I wouldn’t say these jokes about Barack Obama are racially charged.  They may push the envelope on good taste though. More broadly, they lack certain sensibilities.  It’s almost as if Brown expected his audience to soak up the venom gladly. Not with the cameras running.

I’ve heard worse, but don’t quit your day job Mr. Brown.

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God Bless Fox News for reporting on what is really important. The president finally decided to put the Guinness down, leave Europe, and pay his respects to those lost in the devastating tornadoes in Joplin.

Fox breaks the REAL news.  That news wasn’t the terrific, humbling, unifying speech given by the president.  It wasn’t the moving ceremony conducted by the city of Joplin.  It was the fact that the president may, or may not have been chewing gum during the service.  Watch the very socialist, Kenyan-like behavior below:

I’m sure it was watermelon flavored too.  Trifling.

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On April 4th, 1968, American history changed forever. At 6:01pm, gunshots ripped through the flesh of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,  as he stood on the balcony of his motel room. The purest embodiment of the civil rights movement lay motionless from a gaping wound to his neck.  Dr. King became that which most in the movement feared–a martyr, brought to his end by the tip of a coward’s bullet.  The heart of the movement had been removed from the body.

The man who dedicated his life to peaceful agitation for the rights of his fellow man, saw his life end in the most non-peaceful manner.  The irony was inescapable; the idea behind Dr. King’s nonviolent protest was that he believed that black Americans could never win a confrontation with armed authorities–those empowered to protect the scurrilous white supremacist status quo.  In the end, he was all too correct.

The system of racial oppression and white supremacy– and the stench from those willing to commit murder to enforce it, are not the legacy borne from Dr. King’s murder.  It is the sacrifice in pursuit of an America that is great and just–and America that realizes its potential, and invests her capital in all of her people.  That is the mantle held proudly by those of us dedicated to equality in the face of despair.  The struggle has changed somewhat.  The path to equitable practice is still not without strife.

What would Dr. King think of America’s dissipating middle class–that vital segment of American existence?  What would he think about the virulent anti-union climate in America?  Civil rights is about more than racial equality.  Civil rights equal gender and sexual orientation equality.  It means equality and justice in the workplace.  America is not a country of silence in the face of tyranny, oppression, or bigotry.

Our capital is not just the liquidity of our bank accounts–it is the heart, the mind, and the soul of the progressive thinker within us–progressive enough to affect change, and to embolden others to act as catalysts to remake our communities in an image Dr. King would be proud of.

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Let’s just call it what it is:  idiocy, lunacy, and buffoonery have become triple components  of an ideological doctrine that is passing for earnest debate in conservative GOP circles.  More and more have proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It’s nice to know so many of them have become knowledgeable about Kenyan world views.  What is this exactly, and why are conservatives so eager to ascribe it to the president?  Of all manner of insults and illogical barbs you could level at President Obama, a Kenyan world view is not one of them–especially when you don’t really know what it means (Huckabee).  Let’s delve a bit deeper here;  President Obama’s political ideology is not borne of some science fiction project–nor is it culled from the African fields of pseudo-socialism.  This president’s views are shaped by neo progressive ideas and pragmatic centrism– a most American thread of ideology.

Frankly, the ascription given him by fake conservatives is beyond bizarre– but this fits the pattern of false ideological dogma– tripping up conservatives since 2008.  Initially, he was the novice–the community organizer who dwelled within a prison of academia–unable to engage with real America because of his intellectual bonafides.  Whatever happened to that theory?  At least it portended of some semblance of political difference. It tried to serve as some type of warning about his lack of experience.  The path these individuals have now decided to take is more sinister, more dangerous.

While the whiffs of Obama as “one of them” has been wafting around for some time, the rancorous theme has spread like wildfire in the last year–and it has been propped up appreciably by more and more recognizable conservative mouth pieces.  Mike Huckabee’s mangling of Barack Obama’s you conflates the notion of Obama as the outsider–and Obama as the African enemy of democracy. Conservatives need to believe this.  They need to make it their reality, in order to advance their own distorted reality. It’s paramount to their degenerative thesis on disproving this President’s effectiveness by delegitimizing his very Americaness.

