The Irredeemables

Hillary Clinton and the politics of leftist condescension.

- Kevin D.Williamson

IN the 1980's, every punk band had a song about racism, the classic of the genre being “Racism Sucks,” by 7 Seconds, whose teenaged members had no doubt learned a great deal about the hard facts of black life on the almost exclusively white streets of Reno, Nev., in 1981. There was also the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks F*** Off,” also from 1981, Black Flag’s “White Minority,” Operation Ivy’s “Unity,” Minor Threat’s “Guilty of Being White”—it is a pretty big catalogue.

Preachy stuff, in the main, but preaching to whom? By the 1980's, it had become difficult to find an honest-to-God open racist in the wild, at least one under about 50 or so. Punk posed as a counterculture, but here at least it was merely setting the rules of polite society to music. Indeed, it was much, much more outré to be an open racist than to have a purple mohawk—a fact that was helped along enormously by Geraldo Rivera and his infamous 1988 show with white supremacist John Metzger, which ended in a televised skinhead brawl.

People tuned in to watch that episode not because it was familiar, but because it was so unusual.