TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2026
But also, subsection (b) of the Voting Rights Act: In fairness, American incoherence is just part of a much larger human story.
Here in America, one current snowstorm of incoherence got its start in 1982, when the United States Congress agreed, by overwhelming margins, to add some murky language to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
At that time, the Congress added subsection (b) to Section 2 of that important piece of legislation.
Borrowing from the later Wittgenstein, had "language gone on holiday" in that addition to the Voting Rights Act? To a large extent, we're going to say that it pretty much had. You can peruse subsection (b) below
SECTION 2 OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT
42 U.S.C. § 1973. Denial or abridgement of right to vote on account of race or color through voting qualifications or prerequisites; establishment of violation.
a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of theright of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 1973b
(f)(2) of this title, as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
(b) A violation of subsection (a) of this section is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) of this section in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.
To be clear, it was subsection (b) which was added in 1982, in part for reasons which Carl Hulse described last month in the New York Times.
Did language "go on holiday" in that new part of the Voting Rights Act? We're going to say that it did! Even today, forty-four years later, it's virtually impossible to untangle the balls of confusion which have come into being in the wake of the vacation taken by clear, concise language within that jumble of words.
Somewhat oddly, there's one declaration in subsection (b) which seems to be fairly straightforward. It comes at the very end of this addition to the original VRA:
[N]othing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.
Paraphrasing slightly, this new subsection said that members of a protected class are not guaranteed "proportional representation" in (for example) the House of Representatives. You may think that was a lousy provision but, in fairly straightforward language, that's what this new subsection said.
You may think that's a lousy provision but there it sits, in fairly straightforward language, right there in the VRA. Oddly, the recent Supreme Court cases which have generated anger and controversy seem to involve claims by plaintiffs who were demanding proportional representation under terms of the Voting Rights Act.
The Act doesn't guarantee such representation. To appearances, plaintiffs seemed to be seeking it all the same
Proportional representation might seem to be fair. In principle, it would seem that it plainly would be fair," whatever objections might arise with respect to some such legal requirements. That said, subsection (b) seems to say that there is no right to some such outcome on the part of the "protected classes" under consideration.
If no such outcome is guaranteed, is the active pursuit of some such outcome constitutionally permissible? It seems that's a question the Court was batting around in its recent decisions.
At any rate, a ball of confusion was set into motion when Congress passed that new subsection. According to Hulse's account, the Republican Party supported that new subsection for a grimly political reason:
According to Hulse's account in the New York Times, the GOP wanted to cram Black voters into majority Black districts in the hope that this would help them win congressional seats in adjacent districts. According to Hulse, this was part of the GOP's attempt to win control of the solid South, a region which was slowly moving from solidly D to solidly R at the time in question.
That last part of subsection (b) seems to be reasonably straightforward. Did language go on holiday in other parts of that new subsection? Also, has language been on holiday in the decades of legal and journalistic writing which have followed the creation of that subsection?
We're inclined to say that the answer is yes—that an era of American incoherence has been added to the much longer story of human incoherence.
It's sad but plainly it's true. As a species, we the humans simply aren't built for this kind of analysis. That said, we'll continue to try to show you what we mean when we say that "language has gone on holiday" with respect to subsection (b) of the Voting Rights Act.
Meanwhile, a larger chasm in understanding opened up yesterday, first on The Five, then five hours later on Gutfeld! Believe it or not, this was one of Greg Gutfeld's handful of opening jokes on his eponymous "cable news" program:
GUTFELD (6/15/26): At Sunday night's Freedom 250, fighter Josh Hokit ended his post-fight speech by yelling, "Michelle Obama is a man!"
AUDIENCE: Applause
GUTFELD [scolding audience]: Terrible! Ohhhhh! Don't clap! Don't clap!
GUTFELD: Barack Obama angrily responded, "Leave him out of it!"
AUDIENCE: Laughter
GUTFELD [feigning bewilderment]: I must have misread that.
He delivered the joke at 10:01. While hiding behind several beards, the little guy pretended that the former president had referred to his wife as "him."
You can see the angry fellow perform this function simply by clicking here. It's as we've told you again and again: "Michelle is a man" and "Barack is gay" are two of this angry nut-ball's favorite themes.
He pushes a large assortment of such themes at his large Red American audience. He's paid $9 million by the corporation to perform this messaging function.
