{"id":592,"date":"2025-12-03T10:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T10:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp_stories\/?p=592"},"modified":"2026-08-14T22:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T22:27:14","slug":"ta-nehisi-coates-ezra-klein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/?p=592","title":{"rendered":"Ta-Nehisi Coates \/ Ezra Klein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>December, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this brohaha about Charlie Kirk sprung up while I was re-organizing all these posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have thoughts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Overall I am <em>on Team Coates<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think Ezra is full of s&#8211;t on his political recommendations for how the left can get it&#8217;s mojo back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coates is right that Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger and deserves respect only two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>getting killed in an awful way that should elicit sympathy from any feeling human<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>and being a very effective salesman for his hateful stuff.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s it, that&#8217;s everything good that Coates (and I) have to say about him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The stuff Kirk was selling is reprehensible, but he was very good at selling it!  Then he got murdered the way he did which put him in the Racist Martyr Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So far, Coates is having the most stirring rhetoric, but at the en of each bit, Klein just says &#8220;So why are we losing?&#8221;.  The answer to that seems pretty clear to me, but that answer is kind of outside the scope of the debate they have set up for themselves, so Coates ends up with a weak-ass response about the history of black folks in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now about 1\/3 through and the both have a lot of baggage to sort out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coates talking about going to West Point and confronting them about Confederate Monuments, Klein talked about getting crapped all over by everybody for defending Bernie for going on Joe Rogan. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good for both of them. They&#8217;re old friends and they both were just &#8220;letting some stuff out&#8221; \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then we got back to the key of Klein&#8217;s point:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:2px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-5bf52322 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\" style=\"border-width:2px;border-top-left-radius:15px;border-top-right-radius:15px;border-bottom-left-radius:15px;border-bottom-right-radius:15px;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;padding-top:0.5rem;padding-right:var(--wp--preset--spacing--10);padding-bottom:0.5rem;padding-left:var(--wp--preset--spacing--10)\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>We failed. We lost. The loss is having terrible consequences<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">which is a super-valid point!!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Actually, I think maybe we didn&#8217;t lose, maybe they cheated!  <br>  But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s helpful in this discussion.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" style=\"border-top-width:2px\">What I think<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think they totally skipped past the information environment that it all took place in.  Sometimes really smart people take ot all on themselves: <em>If I had been just a little smarter I could have prevented this<\/em>!  No, not here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many people leave their tv on all day, and many of those leave it on Fox News. If you have Fox News on all day you&#8217;ll have a quite different information environment than I do having the tv on MSNOW all day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December, 2025 So this brohaha about Charlie Kirk sprung up while I was re-organizing all these posts. I have thoughts: Overall I am on Team Coates. I think Ezra is full of s&#8211;t on his political recommendations for how the left can get it&#8217;s mojo back. Coates is right that Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[80,81],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-debate","tag-public-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2657,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}