The article traces this antipathy back to racial unrest and protests in the community decades ago, which Walker chose to sit out:
Two nights after Easter, the courthouse square filled with about 75 Black protesters and twice as many white ones. The Black protesters were attacked by the white crowd, and sheriff’s deputies joined in, Black leaders told reporters. No one was arrested. Violence continued sporadically for weeks. Schools and factories closed for fear of outbursts. A little girl, a woman and a policeman were hurt by gunfire. A cafe burned. Mr. Walker never got involved. Mr. Walker had several other white mentors in town, including an owner of a service station where Mr. Walker worked and a farmer who had employed his parents. Another was a math teacher, Jeanette Caneega. “As a student in school, his role in society was not to solve the racial problems of the world,” she said this summer...Mr. Walker soon left Wrightsville and rarely spoke about the episode. He declined to be interviewed for this article. In college, when he was asked by a reporter about the friction back home, Mr. Walker said that he was “too young” and “didn’t want to get involved in something I didn’t know much about.”
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The thesis of the story is that Walker turned his back on his black identity on his way to stardom. It quotes black people criticizing him, and white people defending him. Subtle. Meanwhile, Saturday Night Live is also pitching in for the team, disproportionately mocking Republicans and conservatives, despite Democrats holding unified power in Washington -- and despite the ongoing rolling comedy of errors from top Democrats, ranging from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris to Nancy Pelosi. Instead, the SNL audience was treated to a Trump-centric cold open (with a brief reference to the dearth of Biden mockery), and also this:
If SNL allowed themselves to do more than 1 in every 40 jokes about Democrats they’d find there’s some hilarious material to work with.
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) October 2, 2022
They got into Ted Cruz’s vote on the electoral count act — but couldn’t manage more than 1 joke about Biden’s last 4 months. https://t.co/yOgtY4a41R
A sketch featuring McConnell and Walker, plus a dig at Ted Cruz, but barely a word about the sitting president and the mess he's made. Cutting edge stuff, gang. Since we're on the subject of Georgia, and in case you'd missed it, allies of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams filed a lawsuit against the state's election reforms, which she'd falsely smeared as Jim Crow 2.0 and racist voter suppression. These lies resulted in boycotts and other economic harms to the state, from which she's subsequently and frantically sought to distance herself. Even after actual reality eviscerated her complaints, she continued to stick to her wild claims, preposterously arguing that suppression doesn't necessarily require votes to be suppressed, and that record-shattering turnout under the new system didn't disprove her lies. This past week, a judge ruled on her suit, and it did not end well for her:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Judge upholds Georgia election laws on all counts in voting rights case"https://t.co/Fdeuy96ulT
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 1, 2022
A federal judge on Friday evening ruled that Georgia’s election law does not violate voters’ constitutional rights, dealing a blow to Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group aligned with the Democratic nominee for governor, Stacey Abrams. U.S. District Court Judge Steven Jones ruled against all the claims brought by Fair Fight Action...“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the Voting Rights Act,” Judge Jones wrote in his 288-page order. The judge, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, added that the “burden on voters is relatively low” and that Fair Fight Action did not provide “direct evidence of a voter who was unable to vote, experienced longer wait times, was confused about voter registration status.”
The Obama-nominated judge ruled against all of her group's claims. Every last one. A total judicial rout. But guess how Stacey reacted?
It would be hard for anyone to know from reading this thread that Abrams is reacting to a federal judge throwing out a lawsuit from her allies and upholding the GA voting laws: https://t.co/E8sOUnPHOI https://t.co/qWwrzKPoN2
— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 1, 2022
She declared victory, hilariously. Because, as we know, Stacey Abrams doesn't lose. And when she does, she won't admit it. How fitting. I'll leave you with this: Because election denialism is currently condemned by her tribe, Abrams -- who has been hugely rewarded for her own election denialism -- is now trying to rewrite the history of her 2018 conspiracy theories. She's trying to pretend that she never denied that she'd lost, shameless spin that the Washington Post's fact-checker can't abide:
Abrams, who lost the 2018 GA gov race, "has said the election was 'stolen' and ... that 'I won.' She suggested that election laws were 'rigged' ... She refused to say [Kemp] was the 'legitimate' governor."
— Will Saletan (@saletan) September 29, 2022
Now she claims "I have never denied that I lost." https://t.co/f8E2RVxQgX
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