Tlaib isn't 'of color'

Racist. As the definition goes, that's what they call somebody who wins an argument with a liberal. Sounds like a lot of liberals are losing the argument to President Trump this last week, as the media and the Democrats have rocked the heavens with cries of "racist," for Trump suggesting that certain far-left congresswomen might be happier in another country. Trump's rhetoric may be ham-fisted, but his timing, as always, is spot on. The walls are closing in on Ilhan Omar, the most enthusiastically hateful member of Congress. Evidence of her immigration fraud is overwhelming and will only intensify as more media outlets have to cover the story. She will be an enormous lingering embarrassment to her party. The only question is, how will the U.S. attorney in the Twin Cities, Erica McDonald, proceed? She is definitely plugged into the GOP establishment of that state and is well aware of the need for a grand jury to look into this. But will she have the guts to follow the law, or just wimp out, in another case of Minnesota nice? I am not hopeful.

Perhaps we can be more optimistic about another guy screaming the loudest about racist Trump: Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose wife's charity received millions in a pay-to-play scheme. Baltimore Democrats are not only corrupt, but so sloppy that they often leave the feds no choice but to prosecute. Anyway, it strikes me as odd that no one has yet pointed out the most glaring fact about the Squad of Four "women of color" running amok in the Congress: one of them is obviously a white woman. This rather makes calling their critics racist even more absurd. Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit of Palestinian Arab ancestry. Arabs from the Near East are white, and always have been, as far as the U.S. Census Bureau and American society at large are concerned. In the supercharged race-hustle of today's left-wing politics, though, everyone wants super-victim racial status. Not many American politicos are actually full descendants of black American slaves, so we have a lot of them scrambling to fit under the title "brown" or "of color." So far, none of the many white ethnic groups of the Near East — Greek, Jew, Arab, Turk, Kurd, Armenian, etc. — has been able to achieve this transformation and make it stick. But left-wing Arabs and Persians are fighting to make it so, and Tlaib takes every opportunity to tell Speaker Pelosi that she and her gal pals are all women of color. (Never mind that ethnic groups from the Near East are relative newcomers to America and have no history of mistreatment in this country.) You know this has got to be killing Dems like Pelosi and her allies, who would love to play the "of color" trope themselves — ancestry South Italy or Jewish — but would get clobbered worse than Rachel Dolezal if they actually crossed that line. For Palestinian Arabs, though, fantasy politics is a way of life, and they are good at it. Palestinian wingnut Linda Sarsour admits that everyone considered her white growing up in New York City, so she started wearing a hijab and insisting she was "of color" as a basic element of her political shtick. This play-pretend has some really determined hucksters pushing it. Still, what I am hoping is one of these phony women of color could follow Elizabeth Warren and out herself with a classic entry in an ethnic cookbook. Warren's "Pow Wow Chow" recipe for that old Cherokee favorite — Crab Omelet with Mayonnaise — pretty much put the kibosh on her nonwhite bona fides. Perhaps there is another cookbook out there somewhere — say, "Gaza Goodies" — where Ms. Tlaib tells us exactly how much mayo you put on your Wonder Bread when making a falafel sandwich. Until then, the Arab minstrel show may go on. Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.