If you're too young to remember Helms' "White Hands - Black Hands" ad, be grateful. If you continue reading, then forgive me for introducing to you an ad that would have remained dead in my memory (and never introduced into yours) if it weren't for a sad intentional/unintentional collaboration between an uncomfortably lazy media -airing any ridiculous story that comes its way, and Donald Trump.
And now: "White Hands - Black Hands"
Make no mistake about it, Trump's comments about President Barack Obama's academic fitness was just another blow of the angry (insert group) dog whistle. Trump sad and explicit comments are no worse than those indirectly suggested about Sarah Palin's "fitness", when many on the right insisted that the despite her dubious academic history and the fact that she hadn't finished a first term as the governor of a small state (with respect to population) that she was equally qualified if not MORE qualified than then Senator Barack Obama to lead.
Barack Obama, after all, had to have been handed his positions at Columbia and Harvard, right? He must have been asked to serve as editor of the Law Review to give Harvard a way of relieving its (nonexistent) liberal guilt, correct? Somehow Harvard administrators and law faculty managed any and all guilt it may have experienced every year before then law student Barack Obama arrived. Right place, right time? There's no evidence that the institution is in the habit of promoting people of color for the sake of doing so - except in the minds of Trump and those who blindly follow him.
Trump's call was of course answered by Pat Buchanan, who can now join the pitchfork and torch crowd and demand the release of the President's records. Make no mistake about it, any flaws in his academic records will be magnified and the President will be accused of untoward behavior (why else would he have not performed well, right? He must have been out drinking with friends instead of studying).
As is President Obama's history of not being able to win, for the sake of losing, if his records are perfect, it will be said that he was given each grade instead of earning it. Others will use his "perfection" as further evidence that there is something about him that still makes him "not quite one of us".
This will not end. Those who have been brazen and boisterous in hoping for The President's failure will not let it end. Those in the media who have spent more of their time focused on reporting, but not clearly naming, the irrational rage targeting him will not let it end.
I have my plan to make the rage and ill reporting irrelevant. I'm tuning them out. I hope most of my fellow Americans will join me in doing the same. If you stay tuned in to the fight, ask for the academic credentials of every reporter who brings up the story and every politician and pundit who does the same. I doubt history will regard any of these individuals well for their treatment of this President, but we shouldn't have to wait until a historian a quarter of a century later reflects on this bad behavior. We can demand a higher level of discourse now - rejecting anything less.