By John Hirschauer
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Robert Francis O’Rourke is white. If it’s any consolation,
he’s very sorry about that.
“Beto” has been running from his Irish ancestry for some
time now. Long before the Left fell headlong into the logical termini of its
triune fascination with race, power, and privilege, O’Rourke sensed that there
was a currency to be had in becoming “Beto” rather than “Robert Francis.” For
one, the latter was imbued with a stench of Gaelic papism that made him sound
more like a rosary-wielding Catholic school boy than a dyed-in-the-wool
radical. More damning for a would-be Democratic upstart, though, were the
privileges that attended to his birth name: O’Rourke grew up a white male —
itself a capital offense in the progressive universe — with plenty of money,
and a boarding school education that would later lead him to the Ivy League.
How could he rid himself of the odor of privilege, that stench which would only
become more of a hindrance as his party grew in its disdain for (forgive the
phrase) people like him?
Beto’s father Pat O’Rourke was an El Paso county judge
who envisioned a future in state politics for young Robert Francis; it would be
useful, Pat decided, to give his son a moniker that would afford him a cache
and rapport with the local Hispanic population, which comprised an outsized
share of the electorate. The Dallas Morning News reported Pat O’Rourke’s
comments on the matter this way: “Nicknames are common in Mexico and along the
border, and if [Robert] ever ran for office in El Paso, the odds of being
elected in this mostly Mexican-American city were far greater with a name like
Beto than Robert Francis O’Rourke.”
Consider it Pat O’Rourke’s promissory note for the Beto
for President campaign.
¡De nada!
The myth of Robert-as-Beto is in its death throes, but it
remained alive in O’Rourke’s home state in the not-too-distant past.
Texas-based radio host Chris Salcedo told InsideSources in March that he would
“still hear from Latinos who think that Beto’s Hispanic.” Political columnist
Ruben Navarette told them the same: “Long before he entered the race against
Ted Cruz, I was talking to a Texas lawmaker who was telling me all about Beto
O’Rourke, and I said ‘Oh, he’s Latino, right?’ And he said ‘No, no, no — His
real name is Robert Francis!’ And I said ‘Huh?’”
The genius of Pat’s appropriative moniker is that Robert
Francis would inevitably become Beto in some essential way; even if he
wasn’t Hispanic himself, the mere fact that he spoke extemporaneous Spanish and
represented a majority-Hispanic area would, through a tenuous kind of osmosis,
grant him minority status with none of the commensurate difficulty that
entails. Stephen A. Nuño all but said so in his 2013 NBC op-ed “Why a
non-Latino should be in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus;” in addition to his
fluency in Spanish and the makeup of his district, Nuño reasoned, “O’Rourke is
decidedly progressive on social issues and has been a vocal proponent of
comprehensive immigration reform.”
What else is there?
In his almost certainly ill-fated pursuit of the 2020
Democratic nomination, O’Rourke is no longer on the warpath to oust the
media-loathed incumbent like Ted Cruz. He’s now in a crowded field with other
Democrats, many of whom are actual minorities (and one who tried
her damnedest). The media that no longer view him as the adorable,
skateboard-riding, honorary Hispanic who would supplant a creepy religious
senator from Texas, but instead a privileged white male standing in the way of
some minority candidate poised deliver a symbolic rebuke to Donald Trump (and,
by fiat, the no-good-very-bad racists who elected him.)
The Daily Beast writes of “The Unbearable White
Privilege of Beto O’Rourke;” CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson said that Beto’s
careerism “drips with white male privilege” and insisted that “O’Rourke, tall,
handsome, white and male, has this latitude, to be and do anything. His
privilege even allows him to turn a loss to the most despised candidate of the
cycle into a launching pad for a White House run. Stacey Abrams, a Yale-trained
lawyer, couldn’t do this.”
Beto, meet Robert Francis.
O’Rourke soon realized he must drag himself through that
tired rubric of public self-flagellation and self-loathing expected of white
progressive men who deign to challenge visible minorities for a chance at
power. It has, as of this writing, been an abject disaster:
“As a white man who has had privileges that others could
not depend on, or take for granted,” a fallen, emasculated Beto said on Meet
the Press, clearly penitent for the accidents of his birth, “I’ve clearly
had advantages over the course of my life.” And he is obliged to report that
he, and the society that afforded him these ill-gotten gains, are irredeemable
to at their very core. He told immigrants and refugees gathered at a campaign
in Nashville that “this country was founded on white supremacy, and every
single institution and structure that we have in this country still reflects
the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression, even in our
democracy.”
Nia-Malika Henderson was right — look at what happened to
Stacey Abrams!
Just as Robert Francis O’Rourke’s performative
self-hatred was drawing to an apparent and merciful close, it was revealed that
both he and his wife had distant ancestors who owned slaves. Not only was
“Beto” no longer the hip, young, almost-Hispanic progressive arriviste poised
to unseat a folksy social conservative in Texas — he was the descendant of
actual slaveowners who owned actual slaves. And while those of us disabused of
mammalian instincts for mob justice and imputed guilt don’t indict Robert
Francis O’Rourke for the misdeeds of his great-great-great grandparents, Beto
knew that this revelation could be the nail in the coffin of his quest for the
Democratic nomination (if it required such a nail) and, ultimately, the White
House. He released an extended reflection on the matter on Medium, reading in
part:
I benefit from a system that my
ancestors built to favor themselves at the expense of others. That only
increases the urgency I feel to help change this country so that it works for
those who have been locked-out of — or locked-up in — this system . . . We all
need to know our own story as it relates to the national story, much as I am
learning mine. It is only then, I believe, that we can take the necessary steps
to repair the damage done and stop visiting this injustice on the generations
that follow ours.
There has been great, awesome injustice in America’s
history, a fact which no one of import disputes. Advantages certainly accrued
to those alive during the various de jure arrangements that have, to one
degree or another, excluded minorities from the promises of America. Individual
instances of injustice remain. Rinse, wash, repeat. But it is nevertheless
unclear what the impropriety of Beto O’Rourke’s great-great-great grandparents
should matter to the average American voter, or why O’Rourke is even discussing
his ancestors at all.
The O’Rourke saga has been characterized by a consummate
self-obsession, the presumption that Beto — or Robert Francis — matters in some
essential and transcendent way, that his story is ours, and that the
sins of Beto’s ancestors are America’s. Whatever his name is, the pitch isn’t
working.
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