Vol. 4: In Defense of White Men
Be honest: Where would you be without Gutenberg, Edison, and Richard Hopkins?
It’s tough to be a white man these days. Everywhere we go, people denounce us as racists, misogynists, fascists, imperialists, terrorists, or just plain thugs. To hear them talk, you would think we spend our waking hours hitting on women, marching in torchlight parades, shooting up shopping malls, and plotting to kidnap mayors and governors.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m sure I speak for the vast majority of white men when I say that the mere thought of invading some defenseless Third World country and torching its homes while enslaving the male inhabitants and forcing their voluptuous half-naked women to grovel at our feet for mercy is anathema to us. No one among us could imagine barging into an elevator for the sole purpose of cornering a long-legged sexy blonde wearing high heels and a miniskirt so we can grab her buttocks. We wouldn’t dream of settling an argument with some smug Ph.D. know-it-all by handcuffing him to a barbed wire fence, ripping off his pants, slathering honey all over his private parts and then releasing a swarm of killer bees while chortling gleefully over his slow and painful death. It’s just not something that would ever occur to us.
Ever since Clarence Darrow called us “the biggest group of sons of bitches that ever walked the Earth,” white men have made convenient scapegoats for all that’s wrong with the world. But just once, can we look beneath the stereotypes? Over the long scope of human history, can any other demographic group rival the quantity and diversity of white male achievements?
Think about it. Gutenberg gave us movable type. Columbus discovered the New World. Edison gave us the electric light. Jonas Salk gave us the polio vaccine. Richard Hopkins gave us “Dancing with The Stars.” The list is endless.
Ask yourself: What would your cultural life be like without white men like James Levine, who led the Metropolitan Opera through more than 40 years and an unprecedented 2,552 performances, bringing a fresh, clearheaded musicianship to tired old European scores before he was fired for sexually abusing young men? Or Placido Domingo, whose sublime tenor voice uplifted generations of music lovers while performing more than a hundred operas in six languages in the world’s most prestigious opera houses before he was forced to quit due to allegations of sexual harassment? Or Harvey Weinstein, who produced film classics like Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, The English Patient, and The King’s Speech before he was sentenced to 23 years in prison for sexually abusing young actresses? Or Charlie Rose, whose thoughtful and sensitive interviews reinvented the TV talk show genre before he was fired for groping, exposing himself, and making lewd phone calls to his female assistants? Or David Letterman, who brightened the lives of millions of insomniacs as the longest-serving late night talk show host in American TV history while conducting sexual affairs with multiple female subordinates?
And where would amateur sports be without white male role models like Joe Paterno, who ran an exemplary college football program at Penn State for 45 years before he was fired for harboring an assistant coach who routinely sodomized young boys?
Come to think of it, where would Western civilization be today without the moral foundation established by the Catholic Church and sustained for 2,000 years by dedicated white male priests who— well, you get the idea.
With all the talk about the evils of white supremacy, it’s easy to forget that Clarence Darrow, that champion of the underdog, was himself a white man. So was Abraham Lincoln. So was Jonas Salk. And where would the Civil Rights movement be without Martin Luther King?
(Oh, wait— King wasn’t white. That was the whole point, wasn’t it?)
I ask you: What other demographic group could produce a multi-faceted individual like Benjamin Franklin— publisher, author, postmaster, inventor, scientist, diplomat, and Founding Father? Or Ignacy Jan Paderewski— an acclaimed composer and concert pianist who also served as prime minister of Poland? Or Donald Trump— a self-made billionaire, successful business executive, and best-selling author who reinvented reality TV and won two presidential elections by landslides? And did I mention Jonas Salk?
(OK, OK— Donald Trump wasn’t self-made. And he isn’t a billionaire. And his companies went bankrupt six times. And his books were written by ghostwriters. And someone else created his TV show. And he lost the popular vote decisively both times he ran for president. Still, you must admit he’s led a remarkable life.)
I know what you’re thinking: White men drove Native Americans from their ancestral homelands. We subjected Black Americans to 244 years of slavery plus another hundred years of legal racial segregation. White men also orchestrated the Holocaust and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and sent 20 million Russians to the Gulags. But hey— nobody’s perfect! Let’s have a little fairness here, some sense of proportion. Did I mention Jonas Salk?
What makes white so fucking special? Put away the crayons Dan.
Classifying individuals by color is the problem.....what about "character" ala MLK?