This is a hard blog to write - not least because I am not and never will be an American. I have been a legal resident here in the beautiful US of A for many years, and participate in every part of civic life both mandated and by choice. I am not allowed to vote, and though Amerika is built on a principle of 'no taxation without representation' I pay those taxes. I ensure my voice is heard by taking part, plain and simple, in the process of democracy. I am not allowed to serve on a jury. Or run for public office, though I can be appointed to commissions to advise those elected whom I wasn't able to elect. I keep my British/European passport in a drawer somewhere. Where is it, by the way, as I am meant to be going to Europe this fall.
But goddammit, I can tell you what I think about what the freak is going on around here.
The public airwaves are filled with hateful speech, the volume is pushing the needle into the red, and the voices are showing no signs of abating their 'ruder than you' polemic.
Obama has suffered a couple of missteps this week. His rock star tour to Europe and the Middle East hasn't given him the 'bounce' expected, but did bring out his self confidence (and you know, I kinda want the President to be a self confident guy) as he morphed from a presumptive nominee into the 'presumptious world leader' in the cold hard world of talk radio. Obama seems to have an unfortunate way of letting his usually sound judgement get swayed by the very passions he has stirred. Call it youth, call it inexperience, call it getting carried away.... it's why I wish that Obama was learning the job of President from the relative safety of the Veep chariot.
But what is playing out now between right and left loudmouths on the airwaves is gettin' as smelly as a hog farm. Accusations of playing the race card being hurled across the battle-lines accompanied by the worst kind of insinuations about the subtexts of everything from country music songs to rap lyrics.
Now may be a moment to evoke one of my early heroines - the pragmatic Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg who never stopped believing in the power of the ballot box as an agent for real change and who coined the phrase 'freedom is always the freedom of dissenters'. In other words a true democracy will not condemn the voices of dissent, but give them the free rein of expression, no matter how ugly or unwelcome.
Liberal talk radio outdid itself by accusing country singer and lifelong Democrat Toby Keith of racism and of supporting lynching by evoking the lyrics of his 2003 hit 'Beer For My Horses' (long before Obama was presumptive for anything). The song - a duet with that famous racist Willie Nelson (you understand sarcasm right?), talks about how justice in an earlier era (like maybe the Wild West?) involved fetching rope and stringing bad guys up over limbs of trees and that today there are still bad guys and justice must still be served. The video of this song makes it clear that the bad guy in question is a knife wielding white serial killer of women, and yeah, the good guys get their man in the end. Toby Keith is a red meat, shoot and hunt, flag waving southern white hunk. So freakin' what? In an earlier controversy, he and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks engaged in a very public nasty spat after her comments criticising Bush when she was in London. So, he's a hothead.
On the other side, Ludacris, one of the smartest rappers in Amerika, whose anthem in support of Obama, 'Politics As Usual' calls Hillary Clinton an 'irrelevant bitch', may have just cancelled his invite to stay in the Lincoln bedroom. Honestly, most women don't like being called bitch, cunt and whore.
I have a more genuine concern about how some in the media are clearly using codewords when they describe Obama, and the most obvious is the use of the words 'arrogant' and 'elitist' (two words which could not describe George Bush better and add in 'smug bastard'). But these words are meant to rile and irritate a constituerncy which is clearly still uncomfortable with Obama - the white working class. I blogged about this in May when I wrote:
"Many wonder if it can possibly be true that working class whites, especially in the South will not vote for a black president. What the freak is so surprising about that? What more 'uppity black' could you get than President? Is it really shocking that working class undereducated whites are afraid of empowering blacks? Geez, Amerika, where've you been all my life?"
Truth is the race card is being played for all it's worth by both campaigns. Obama's 'historic' candicacy is about race for heaven's sake. In my view this debate needs to be dragged out of the closet where white guilt mingles with simmering and justifiable black american rage. Obama has this opportunity, we all have this opportunity. Whether the presidency will enable him to lead that national debate is one of the most important questions of our time.
Comments