It's as we've told you again and again. Until he's told to stop by his corporate owners, this little guy isn't going to quit. And whatever you may think about the current state of the nation, therein lies a major societal problem.
Earlier yesterday, on The Five, Jessica Tarlov had explicitly raised a perfectly sensible question. Specifically addressing Gutfeld himself, this is what she said:
“Why can’t you just say that the guy should never have said that Michelle Obama is a man?"
Why can't you simply say it, she asked. It was a perfectly obvious question.
Gutfeld followed with an angry, multifaceted response in which he histrionically defended his refusal to reject Hokit's insulting remark. After that, Emily Compagno offered one of her hopelessly garbed orations in which she too seemed to refuse to say that Hokit shouldn't have said it.
Discussions of the Voting Rights Act come from the higher end of American public discourse. The intellectual squalor frequently driving the Fox News Channel comes from a whole different realm.
That said, even on its higher end, our public discourse is so unskilled that there is no real chance that anyone could ever untangle the endless confusions surrounding the recent Supreme Court decisions about the Voting Rights Act.
Meanwhile, the tribal anger of players like Gutfeld and the Compagno reflect a silent secession from the existing American project. Whatever you think of some such secession, a secession like that can't be easily brokered, especially when our major mainstream Blue American orgs refuse to report or discuss the fact of this rebellion.
Over at Mediaite, Sarah Rumpf has reported what Gutfeld said on The Five, with videotape included. Rumph has thereby provided a valuable service.
True to the rules which seem to obtain at that site, no one at Mediaite has reported what Gutfed did, five hours later, on his eponymous primetime show. Also, Rumpf failed to record the garbled non-discussion discussion from the perpetually garbled Compagno. What if they staged a civil war and the press corps refused to come?
We'll continue to discuss each of these rolling events, the sacred and the profane. For the record, we humans aren't built for this line of work, and that isn't going to change.
"While hiding behind several beards, the little guy pretended that the former president had referred to his wife as "him."
ReplyDeleteSeveral commenters here pointed out the inappropriateness and offensiveness of Somerby using the term "beard" to refer to Gutfeld's show, on which there is nothing related to the actual meaning of "beard" happening. Somerby goes right on with his misappropriation of that term, ignoring its meaning and transferring it to a context where there are many better ways of describing what Gutfeld does.
You could claim that Somerby doesn't read his comments and thus doesn't know that anyone objects to what he is saying, but that doesn't excuse his ignorance in the first place. And then there is the irony that Somerby is pretending to object to someone calling Michelle Obama a man while spitting on the need for gay men to marry women in order to protect their gayness from persecution, including job loss and imprisonment.
To compound the weirdness, Somerby has taken to referring to Gutfeld as a little guy. When did referring to any height become a derogatory term? Robert Reich, someone I admire, is less than 5 ft tall and talks in his bio about being bullied and consequently making opposing bullying part of his life's mission. Trump bullies people. The right wing bullies people. Somerby bullies people like Gutfeld by calling him "little" when Gutfeld can legitimately be criticized on the basis of his behavior without referring to a physical characteristic that he has no control over.
Somerby tried to discuss toxic masculinity a week or so ago, but he apparently missed the point that men basing their dominance hierarchy on height and strength is part of the same masculinism Somerby called "bred in the bone" and the result of too much testosterone (too much manliness) and not failure to teach men that attributes that can be developed, such as courage, hard work, persistence, integrity, honesty, character make one a man, not muscles or raw aggression or gay-baiting.
Calling Michelle Obama a man is a misapplication of terms. Calling the people on Gutfeld's show "beards" is a similar misapplication of a term with a different meaning. Somerby is just as bad as Trump and his ignorant UFC rabble when he implies that Gutfeld is gay because his "guests" or "hosts" cover for him by laughing at unfunny jokes, when being or having a beard implies denying your reality and living a lie to have the same life heterosexuals take for granted.
There are stupid trolls here who think they have said something when they call others faggots. Somerby did the same thing to Gutfeld, insulting gays in the process and ignoring a history of subjugation, because Somerby is too lazy to describe what Gutfeld actually is, what he does and why it is wrong. That makes Somerby no different and no better than the flies he attracts to his blog with his thinly disguised attacks on the left. And if Somerby is slyly laughing up his sleeve at this kind of thing, he is as ugly as they come and belongs on the same side of the fence as Trump and his evil goons.
