Saturday, December 13, 2008
TigerHawk TV: An interview with author Christopher Chambers
We had a delightful visit today with Christopher Chambers, who TigerHawk readers mostly know as a lefty comment troll that I tolerate for some strange reason. Well, in addition to being my old college friend and law school roommate, Chris is a very interesting fellow. He is a lawyer, the blogger behind Nat Turner's Revenge, an associate professor of journalism at Georgetown University, the author of mystery novels, and the editor of an anthology of superhero stories. In the first segment -- I had to bust the interview into four parts to meet the YouTube limits -- Chris reveals that he took up writing at the suggestion of Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, who had warned him that Al Gore might lose the 2000 election, and that Thomas P. Dewey could not have taken down Lucky Luciano without the help of a black graduate Smith College who is herself the grandmother of another African-American novelist.
In the second segment, Chris talks about the historical novel he is writing, "Yella Patsy's Boys," which weaves together the lives of British and American blacks in 2008 and their ancestors who fought in the war in 1812. We also discuss, at some peril, whether Barack Obama will be, in fact, the first black president of the United States.
Yes, that is our kitchen, and yes, I need to learn how to edit these things. Segments three and four will appear in an update to this post.
MORE: In segments three and four, we continue talking about "Yella Patsy's Boys" -- Chris invites Spike Lee or Clint Eastwood to turn it into a movie -- and then, against our better judgment, we discuss the freighted question of the election of Barack Obama and what it means for those Americans who see themselves on the losing side.
13 Comments:
By 
Mystery Meat, at
Sat Dec 13, 11:40:00 PM:
One of you need to put his baseball cap on backwards.
By 
, at
Sun Dec 14, 12:38:00 AM:
"Journalism" and "Holder." What a nasty thing thing to say about and friend and roommate!
Just as the members of the Congressional Black Caucus KNEW that there were no WMD in Iraq, I know that Holder is as dirty as Obama, Blago, JJJ, Rangel, Jefferson and Doofus Dodd!
Ask every Congressional dem (and some pro-Americans) whether they are on a list of VIP auto customers to see what kind of lease agreements they have. We have entered into a new criminal world.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 06:51:00 AM:
I believe the psychologists call it projection.
There was no outcrys at Palin rallys for the death of Obama, it was a smear.
Yet your friend uses that to imagine blue color whites now feel lower than blacks. Complete nonsense.
He's using his perception on racism and projecting it on everyone else.
I think one of the main problems we have is people just like that who think they know what I think.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Dec 14, 09:07:00 AM:
Anon 6:51, I saw the news reports and I never saw them convincingly refuted. John McCain even felt the need to speak out against them, as I recall. Now, I do think that the press greatly amplified whatever did happen and that influenced a lot of people like Chris, and I do not agree with Chris' perception of the situation, but I think it does speak to the big gulf in perceptions that still exists in this country. Chris hardly isolates himself. He has always had a great many white friends, including palpably conservative ones. He has always had some obvious race identity, but with good humor (as you can see), and he has never, that I have seen, played the guilt card. Yet this is what he sees and feels, and I take it to be genuine. You can decide whether you care, but there it is.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 09:42:00 AM:
Exit question for Chris: how is it that the guy who I just saw on TH TV is a lot more thoughtful (and lucid!) than the guy who comments on this blog? (I can see why you two have been friends for a long time, by the way. You must have had a lot of fun arguments through the years).
I enjoyed this segment and look forward to future rants by Mr. Chambers. It is good for us in the "conservative toolshed" to be forced out of the echo chamber once in a while.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 10:10:00 AM:
It was delightful to listen to and watch friends talking, and seeing CC in person removes some of the tinge of nuttiness I sometimes see in his posts. Thanks.
TBTW, I think the claim of a shouted "kill him" at a Florida Palin rally was indeed thoroughly refuted, as Dana Millbank turns out to have been the only person to have heard it. The Secret Service denied the event occurred. Josh Marshall only mentioned the report with a disdainful brush-off. Even Dana Millbank subsequently spoke about the report with an anxiety, trying to correct the misperceptions created by the original article. The other familiar report claiming the same delusion, alleged to have occurred at a Scanton rally, was also refuted by the Secret Service.
