A few friends and I took a walk on the dark side the other day when we sat through the first 35 minutes of Hannity and Colmes to see Barack Obama's interview in response to the whole Wright uproar.
After we heard the usual angry, false, uneducated bullshit from Hannity, Democratic Strategist Bob Beckel said something that perfectly described the whole media circus surrounding Obama's connections to Wright: that this is an example of a "high-tech lynching."
They can't attack Obama on substance, they can't attack him on his record of public service, they can't find any mistresses yet, so they've resorted to the old standby: Good, old-fashioned racism.
Every fucking thing that the media has done recently to attack Obama fits into the narrative of trying to paint him as the Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, "black militant" image, such as 1) The Star Spangled Banner bullshit (as Obama says, anyone who paid attention in fucking kindergarten knows that you put your hand over your heart during the pledge of allegiance, not the Star-Spangled Banner, as anyone who has been to a professional sporting event knows) 2) The American flag lapel pin smears (flung mostly by anchors and political hacks who themselves refused to wear such a pin) 3) Using his wife's admittedly MISSPOKEN words, which were taken out of context on top of that to cover up the fact that she misspoke, to portray Obama as beholden to angry, anti-American interests.
Finally, they want to tie him to a few angry sermons his preacher gave out of probably tens of thousands of hours of speeches. Use this rubric, and suddenly every Catholic molests prepubescent boys and every Evangelical wants to protect Israel just so that the Jews can go to hell in the Apocalypse or smokes meth while getting blown by a gay hooker.
If any of you who have been perpetuating the "Obama's finished" line over the last few days are, by chance, NOT trolls, understand this:
These are not legitimate political questions to be asked. You know who cares about what Barack Obama's preacher says or what proper etiquette is for saluting the American flag?
Not the terrorists.
Not the Iraqis.
Not Kim Jong-Il
Not Ahmadinejad.
Not the insurance companies who murder millions of people through the process of "death by spreadsheet" and sit at the center of the most immoral, corrupt, inefficient healthcare system in the industrialized world.
Not the industries that are poisoning our environment and destroying the lives of humans and animals by burning fossil fuels to put global warming on steroids.
Not the economic institutions which are foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans and making it harder and harder for honest people to find a job in this country.
Not the colleges which charge up to $200,000 just for a 4-year college education.
Not the telecom companies which want to continue breaking the law to spy on all of us.
It's time to wake the fuck up and realize what the REAL threats in this world are. Try going for a tour of duty in Iraq and then come back and decide whether what someone's minister said really matters in the whole scheme of things.
Make no mistake: these attacks are happening because Obama is [half] black. And those who fail to condemn them have blood on their hands. THIS is why we can't get over the racial divide in our country. THIS is why "identity politics" still exists and why black people who study hard and interact with Caucasian friends are scolded for "acting white." We will never move on to racial harmony as long as the pundits pray to the holy Bottom Line and use immoral race-based narratives to destroy hope and optimism and unity.
As Barack says, we never expected this to be easy. The media is now fully geared up to play the role of the lynch mob while our country heads down the drain, and it's up to the ordinary people in this country to tell the fatass executives who try to brainwash us from the boardrooms of their broadcast companies that we have had enough of the same, old, dishonest, dirty, insulting politics of the past.
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