Two Annunciations: MSNBC Supports Barack Hussein Obama, And He Is Not Black (or so says someone)

In a matter of minutes from now (30 minutes), Barack Hussein Obama, the handsome and well-spoken senator from Illinois, shall officially announce his candidacy for President of the United States. Assisting him in this proclamation, and no doubt a supporter of his candidacy, is MSNBC, the cable network featuring such notable political wisemen as Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann. My saying that MSNBC is assisting him is due entirely to the fact that MSNBC is hyping its "live coverage" of Mr. Obama's annunciation with undue alacrity at this moment: MSNBC is giddy about this man. Even Mr. Russert's words on an Imus in the Morning program, words replayed during Mr. Russert's testimony in court the other day -- in the Scooter Libby perjury trial -- are perfectly apt: It was "Christmas Eve" in the newsroom when Libby was indicted. No doubt it is Christmas morning today.

Alas, I have proven rather incompetent in my coverage of the Obama story. For I have not properly secured the facts, though, in this digital age of plastic facts, it is not likely that I could ever pin down any fact, for facts vanish in a flash-media second. But please note that on October 24, 2006, in an essay I wrote about Mr. Obama, I noted that his September 2005 essay posted on the Daily Kos, the influential, self-described leftist blog, had as a banner advertisement the following image:



Please note Mr. Obama's placement in this advertisement. Please note that this ad was present at Mr. Obama's Daily Kos essay months before Mr. Obama even announced his exploratory committee for the presidency. Please note that MSNBC not only placed an advertisement for itself on Mr. Obama's Daily Kos diary, but MSNBC placed Mr. Obama's image adjacent to President Bush's, suggesting, perhaps, that both men are in some sort of great struggle. To MSNBC, Obama is a contender, and this MONTHS before he was indeed a contender. Amazingly, MSNBC threw Mr. Obama's hat into the presidential ring before he had himself.

Or so it looks. Or so it feels.

Unfortunately, I only took a screen shot of the actual ad. I failed to take, and preserve, a screen shot of the ad on the actual Obama page. And as you can see, the ad has been removed from Mr. Obama's essay posted, as it was, on the world's largest blog, a blog entirely devoted to political and sociological liberalism.

But who cares, right? This is, after all, the deliverer we are talking about. The great hope. And in just a little less than an hour, there will be a star over the silent little town of Springfield, Illinois. You know, where Abraham Lincoln once lived.

This is all shaping up to be a perfect little fairy tale, the kind America just loves to tell itself.

MY SKIN IS CLEAR (I think)

Curiously related to all of this mythmaking, and jarring our senses, is this essay ("Colorblind") about Mr. Obama (and race in America in general). It is published on Salon. com, and it is written by a "black" woman, Debra J. Dickerson. Perhaps you saw Ms. Dickerson on "The Colbert Report" earlier this week (in a brilliant interview). Ms. Dickerson's thesis, in case you did not know, is that Mr. Obama is NOT BLACK. I kid you not. His mother, apparently, is a white woman from Kansas, while his dad is from Kenya. That Ms. Dickerson defines blackness in political terms is astonishing: to be black in America means, strictly, to be a direct descendant of former African slaves. During Ms. Dickerson's interview with the thoroughly enjoyable Mr. Colbert, she said that Mr. Obama would be better served if he defined himself -- and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP -- as an African African-American. But he is definitely NOT black.

That this woman, who wrote the book, The End of Blackness, is ruining the great idea of a man with dark skin announcing his presidency from Abraham Lincoln's hometown, you know, the town of that great president who clearly made the first great step for the emancipation of slaves so they could become -- eventually -- candidates for President, is a fact too interesting to let pass unnoticed.

But I ask you: if being black is a political-linguistic term denoting only those who are descendants of actual African slaves imported to America, does it NOT FOLLOW that "white" is equally political, denoting only those who have descended from white slaveholders who imported African slaves to America? I think it does. And if that is the case, then, since there were no slaveholders in my ancestral gene pool, I am not white.

