Kathleen Townsend needs to visit the Barbershop

Trevor Bothwell

Last Thursday featured the first televised debated between Maryland gubernatorial candidates Rep. Robert Ehrlich (R-MD) and current Democratic Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. The debate featured its share of mud slinging from both candidates, and in the end campaign chairs for both parties predictably declared victory for their respective camps.

Big surprise, right?

At present, analysts have the two candidates pegged in a statistical dead heat. Ehrlich has faced criticism due to his conservative voting record on issues such as school funding and Medicare, while Townsend has been accused of being directly responsible for Maryland’s current budget crisis (to the tune of a $1.3 billion deficit). The argument from Democrats pretty much goes like this: We need to tax, tax, tax in order to spend, spend, spend everyone else’s money on all our poor, helpless children, minorities, and seniors. Oh, and by the way, you’ll likely be heading to Dante’s last circle of hell if you don’t agree.

When it comes to social programs, everyone knows it’s not about how much money you dole out from taxes when it comes to running these programs effectively, but how efficiently you spend the money once you get it. But the one issue of the debate that has received the least public scrutiny to date, indeed the system of beliefs upon which the success of most social programs hinges, was Mrs. Townsend’s attack against Mr. Ehrlich’s opposition to race-based affirmative action policies.

According to the Washington Times, Mrs. Townsend specifically stated, “[Mr. Ehrlich] opposes affirmative action based on race. Well, let me tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination was based on race. Jim Crow was based on race, and affirmative action should be based on race.”

The forum, held at Morgan State University and sponsored by the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, proved to be an appropriate venue for the lieutenant governor to air such criticism. The floor erupted with cheers upon her announcement, and Mr. Ehrlich was challenged to get a word in edgewise amid the slew of boos and jeers he faced throughout the night. Classy.

Surely the Townsend team knew this would be the case, which is likely the reason they had declined to partake in a televised debate until last Thursday. And Mrs. Townsend has already declared that the next debate should not be held in front of an audience. The Democratic gubernatorial hopeful’s lead in the polls has fallen to a tie, so it’s no wonder her team is interested in getting a big shot in early, only to suggest that her counterpart shouldn’t have an equal opportunity (there’s no irony here, apparently) to host a debate in front of his primary supporters.

Brilliant, really. Or is it?

Recent history has proven that Republican gubernatorial candidates in Maryland have been little more than a formality come election year, regardless of their previous political success. This year, the Democrats are facing a challenger who has proved his worth in the Maryland legislature and in Congress. But if integrity plays any part at all at the polls this November, Mrs. Townsend herself might just be the best hope for those of us who are desperately praying that the state of Maryland turns from “blue” to “red” after the election.

It’s one thing for Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson to play the race card, however ridiculous and offensive it has ever been. But for Kathleen Townsend to stand before a crowd of primarily minority (read: African American) voters and imply that they need her in order to advance, that “my fight is your fight, my cause is your cause,” it has to infuriate black American taxpayers who have had just about enough of the prevailing mantra that they can’t get anywhere in this world without the “white man’s” help.

Ignorant on their surface, Mrs. Townsend’s proclamations do nothing but help to exacerbate tension between whites and blacks, aiding only the potential dissolution of equality in this country, not any remaining hints of discrimination by either side. Someone should probably inform Kathleen Townsend that slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow laws ended decades ago.

Here’s some political irony: For years, liberal feminists have chastised men for daring to have an opinion on abortion, as they claim that men could never know what is best for a woman’s body. But it’s apparently fine and dandy with liberals that some rich white chick (a Kennedy, no less) can claim to understand the historical plight and struggles of African Americans. This is to say nothing of the blatant appeal by Mrs. Townsend for the “black vote,” certainly not an unpopular policy scheme among almost every Democrat; it’s just hard to envision a Republican ever being allowed to target an audience because it’s not African American (not that he or she would want to, mind you).

And now for some cultural irony: Mrs. Townsend’s comments favoring race-based affirmative action policies came the same week that the movie Barbershop was the No. 1 film in America. The film, criticized by Jesse Jackson last week because it contains negative references (a.k.a. jokes) about Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and (most tellingly) Jesse Jackson himself, is a movie about Eddie (played by Cedric the Entertainer), a veteran barber who works in a shop where black folks are allowed to speak their minds; it was written, directed, and produced by black people and features an all-black cast, except for one white character who wants to be black, as told by National Review Online writer Rod Dreher in an article last week.

According to Dreher, Barbershop impresses upon its audience the message “that the younger generation of black Americans are throwing away the gains of their ancestors through laziness, self-centeredness, lack of discipline, greed, and a weakness for seeing themselves as eternal victims,” a vision that has been timelessly championed by leaders like Jesse Jackson.

Dreher goes on in his review to explain that the movie relates the importance of hard work, determination, and self-confidence to black progress, and urges today’s younger generation of blacks to be self-reliant and independent. It argues against the validity of reparations for slavery and sends the message that a culture of grievance and dependence has been primarily responsible for keeping inner city black America down, not conservative politicians or white America.

The prevailing theme of Barbershop runs antithetical to the Democrats’ self-congratulating view that African Americans can only achieve with their help. That Jesse Jackson is infuriated with a success story like Barbershop, demanding that MGM censor the film, only paradoxically substantiates the claim that the majority of Democratic politicians and leftist liberals care more about self-serving ideological rhetoric and social programs than they actually do about the advancement and equality of all people.

Moreover, that Kathleen Townsend can stand before an audience and assert her unyielding affection for played out race-based affirmative action policies indicates that we may not in fact be moving away from a time of actual discrimination as much as we pretend we are. For a party that generally claims that “even more violence” is not a solution to existing violence, you’d think they’d be a little more consistent than to favor combating hypothetical intolerance with authentic bigotry.

Maryland needs a governor who will appreciate the hard earned tax dollars that make implausible social programs like affirmative action strategies possible in the first place, not one who will continue to exploit minorities as a means of obtaining more votes. And contrary to popular opinion, those in the minority community will profit more with Robert Ehrlich in the governor’s mansion than Kathleen Townsend.

Perhaps Mrs. Townsend needs to go have a chat with Eddie in his barbershop and come back in 2008.

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Trevor Bothwell is senior editor of The Right Report (therightreport.com).

Send comments to: bothwell@therightreport.com