Sound Politics: What Sherman Alexie didn't know

March 03, 2005

What Sherman Alexie didn't know

Dino Rossi is Tlingit on his mother's side. Michael Medved (on Talk 770), on the second hour of his show today, interviewed Spokane Native-American author Sherman Alexie (a pretty cool guy), who was unfortunately unaware that a gubernatorial candidate for his home state had tribal ancestry.

Hmm.

Mr. Alexie had some pretty harsh words for the treasonous hack and plagiarist Ward Churchill.

By the way, Mr. Rossi will be a guest at the KTTH 2nd Birthday event tonight at the Premier.

Stefan and I will be there as well.

UPDATE: Lest I forget, the Talk 770 event will be a half a block away from the "evening of utter decadence" to support NARAL. Same night, same neighborhood, different crowd.

Posted by Brian Crouch at March 03, 2005 02:07 PM | Email This

Comments

1. "The Tlingits held slaves until American law banned slavery. A large number of slaves were owned by the Tlingits, with wealthy chiefs possessing as many as twenty to thirty. Slaves were captured in war or purchased from southern tribes and did much of the hard and tedious labor. They were sacrificed in ceremonial activities that validated the ownership of property and the transfer of office to new leaders." Encyclopedia of North American Indians

Figures that the descendant of elite slave-owners would find his niche in the Republican Party! (Just kidding.)

Posted by: Bill on March 3, 2005 02:27 PM

2. I'm looking forward to the KTTH event tonight. Beware the protestors, though. Apparently, dissent is being silenced here on the Left coast by the imperialistic broadcasting of material to the right of Lenin. You could've fooled me.

Posted by: chunkstyle on March 3, 2005 02:35 PM

3. I heard Sherman Alexie for the first time on a TVW program some months ago. Though I disagree with his politics, at least he's a liberal who actually loves America and isn't afraid to say so.

He was very entertaining. Too bad he didn't know about Dino's background~!

Posted by: Michele on March 3, 2005 02:52 PM

4. My last close encounter with Alexie was via his blessedly brief gig as a pundit for The Stranger. In explicating the laff riot that some of us call the Bush Administration, Sherman often punctuated his prose with this exegesis: ha HA ha HA ha HA!!

That's what passes for Left-Coast left-wing profundity, & it was an eerie dead-ringer recap of NPR's Scott "Giggles" Simon when he simulates laughter.

Posted by: sandalista on March 3, 2005 04:33 PM

5. Swine Fly: Alexie may be a harbinger of climate change, a thaw in the reflexive hate-Bush anti-Americanism of the American Left. Two days ago the New York Times said this: "Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance." (www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/opinion/01tue1.html?oref=login)

Savor the moment & seize the day, boys & girls; we may never again in this life see the Mo Dowd (not Mo Betta) Krugman Times say something good about one of us.

Ditto Jon Stewart, who inarticulately led a Clintonista to articulate the premise that things are looking way too good for Bush & America. Democrats can only pray, to whomever secular humanists pray, that Iran & Korea melt down or blow up & spoil Moron Bush's nomination for a Peace Prize before Stewart's kid is sent to Reagan Middle School & GW Bush High School. The horror.

To be fair & balanced, 'twas only the day before yesterday that this president has been entirely too (Woodrow) Wilsonian. Pat Buchanan notes correctly that, in his impulse to make the world safe for democracy, Wilson made the world safe for Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, & Mussolini.

Whatever happens now, and I pray for the best but expect the worst (that way I'm seldom disappointed), this is the start of something big.

Posted by: sandalista on March 3, 2005 05:14 PM

6. Typo'd: ... 'twas only the day before yesterday that [I said] this president has been entirely too (Woodrow) Wilsonian. ...

Said it on Rosenblog, before I got dooced or douched or whatever they do over there.

Regarding Governor Rossi as a born-again Tlingit: Was he descended from the slave masters or the slaves? Inquiring minds want to know, just so we know whether to send him a reparations check or a reparations bill.

Posted by: sandalista on March 3, 2005 05:22 PM

7. sandalista,

Tlingits didn't own other Tlingits as slaves--they captured them in wars with other tribes or bought them from other tribes. Also, it sounds like slaves didn't live long amongst the Tlingits, with all those ceremonial sacrifices going on.

I find it interesting that no one ever talks about the slavery that occurred amongst the Pacific Northwest Indians. It was rampant and brutal to the point of making the historic black slavery in the South look tame and enlightened in comparison.

Posted by: Bill on March 3, 2005 08:41 PM

8. Very good, Bill, & very similar to what the Manos of West Africa told me about their early experiences with the Gios of West Africa.

Posted by: sandalista on March 3, 2005 08:50 PM

9. The attempt to disparage Rossi by implying that he's some kind of slave-owner is pathetic

Posted by: Michele on March 4, 2005 09:50 AM

10. And don't forget that Dino is half Italian-although he was a democrat- Rosselini was one of our best governors ever- I trust Dino will be a bright star in the Italian-American community as well.
Salute!

Posted by: GraniteStater on March 4, 2005 09:56 AM

11. Pathetic: The attempt, ineptly made, was to disparage the pathetic absurdity of demands for slavery reparations. That goofy idea still gets traction in cesspools of smelly leftist orthodoxy such as U-Dub.

The Tlinget stuff is tangential refutation of the Left's attempt to reduce a complex issue, American slavery, to simplistic absurdity. It's a variation on the theme of, for example, the 12-year-old Shoshone girl who was enslaved by the Hidatsas and who, as a more-or-less unwed teenaged mother, was liberated by Lewis & Clark.

Posted by: sandalista on March 4, 2005 01:19 PM