There you go then.

I am not white, and Barack Obama, should he become president, will not be America's first black President.

Go figure.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Replay: Celebrating The Forgotten Martin Luther King

[This essay first appeared here on January 16, 2006]

I don't really care what anyone thinks about the following statement, so I say it without hesitation: The 1960's in America were pretty sick years. I have no nostalgia for them; no awe of their alleged liberation or romance for their upheaval, no glee over the sexual and drug revolutions. I stand in protest of the 1960's and their legacy.

And one salient feature of the illness of the 1960's was the shocking death of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not shocking in that it was unexpected, for even Dr. King anticipated it, I believe, in his very final speech. It was shocking in that it was emblematic of truly profound social conflicts that marred that decade, perhaps the most vulgar and violent one, in America's history. Dr. King, after all, was a pacifist in a tumultuous and vicious fight for equality among the races. That his death, his martyrdom, may have spurred Americans toward a more just and kind world is disconcerting, as death should not be required for what seems intuitively to be a simple lesson: All men are created equal.

Of course, as a man bent toward the philosophical, I ask myself whether it is indeed true that all men are created equal. Is it? If we are strict Darwinists, if we are secularists without appeal to God or some transcendent force responsible for mankind's existence and equality, then we must concede that equality is not an ontological (metaphysical) reality. Evolution, in its dynamic "natural selection" process, abhors equality, as disparate species fight and morph for dominance and survival, with nary a hint of egalitarianism. To the secular mind "equality" must be a religious fiction created by that secularism, for there is nothing in the entire cosmos that even resembles "equality." As I've stated elsewhere, including here at Contratimes, neither "equality" nor "rights" exist in any place other than the faith-based imagination of secularists.

Unless, of course, there really is a God. Then one can indeed talk, not only of "equality" but of "rights" as well, rights rooted in the imago dei, the image of God. And that is why the concepts of "rights" and "equality" are rooted in theological language in the founding documents of America. If there is no God, there is no equality and no rights, except in that fictive realm wherein the secular mind places them. If there is a God, there is at least the potential for there to be real qualities to equality and rights; a real, ontological quality.

Of course, the philosopher in me also sees this astounding problem: If there is indeed a God, then only humans are equal one to another, for God surely is not equal to His creation. In short, a world wherein God exists is hierarchical, with God sitting in the highest seat. With that said, it is no wonder secularists abhor a theological structure for social governance, as God confounds their love of absolute equality.

While today we celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, I would like to celebrate what is absolutely forgotten about Martin Luther King. And what is forgotten is that Dr. King held no expertise in social or political scheming; he was not trained to be a rebel or a revolutionary. No, Dr. King was first and foremost a Christian theologian and ordained minister. Sadly, in most celebrations of his life, these seem to be the first things that are forgotten about him. I wonder, how would this make him feel?

Today is really a religious holiday, but you wouldn't know it. It is a holiday celebrating the liberating power of the Gospel, the very power that liberated a young Martin King when he first attended church, and when he first attended college. It is a day, not of civil rights, but of the power of love and justice and this wild notion that God loves ALL MEN EQUALLY, which manifests itself in justice and truth in the Christian Savior walking the streets offering a message of hope to the oppressed and harassed: those persecuted by the powerful; those harassed by the terrors of their own sins. It is right to be civil, and it is civil to be right; but neither truth means anything without the civilizing and righteous power of the Christian God who calls all men and women unto Him: that neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free; neither man nor woman nor black nor white, are to be excluded from His banquet hall. This is not unconditional universalism, but that universalism with a caveat: that all invited guests must first accept the invitation, shedding their filthy clothes for the formal clothes that come as a result of God's sacrifice, with all men and all women attired in the grace of God's forgiveness. Those who refuse the invitation, or the forgiveness, remain, freely, outside to dine alone. The maître d' bids them Bon appetit! if they would just humble themselves and accept their reservations.

