The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Scotts and Prayers

Every week, I come on here to complain about the haters. But as Maya Angelou once said: “Every day, I thank God for indoor plumbing, toilet paper and haters. Because, without them, I’d have nothing to shit on.”

Or maybe it was Will Smith.

Although the visualization of that quote might make your mouth salty, we should all be thankful for the people who spend so much of their lives thinking about us. When anyone sets aside some valuable time to send me an email, tweet or a DM, it lets me know that I have fulfilled their purpose by impacting their way of thinking.

Wait...Maybe that quote is from the Bible. I know I read it in a Facebook meme.

My grandmother always said: “If the Devil is trying to stop you, keep going. It means you’re doing the right thing.”

Anyway, it’s nice to feel love and appreciated.

Case in point: The National Review’s writer cut-and-paster Isaac Schorr actually clapped back at me for clapping back at him:

Here is Schorr’s article.

For The Root, Michael Harriot responds to my post from earlier this week about Elie Mystal’s attacks on Amy Coney Barrett and her family:

[Schorr followed with four paragraphs from the article I wrote.]

There’s a lot to unpack here, but if you don’t immediately recognize this screed for the hateful rubbish it so obviously is, there’s nothing I could say to convince you. All you can do for someone as far gone as Michael Harriot is pray, so I’d ask you all to do so.

That’s it. That’s the entire article.

Dear Isaac,

First, I would like to thank you for your prayers. When I started receiving prayer notifications out of the blue, I had no idea what was going on. But after I realized that it was your doing, I was extremely pleased to discover that the readers of The National Review think so highly of me. However, there is one thing I would like to clear up with Schorr’s fans:

I am not God.

Maybe it’s because God and I are both Black (I guess we all look alike) but it seems as if many of your readers assumed that I am the invisible, abortion-hater in the sky because, instead of sending their prayers to God, I received emails like this one:

From: James
To: Michael Harriot
Subject: Hell

It’s nice to know where you’ll be spending eternity so I can make sure I don’t end up there. It’s one thing to attack a woman on her politics but mentioning her “panties” and her hair was out of bounds. Godless liberals like you are making it easy for conservative cause because you hate Christians and all we stand for.

I hope your proud of yourselve.

Or this:

From: Shar
To: Michael Harriot

Amy Coney Barrett is twice the Christian you’ll ever be. May God have mercy on your soul.

Anyway, after receiving these letters, I actually set up a Zoom meeting with God (he had one scheduled with Jeffrey Toobin, but Toobin said he was “beat”). During our meeting, I read the emails to him and pitched an idea for a new religion called The Church of the Almighty Savior Scott and Latter-Day Wypipo.

Like most conservative Christian religions, the goal of the A.S.S. Wypes is to get to white heaven, where the streets are paved with gold stolen from the empires ransacked spreading the knowledge of the true and living God (we call him Scott, which is a nice, generic white-sounding name).

I would start by explaining that Scott appeared to me and ask me to ghostwrite a book that laid out the ten most important tenets of the Scottist Church:

1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. Fuck all them other gods. Other monotheistic religions believe in this flawed notion that they can live in harmony with people who believe in other Scotts. We don’t play that bullshit here. If you don’t believe in a deity who resembles Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, or the bearded members of ZZ Top, then you have no idea that Scott is good all the time and all the time...
2. Thou shalt not make any graven images: But if the Son of Scott dies, you can wear the symbol of whatever killed him around your neck. We call it an ASScott
3. Thou shalt not call Scott’s name in vain: Not even his street name, S. Diddy. Don’t make him slap the Scott out of you.
   
4. Remember the vagina and keep it holy: All religions are essentially groups of bearded men who decide what women can do with their innards. So no abortions, masturbation or promiscuity. Good, virtuous women like Amy Coney Barrett understand that respectful women only have sex in the missionary position (Except on Valentine’s Day, because everyone knows that’s when you can do mouth stuff) while thinking about casseroles and Bible Study. Men get to fuck whoever they want because Scott loves the ladies.
5. Thou shalt not kill: Unless it’s people who don’t believe in Scott Almighty, in which case, fuck them (see the first commandment). Killing is also OK as punishment for killers, because, how else would you stop people from killing each other if you don’t kill people? War is OK, too. Or if you fear for your life. Or if you wear any kind of badge. Or if you don’t wear a badge but the president sent you to stop a protest. Or if you don’t feel like wearing a mask. Or you hate Skittles. Otherwise, respect life.
6. Thou shalt not steal: Unless it’s land where Native Americans live. Or you don’t like paying all those taxes, or are nominated for a Supreme Court vacancy, oppose a woman’s right to do something with her body that doesn’t affect you whatsoever, or you want to stop a Black person from voting...or living.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery: Adulting is hard (I haven’t looked up “adultery” yet but I’m sure it has something to do with being a grown-ass man). We stand for family values and two-parent homes. Unless you’re a Mexican child who was stripped away from their parents. Porn stars don’t count.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor: If you’re at a Senate confirmation hearing, you can lie your ass off because you’re not your neighbor. See? Anything can be the truth if you believe in yourself.
9. Honor your mother and father: For instance, if your father was arrested at a Klan rally, honor that legacy by being even more racist. Make sure your children honor you by acting the same as you. Unless her name is Tiffany. Or you bought your children at a discount from Haiti, in which case, you can love them while destroying people who look like them.
10. Thou shalt not covet: Just take it. That’s what Scott would want.

