From the Baltimore Sun:
[Maryland] Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said yesterday that he is angry at "revisionism" from political opponents who question a much-repeated story about Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele being pelted with Oreos during a 2002 campaign debate in Baltimore.
Versions of the story have been repeated over the years by Ehrlich, Steele and their supporters in describing what they call a pattern of racial slights against the black Republican, and accounts of the event have spread widely.
Blogger Steve Gillard and the Kossites have been tracking the above "Case of the Missing Oreos." What's that, you ask? Well, every black Republican worth his Talking Android decoder ring keeps a sob-story handy detailing the horrific abuse they've endured at the Cain-like (or is that Ham-like?) hands of Democratic brethren and sisthren. It now seems Michael Steele's version might be a little over-leavened. While the Maryland Lt. Governor and 2006 Senate hopeful has long regaled listeners with the story of an alleged edible fusillade launched in 2002 by a hostile African American audience, some maintenance workers charged with clean-up that night recollect a trans-fat-free evening. Steele isn't commenting, but the reaction of his patrons -- "leggo Mike's mock-heroic-rejection-by-his-own-people!" -- fits in nicely alongside the Right's recent "liberal revisionism" meme.
For those of you watching this particular battle royale from the cheap seats, three points of information:
1 - Steele's been in for the expected rough treatment since the profile-raising announcement that he's running for Paul Sarbanes' (MD-D) Senate seat -- rough treatment that included Gillard, an African American blogger, photo-shopping blackface onto a .jpeg of Steele. Although sycophants of every stripe were quick to cry "liberal racism" over the satirical e-corking, their outrage is a bit of a put-on. For time immemorial (or at least since the phrase "house negro" was coined), black folks who've made careers out of throwing in with the proverbial "other team" have known to expect a certain, uh, creative virtuosity, should any subsequent internecine squabbles pop off. (Just ask Clarence Thomas, whose most vicious critics have long been other black people.) Today it's just a fact of political life, and if some of these attacks are in poor taste, well, that just goes to show that home really is where hurty stuff's at. Comparing such black-on-black rhetorical violence to the imagery of honest-to-god racists is stupid, and anyone making such claims is either carrying Republican water or lying. (That, or, they were raised by wolves and therefore legitimately ignorant of your basic human dynamics.)
2 - On the aforementioned question of taste, pelting a black conservative with snacks is only an instance of creamy goodness if the thrower is also black, and if said con/neo-con comes under fire from baked goods that are black on the outside and white on the inside. Moon-pies, Ho Hos, various Little Debbie snack cakes, all good. Twinkies, not so good. Any of the above thrown by white folks, highly ill-advised. Get it?
3 - And yes; Nabisco and Hostess couldn't have paid Armstrong Williams for better product placement.
RE: the specific Steele allegations, while I'm tickled that yet another Republican might be outed as a liar, I'm not as exercised as some over whether or not the cookies actually rained. Yeah, sure, Steele maybe exaggerated, but if the cookie attack didn't happen my thinking is that it should have. Black politics has a fine tradition of back-channel jousting, and I don't think we should sanitize our arguments just because there's no longer a fully segregated yard reserved for the safe airing of dirty laundry. A senate candidate's honesty/dishonesty is obviously fair game for reporters and bloggers, but an unintended consequence of this particular hunt is endorsing the idea that cookie tossing is some kind of outrage, when actually it's just, like, hilarious. (If Steele had an ounce of mother wit in him he'd tote a glass and a quart of milk everywhere he went. "Have at it, ruffians!" he could cry, but alas and alack, dude's not that kind of funny.)
Me, I have to confess to having (in my ill-tempered youth) subjected the black prez of my campus' College Republicans to some nifty abuse on more than one occasion. I can't recall what the bit was exactly (the state-of-the-art then was "incognegro" not "oreo"), but I think it might have involved an extended riff on Lucan the Wolf Boy. (Black Republicans clearly having been raised by wolves and all. The kid did grow up to work for the Bush White House, but that's hardly my fault.) To those readers tsk-tsking that such behavior abets the decline in civil discourse, my response is a big: yeah? And? Not only are you late to this particular party, but your measuring stick is off. I'm riffing about throwing cookies, or coughing *lucan!* into my fist while someone blathers on about quotas, this while his only claim to fame is being the black guy at the think tank cookout. In contrast, it was just a few months ago that Steele's ilk were engaged in enthusiastic rhetorical copulation with every wingnut from here to Michelle Malkin, the whole bunch enthusing all over the internets at the thought of large numbers of black people being summarily executed. Compared to that outrage, a cookie -- real or imagined -- is just a brotherly kindess, a chocolaty kiss on the cheek.