But this great day is for me in many ways a day of sorrow, for the great man Dr. Martin Luther King is cheapened, gutted and reduced to something other than he was, for he was not a secular member of the vanguard; his power was not intrinsic to him; his cause was a cause that has nothing, ultimately, to do with him at all. For it is God's cause, and Dr. King knew that, and he embraced that powerful fact. How sorrowful that our schools and culture want to forget what ultimately made Dr. King a great man.†

For me, Dr. King represents the fight to keep the cardinal virtues together in harmonic balance. G. K. Chesterton argued that the Protestant Reformation smashed the union of the cardinal virtues, causing them to run amok, befouling the earth with their zeal. Just think of love, hope, faith, justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude helter-skelter on the earth, unbound from each other. Justice untethered becomes a church or legal fund or race riot insisting on its own verdicts, neglecting the temperance which is mercy. Temperance alone turns into flagellation and legalism. Prudence in isolation turns into the idolatry of caution, dreading the imperfect choice. Love runs to and fro without the truth of justice or the restraint of self-control, and blindly affirms acts and deeds that true love, in balance, would not countenance or so casually condone. Today, I can hear Dr. King call for the orthodoxy which holds all of these virtues together, the orthodoxy of Christ. It is this part of Dr. King's message that I remember today with sadness, for it is the part of his message and his life that is forgotten.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

†There are those who don't think Dr. King was a great man, but I think otherwise. His peccadilloes, his sins, do indeed count against him. But all of us have these charges against us. What made him great is that he held to his convictions without being paralyzed by the fact that he was a man of imperfections. Too many of us permit our imperfections to sway us from our course. We fall prey to one of the greatest social evils, which is the fixation on the purity of the messenger rather than on the accuracy of the message. It is the "Who are you?" fallacy. It is the devil's line of discredit.

John Kerry: A Racy Joke?

I will not whip the John Kerry story to death, but there are several more things to say about Mr. Kerry's allegedly "botched joke." The first thing to say is that, if you get a chance to watch the video of Mr. Kerry's stand-up routine, you will see that he does not, at any time, LOOK (or sound) like he is telling any sort of joke. There is no facial cue, no lilt in the voice. He does not offer a softening of the eyes, or even a twinkle in one eye. There is no wink; no feigned laugh, no silly smirk. There is no affect whatsoever that he is trying to be funny. He does not prompt his audience after a long set-up to the punchline. Nay. He gives us nothing other than a very dour face; he looks like he is waiting for the audience to immolate themselves, to burn themselves to death. He does not look like he is expecting a laugh: His face, without doubt, looks like he is saying that none of this is a laughing matter.

That is point 1.

Point 2 is that even if we rewrite Mr. Kerry's joke, adding the "us" that he says he carelessly omitted, it isn't one whit funny. "You know, if you don't do well in school, well, you get us stuck in Iraq." AHHAHHHAHAHAHA! What a howler!

Point 3 is that, irrespective of Mr. Kerry's apology -- in which he apologizes, not for the joke but its misinterpretation (it's the listeners' fault) -- the joke, no matter how accurately or inaccurately delivered, cannot, in any way, be interpreted as NOT a slam of the military. For if Mr. Kerry is telling the truth, that he was merely damning the dumbness of the Bush Administration, he is nonetheless damning the Commander-in-Chief and his underlings. In other words, he is slamming the military. Moreover, he is also slamming the generals and colonels who submit to the alleged idiots in the White House; and he is also suggesting that many of the generals and other military officials who believe the invasion of Iraq was indeed a good thing are also "dumb". In other words, it is a joke belittling the military. Lastly, the joke suggests that all those soldiers who are UNDER the great dolts comprising the leadership of the war are themselves duped into submission, serving under leaders who are foolish, deceitful, empty -- men and women who did not do their homework. In other words, the joke damned every level of the military, no matter how you look at it.

