Eugene Kane Watch

The blog Ask Me Later now actually has a “Eugene Kane Watch.”

It’s a backhanded tribute to the black columnist at the Journal-Sentinel that anybody considers it worthwhile to have a “Eugene Kane Watch.”

We’ve tended to view Kane, whom we don’t read very often, as just another black hustler, expressing the kinds of opinions the white liberals running the Journal-Sentinel doubtless hired him to express.

Checking out his blog shows that this is sometimes the case. For example, he welcomes the vote of the Milwaukee Common Council requiring all firms doing business with the city to research and disclose any history of profiting from slavery.

The truth is that this is merely a racial hustle. Most firms with a long history and any interests at all in the South had some connection with slavery. In no case does that affect in any but the most trivial way how much they are worth nor how they do business today.

We’ve discussed this issue before.

Kane is also the “race man” in his discussion of the fact that President Bush has met with leaders of the NAACP.

It’s good to hear President Bush met with NAACP CEO Bruce Gordon and other black leaders at the White House this week. He also met with a group of African-American officials a few weeks ago. It shows he recognizes his image problems with many African-Americans need to be repaired. In previous years, he hasn’t had much dialog with the NAACP so I hope this is a positive sign of change.

Kane fails to mention the vicious attacks that the NAACP has made on the president, including (most notoriously) the 2000 presidential election ad that implied that Bush was somehow responsible for a racial murder in Texas.

The irresponsible behavior of the NAACP, in other words, has been the reason for their exile, and the organization’s election of a more moderate and conciliatory president has opened the possibility of a decent working relationship with the White House.

But where other issues are concerned, Kane can be a bit independent-minded.

He tends to stress how black people don’t have monolithic opinions, for example. A post titled “All blacks don’t think alike” deals with the caller response when Milwaukee station WMCS-AM (1290) discussed the execution of “Tookie” Williams.

About half of the callers felt Tookie should die because he hasn’t admitted his guilt in the deaths of four people in 1989. Others felt he should not be killed because he possessed the kind of street credibility necessary to convince young black males to reject a life of crime.

In another post, Kane links to an article on the blAckamericaweb.com attacking the Hollywood types who made a hero of “Tookie.” The author, Joseph C. Phillips, argues that:

Here again, wealthy celebrities are telling hard working, law-abiding citizens that the example offered by them is inadequate to save their communities; the models of competence, creativity and virtue that are alive in these neighborhoods are simply insufficient. No matter that hundreds of young people find the strength of character — the hope — to resist the gang life. No matter that many of the stars have themselves found the strength to rise out of the tough streets. All that means nothing as compared to the words and example of Tookie Williams.

That black people can be quite independent-minded isn’t news to us.

But it’s news to a lot of the politically correct crowd, for whom an article of faith is that all blacks think alike, and indeed all blacks think just like white liberals and leftists.

And if you don’t agree with the opinion of “all blacks,” you must be a racist.

Kane also sounds a bit conservative in some of his social views. Consider this:

With the recent death of Richard Pryor, some feel it might be time for more African-Americans to follow his example and never use the N-word again. This commentary is by Gregory Kane, a black conservative writer in Baltimore who makes a good case that too many blacks in hip-hop music like Kanye West and Snoop Dogg use the word way too much.

And again:

Not every black person liked Richard Pryor, either

Amid the praise for the late Richard Pryor, here’s a contrarian point of view by a black Daily News columnist who thinks Pryor’s legacy is flawed because of his vulgarity.

Again, all black people don’t think alike.

Indeed.

The mere fact that we have bothered to write this post is an admission that Kane, no matter how wrong-headed about so many issues, has indeed crossed a threshold.

He’s worth reading.