I read this column last night.
But Obama is proving himself to be a most peculiar commander in chief. Maybe another black boy will someday grow up to become president, but if he turns out to be like Obama, it'll be hard to call him a black man.
I don’t mind the posts that call the President a Republican, or a failure, a bad negotiator, Carteresque etc. I’ve gotten used to all of that. But I do have a problem with the fact that it’s acceptable to deny this President his manhood, that statement Mr. Milloy wrote just staggered me and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
I don’t even know what to write in response but I feel the need to write something; because you can’t stop and let stand something so foul without at least calling it out.
By most accounts, Obama acts like a black man behind closed doors. He talks trash while shooting hoops, talks Chicago South Side tough with his aides and conveys a range of emotions, including anger.
Once in public, though, he demurs - as if upholding some unspoken bargain with white America to never look like an angry black man in exchange for continued off-the-charts "likability" ratings and a shot at reelection in 2012.
It's bad enough that there are so few black men in public life who can be thought of as feared and respected - except for athletes such as, say, LeBron James. No black "Hammer" in the House, as Tom DeLay was called. No black arm-twisting Dick Cheney or in-your-face Rahm Emanuel lurking in the West Wing. Not even a black James Carville just to show up and harass the opposition.
But for a black president to apparently choose to be the Great Placator is downright embarrassing. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times calls Obama "a 46-year-old virgin"; The Post's Kathleen Parker says he acts like the nation's "first female president."
You know it's bad when a white woman tag team can play the dozens with a black man and score unanswered points left and right.
You’re right Mr. Milloy, that is bad. Look in the mirror because you joined the club.
You’re standing next to those teabaggers with the signs of Obama with a bone through his nose, Obama as Hitler, Obama as a thug, Obama as (fill in blank) with all the cries of socialist, communist, Hitler a long primal scream they have yet to stop since he came into office. This seething anger and frustration that they can’t call him a nigger. So they say how very, very urban he is.
It’s not easy being the first.
You get the hardest hits and they don’t stop; but you keep going because if they take you down the door stays closed that much longer. Unlike other people, the President doesn’t have the luxury of saying it’s wrong for a man to be arrested in his own house when he has ID. It’s insane. But as soon as he says it, it’s not simply a self-evident thing but a racial brouhaha that leads to a beer summit.
And yeah, Barack Obama doesn’t’ have a black James Carville. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been elected President if he did. He has to walk a tight rope that every black man knows; but he’s got no net of anonymity.
This site is really angry at POTUS right now and that’s fine. But I just wanted to write this because I’m beyond angry right now. I’m beyond furious. I keep flashing back to Rush Limbaugh and his Barack the Magic Negro thing and I just feel like that miserable son of a bitch was more right than I knew.
It feels like every damn thing is the responsibility of Barack the Magic Negro.
It’s been two years. I keep reading how this was the most productive Congress and the most progressive legislation that has passed the last two years since Johnson. And there’s not one damn Democrat that’s gone out on the line for the President.
Instead, I get to watch James Carville blame the President for the BP spill and call him out on national tv. But at least he had the grace to apologize for his mistake.
I hope Mr. Milloy will offer one.
UPDATE: I just want to make something clear. For the sake of this post I will agree with whatever policy or political critique you have of the President. He's a failure, he can't negotiate, he's done nothing good, he's a Republican and we wasted a vote putting him in office. FINE.
Now, please respond to the heart of Mr. Milloy's column which is about race and the fact that President Obama is not being a real black man. He's not a black man, in fact, he's a boy. This entire column blew my mind and simply because the columnist is black does not mean we can not recognize and call out the racism, the sexism, and the pathology that says being black means you have to prove your humanity and sex.
Let's say the President is a failure. As liberals, it is incumbent IMO to also recognize his humanity and defend him when it's denied; especially when it is done in such racist terms.