The fourth point is one I brought up here yesterday. I am going to be so bold to suggest that I am one of the first bloggers (if not the first and only) to make the observation, and the observation is this: John Kerry might have been playing the race and class card. For we all know that certain Democrats, like Charlie Rangel and John Conyers, have complained that too many minorities -- inner-city minorities -- and the least privileged members of society, are most vulnerable to military recruitment. We also know that Messrs. Rangel and Conyers supported the reinstitution of the military draft during the 2004 election cycle: they played on the fears of their base under the guise that they were trying to build balance or parity in the recruitment of soldiers.

It appears to me that any sane observer could conclude that Mr. Kerry was playing this very cynical, racially-charged card. Context is everything, no? So it stands to reason that we might want to understand who it was Mr. Kerry may have been aiming his comments at; it is reasonable to ask to whom was Mr. Kerry speaking. You see, his joke was to a college crowd at Pasadena City College. As I stated yesterday, that inner-city college has a student body of over 25,000; 70.3 percent of that student body is made up of minorities. The school's largest minority group is Hispanic; the second is Asian; with the black student population making up just about 6.5%. Was John Kerry playing to this crowd? Was he saying -- since these listeners were minorities -- that they were most vulnerable to recruitment, to death on the war front? Was he playing to two stereotypes; one being that minorities make great cannon fodder for Republican wars; and two, that minorities are only able to save themselves if they rise above their apparent dumbness by doing well in school (I do not think there is ANY apparent dumbness, by the way)? Was Mr. Kerry propping himself up as a defender of minorities from alleged Republican indifference to their plight?

I think a good case could be made that he was so propping himself. This is not to suggest that Mr. Kerry is at all a racist himself. It is merely to posit some reason why Mr. Kerry said what he said. Here is a good question: Would Mr. Kerry have told this joke to an Ivy League college crowd? Had he ever told that joke to a group of affluent white folks? If he has told this joke before, or if he would have told this joke to a bunch of rich kids at Harvard, then my observations here are irrelevant and misplaced.

One final little note: Amy Kane of Atlantic Avenue passed this very informative link along to me. It is a very detailed study of the actual, rather than perceived, demographics regarding military recruitment.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: John Kerry, Botched Joke, Race

Racist Ads? Where Racism Lies

It is a controversial time. It is a pathetic time. Rarely is it ever a fun time, or even a funny time. It is nearly always a petty time, a mean one, full of vitriol and sarcasm and lies. I am talking about election time, particularly that time when political commercials bombard us.

But once in a while, there is a great, lighthearted, even silly political ad. This new Rick Santorum ad comes to mind; it sets a new standard for good-hearted fun.

Of course, there is a fully satirical, even self-mocking ad that has caused predictable controversy. It is this one by the Republican National Committee regarding Harold Ford Jr.'s bid for a Tennessee US Senate seat. I hope you have seen it; I hope you watch it. It is really quite good-natured. (Please watch it before proceeding.)

WELL?

Did you watch it? Did you think it offensive? racist?

Let's look at who this ad pokes fun at (besides Mr. Ford). Surely it pokes fun at gun-wielding hunters, white guys with weapons selling their souls to the NRA. Surely it pokes fun at Canada, and alleged middle-American values regarding that allegedly lazy socialist neighbor to the north. Surely it pokes fun at sex appeal, the face value, so to speak, of a candidate. Surely it pokes fun at retired white men, retired white conservative men. Surely, if nothing else, it pokes fun at blondes, Playboy blondes.

But do you think it pokes fun at black men? Hmm.

Here's a news story about the whole affair, and it is steeped in claims that the commercial is racist. That bastion of racial clarity, that race-free zone known as the NAACP, is quite up in arms about a certain insinuation:

"It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women," Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington NAACP office, told the Los Angeles Times.

Really? What innuendo is that? That whites can be involved sexually with blacks? Is that an innuendo? What about the black woman at the beginning of the ad, does she feed some sort of gross racial innuendo too?

(For more eye-opening video, watch as MSNBC's Chris Matthews sets us all straight about moral and racial decency. Just note that it is Matthews who believes that white males have a hard time with Harold Ford. Talk about racial innuendo. And take a moment to read some of the comments at the Huffington Post.)

