Thinking Out Loud

THINKING OUT LOUD
A Brown Man Thinking Hard Retrospective

On The 2008 Presidential Election
Kris Broughton
Thinking Out Loud: A Brown Man Thinking Hard Retrospective
Acknowledgments
Thinking Out Loud: A Brown Man Thinking Hard Retrospective of The Obama 2008 Campaign, is
published by RKB Digital Media.
Cover art is courtesy of Joel Dietle of France.
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Many thanks go out to S., my parents, and other family and friends who have endured the long hours
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Kris Broughton
Thinking Out Loud
A
Brown Man Thinking Hard
Retrospective
by
Kris Broughton
RKB DIGITAL MEDIA
Atlanta
3
INTRODUCTION 8
The Primary Season 10
When I Reached The Tipping Point 11
Rejecting The Conventional Wisdom Of "Electability" 13
Race & Class - Here We Go Again 14
Tone Deaf Campaigning 16
Ready To Join The Club 17
What The Raw Numbers Suggest 19
My Eyes Are Tired 20
The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question 21
Better Than The Super Bowl!! 22
Under The Hood Of The O-Train 23
For The First Time In My Adult Lifetime... 24
Watch Out For The “Jedi Mind Trick” 24
Good Old Fashioned Letter Writing 26
Simplifying The Positive 27
I Want A President Who Is Smarter Than A Fifth Grader 27
No Puppet 29
Math Any Ten Year Old Can Do 30
On Obama Not Going To Memphis 31
Math Any Ten Year Old Can Do 31
Attending An Obama Fundraiser 32
The Chit Chat Hour 36
Does Obama Need To Come Out Hard Against Rev. Wright? 38
This Is Not A Horse Race 39
Right Back Where We Started From 40
183 To Go 41
177 To Go 42
Assassinate - Rhymes with "playahate" 44
The Last Primary 44
Office Politics 46
Keeping The Tally From Our Eyes 48
Half Dollars and Half Delegates 49
Puerto Rico Voters Will Lay Low On Sunday 51
"Im-potent" People Versus The Grand Poohbahs 52
"Im-potent" People Versus The Grand Poohbahs - Part 2 54
Upsetting The Natural Order 55
THE SILLY SEASON 57
Let Me Hear It Just One More Time 58
Guess Who's Coming To The White House 59
Obama: Metaphorically Black or Literally Black? 60
Thinking Out Loud 62
Off The Record 64
Secret Black Frequency 66
Claiming The Chinese 68
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Barack Obama: The Hunchback of Cyberspace 70
Descended In Blood And In Spirit 72
Where Is A Flag Pin When You Need One? 73
Training The Boss 75
"Mike Check, One Two One Two" 75
Hit The "SEND" Button One More Time 77
18 Million Cracks Votes Dollars 79
Obama Beats The Street 80
Obama Is My Slave 81
Obama: Speech Creator-In-Chief 82
Obama and Ludacris: Apples to Apples? 83
Obama, America, and Race 85
How Many Licks Does It Take To Get to the Center of Barack Obama? 86
"White House Is The People's House" 87
Does Obama Need To "Man Up"? 89
What Do We Want? A Five Part Series 90
Obama's Racial Ambiguity: A Blessing Or A Curse? 91
Obama and Racial Ambiguity: Acting White 93
Does "No Negro Left Behind" Trump "Yes We Can"? 94
How Much Redress For Past Wrongs Is Enough? 96
Recarving Our Cultural Totem Pole 98
You Don't Have To Drink The Kool-Aid 100
I Wore My "Obama 08" Shirt To Work Friday 101
I Won't Be Getting A Text Message From Barack Obama 105
Right Off The Bat 106
Obama VP 3 AM Text Message Trails Networks 107
The Punditocracy Goes To Denver 108
Brownskinned People Won't Tarnish Presidency 110
I Already Know Michelle Obama 110
The Punditocracy - Keeping You Uninformed 112
"Uncertain" - Word Of The Day 112
The Kids Can Stay Up Tonight 114
The O-Man Cometh 114
No More Rope-A-Dope For Barack Obama 116
The Talk That Really Matters 118
Critical Thinking Is The New Black 119
Deal Or No Deal, John McCain 120
Elephant In The Room Last Night Not GOP Mascot 121
They Can't Kill All The Indians This Time 123
FOR ALL THE MARBLES 126
Palindromic Free Verse - "I Love Me, vol.1" 127
Oprah Stands Her Ground 129
"Reckless Reporting" Is The Rage These Days 132
Yada Yada Yada Won't Get VP Job 135
"Sarah P. - BOO-yah!" 137
5
Resisting The Evil That Dwells Within 139
Keeping Our Heads On Straight 141
SEC Fails To Regulate "Me, Me, Me" Brokerages 143
Homeownership Philosophy Americans Believe In Deeply Flawed 146
Sticking It To "The Man" 147
Debate Delay Dicey Decision 148
"Negro, Do You Know Who I Am?" 149
Are You Suffering From Electile Dysfunction? 150
White Americans And The Politics Of Race: A 4 Part Series 151
Can We All Just Get Along Already? 153
The Tipping Point and Racial Ambivalence 155
Afraid Of The Dark : Racial Animosity 158
"Negroes Smell Like Copper": White Racists 160
No Vice Presidential Candidate Left Behind 163
Barack Is Back 164
New Voters "Money In The Bank" For Obama 165
McCain Succumbs To Obama Mojo During Debate 166
Obama's Kryptonite Crippling McCain Campaign 168
You Know You Flipped That Switch, John McCain 171
This Is Not A Horse Race - Again 172
For Those Who Have A Hard Time Believing In Obama’s Chances
When The Polls Are Not Enuf 173
No Intellectual Peacocks In This Debate 175
Cut That Zero, Get With This Hero 176
Doing The Colin Powell Bounce 178
H.N.I.C. Rebukes G.O.P. 179
GOP "Legion of Doom" Shrink Black Vote 180
Will Democrats Nationalize Your 401(k)? 182
Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency 183
Obama Controversy # 137 186
Replacing The Hate I Feel With Hope 189
Getting The Early Vote Lead: Vote TODAY! 191
GOP "Hack-A-Shaq" Can't Stop Obama 192
Things I Have Learned This Election Season 194
415,631 Black Men In Georgia HAVE NOT Voted - Do YOU Know Any Of Them? 195
Brown Man Thinking Hard Featured On TV One Election Coverage 197
Yes We Did!! 198
Barack Obama - PRESIDENT!!!!! 198
The Best Email I Got Yesterday 199
POSTSCRIPT 201
INDEX 202
6
7
INTRODUCTION
I started off so casually as a blogger, I almost didn’t become one.
The idea of “simplifying the positive” was my main goal. “Simplify The Positive” became the original
name of my blog.
But it took awhile to get into a write and post rhythm that worked for me. Careful revision was my
watchword, with many hours spent agonizing over word choices and sentence structure.
Blog posts, by contrast, were meant for quick consumption.
I guess it was my raw honesty, more than anything else, that had the few people who visited my site
regularly in the spring of 2008 hanging in there for eight hundred word or thousand word or sometimes
even twelve hundred word posts.
I told a buddy of mine, a lawyer, about one of my early posts, and he just about came through the
telephone. “You posted THAT?” he said. I could see him in my mind’s eye, shaking his head.
“My man,” I said, “this is the internet. Nobody is coming to my blog to read the kind of stuff they can
get at the New York Times.”
Indeed, the things people wanted to read about were mired more in the right now than in twenty four
hours ago, given the relentless pace of today's real-time, up to the minute news cycle.
As a fiction writer, I’d aimed for clarity. As a blogger, I learned, slowly, to aim for relevance.
I was just a guy with a keyboard and an internet connection, trying to figure out why the candidacy of
Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States meant so much to me.
Somewhere during those first couple of months, I got tired of telling people the name of my blog, only
to watch their eyes widen as they tried to figure out what such an esoteric phrase actually meant. But
I couldn’t think of anything else that appealed to me.
It wasn’t until I tooled through some of my archived notes about a fictional character I was trying to
create that a phrase – “brown men thinking out loud” - hit me right between the eyes. The words
“Brown Man” resonated so naturally with my subject matter, as well as with my own self image, I could-
n’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Over the last year and a half, it has become my alter ego of sorts, even though the sensibilities and
the predilections and the bombast of the Brown Man are all mine.
Kris Broughton
November 2009
8
99
The Primary Season
I had a hard time watching talking head news soon after the 2008 primary season started. The blogging
community's more active and obsessive members had raised the bar by providing reams of accurate
and up to the minute reporting of local election processes and results, in many cases days before the
mainstream media delivered similar information.
I have respected the power of the internet for some time - I will have to say that for the first two months
of 2008 I was in awe of the power I had to literally be "on the ground" every night in Texas and Penn-
sylvania and Wisconsin and Ohio.
Were many of these blogs biased?
Yes, as far as their opinions went. But the care with which many of the better blogs treated their rep-
utations, whether they were getting raw data straight from the source or updating and correcting errors
on the fly was simply astounding.
One of the other things I really appreciated about the dramatic presidential primary was the way that
people were talking TO other people about the things they cared about, things that weren't sanctioned
by NASCAR, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, the MLB, the PGA or the WWF. I can't remember in my
adult life that many Americans who were INVOLVED in a national drama that didn't revolve around
death or terror. Even those who weren't engaging in any public discourse looked more alive, more vi-
brant, more aware.
I was already reading, researching and emailing my findings to friends and family members practically
every night. And even though I’d sworn that I would never start to blog - “too time consuming for
someone who wants to be a writer” - it wasn’t long before I was checking into the ins and outs of
setting up my own blog.
I was hooked.
10
When I Reached The Tipping Point

