Great, Mr. President. Now we have to start over.
One of the reasons I think America may have hit peak civilization, meaning that the future is all downhill from here, is that most of our political press seems downright hostile to any thought process that cannot adequately be conveyed on the inside of a bottle cap. This weekend President Obama
appeared on Marc Maron's podcast for a lengthy interview in which he explored ongoing American racism and gun obsessions; see if you can spot the moment when the press covering Obama and his various doings decided
they had their headline.
“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it,” Obama said in the interview, posted in full on Monday. “And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘n——-’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. … Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 2-300 years prior.”
Yep, there it is. Our Politico headline:
"Obama uses the N-word in podcast interview." The Hill:
"Obama uses N-word while arguing US is not 'cured' of racism." CNN:
"Obama uses N-word, says we are 'not cured' of racism." ABC?
Check. NBC?
Yup.
Well, at least those fine institutions went on to include Obama's actual argument. Fox News went into full histrionic meltdown mode, bringing on black Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli to help deploy their own preferred and very much stupider frame, that Obama was the "rapper in chief."
"He has really dragged in the gutter speak of rap music. So now he is the first president of rap, of street? [...]
You see all of the people coming together in the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, black, white and otherwise, coming together, praying, supporting each other. And here you have the president make this insane, crazy comment of using the "n-word" to really distract. This is all a distraction, grand distraction to take away from the people uniting and then the president in chief, the rapper in chief, now further dividing our country. I find it outrageous."
Once again, we were
this close to being united as a nation, only to have President Obama "rap" at us and point out that much of America still has a shallow and juvenile understanding of what racism even
is—and now we're divided again. Because we're just not ready to have any conversation about race that goes any deeper than whether or not somebody said a bad word. Which may or may not have been the president's precise point—I forget, and can't be bothered to look up five paragraphs to find out.