Steele & Hughley Lack Any Historical Context On Nazi Germany
03/04/09
RNC Chairman Michael Steele made a fool of himself during his recent appearance on CNN's "D.L. Hughley Breaks The News".
As an aside... D.L. Hughley has a show? Really? When did this happen? I'm not sure how Hughley's past theatrical roles in blockbusters like "Soul Plane" and "Scary Movie 3", and voicing the Gadgetmobile in the big-screen adaptation of "Inspector Gadget" really parlayed into a gig analyzing or "breaking" the news on CNN. But hey, goofy home run calls and sports puns landed Keith Olbermann a job hyperventilating and reciting tired left-wing talking points on MSNBC. So why should we be that surprised? You can be anything in America! Isn't this a great place?
On Hughley's show, there was this very, very peculiar and uncomfortable exchange - first with Chuck D, about where they respectively grew up and the cultural relevancy of and Steele's appreciation for hip-hop, and then Hughley's take on the 2008 Republican National Convention:
A brief transcript, just for posterity's sake:
I'm telling you, if it were the sign alone -- in other words, the tenets of the Republican Party are amazing and they seem warm and welcome. But when I watch it be applied -- like you didn't have to go much further than the Republican National Convention."
"Agreed," replied Steele.
"It literally look like Nazi Germany. It literally did. I make that point, not only are we not welcome -- not only are we not welcome, but they don't even care what we think," explained Hughley.
Now, much of the consternation is that it somehow seemed Steele was in agreement with Hughley's point, as shown through his nodding in agreement at the likening the RNC to a Nazi rally. First and foremost, for not openly challenging and quashing Hughley's assertion, Steele has demonstrated why he has, so far, been a rather poor practitioner of his post as RNC Chair. But frankly, despite some of the particularly and stupendously dopey things Steele has had to say over his short term as RNC Chair - see: bashing of Limbaugh, Rush and subsequent retraction - I watch this and think the "nodding" controversy could easily be attributed to simple projection, over-analyzation and possibly even to just a simple satellite delay between Hughley and Steele in the midst of the broadcast. The nodding is much being made over nothing. I find it near incomprehensible that Michael Steele would ever agree that the RNC had the appearance of Nazi Germany.
That, though, is not to apologize for Michael Steele's embarrassing performance on what should be a completely irrelevant program.
And besides, if anything from the 2008 Presidential campaign had the appearance of a Nazi rally, wouldn't it have to be this:
For those not sufficiently up on their German history, that giant monument in front of which Obama gave his now-famous Berlin speech is the Berlin Victory Column. The column, originally located in Königsplatz and constructed to commemorate and celebrate Prussian military dominance and victory in the Danish-Prussian War, was relocated to Berlin by the Nazis in 1939, in full accordance with their public symbolism of their military might. To this day, it is still widely viewed as a Nazi symbol.
Barack Obama speaks to throngs of people in Berlin, Germany with the Berlin Victory Column as his backdrop, and it's the Republican National Convention that's compared to Nazi Germany? Really?
Perhaps D.L. Hughley forgot the necessary "go go Gadget brain function and concept of historical context" before he made that comparison. Just a thought.