I know a number of bright people who read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog. Everyone once in a while someone with some credibility will make mention of him. The Atlantic is a respected publication, even though its quality varies greatly. There have been years when it is unreadable, but also years when it is great. It is predictable liberal pap most of the time, but aimed at the PBS tote bag crowd, so it is generally well behaved.

Putting it all together and I’ve tried to check in on his blog from time to time. I figure if respectable people think he is worth a few minutes on occasion, I can learn something about them by reading what they read and who they read.

The thing I’ve been puzzle by from the start is he appears to be a gold plated phony. If I were to describe his style, I’d start with conventional black whining about whitey with a heavy dose of references intended to imply erudition. He likes to mention how he can order food in French (and how the always white waiter is shockrf to see a black speak such great French!), but there’s never a reason for it.

Similarly, he drops references to writers we’re expected to think he has read, but he never actually writes anything that says he learned anything but the book title. It is the type of name dropping you get from college sophomores who are on their way to becoming posers. In my day, these were the types who smoked clove cigarettes and wore a lot of black, even in summer.

I think what we have here is simply a hustle. Coates is the house black guy at the Atlantic, performing the rituals expected from the position.  This post is a good example.

If you haven’t yet, it’s work checking out Barack Obama’s address before the National Action Network, last week. I think it’s one of the most significant and morally grounded speeches of his presidency. I think we will eventually regard this current effort to suppress the vote through voter-ID laws, ending early voting, restricting voting hours, etc., in the same way we regard literacy tests and poll taxes. (It’s worth recalling this piece for the magazine by Mariah Blake which helps historicize voter suppression.)

There are two assertions here. One is that this speech, that has been ignored by everyone, is his most significant as president. That’s not a very high bar for a president who has exactly zero memorable speeches according to his fans. Ask yourself, when was the last time you heard anyone quote an Obama speech? When have you heard anyone talk about one of his speeches a month after it was given?

As far as “morally grounded” is concerned, that’s simply emotive gibberish the Left uses to signal. The signal is this issue is not debatable. The people pushing voting reform are evil and those opposed are good. There can be no compromise. The fact that Coates misses this entirely suggests he is not the thinking man he would like us to believe.

The second claim is that cleaning up voter fraud, a well documented problem in every state, is voter suppression. He is correct in so far as requiring positive identification suppresses the dead vote and other methods for stuffing the ballot box. Otherwise, comparing these measures to Democratic efforts to keep blacks from voting is the sort of thing very stupid people repeat because they heard a flak on TV say it. For a guy who claims to be so erudite, Coates seems to like repeating a lot of very silly things.

I believe in judging Barack Obama’s rhetoric and policies not as though he were the president of black America, but of the United States of America. On that count his speech soared. There aren’t many topics more important than the security of our democracy. The president did not attack that topic gingerly, but forcefully, directly and without hedge.