April 8^th

Mona Charen believes that we just have too many victims.  “Victim status is the only prism through which progressives see American life.” This sentence is from a recent column. It’s exaggerated of course. I’m a progressive and I certainly don’t consider Mona Charen to be a victim, well, perhaps a victim of her own near-sighted conservative views.

According to Mona the only real victims worthy of the name in this country are blacks. The descendants of former slaves are truly victims, no one else need apply! Mona says, “There is no analogizing the black experience to other groups.” Nonsense! Mona has apparently never heard about our treatment of Native Americans. Since there are so few of them left there’s no reason to worry about what we did to them, right Mona?

Mona parodies the Biblical “In the beginning’ verses: “In the beginning there was discrimination against blacks and we saw that it was bad. And then there was discrimination against women and we said, “Just as it is wrong to discriminate against blacks, it is wrong to discriminate against women.” And then Mona claims that by analogy this mantra was applied to just all sorts of groups…but she says that doesn’t hold. Because the treatment of blacks has been so bad that nothing could be analogous to it. No one denies that the treatment of blacks has been bad, indeed terrible, but the way to stop that from happening to another group is to take action when discrimination starts. I guess Charen would prefer to wait and hope that the rash of current attacks against Mosques and Synagogues would just stop.

She claims that liberals have argued that “women were just like American blacks persecuted for centuries by sexism and needing affirmative action…”( I think Mona Charen wants to assume the robes of Phyllis Schlafly who wants women to stay in the kitchen and under their husband’s thumbs.) Charen must believe it’s just fine for government programs to give more support per capita to men’s athletic programs than to women’s. Tell us Mona, should women have the vote? Should they be paid the same wage for the same work? Perhaps they should all wear Burkas in the work place lest men become uncontrollably aroused.

To suggest that there are no victims worthy of the name because none of them have endured what black Americans have endured is to suggest that we ignore finding a cure for the common cold because it isn’t as bad as pneumonia…more nonsense from the right!