Daily Kos is radical. That’s why I like him. He’s a liberal and I don’t agree with everything he stands for, but I like that he isn’t afraid to tackle the Republican Party on some very tough issues. This time, he’s riding John McCain’s ass for not taking advantage of an opportunity that would have benefited his campaign.

I agree with him. Not letting Daniel Zubairi go on the air to talk about his confrontation with a Republican hate-monger was just plain stupid. It doesn’t look good and it paints the McCain camp as out of touch. Meanwhile, Barack Obama stopped campaigning for a day to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, which makes him look all too human. Ideology aside, Barack is looking like a real person; McCain just looks like a chump.

Here’s what I’d do if I was McCain: I’d fire my entire campaign staff. Then I’d run as a maverick. A true maverick. No campaign staff and speak from the heart. Now that would truly be a maverick thing to do. But he doesn’t have the balls.

That guy who writes Things That Just Piss Me Off really pisses me off sometimes. But today he’s got me pissing happy as a Russian racehorse. He invoked the ‘Rush Limbaugh is a racist’ card.

Rush Limbaugh is the slime bucket of the GOP. He and Sean Hannity. Colin Powell didn’t rise as far in the ranks of the military as he did by showing racist favoritism. The U.S. military has come as close to eliminating racism as any institution in the modern world. Colin Powell’s professionalism and dedication to his country are untouched and unmatched by few in the ranks of either major party. If he chose to endorse Barack Obama, I can assure you it wasn’t because of race.

Colin Powell was used by the rightwing nutjobs who now hold public office - primarily George W. Bush, his sidekick Dick “Mutley” Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld - to sell their lies to the UN and the American people. That alone is enough to make any reasonable and self-respecting Republican of any race to switch parties no matter who the running mate is. Colin Powell is just one person in a long line of Republicans to have abandoned their party and endorse Barack Obama. I suppose all those white Republicans did so because Barack is black as well, right?

Rush Limbaugh has as much sense as pharmaceutical abuse. And the effect he has on the American system of politics is about the same. No wonder he pisses people off.

The Internet has been the subject of much scorn and ridicule as a place where untruths, lies, and outright blasphemies can be distributed with ease. But I’ve always argued that they can just as easily be refuted with ease. E-mail, however, can distribute one lie in a thousand different directions with no chance of retrieval and a total loss of control - in a microsecond. It’s a far more dangerous media tool than the World Wide Web.

Consider: The Internet is a mass communication tool. When you publish online you are communicating with millions of other people who share cyberspace. If those people cannot talk back on the same page and website on which lies are distributed, they can at least set up their own page to counter those lies and untruths. The power of distribution is equal.

E-mail, on the other hand, is a one-to-one communication tool that can be used to communicate the same message to many people by copying and blind copying them. Then those people can create a one-to-one communication message and distribute the same untruths to their friends. And so on and so on. Untrue messages can circulate over and over again continuously with no checks or balances and no chance for refutation. Sure, I can respond to an e-mail and correct the sender, but who will correct all the other recipients of that e-mail and their friends who distribute it too? The answer is, most people, even if they know a message they’ve received in e-mail is wrong, will simply delete it and not think about it again. That allows the untrue message to continue circulating unchecked.

Barack Obama And The Audacity Of Hype

I recently received an e-mail from a close member of my family that attempts to paint Barack Obama in a bad light by using his own words. They are words from Obama’s book’s Audacity of Hope and Dreams Of My Father. First, I’d like to say that I haven’t read either book and I think it is highly likely that the person who sent me the e-mail hasn’t read them either. That means that neither of us can verify whether the statements in the e-mail are true without some research. But I find them to be highly suspect because it is easy to take such statements out of context. Even if the source to which they are attributed is correct, it is highly likely that they are being construed in ways that the original source unintended. That is easy to do with e-mail. Below are the comments in the e-mail I received and my impressions:

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.’

