11 June 2008

What on Earth are they doing?


Why do I know that this will NOT be the last time the American media makes this current election a racist, ignorant, fear driven, sick-minded, debacle? I guess because, I have a brain.
It appears that the ignorant, talking-heads that we have so graciously planted on cable-TV and given their own news shows, loud microphones and bright lights - want to be heard. They want to be heard and they want to say THEE stupidest things so that someone will pay them some attention.
It seems as though Barack and Michelle Obama gave each other a little "dap" onstage last week in St. Paul and the media appears to have gone ape-sh*t over the gesture. Media people on all of the big networks were asking what was "meant by that gesture," and "Why did they do that?" and "What do you call that hand thing?". WHAAAAAAAAAT???
These people claim to be able to present NEWS to the masses. They are supposed to be intelligent enough to present world events, history making events, once in a lifetime events and they are unnerved and baffedly beyond words by a little "fist dap." Give me a freakin' break.
I started to define "fist dap" right here... but then I thought about it. If anyone is kind enough to read this, and living in the United States, and has NOT, repeat - NOT been living under a rock, then they should already know what a "fist dap" or "a pound" or "some dap" is. Therefore I won't waste your valuable blog-reading time.
Back to the talking heads - one Fox News reporter, E.D. Hill went as far as to call the gesture "A terrorist Fist Jab." Hill was promptly repremanded by Fox in public; behind closed doors I'm sure she's a water-cooler hero at Fox, and she probably got a neat little bonus check for the dig against the Obama's.
But, this kind of foolishness, what I call "racial foolishness" is certain to spread in the coming months. I think Barack is going to come under fire for his party of choice, that's a no-brainer, but what we are going to see and read is an amazing amount of racial foolishness from the mainstream media. We are going to see the big media windbags from Fox, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, etc. saying things and making accusations that are going to sound nothing short of insane. The media is going to attack the Obama's because they are not White. Note that I didn't say Black, I said, "Not White."
For the simple fact that the media picked up the gesture and noted it, shows that even the tiniest of things that may not be done by "mainstream" Whites are going to be presented as alien, foreign, void of logic, you-name-it. Every little thing that Barack and Michelle will do overthe rest of this election is going to be hyper-scrutinized. John McCain can drag his wife out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and cover her in whipped cream and chopped nuts from head-to-toe and the media will glance over it with a chuckle and a grin and move into a detailed, three-part, round-table discussion over "Why the Obama's picked NOW to paint their Volvo station-wagon beige?"
We are going to be flooded with some of the dumbest, saddest, most ignorant news reporting in our country's history over the next five months, and I'm sorry to say The Obama's are going to be at the heart of most of it. We are at the most crucial time in our country's existence, employment is down, the economy is down, thousands of Americans are losing their homes each day, crime is up, education is WAY down, we are deep in a recession, gas is approaching $5 a gallon, healthcare is a joke, and our media is acting like the Black guy running for president is sharing a mysterious pact of some sort with his wife.
Until we demand our media to take us seriously as Americans. they never will!!!!

04 June 2008

Michelle Obama


Last night as I sat glued to my TV watching Barack Obama acknowledging his history making ascension to the Democratic Party's nomination for President, I was overwhelmed.
Here we are in 2008 and there is a very good chance that the next President of the United States could be an African American man. I am nothing less than astonished. I'm astonished and tremendously proud to be an American on this day. The majority of Democratic voters were able to look [for the most part] past race and they were able to vote for a Black man. WOW! Way to go America!
I was on the edge of my seat for the whole speech. My wife and I were exchanging high-fives and clapping and giving our love to Barack Obama and the future of hope and optimism that we pray he brings. Then he finished with a couple of "God Bless America's" and then suddenly my whole perspective on the night's events changed. Michelle Obama took the stage with her husband.
I have become quite a Michelle Obama fan over the last year or so. I think that she is a very dynamic, intelligent and downright likeable person. For Barack Obama to have captured the heart of a woman like her, it says a lot about his character, and I admire the relationship the two of them appear to have. That is why my perspective changed. Michelle did not appear to be her usual happy and cheerful "potential future-first-lady" self, she looked worried.
She tried to hide it, that stunned, worried look that people get when their spouses step into harms way. It was the look of spouses that kiss their loved ones goodbye before they head off to war. It was the same look that I imagine police officers and fire-fighters spouses give their loved ones when they leave for work. It was the look I assume Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz gave their husbands when they went out to change the world.
I have an optimistic streak deep within me, it is in this streak that I believe Barack Obama will change the world, I believe that he will beat John McCain and move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and he'll do amazing things and he'll grow old and gray and write memoirs and give lectures and be an American icon for generations. But, my optimism aside, we live in a world of fanatics, lunatics, racists and hate mongers. We live in a world of danger.
I think this is why My Girl - Michelle looked a little worried last night. She's given us her husband. She's allowed... YES allowed... our country to have a chance for renewed greatness on the back and shoulders of her best friend, her husband, her man, [in her own words] her babies DADDY. She's a smart woman, she knows the dangers that powerful people face, she knows the dangers that powerful men face, she knows the dangers that powerful Black men face - and yet, she's allowed her husband to try and improve our lives.
In all the wonderful and deserved Barack Obama hype that we are now celebrating, let us not forget Michelle. Let us not forget that behind every good man there is an even better woman.
LUV U OBAMA'S!!!!!!!!!!!
TTBM