God liked the idea but said I needed a way to convince people to give Scott money without having any evidence of his existence. He also asked how I would handle people who violated my Caucasian commandments. He suggested smiting or eternal damnation but I thought that was a little harsh.

“What if I just forgave the people who break the rules?” I asked. “Or even better, what if—instead of a list of rules, I just told them to be good people?”

“Too simple,” he replied. “Who’d ever believe in something like that?

“Got any kids?”

Scottdamn him.

I also received this DM about our election series:

From: Bo

To: Michael Harriot

Your Root blog is a joke Funny how you think Republicans will start election violence when its leftists like BLM who are burning cities and looting stores. You’re 13 percent of the population and 50 percent of crime but always say whites are violent. Have you ever thought about why that is?

America is the only place you can have true freedom and we will fight Commie twats like you who want to destroy our democracy

And this, from someone who apparently found me on Facebook to comment on a photo that had nothing to do with anything political:

From: Paul

To: Michael Harriot

You’ll never forget today, either, 10/14/2020, the day Ice Cube ditched traitors like you and your grim fate as a communist sellout was SEALED. Bon voyage, Mike!

One of my white Facebook friends (Told you I have white friends) replied: “Paul, what in the neck beard, burnt coffee, cigarette toothed, ayn rand body pillow, basement dwelling, cheez it gripping fuck is wrong with you?” to which Paul replied.

From: Paul
To: Michael Harriot

Hey, I resemble that remark! But still, no amount of ad hominem will alter Harriot’s fate, and the fate of his partners-in-treason. Cube’s defection today, and the unfolding ramifications the next couple of weeks, has doomed the 1619 Project of overthrowing America. Make way for the 1620 Project, i.e., the year Pilgrims and Strangers signed the Mayflower Compact in beautiful Provincetown, i.e., the birth of American democracy. You may ask me if I’m happy, well, as matter of fact, I’m ecstatic, because Cube and Trump just made a pact themselves. Platinum Plan, meet the Contract for Black America. The traitors LOSE. America, and particularly the black Americans that would’ve been sold down the river by Harriot and his Root cronies who serve the interests of devilish transnational control freaks in Belgium and China...all the halfway normal people of the world...WE WIN. Eat shit.

Dear Paul and Bo:

Thank you so much for seeking me out to let me know how much my work affects you. I can understand why you seem so mad at me. See, I know the secret plan that white people have been working on since 1609:

Don’t let America become a democracy.

This country was never meant to be a democracy or a republic. It was always meant to be a bastion of whiteness. White supremacy was always the goal and history proves that the people who call themselves “patriots” were just trying to prevent their beloved nation from becoming a country that offers liberty and justice for all.

For instance, when the great Founding Slaveowners wrote the Constitution, they were trying to limit freedom. For the life of me, I can’t understand why white people believe the American Revolution had something to do with tea or “taxation without representation” when most of the people in America—women, Black people, Native Americans and people who didn’t own land—couldn’t participate in this great experiment at its inception. America came up with the idea of income taxes because Great Britain only exercised taxes on imports and business owners. We started the taxation without representation shit.

The traitors who fought on the Southern side of the Civil War wanted to limit democracy. Reconstruction, the most violent era in American history, was a terrorist plot to stop Black people from voting. But, instead of calling them “race massacres,” history books still refer to them as “riots” because...you know how white people hate violence. Reconstruction ended when Southern whites agreed to stop killing people in exchange for subverting the election of 1876 and the government’s promise to build railroads and factories in the South as an economic stimulus.

I know my explanation is a little clunky. If only there was a word that sums it this political theory.

Then came Jim Crow, which was the most undemocratic, unconstitutional policy since the Trail of Tears. But when white people slaughtered Black people in the Red Summer of 1919, they called them “race riots” again. Oh, yeah, the Trail of Tears was anti-Democratic. But to be fair, everything this country did to the Indigenous people was about keeping the true Americans from being part of America.

During the civil rights movement, white people lobbed claims of communism at Martin Luther King Jr. and anyone who dared try to assert their rights as Americans. They said sit-ins, marches and peaceful demonstrators were “riots.”

Look, bruh, I know you have probably studied a whitewashed form of history that makes you believe that Jesus wrote the Constitution, flags are sacred and America is a democracy but, because I know a little bit about history, there are three things about which a white person can never ever lecture me about:

1. Violence
2. Racism
3. Seasoning

But thanks for letting me know I’m doing something right.

By the way, have you heard the good news about Scott?