Big deal. At 12 or 13, we all make statements and think thoughts that, after 30, we are quite ashamed of. Obama’s book is a memoir that tells the story of a young man with a black father and a white mother who was selected to be the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Of course race is going to be important in such a story and race in America is always - ALWAYS - a double-edge sword. Race relations are strained and there is a deep level of resentment toward whites among blacks toward blacks among whites. Anyone who hasn’t had negative thoughts about members of the opposite race has probably not had much contact with members of the other race. Obama’s youthful experience is natural and normal.

From Dreams of My Father : ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.’

This is a loaded statement because there is no background given for this quote. How old was Obama at the time? What were the circumstances? What experiences led Obama to feel this way? Is there a white person in America who has never felt a grievance or animosity against African-Americans for one thing or another? Yes. In every city and every state. This is just another example of white people of privilege trying to paint a member of the black race unfairly. Stop it!

From Dreams of My Father: ‘There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.’

OK. Again, what were the circumstances and how old was this Obama? Who is he talking about? Bill Clinton? George H.W. Bush? The former president of the Harvard Law Review? Give me some details. I can’t make a judgment on the basis of one fact alone.

From Dreams of My Father: ‘It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.’

Wow. To even include this statement shows an utter sense of ignorance. I think every successful black man in American has probably felt this way. Hell, I’ve felt this way and I’m not even black.

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa , that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.’

Again, how old was this Obama? Does he feel the same way now? Does it matter? He’s a black man in a predominantly white society who is almost old enough (if not actually old enough) to remember when white-only water fountains were still allowed by law. So why shouldn’t he identify with members of his own race? Why is that such a sin? I understand that Malcolm X carries some baggage among some whites due to the nature of his message, but who can argue that Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Dubois, and Nelson Mandela aren’t positive role models - even for white people? Give me a break!

And there’s the kicker. Oh, this is the big one. Holy Fricking Cow! I can’t believe it. The big, big sin cometh!

And FINALLY the Most Damming one of ALL of them!!!

From Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’

This is where I, a red-blooded white American boy, am supposed to pull out the full force of my redneck attitude and start hating. A BLACK man will side with the Muslims! Oh my God! Traitor! Traitor! Heretic! Traitor!

Facetiousness aside, I’ll ask the same questions again. What were the circumstances for him saying this? What’s the background? And before you go off and say there is no set of circumstances under which a white American Christian male should say he’ll side with the Muslims, consider this:

A violent Buddhist sect from India crosses into Pakistan and begin burning mosques. There is no visible motive for doing so other than sheer hatred. They go so far as to rape the Muslim women and kill their children, setting farms to fire, and blowing up buildings and automobiles with bombs. Are you going to side with the Muslims or the Buddhists committing acts of terrorism?

As I said earlier, I haven’t read either of Barack Obama’s books. I’m not particularly fond of his brand of politics. Though, in the interest of full disclosure, if it boils down to Obama and John McCain, the less of two evils is Barack Obama. I can’t imagine that John McCain will do anything a great deal differently than our current president and I think George W. Bush has destroyed enough of American values. We don’t need any more Republican nonsense in the White House. But this isn’t about who should be our next president. It’s about stupid e-mail messages circulating untruths, half-truths, and downright misappropriations of criticism about a candidate for president. In this case, those misappropriations are racially charged.

And how urgent is this message? According to the creator of the e-mail message, it’s very urgent:

* If you have never forwarded an e-mail, now is the time to Do so!!!! We CANNOT have someone with this type of mentality running our GREAT nation!! I don’t care whether you a Democrat or a Conservative. We CANNOT turn ourselves over to this type of character in a President. PLEASE help spread the word!

Notice how Democrat and Conservative are set against each other, as if a Democrat can’t be conservative or a conservative can’t be a Democrat. And God forbid that we should elect a president who has struggled with race issues in the White House.