But where is this strategy leading them?  The shrapnel of kookiness threatens to damage innocent bystanders vying to challenge the president next year.  That is the irony of it all:  In their attempt to retake the White House, this type of delusional demagoguery practice by some aspiring candidates is poisoning the waters–whether they deem it so or not. Coates puts it best here:

But again facts don’t really matter here. This is a strict ideology built on an alternate reality. You can’t reason with people who not only believe their president is Kenyan, but need to believe he’s Kenyan. The belief comes first. The casus belli of white populism is resentment of those not like us. Facts are mere materiel meant to be invented, discarded, smelted and recast in service of the cause.

When facts are created to prop up your reality, what use is there to debate anything–if that indeed is their true intent.  Where are the real grown-ups here?  Perhaps they’ll show their faces during the president’s second inauguration.

Image by tsevis via Flickr

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Whether you believe the founding fathers abhorred slavery, and consisted of a diverse collection of races is not as relevant as the narrative bringing it inside the margins of political thought.  The callous certainty of prominent political leaders– quick to create an air of false historical reference to buttress their arguments– is taking a more firm hand in our discourse.

It’s becoming more and more prevalent now to disavow any and all negative historical facts about the founders.  The plain truth is this: Most of them were slave owners, and they did pursue a constitutional course of racial, gender, and religious purity.

One of the most curious revisionist history cases is taking shape right now in the state of Tennessee.  Tennessee Tea Party activists are demanding state legislators make changes in the curriculum of the state’s students:

“Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States,” according to a document the two dozen activists distributed to reporters. “We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

Neglect and ill will?  On whose part?  The methodology of these individuals’ attempt to buffer their argument with the I hate America meme is dangerous. What constitutes the truth to these people?  It’s probably the same illogically narrow thinking that led Michele Bachmann to claim the purity of the founders and their ideology.

Its genesis originated as a means to undermine the struggle of black Americans, wading through the morass of racial inequality.  It is a deliberate attempt to white-wash American history, in order to prop up a false mythology.

There is a craven, menacing theme underlying this argument.  It’s the work of a cadre of revisionists, unbowed in their blatant attempt to unravel the American tapestry.  These individuals–of whom Bachmann is at the forefront–are deliberately shredding the very document they purport to hold sacred.  You cannot rewrite American history and rinse it clean of the bloody stains attached.  It’s a disservice to those individuals–black and white, men and women–who gave their lives to shear the path clear of the oppressive weeds of intolerance.

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We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”  Martin Luther King Jr. ,Letter From Birmingham Jail

An uncommon man leads in an common world, stripped bare of his dignity– but never his character, never his faith, never his soul.  To see the struggle is mighty.  To battle it heartily is righteous.  To maintain your serenity and love is Godly.  That defines leadership.  That defined Martin Luther King Jr.,  a man who led the struggle no average man or woman dared endure.

As I look backward, I gaze forward.  I celebrate the 25th anniversary of Dr. King’s holiday proudly, respectfully, and humbly.  I celebrate a man who in today’s climate of poisonous rhetoric, and unintelligible debate– would have been called anything from a treasonous Marxist– to an unpatriotic socialist. Some in fact, would debase and demean his work, while claiming to carry the awesome mantle of Dr. King’s legacy.  He demands more respect than that.

If Dr. King taught us anything, it was that sacrifice is a necessary burden of leadership.  Leadership must be tethered to a righteous cause.  It cannot be vacant in times of strife, or as the winds of discomfort shift the debate.  Righteous causes exist to give our lives direction– to fill our souls with purpose.  Dr. King knew his, and he shared it with all of us.  Those able to walk in his graceful path were anointed with the spirit of compassion, the power of forgiveness, the strength of righteousness, and the glory of eternal love.  With these qualities, man and woman shall endure.  They shall prosper.  They shall triumph over injustice and intolerance.

On this day, we should praise the true meaning of leadership.  We all should aspire to the heights of a man who worried less about his own mortality–and more about the mortality of those four little girls– brutally murdered in Birmingham.  Those little girls, whose lives “were distressingly small in quantity, but glowingly large in quality.”  We should aspire to quality.  We should wind our paths through gardens filled with light– never seeking comfort– but always giving it in doses large and small.

We have the power to lift the shadow of disappointment, cast widely upon us in times of difficulty.  It is within us to seek the solution to our problems, and reject with great confidence any attempt to dissuade us from our cause.  This is what real leaders choose.  The path is never a clean one, but it is a necessary one.  I pray I have the strength demanded of me to fulfill my promise.  But in times of doubt, the words of a man who worried less about his own mortality, and more about the quality of life for others, assuage my fears:

…when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Dr. King taught us that continuous struggle is a necessity of change.  We can be the mechanism that fosters hope, as we continue to make that change a reality.  There is no greater heir to the King legacy than that.

