Obama supporters want him to be their man, even when he tells them that he isn’t.
Barack Obama drives white people crazy, some because of love and some because of hate. Pundits and politicians have lost their collective minds because a black man has a chance to be president. Psychotic episodes and outbreaks of foot in mouth disease are spreading faster than bird flu, all because of Barack Obama.
Racism, like a familiar refrain, is the cause of much of the madness. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is the latest Clinton supporter to experience political Tourette’s Syndrome in regard to Barack Obama. “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference. . .,” Cuomo said with a straight face. He tried to backpedal by saying he meant “bob and weave.” Such is the effect that a black face has on the lizard brain that still prevails among much of white America.
Hillary Clinton’s white feminist supporters experience their own Obama-related mental breakdowns. In a New York Times op-ed Gloria Steinem tried to defend her support for Clinton by saying that Obama is not as well qualified but instead gets a pass because he is a man. She claims that women have it harder than men of any race, and by way of explanation pointed out that women did not have the right to vote in America until 1920, fifty years after constitutional amendments gave black men the franchise.
The otherwise intelligent Steinem developed selective amnesia about lynching, poll taxes, and all the terrors inflicted by segregation.
The fact that black men in most of the country were effectively barred from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act went unmentioned in Ms. Steinem’s column. The otherwise intelligent Steinem developed selective amnesia about lynching, poll taxes, and all the terrors inflicted by segregation when defending her candidate.
In 2006 Steinem had this to say about Clinton: “I disagree with her very much on the war. I feel otherwise she’s good on issues. But the war is huge.” Not huge enough. Steinem has fallen prey to the siren song of upholding identity politics even when her candidate doesn’t identify with her.
The third category of Obama-related neuroses comes from creepy white people who profess undying love. Chris Matthews of MSNBC gets teary eyed at the sound of Obama’s voice. “Obama’s speech made me cry,” said the biggest hack on television. Matthews is well known for developing man crushes on conservative white men, from President Bush (“Americans love having a guy as president”), former Senator Fred Thompson (“Can you smell the English leather on this guy”), or Mitt Romney (“He has the perfect chin, the perfect hair, he looks right”). Matthews’ public profession of love for Obama is telling and it doesn’t tell us anything good about the object of his affection.
O’Donnell believes we should let check-bundling fund raisers choose presidents for the rest of us.
Television pundit Lawrence O’Donnell is so besotted with the black candidate that he is ready to throw a white one under a bus. “If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.” O’Donnell believes we should dispense with democracy and let Iowa, New Hampshire and check-bundling fund raisers choose presidents for the rest of us. Obama’s candidacy is indeed historic. The corporatist pundit class prefers a black man if he is running against a white man who speaks out against corporate corruption.
Sadly, too many black people with a lifelong history of supporting a progressive agenda suddenly become tongue tied or verbal but nonsensical when they attempt to justify their Obama love. Obama tells outright lies such as, “. . . what ails working- and middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts,” yet the love fest goes on without question. Obama supporters want him to be their man, so they continue in denial and conclude that he is, even when he tells them that he isn’t.
Voting for someone who acts in opposition to our interests makes us dupes, chumps to be quickly disposed of after the inaugural ball.
It is tempting to sign on with Obama because of smears from Clinton supporters like Cuomo, or because of Gloria Steinem’s convenient ignorance about black history or her bizarre allegiance to someone who dismisses her. Some attacks on Obama will be racist, some attacks on Clinton will be sexist. Supporting either one of them for those reasons is nothing but capitulation to the madness and a recipe for political disappointment.
Citizens should identify with politicians who believe as they do. Acting otherwise is to be in a constant state of bamboozlement. Neither the nonsense spread by hack pundits nor the grotesque smears of politicians should play a role in our decision making. Simply put, voting for someone who acts in opposition to our interests makes us dupes, chumps to be quickly disposed of after the inaugural ball. They are already prepared to send us to the political garbage dump. We shouldn’t make it easier for them.