Miss Oprah Winfrey, "I'm not supporting Obama because he's black I'm supporting him because he's brilliant, he's brilliant." Oh, yeah...
For so many years white conservatives in Congress, in the media, at your family gatherings have somehow mastered the art of the code. The media of course usually lets them get away with it. We all know the four subsets of the population they hate the most: blacks, hispanics (especially Mexicans), Jews, and gays. They have developed a very nifty way of telling us this in public. Poltical correctness REALLY means that conservatives are miffed that they can't speak in public the way they speak in private. Thus:
1) government give-away programs (blacks)
2) welfare cheats (blacks)
3) states' rights (blacks)
4) taking our country back (hispanics)
5) smart-aleck New York lawyer (Jews)
6) Hollywood media elite (Jews)
7) The "San Francisco" Democrats--at Reagan's '84 convention (gays)
8) family/tradition values (gays)
9) Midnight Basketball (one of my favorites-this was used against Democrats in the '94 midterms) (blacks, especially young blacks)
10) and let's not forget good ole' Willie Horton (and if you vote for Dukakis, he'll let every n.... out of jail) (need I mention it)
Now all my friends and colleagues who are supporting Barack Obama (a man with a resume as thin as Ally McBeal compared to the other candidates of both parties) are just TERRIFIED, yes TERRIFIED to bring up race as the obvious reason why they're for him. It's actually rather humorous to listen to the Obama people on TV (like Claire McCaskill) trying to use every verbal gymnastic trick they can come up with to justify their support; you hear a lot of this in op-eds and on the blogs too:
Obama:
1) is a refreshing change of pace (he's black)
2) can bring real change to the way we do business in
Washington (he's black)
3) is a brilliant, spellbinding orator (he's black)
4) can unite the various factions of the country into a
cohesive unit (he's black)
5) reminds me of John and Bobby Kennedy (he's black)
(by the by Bobby ordered wiretaps on the phones of MLK)
6) excites me like no other politician ever has (he's black)
7) is not the same ole same ole (he's black)
8) is INSPIRATIONAL (this one is all over the place like horse
s..t) (he's black)
9) is poetic and lyrical (he's black)
10) finally, sums up all of my hopes and dreams for this country
(guess what-he's black)
Now I realize that I have a lower-than-most-people tolerance for this crappola about Obama but should it be tolerated? I would respect the Obama people a lot more if they would actually come out with what they really mean. They want Obama to win because he's black, period. Does that mean he has no qualifications nor attributes? Of course not. He has plenty, but so do a lot of the other candidates who have vastly more experience for the toughest job on earth than he has, who were also against the war, and are just as "brilliant"--he hasn't been such a genius by the way in these debates and I've seen them all. Most Clinton people I know will flat out tell you they have longed for a woman president for decades.
But getting the Obama people to admit the truth would be harder than getting the earth to spin off its axis or Charlton Heston to grow his own hair.