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I’ll be following up the main point of this post in a lengthy post tomorrow.  This clip, courtesy of Young Turks simply illustrates the meme about incivility, divisiveness, ignorance, and intolerance.  Congressman Steve King openly flouts the law in some lame attempt to correlate “injustice” with “reverse racism.”

I suppose a very,very, suburban senator would be better than a very, very urban senator right?  Blatant irresponsibility and racism.

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I’ve wondered often what the word racist means to some folks–black and white.  What weight does it carry today, given the notion that most intolerant white people refuse its  label, even in the face of broad bigoted theology.  Here’s a stark illustration of a woman rejecting the slur, and invariably turning it on its head by labeling “colored people” as ungrateful.

H/T Adam Sewer

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Why is there fear of Sharia Law in America?

Will someone answer this question for me?  What is wrong with being a Muslim?  There are Muslim doctors, lawyers, teachers, policemen and women.  There is a Muslim congressman from the great state of Minnesota named Keith Ellison.  We encounter Muslim Americans in every facet of American life.  They are part of the American tapestry.  When did it become un-American to be a Muslim?

52% of conservative Americans believe Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law.  I’m sure if you also asked those polled what Sharia law is, they couldn’t tell you.  Since it’s associated with Islam and Muslims, it must be terrible– and this president must be in support of it.  Everyday more of his American identity evaporates in the eyes of these people–if it were even there at all.  Why?  Even in the face of substantial proof–evidence that is insurmountable–these people insist on painting the president as some foreign enemy of the state.

Where is the media culpability in this? Fox News pushes a bitter narrative, asking questions about Obama’s American legitimacy and his faith.  They allow this meme to be explored on a routine basis.  They harbor vicious anti-Muslim views, and foster an unseemly climate of Islamophobia.   Yet one of their major shareholders is a Saudi Prince named Al-Waleed bin Talal– a man who owns a 7 percent share of NewsCorp, parent company of Fox News.  A man who contributes heavily to Islamic groups Fox conservatives believe are terrorist organizations.  A man who in his homeland of Saudi Arabia, rules UNDER Sharia Law.  Where is their outrage?

Shouldn’t Sean Hannity be condemning this bold expansion of the Sharia law in American media?  If right-wingers fear Sharia tentacles tethering themselves to American institutions, why not start with rebelling against the power structure at Fox News?

These people are not defenders of American justice.  They hide behind euphemistic attacks–which are not only cowardly– they’re craven and treasonous.  They are dishonoring their patriotism, perverting it in order to gain political advantage.

When Byron York, staunch blue-blood right-wing pundit indulges in fantastically simplistic reporting, by placing blame directly on the president–he noted that Obama has brought much of this on himself by choosing to play golf or basketball Sunday mornings, rather than attend church–you realize just how cynical and foolish the tone of this debate is.   I did not realize that is what made one a Christian. You must attend church on Sundays. If Americans need this type of affirmation– seeing video clips of the president attending church to answer questions– perhaps they have the wrong questions.    Amazing.  Some of us are choosing to embrace religious radicalism to support our notions of nationalism.  That’s not the America I know.

These people are cowering in fear.  They are racing to a corner of self-doubt and pity, trying to resist change.  There they are, waving flags of self- pity and anger because of their reticence to accept the wave of change on the precipice.

This isn’t what this country is about.  It’s not how we were founded.  If Islamist fundamentalists choose to burn bibles and American flags, should we met their wretchedness and hatred with our own?  No, and that is what makes us better than the enemy.

This is where we find ourselves.  Struggling to discern who we are as a people and a nation.  We used to have an identity.  We used to stand for something righteous, mighty, and right.  We used to stand proudly for tolerance–at least most forward thinking Americans did.  We used to debate fairly, cogently, and intelligently.  Now we’ve become an empty husk, filling with anger, mistrust, hatred and fear.  Now we disavow our own laws callously in order to marginalize some of our citizens.  We should be better than this.

America stands for something more because we don’t devalue our idealistic principles, and we don’t deviate from our values.  We set the pace for virtuous action, and let others follow our example.  Our discourse has been hijacked by pretend patriots, who’ve warped constitutional moralities into fluid, politically expedient landmines.  America is better than this.

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In honor of what true American spirit looks like– and what real struggle and sacrifice embody– here is the “I Have a Dream Speech,” by Martin Luther King Jr. in it’s entirety.

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