Racist eye doctor returns<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Racist eye doctor returns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/\",\"name\":\"Racist eye doctor returns\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Racist eye doctor returns\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Racist eye doctor returns","description":"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Racist eye doctor returns","og_description":"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00","author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/","name":"Racist eye doctor returns","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00","dateModified":"2004-03-29T11:39:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e"},"description":"In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Racist eye doctor returns"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":680,"date":"2004-03-29T11:39:41","date_gmt":"2004-03-29T11:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/"},"modified":"2004-03-29T11:39:41","modified_gmt":"2004-03-29T11:39:41","slug":"racist-eye-doctor-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/03\/29\/racist-eye-doctor-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Racist eye doctor returns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In the 2002 race for Pennsylvania's reconfigured 13th congressional district seat, Democrat Joe Hoeffel narrowly won re-election over opthalmologist Melissa Brown.<\/p>\n

Brown's signature issue was \"Section 8 reform.\" Essentially, Brown used Section 8, the federal subsidy for low-income housing assistance, as a wedge-issue translating into \"Big Government forcing you to accept black people in your neighborhood.\" (Links to many of my 2002 posts on the Brown campaign seem to be bloggered \u2014 this one<\/a> and this one<\/a> are working.)<\/p>\n

Brown's '02 campaign focused relentlessly on preserving \"neighborhood's\" and \"property values,\" casting herself as George Wallace in the doorway, defending white neighborhoods from black Philadelphians who wanted to actually buy homes in those neighborhoods and send their children to those schools. (She also liked using Philadelphia Mayor John Street and even Al Sharpton as bogeymen to scare white voters.)<\/p>\n

Brown's race-baiting was shameless, aggressive and very nearly successful.<\/p>\n

Now, with Hoeffel running for the Senate<\/a>, Brown is back, taking a second shot at the always-closely contested 13th seat.<\/p>\n

So far, \"Section 8 reform\" has been kept more to the background of Brown's new campaign<\/a>, where the up-front issues seem to be cutting taxes and \"tort reform.\"<\/p>\n

The segregationist doctor's position on Section 8 remains a part of her campaign, however, and we'll be keeping an eye on this race to see if the \"protect our<\/i> [i.e. white] neighborhoods and property values\" theme again becomes dominant.<\/p>\n

Even in the background, though, here's Dr. Brown's idea of housing policy:<\/p>\n

Changes in the program\u2019s priorities must be instituted. I support a yearly background check and a one strike and you\u2019re out policy for serious misdemeanors or felony convictions. I support the new reform change placing a seven year limit on eligibility, excluding seniors and disabled persons. I support unscheduled, unannounced inspections of properties, open transcripts of hearings and market price evaluations to establish rent guidelines consistent with the residential area. An increased [sic] in the number of inspectors and detectives are [sic] necessary to maintain the program. I am calling for a moratorium on any expansion of Section 8 until the above problems are addressed and reform is accomplished. It is only then when attention can be focused on home ownership.<\/i><\/p>\n

More detectives making unannounced \"inspections\" of the homes of the poor. The American Dream.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"