So you can see how e-mail is a very dangerous media for passing on messages of hate, ignorance, and downright untruthfulness as well as damaging commentary on nothing of real importance.

Yes, you heard it right. Jesse Jackson said he wants to cut Barack Obama’s nuts off, or out, depending on which transcript you see as the official record. Some news agencies reported “off” and others reported “out.” Either way, it’s a big, fat “Ouch!”

What did Obama do? He allegedly “talked down to black people.” OMG! A black man talking down to black people? What nerve!

Evidently, the Rev. Jesse Jackson thinks it’s OK for a black leader to make excuses for bad behavior, but if one tells black men that they’ve got to start being better fathers then he’s “talking down.” But Obama isn’t the first black leader to make such remarks. Comedian Bill Cosby said it first, but I don’t remember Jesse Jackson ever saying nasty things about him. Of course, the once voice of Fat Albert wasn’t running for president on the Democratic ticket. Well, I guess it just goes to show that if preachers don’t tell it like it is then politicians should know better than to do so as well.

Poor Obama. He gets no respect.

I caught this paragraph at the bottom of a news article that is chiefly about racism in the news:

(Source) “I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended,” she said. “It’s a very colorful political season and many of us are making mistakes and saying things that we wish we hadn’t said.”

Why is this funny? If I were a black man would I still think it’s funny?

The woman making this statement was fired from Fox News for making a statement in her news segment that some people found offensive and racist. It was likely not intended as a racial slur, but it was taken that way. Many black people feel that there is a covert type of racism that exists when white people are simply ignorant of black culture. Because of this ignorance, white people are prone to saying stupid things that sound racist even when unintended as racism simply because we are being ourselves. I have no doubt that it’s probably true. Intelligent people (and nice people too) say stupid things all the time.

Many of the things that are being called offensive and getting news personalities in trouble this year are not necessarily gaffes that reveal a prejudice. Some of it could just be confusion. For instance, the article quoted above discusses a moment when Chris Matthews of MSNBC was talking about Barack Obama and a picture of Osama bin Laden came up on the screen. Was that planned or simply an “honest mistake?”

I can’t imagine that anyone, even an overt racist, would be stupid enough to make that kind of mistake on purpose. It was obviously not Chris Matthews’ fault. He had no control over the image that appeared behind him. News technology being what it is today, a producer or someone else connected with Matthews’ program would be the one responsible for the photos that appear behind Matthews when he is speaking. Did that person have a script or storyboard of some sort? Did he (or she) have a bevy of political images and just chose the wrong one? Were they in alphabetical order? Did he accidentally click on the wrong image while moving his mouse over the Osama bin Laden photo?

Anything (almost anything, conceivably) could have happened. Is it racism no matter what?

Not to downplay racism at all, there is obviously a lot of it floating around. Sometimes it floats in the opposite direction. But do we have to hear the choir sing every time something happens that appears to have a racial tinge to it? Certain things, like the “terrorist fist jab” comment and the “Obama’s baby mama” reference, are just tasteless. They aren’t necessarily racist (terrorists aren’t all black; in fact, most of them aren’t). So what is it?

Liz Trotta’s observation that this is a political season makes news commentators say things that they regret saying isn’t exactly a clarifying comment for me. People don’t need to be neck deep in presidential election year to come up with stupid stuff to say. Some news commentators have made a career of it. But I can’t help but noticing that this particular presidential election has the first black man to have secured a major political party nomination in U.S. history in the running. That fact alone makes us sensitive to the race issue and actually makes race an issue even if Obama is adamant and sincere about his desire to get past those things. He may want to, but the rest of us can’t.

Race matters. It’s important for a number of reasons, not the least of which because everyone of us is a byproduct of it in some way and the differences between the races are sometimes so striking that there is a natural conflict to the order of things. Political season or not. So why is Trotta’s statement so funny? It was her choice of words. It may be a “colorful” political season, but do we really have to spell it out?