The final “New Rule” of Bill Maher's tonight (February 17, 2012) is how I have felt (and then some) all along. (You can watch the episode online as soon as they post it, if you subscribe to HBO.) Remember when one of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, during a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq said "we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush) is from Texas"? The response was by many that it was awful, disrespectful, even treason.
The "disrespect" given blatantly to President Obama by politicians and others behind his back and to his face are rooted in bigotry in my opinion. He is a "socialist", a "nazi", "he hates religion and/or the USA", and on and on. I believe this “branding” of him is because "they" feel that the word they’d rather use, “nigger”, can't be used openly. The lady in an online "Town Meeting”, who he offered to help her husband with a job, followed this up with suggesting to the President that he stand and do a "jig" was over the line. Who uses the word “jig” nowadays? He responded by politely delivering the line, “No, there will be no dancing”. Entertainer Al Jolson, who liked to entertain in black face did jigs. He was an entertainer. Many want to put President Obama “in his place” - the back of the bus, strip him of his voting rights, put him in prison, send him to Kenya, etc. An entertainer, a sportsman, a second class citizen – all things black people’s can be and be kept in their proper places, but certainly not be treated like the President of the United States of America.
If Jeremiah Wright had suggested this week that women put an aspirin between their legs for birth control as Foster Friess, a major donor to the super PAC backing Rick Santorum, said, I believe the Republicans and their pundit representatives would have spun it into something that pushed Obama into being Satan or something at least like “Well, you know those Kenyans just have no couth, they are crass.” Rep. Wilson yelling "liar" to Obama when he addressed the nation and Congress and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer sticking her finger in his face would not have been acceptable behavior to a white Republican President. Republican Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s statement, “Making Obama a one-term President is my single most important political goal” is at minimum a political goal with no respect for the voters who put President Obama into the highest office of the nation. Fixing our people’s problems hasn’t had McConnell’s attention.
There is an element in the country who can’t cope with a black man in the White House. It turns their stomachs. It is all about race. Not about a birth certificate, being a secret muslim, etc. Are there good and bad bigots? Not in my mind. And yet they have become "acceptable" in that it has been commonplace to hear this rhetoric starting when Barack Obama decided to run for President. And we have accepted it by the fact of not having leaders shut it down, but actually riding on bigotry’s coat tails. The courage for our politicians to let it continue and swell comes from their vein of constituents who tell them they don’t want a black man as our President. (I look forward to a book from the President after he leaves office in his second term. I hope he is brutally honest. But I suppose he won’t be able to tell us of all the death threats accompanied with racists comments to him and his family, as he will have to protect his family’s safety.)
I am not happy with President Obama when it comes to some issues, but it doesn't mean that I take license to step into the land of bigots.
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