RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Some Americans tell others not to play the victim, because they want the title all to themselves

We’ll get there, but first let me set the stage.

The longtime radio talk show host, who I met 27 years ago when we both hosted shows for ABC Radio in Los Angeles, recently lost his bid to become governor of California in an election that aimed to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Yet we haven’t heard the last of Elder. He was, far and away, the top vote-getter in a crowded field of more than two dozen Republican “also-rans.”

That makes the radio talker the de-facto leader of the rudderless California GOP, which these days couldn’t win a spelling bee. One reason is that California Republicans have a long history of picking on Latinos, who represent about 40 percent of the state population and make up about 28 percent of registered voters.

My Republican friends would prefer that Latinos just get over it.

Not going to happen. It’s un-American to let bygones be bygones. Americans are not good at getting over slights against us. We’re good at telling other people to get over slights aimed at them.

Meanwhile, many Black conservatives have built prestigious and lucrative careers by letting white people off the hook and lecturing other African Americans to stop being victims and start taking responsibility for their actions.

Elder himself delights in telling the disadvantaged, Latinos, African Americans, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community to not be “victicrats.”

In a tweet, on May 30, 2020, Elder said this about the term:

“I conceived it to describe those who constantly complain that oppressive outside forces — racism, sexism, capitalism or some other ism — perpetually holds them back and keeps them down.”

Elder sometimes also feels held back and kept down — by the media.

As a journalist, it’s my job to be critical — of all people, and all things, at all times. But, even so, anyone who read my columns about Elder leading up to the election would have to conclude that I was “friendly” to my old radio buddy.

For instance, one column tried to explain Black conservatives and push back against white liberal racists in the media who want to discredit and destroy them.

At one point, Elder granted me an interview for this column — and my podcast. When the election was over, I sent him an email and congratulated him for bravely entering the arena. I invited him to join me for another interview, to share everything he learned from the rough-and-tumble of running for office.

He wrote back and — accepting my invitation — told me that he would connect me with his team to set something up.

Then it all went bad. Apparently because of one sentence in one of my post-election columns, which Elder read. I know he read it because I sent it to him after it published, and because he later quoted it back to me — and not in a nice way.

The offending sentence, which referred to a pre-emptive challenge by Elder to the integrity of the election, went like this:

“While we might have predicted that leading Republican challenger Larry Elder would cry foul and — like a whiny former president to which he was often compared — claim that the election was rigged, who could have known that these claims would come a day ahead of the election, before a single vote was counted.”

That’s it. Those 53 words — in a column where most of the other 700 words were jabs at Newsom — apparently set Elder off. When I asked him to help me set up the interview with him, he responded that this was not going to happen.

“No,” he wrote. “I’m too ‘whiny.’ I’m out.”

I never called Elder “whiny.” I said former President Donald Trump was whiny. I explained this in a follow-up email, but to no avail. Elder ghosted me. I never heard back. Perhaps we’re no longer friends.

I can live with that. Still, I struggle to reconcile Elder the Radio Host, who had alligator skin, with Elder the Politician, whose skin is made of tissue paper.

Black conservatives are a conflicted bunch. Many of them talk a good game about how people shouldn’t be victims. And then — when something goes wrong in their own lives — they can’t wait to claim the title for themselves.

My former friend has only been in politics about three months. And already, the coven has cast a spell that transformed him into the very thing he despises.

Ruben Navarrette Jr.’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.