Cynical, Arrogant, Dumb--but Never a Racist

You write a column of opinion, you’re called names. It comes with the turf.

I’ve been accused of being dumb, evil, sinful, petty, arrogant, phony, cynical, vicious, hypocritical and dumber than dumb, all perhaps with justification.

I’ve been called a facist. I’ve been called a communist. I’ve even been called a facist-communist.

I’ve been called a Nazi and I’ve been called a dirty Jew. Someone else charged that I was such a self-hating Jew that I should return my circumcision. And one woman wrote me a letter insisting that I was so sexist that I deserved castration.

I’ve also been labeled a homosexual more than once--by persons who presumed that this, above all else, would cut me to the quick.

Wrong.

What cuts me to the quick is being called a racist.

One good thing about being called a racist: It makes you more careful about calling others racist.

But that’s the only good thing.

The angry message on the telephone recorder said, “I thought your column was very racist.” There were other calls and many letters saying essentially the same thing: that either I was racist or my column was.

All right, you turn out a column contending that allegedly racist remarks attributed to “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney--which he denies making--are not really racist, and you expect to be called racist yourself. You brace yourself and await the onslaught. Again, it comes with the job.

This is not the first time I’ve been called a racist.

It happened after I wrote critically about KABC Channel 7 sportscaster Jim Hill, who is black.

It happened after I wrote a dumber-than-dumb negative review (since recanted many times) of that splendid CBS series “Frank’s Place,” most of whose cast was black.

It happened when I defended Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder’s bumbling remarks relating to the superiority of black athletes as being not racist, but essentially truthful.

It’s probably also happened other times that I no longer recall.

Despite my experience at being called a racist, it still stings.

Some might see this as a cover up, that “the truth hurts” and that “he doth protest too much,” that what I subconsciously fear is that, deep down, I am exactly what I purport to loathe, and that failure to accept this is a form of self-denial.

Well, we do accumulate a lot of baggage beginning in infancy, and there’s no telling what’s gathering dust in the sub-basements of our minds. Me a racist, though? Call me self-deluding, but . . . nahhhhh.

Why, some of my best friends . . . no, scratch that.

Actually, what bothers me most about all of this is how wildly and randomly the charge of racism is made these days, like unloading an AK-47 at a crowd to hit a single target.

Hate and hurt linger in America, nourishing a siege mentality in which the worst is usually expected and the benefit of the doubt is rarely given. Television daily envelopes us in its angry, violent world, feeding our fears and suspicions, turning George Bush’s kinder, gentler society into dreamy myth. We’re not so scared of the Commies anymore, but isn’t that a killer outside your door? A Colombian drug dealer hiding in your closet? A racist under your bed?

Institutionalized bigotry does live, and given this nation’s racist history (we’re on safe ground using “racist” here, yes?), the hair-trigger paranoia is understandable.

That doesn’t make it any more rational or easy to live with, however.

Even before the Andy Rooney incident, a point was reached where writing something critical about a black person--or disagreeing with someone else’s definition of racism--positioned you at the end of a plank above waiting sharks.

The government or thought police didn’t censor you, but you were still in for a lot of trouble. To many of those who might disagree with you, you were not merely wrong, you were also racist.

A sign of maturity is the ability to accept responsibility for the bad along with the good. In the present atmosphere, however, aggressive reporting on embattled Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion S. Barry, for example, is seen by some as automatically racist, as are stories seeming to put Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in a harsh light.

And in this environment, anyone challenging the prevailing wisdom that Rooney’s alleged remarks were racist--while also noting his slurs against gays--is labled racist. I can’t be merely dumb, evil, sinful, petty, arrogant, phony, cynical, vicious, hypocritical or dumber than dumb. I have to be racist.

It doesn’t seem fair. However, that doesn’t mean I hold a grudge or am prejudiced against those people who have made this foolish charge. After all, some of my best friends are fools.