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Poor Colin Kahl. The Stanford professor is qualified, experienced, and shares President Biden’s views on defense and foreign policy. Ordinarily, that would be enough to get confirmed to a job like undersecretary of defense for policy.
But no more! Three and a half years after #MeToo, the casting couch has migrated from Hollywood to Capitol Hill, thanks to Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
On Tuesday, Sen. Duckworth announced that, since President Biden’s political appointees were insufficiently diverse, she would be voting against any Biden nominees with white skin color, starting with Kahl. The only exception, Duckworth said, would be for LGBTQ nominees.
Well, Kahl will have a hard time pulling off a racial rebranding this late. So, if he wants to revive his career, he knows what he needs to do. He can slap on a wig and announce he’s now calling himself Cassandra Kahl. Or he can bend over and start taking it like a man. No whining now, Colin.
This is the state of 2021 liberalism. The flesh under white skin is an abomination, curable only by homosexuality or hormone pills.
Fortunately for Kahl, his dignity may be salvaged by the Biden administration. Despite routinely denouncing racism, the administration was eager to placate a senator vowing to vote according to race alone. Duckworth and her colleague, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, were satisfied (for now) by a Biden promise to appoint a new ‘Asian American and Pacific Islander liaison’.
It’s too bad. Cockburn was looking forward to how Biden’s nominees might test the Duckworth blockade. Would she be angry the first time a transgender nominee chose to ‘de-transition’ shortly after being confirmed? Would she demand that white female nominees produce affidavits from former girlfriends to make sure their ‘bisexuality’ wasn’t just to compensate for their whiteness? And seriously, after all this time, does anyone know what it actually means to be ‘queer’?
The racial requirement from Duckworth would raise even more questions. How white is too white? Would Duckworth reject an Egyptian nominee? A Turk? Would she be like the New York Times, and count some groups as white if Republican but ‘of color’ if Democratic?
Duckworth’s demand for more ‘AAPI’ — Asian American and Pacific Islander — candidates in high office is only a little easier to work out. What counts as an Asian Biden nominee? Do Aleuts count? Uzbeks? Uighurs?
While we’re at it, what is this ‘liaison’ to the AAPI ‘community’ going to do? The very concept of such a liaison is so ridiculous that articulating it would get you caned in Singapore. AAPI is the least coherent ethnic construct since Belgium. Asians and Pacific Islanders have no shared language, religion, appearance, political orientation or former colonial power. Some subgroups, such as Indians, are extremely successful. Others tend to be poor. The only thing binding Samoans and the Sinhalese together is the decades-old masking tape of the US Census Bureau. But no matter. The Biden administration will appoint a liaison and liaise they will.