What I am really curious about has everything to do with miscegenation, you know, that grotesque thing known as INTERMARRIAGE and INTERRACIAL dating, which are so often damned by racists. You know, the stuff liberals accused (for example) the Republican bastion Bob Jones University of restricting, where people of differing races cannot date. You know, that gross stereotype about mixing races. Yeah, you know, that racist stuff that meant that dumb blondes, or even smart ones, must never date black men.

Sadly, in our duly enlightened times, it is unseemly, for sure, for a black man to flirt with a white woman, or vice versa, at least to the NAACP. Egads, let us stop our ears at the thought that a white woman might find a black man SEXY, even cute (or vice versa)!

Chalk this all up to the new puritanism I've written about before, where Democrats and progressives wag their fingers at fun and very real -- and totally OK -- things. Chalk this also up to Democrats -- who just love the parodies performed by their most comedic representatives throughout the media -- having lost their sense of humor and perspective when conservatives try (!) to be funny.

There is nothing racist about the ad at all. What IS racist is the suggestion that it is.

The only thing that we should be asking is whether the ad is fair, and whether it is at all stating anything true. I am not sure it is UN-fair, though I am not sure about its truth. It seems to be an effective parody of reality: it is based on true things, but it is not direct expressions of anything actual. In some ways the piece is rather brilliant. But it is not in itself true: these are not the real thoughts of real people (at least I don't think they are). It is a satire, a spoof, of Mr. Ford's political decisions and opinions. It is, again, about making impressions, not least of which is that Republicans can lampoon with the best of them.

Lastly, it is worth noting that Democrats are crying foul about their dear Mr. Ford's sacred racial standing. That's fine with me: his race should be honored and protected. But I wonder if they would be as defensive of him if they were aware of this statement on his own website:

"I will continue to be pro-family, including supporting a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, without taking away the civil rights of gays and lesbians."

Or this from the same essay:

"I believe that my faith mirrors the principles on which our nation was founded: equality, dignity, tolerance and freedom. These ideas formed the bedrock on which the founding fathers based their claim to independence, and these are the same lessons that Jesus preaches in the Gospel. The separation of church and state is not an order for lawmakers to ignore their faith or to banish their values. Instead, it is a command for tolerance, to recognize that not all of us share the same beliefs or worship the same god and to respect those differences.

"And so, I will continue to be guided by my faith in the Senate. …"

Is he not really a guy who wants to impose his religious beliefs on public policy? Is he NOT a homophobe?

It's all just so interesting!

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Harold Ford Jr., Playboy, Political Advertising, Political Commercials, Chris Matthews, Racism

Black And Red? Hah! He Cannot Shine

I spoke two days ago about one of the great rising stars of the Democrat party, Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. I did so because he is in fact a rising star, and he is being very much courted by the media: some have already suggested that he is the man who will deliver the country in 2008, procuring the White House and leading America forward in an audacious pursuit of hope.

But I must ask how many Contratimes readers have ever heard of the first African-American man to be elected to state-wide office in Maryland. Perhaps only a few of you know the name of that man; I know that I forgot about him until yesterday. The man is Michael Steele (pictured above); a handsome, bright, and articulate man who has served Maryland as Lt. Governor and is currently campaigning for a US Senate seat against Democratic congressman Ben Cardin. Apparently it is a very spirited battle.

I am going to make a wild proclamation. I am going to suggest that Michael Steele, every bit as bright and interesting and handsome and capable as Barack Obama, is not a rising star for one simple reason: He's a Republican.

But I will refrain from speaking further on this for the time being. There is one man, an African-American man, who has written a blistering commentary on the treatment of Mr. Steele by the Democrats around him. It is a worthy read. But I warn you. It is fiery and fierce. I am under the distinct impression that beneath all that fire, the author is probably quite right. Which means that this is all very, very sad.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Michael Steele, Barack Obama