By , at
Sun Dec 14, 10:47:00 AM:
Exit question for Chris: how is it that the guy who I just saw on TH TV is a lot more thoughtful (and lucid!) than the guy who comments on this blog?
This has been covered before. I first noted the difference between CC's incoherent TH postings and CC's blog. There was much on CC's blog that I agreed with, in contrast to what he posted at TH, and even if I disagreed with what CC wrote at his own blog, the arguments were well made.
What CC posts at TH are usually poorly reasoned and poorly written arguments, easily refuted. CC is an attorney and a writer who certainly knows how to craft an argument.
My take on CC's postings at TH is that he writes in stream of consciousness mode, as fast as he can for a short time, and posts. He does so to get a reaction from the TH readers, for entertainment, perhaps as meat for his next novel. CC rarely replies to the angry TH posters, which shows he is basically not interested in having a discussion, but in stirring things up. Entertainment.
CC and I do not have as sanguine view of China as many TH posters do.
By SR, at
Sun Dec 14, 04:37:00 PM:
Is this the beginning of something we are going to see when African Americans will accuse Barak of being a sellout. He has to govern the whole country after all including all those pickup drivers.
By Elise, at
Sun Dec 14, 08:57:00 PM:
I did some poking around on the whole “Kill him” story back in October following an argument with a friend and came to the same conclusion as Anonymous 10:10AM although I think Anon is confusing two incidents.
As far as I could tell then, someone did yell “Kill him” at a Palin rally in Clearwater on October 6 but it appears to have been directed at Bill Ayers rather than at Obama. It was a little hard to sort this out because there were a zillion stories floating around and most of them didn’t refer to rallies by date but I did find this from the AP, written on October 10, where the language is torturous but seems to convey the idea (emphasis mine):
The Secret Service confirmed Friday [October 10] that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday [October 6], meaning Obama. There was "no indication that there was anything directed at Obama," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told AP. "We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of caution."
(The original AP story is no longer available but you can find a story with the same quote here. And here's an article citing sources about "kill him" being directed at Ayers, not Obama. This is Patterico so he’s right-leaning but his sources seem in order.)
There was a later reported incident in Scranton on Tuesday, October 14. The Secret Service was unable to find anyone in the crowd to back up the story told by reporter David Singleton:
The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded. ... Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment. ... “We have yet to find someone to back up the story,” Slavoski said. “We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it.”
John Leo provides an interesting discussion of how these two incidents MIRVed into vast crowds of murderous racists screaming epithets and threats at Obama during McCain and (especially) Palin rallies.
By SR, at
Sun Dec 14, 10:04:00 PM:
It is not hard to imagine how such a story can proliferate without modulation when the CC interview
demonstrates that highly educated, well spoken,accomplished people can have a portion of their psyche which still needs to impute such a vicious racism to large portions of the society.
By , at
Mon Dec 15, 06:02:00 PM:
Dear Tigerhawk,
Thanks so much for talking with your friend, CC, on TH TV. It was warm, as well as very informative.
I know from being raised in and escaping from a fully-segregated southern environment the frightening longevity of casual racism.
Although I certainly voted for Bush, and McCain / Palin, I am also very proud of the color-blindness of our United States this Fall.
As a white ex-southern "immigrant" to NY, I feel good that we're making some progress.
By , at
Tue Dec 16, 12:02:00 AM:
Very nice. This member of the Glorious is proud of both of you! Please remind Mrs. TH not to open both fridge doors at the same time. It really wastes electricity.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Dec 16, 10:43:00 PM:
"What CC posts at TH are usually poorly reasoned and poorly written arguments, easily refuted. CC is an attorney and a writer who certainly knows how to craft an argument. My take on CC's postings at TH is that he writes in stream of consciousness mode, as fast as he can for a short time, and posts. He does so to get a reaction from the TH readers, for entertainment, perhaps as meat for his next novel. CC rarely replies to the angry TH posters, which shows he is basically not interested in having a discussion, but in stirring things up. Entertainment."
Like an officially sanctioned troll. Charming.
Too bad it detracts from the blog as a whole. (and probably pisses off co-bloggers)
