Death: May 2008 Archives
Barack Obama has brought to the surface the simmering issue we've all faced since the day we were born in this country: we will never view people of a different skin color from our own as our human equivalent. To be honest, my high school education in Lincoln, Nebraska paid semesters-worth amounts of time to covering thing like segregation, "separate but equal," and apartheid. What good came of it? I'm not talking about myself, personally. What does education do to improve racial equality? What does seeing many many videos of Southern blacks being sprayed with firehoses in the '60s do to bring one's level of understanding to a new place?
It never does anything. The biggest single hurdle Obama is facing in his quest for the presidency is that people will judge him by the color of his skin, rather than the quality of his character. Has there ever been a politician like Mr. Obama? A black man will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Look through your history books. Dissect the imagery. Give it another look beyond that. Did you ever expect this in your lifetime? Whitey could let a black man be ruler of the land. It's only a few steps from happening. Will it happen? How bullshit is it that I need to ask these questions?
As we've seen in West Virginia, and as we'll see in Kentucky, voters are rejecting Mr. Obama outright for the most baseless reasons imaginable. They don't think he has a way forward for our country. They think he's secretly a MOOSLEM. They think all kinds of things which aren't true, and they usually sit in pancake houses and breathe awful, undignified insults to his character to national news reporters through rotten teeth and bits of chewed bacon. Their color? White. These folks is as white as pure snow.
There's a guy out there preaching to the choir. Educated folks is selecting Obama by a large margin. Poor workin' folks is exposin' our inherent racism. No matter what education level you reach, you're a racist. Period. You have suspicions about other groups of races getting together and saying things about your race. Yes, you do.
What do we do? Why can't Obama be President? When you sit down in the voting booth (you are white), are YOU going to cast a vote for Mr. Obama over the white war hero John McCain? These narratives are set up so perfectly. A secret muslim black against a fuckin' WAR HERO white. What else can I even say?
We've been worried that the media is controlling our actions for quite some time. Now, there's a direct application of this principle. You've got an eloquent, fresh, brilliant man running for president in the hopes of getting to Washington and taking a Real Man look at how business is being done. On the other hand, you've got a rotten-to-the-core old bastard running for president who eschews Cialis in favor of imagined bombings of dark religious heathens. Yet, we're divided. We can't see the way forward. We are baited into our worst possible instincts. All of our education is naught in the face of Greta Van Susteren and Karl Rove sitting in a tiny studio playing clips of a black preacher taken out of context from a 7-year-old sermon and repeating line after line after line after line of sicko hitjob politics in order to crucify the black man on a modern media cross. For the corporate good. To make the shareholders get that extra-special chub as they hit the golf course this Friday morning in resplendent spring sunlight. You can't even smell the dust wafting in from Iraq's freshest smoldering child-remains-crater.
Let's go on with our business. We can't elect a black man to president. It's just not possible; the media just can't allow itself to tell the truth about what really might be afoot in our world. No. No, we can't. We sure, sure can't.
It never does anything. The biggest single hurdle Obama is facing in his quest for the presidency is that people will judge him by the color of his skin, rather than the quality of his character. Has there ever been a politician like Mr. Obama? A black man will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Look through your history books. Dissect the imagery. Give it another look beyond that. Did you ever expect this in your lifetime? Whitey could let a black man be ruler of the land. It's only a few steps from happening. Will it happen? How bullshit is it that I need to ask these questions?
As we've seen in West Virginia, and as we'll see in Kentucky, voters are rejecting Mr. Obama outright for the most baseless reasons imaginable. They don't think he has a way forward for our country. They think he's secretly a MOOSLEM. They think all kinds of things which aren't true, and they usually sit in pancake houses and breathe awful, undignified insults to his character to national news reporters through rotten teeth and bits of chewed bacon. Their color? White. These folks is as white as pure snow.
There's a guy out there preaching to the choir. Educated folks is selecting Obama by a large margin. Poor workin' folks is exposin' our inherent racism. No matter what education level you reach, you're a racist. Period. You have suspicions about other groups of races getting together and saying things about your race. Yes, you do.
What do we do? Why can't Obama be President? When you sit down in the voting booth (you are white), are YOU going to cast a vote for Mr. Obama over the white war hero John McCain? These narratives are set up so perfectly. A secret muslim black against a fuckin' WAR HERO white. What else can I even say?
We've been worried that the media is controlling our actions for quite some time. Now, there's a direct application of this principle. You've got an eloquent, fresh, brilliant man running for president in the hopes of getting to Washington and taking a Real Man look at how business is being done. On the other hand, you've got a rotten-to-the-core old bastard running for president who eschews Cialis in favor of imagined bombings of dark religious heathens. Yet, we're divided. We can't see the way forward. We are baited into our worst possible instincts. All of our education is naught in the face of Greta Van Susteren and Karl Rove sitting in a tiny studio playing clips of a black preacher taken out of context from a 7-year-old sermon and repeating line after line after line after line of sicko hitjob politics in order to crucify the black man on a modern media cross. For the corporate good. To make the shareholders get that extra-special chub as they hit the golf course this Friday morning in resplendent spring sunlight. You can't even smell the dust wafting in from Iraq's freshest smoldering child-remains-crater.
Let's go on with our business. We can't elect a black man to president. It's just not possible; the media just can't allow itself to tell the truth about what really might be afoot in our world. No. No, we can't. We sure, sure can't.
