It\u2019s not often I have money-making advice for Mike Bloomberg, but here\u2019s a suggestion: You could improve the ratings of Bloomberg Radio\/TV by finding one or two conservatives to spice up the conversation, as Joe Kernen and Rick Santelli do on CNBC. Some spirited disagreement would elevate both the entertainment value and the intellectual level.\u00a0 We might even occasionally hear the words \u201cObamacare\u201d and \u201cstructural unemployment\u201d in the same sentence. Right now, Bloomberg TV\u2019s notion of political diversity is to balance a Manhattan liberal from the upper west side with a Manhattan liberal from the lower east side\u2014perhaps leavened with a couple of West Coast liberals.\u00a0 It gets kind of boring . . . . except when the on-air liberals have to contend with \u2013 eeek \u2013 a real, live conservative.<\/p>\n
A case in point is \u201cThe Hays Advantage\u201d with Kathleen Hays and Vonnie Quinn. Much to their credit, they invited as a guest the WSJ\u2019s Jason Riley, to talk about his new book Please Stop Helping Us<\/strong>. Riley\u2014did I mention he\u2019s black!\u2014argues liberals are doing far more harm than good by \u201chelping\u201d blacks with supposedly well-intentioned measures like affirmative action and raising the minimum wage. These initiatives harm the average black person while empowering paternalistic liberal elites that pretend to be protecting downtrodden blacks from racist conservatives\u2014despite the manifest failure of liberal policies to improve the lot of poor blacks. Because they find this anti-racist posturing so personally satisfying and politically expedient, Riley argued, liberals try to destroy any black opponent of racial paternalism by labeling them an \u201cUncle Tom.\u201d Which is why Riley was very courageous to write the book.<\/p>\n Riley told Hays and Quinn that what poor blacks need to get ahead is not more \u201chelp\u201d from liberal elites but, rather, embracing traditional habits of self-help \u2013 finish school, get a job, get married, take care of your kids, save some money. Too many blacks dismiss such behavior, Riley said more than once, as \u201cacting white.\u201d<\/p>\n Alarm bells sounded in the liberal brains of Hays and Quinn. Despite their best efforts to play it cool, you could hear the consternation and confusion in their voices as they probed and challenged this wayward black conservative. \u201cAren\u2019t the behaviors you describe also characteristic of other poor people?\u201d Quinn wanted to know. Late in the interview, Kathleen Hays asked the standard liberal question: \u201cWhat should Washington do?\u201d To which Riley answered \u201cStop! Stop trying to help us.\u201d What blacks need is self-help, not help.<\/p>\n Riley ended with a searing indictment of liberals\u2019 cynical opposition to school choice: \u201cPresident Obama has never found a public school good enough for his own children, not before he was president, not since he became president. Yet since the day he entered the oval office, he has been trying to shut down school voucher programs right there in Washington DC that would give the black poor the same educational options that his own children have.\u201d<\/p>\n You don\u2019t hear conservative common sense like that on Bloomberg very often.<\/p>\n Copyright Thomas Doerflinger 2014. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not often I have money-making advice for Mike Bloomberg, but here\u2019s a suggestion: You could improve the ratings of Bloomberg Radio\/TV by finding one or two conservatives to spice up the conversation, as Joe Kernen and Rick Santelli do … Continue reading