Candace Owens Is Racist White America’s Black Friend and She Just Told Congress That White Nationalism Isn’t a Thing
Stephen A. Crockett Jr. Today 4:45pm •Filed to: Candace Owen
Illustration for article titled Candace Owens Is Racist White America’s Black Friend and She Just Told Congress That White Nationalism Isn’t a Thing Photo: Zach Gibson (Getty Images)
Unfortunately for the world, Candace Owens is a thing.
I want her not to be a thing, or, even better, a thing of the past like Furbys and AOL Instant Messenger.
Yet, here we are talking about Candace Owens because she is trotted out by the far-right whenever there is a discussion on white nationalism because Candace Owens is the black person that all racists are talking about when they say they have a black friend.
On Tuesday, Owens sat before the House Judiciary Committee and stated with a straight face:
“We’re hearing [terms like ‘white nationalism’] sent around today because what they want to say is that brown people want to be scared, which seems to be the narrative that we hear every four years ahead of a presidential election.”
She also added that the Democrats panel was focused on “fear-mongering, power and control” rather than on the issue of racism.
Owens, communications director for conservative group Turning Point USA, is boring. Even when she’s trying to be controversial or spouting goofy shit like when she stated that the Southern Strategy was a myth, famed director Ava DuVernay (and my make-believe sister in my head) had to come gather her ass on Twitter.
She’s just boring. Not because she’s not trying to be exciting, or provocative or whatever it is that she does. She’s boring because we all know a Candace Owens. She was the kid that kept a list of all the kids who behaved badly while there was a substitute. She was the sister at the PWI that couldn’t tell you where the Black Student Union was because she didn’t believe it should be there. She’s the black woman that still doesn’t know what product works best for her hair because no auntie told her that she can’t use white lady shampoo.
At this point, Candace Owens is a fountain drink at McDonald’s or an oatmeal creme pie; even at her best, she is just empty calories and something you’ve seen a million times before.
So Candace Owens sat in front of the panel and did exactly what you’d expect her to do: she waxed on about how white nationalism isn’t on the rise but rather that there’s a ploy to scare all the brown people into believing that white nationalism is a thing.
Even Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California was all of us as he exposed Owens’ comments that she made concerning Adolf Hitler and nationalism.
“Of all the people that Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens,” Lieu said. “I don’t know Ms. Owens, I’m not going to characterize her. I’m going to let her own words do the talking.”
And then he played a clip of her normalizing Hitler, a move white nationalists do to try and shift the story of Hitler as a deranged leader of the Nazi Party to a sitcom dad with a poorly shaved mustache.
But even this “gotcha” moment barely got a rise out of Lieu who knew he had her trapped as he played the audio from a talk Owens gave in London:
Inside the Collapsing Media Empire of Deceased GOP Sleaze-Peddler Andrew Breitbart
[...]
The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: "Andrew Breitbart was complicated. He clearly saw around the corner of where journalism was headed but the ways in which he used that insight rightfully raise questions about his ultimate motives... If you loved him, you really loved him. And if you hated him, well you really hated him. Having met Breitbart on a few occasions and corresponded with him infrequently over the years, I can't imagine he would want it any other way."
This is how the mainstream press describes great iconoclasts, not paid hatchet-men and extraction industry tools like Breitbart. It's uncanny how these major media obits synced with the rebel-washed image of himself that Breitbart pushed on the public, as for example this quote from his book "Righteous Indignation":
"My mission isn't to quash debate — it's to show that the mainstream media aren't mainstream, that their feigned objectivity isn't objective, and that open, rigorous debate is a positive good in our society. Man, how I long for the days of Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce."
Slate's Dave Weigel quoted that very excerpt in his Breitbart obituary; what's interesting is Weigel's smart decision to edit the next sentence in that quote:
"Today, the only people upholding their free-speech legacies are conservatives like Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh."
Weigel's decision to edit out that sentence from his Breitbart quote changes everything — put that sentence in, and Weigel's Breitbart is suddenly a lot less interesting and unique and trailblazing. That edit was emblematic of the mainstream media's love affair with an otherwise garden variety GOP sleaze-peddler.
Breitbart, of course, had nothing in common with the comedians whose anti-establishment spirit he claimed to embody. Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce came up from poverty and overcame anti-Semitism and entrenched, violently enforced racism to wield their wit against powerful forces. Bruce was hounded throughout his career by the FBI, local cops and eventually blacklisted from nearly every comedy club in the United States. Whereas Breitbart collaborated with the FBI and New York police to spy on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Perhaps the only thing Bruce had in common with Breitbart, who spent his career in a mostly uncritical national limelight, was his untimely death at age 40 while in the throes of paranoia and emotional collapse.
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