"Earlier yesterday, on The Five, Jessica Tarlov had explicitly raised a perfectly sensible question. Specifically addressing Gutfeld himself, this is what she said:
ReplyDelete“Why can’t you just say that the guy should never have said that Michelle Obama is a man?"
Why can't you simply say it, she asked. It was a perfectly obvious question."
And yet Somerby routinely targets Tarlov, while praising Rumpf for the same behavior.
Somerby's motives are as naked as Trump's, another man with no self-awareness, who never introspects and externalizes every impulse (blames others for his own behavior). Somerby resents that Tarlov has a career while he did not. She asks Gutfeld the question to his face but Somerby only finds fault.
I don't know whether Somerby has invested in Mediaite or gotten paid to promote it, but his favoritism toward that news aggregator is as obvious as the UFC product placement on the White House lawn. Even Somerby has his grift.
"We'll continue to discuss each of these rolling events, the sacred and the profane."
ReplyDeleteHere Somerby borrows another famous book title, using it in a context where it does not fit.
"The phrase "The Sacred and the Profane" most commonly refers to the classic 1957 book The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by renowned historian Mircea Eliade."
The term profane in that title and in other discussions using the dichotomy, as by Emile Durkheim, does not refer to bad language or sex, but to the mundane events of everyday life, while sacred refers to "things set apart, extraordinary, and forbidden that inspire awe and reverence."
Somerby is not going to be talking about the routine events of everyday life but to things he considers out-of-bounds in a bad way. Thus this particular book and concept does not fit his own fetish over reciting Gutfeld jokes and then blaming the press for not repeating them to a wider audience, while claiming that Democrats put Trump into power by just being our Democratic selves.
What did Somerby discuss today that could be considered sacred? I don't see anything.
In all of Somerby's discussion today, couldn't he have pointed out that Michelle Obama is not a man, that this is a bizarre smear on the former first lady perpetrated by right wing conspiracy theorists, entirely fabricated to hurt both Obama and trans people in general? Why can't he say that? This seems like a perfectly obvious question about Somerby.
Polls said if Michelle had replaced Biden she would have won by double digits. Republicans still grossly try to insult this fabulous beautiful mother of two. Republicans really are the party of jaggoffs and weirdos.
DeleteIs Somerby's point that if the Voting Rights Act had not corrupted American politics, Michelle Obama (and her husband) would never have been able to run for President and we wouldn't be dealing with Trump now?
ReplyDeleteI am having trouble seeing what the VRA has to do with Gutfeld, other than that obvious conclusion...
Obama moved to Chicago to participate in politics, starting as a community organizer on the South Side. He did that because Chicago was heavily black due to the Great Migration of black people from the South to Northern cities like Chicago in order to escape Jim Crow and find work. That influx made Chicago a center of civil rights and political organization for black politicians, the best place to start his career, in much the same way as fledgling writers and actors were drawn to NYC where there were like-minded people and plenty of opportunities. Both Obamas illustrate what talented, intelligent, hard-working black people can do when doors are open to them.
ReplyDeleteSomerby should be contrasting that with what happened in the South, where it took legislation to open those same doors to black political leaders. But somehow I don't think Somerby sees things that way. He seems to think that "language has gone on holiday" because others disagree with his interpretation of the damage done by gerrymandering black districts, as opposed to the recent gerrymandering of those districts out of existence, so that black leaders cannot be elected in the South.
This is the new "up is down" language abuse being promoted by the Somerby and the right wing, in honor of Trump's authoritarian regime.
"it's virtually impossible to untangle the balls of confusion which have come into being in the wake of the vacation taken by clear, concise language within that jumble of words."
ReplyDeleteNo, it isn't virtually impossible or even difficult to understand this subsection. In the years following the initial passage of the VRA legislators in the states of the Old South crafted a new set of ways to dodge the mandates of the bill. They crafted ways to allow black people to vote but only in a limited sense. They were permitted a ballot, but the process of nominating and electing candidates was carefully managed to avoid giving black voters any influence over the outcome.
The later 1982 provision was Congress telling these legislators, "We see you and we see what you're doing. And what you're doing is against the law, so knock it off. Oh, and before you run around yelling about quotas, shit up because it isn't a quota."
Really, it's just that simple.
*shut
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