Saturday, January 7, 2008
For the record, I was an Obama skeptic for quite some time. Back in October 2004 I wrote the words
below:
I watched an interesting interview earlier today on TV One. Cathy Hughes,

the black woman who owns this network, took charge of the microphone
herself on her cable channel to interview Barack Obama, the heir apparent
to the junior Senate seat in Illinois. I've heavily paraphrased her below.
"The Republican Party has traditionally been seen by the

African American community as a party that has no real in-
terest in promoting an agenda that includes us or our con-
cerns. Yet I see Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Rod Paige,
and others who are prominent members of the administra-
tion, in positions of real power and influence.
The Democrats, on the other hand, court us assiduously dur-

ing their campaigns, but their interest seems to vanish, as if
they have amnesia all of a sudden, after an election. The
best the Clinton administration could do was field one black
man, Ron Brown, who, after engineering Clinton's victory,
reluctantly took the post of Secretary of Commerce after
being turned down for the job he wanted as Secretary of
State.
Are you concerned about the absence of blacks in real po-

sitions of power in a Democratic presidency? Will you use
your influence as a Democratic Senator to help correct this?"
Barack's answer was tepid, flighty, and rhetorical - he needs the backing
of the national DNC to keep his political career on track.
But what she said is what plenty of people of color - black, brown and yel-
low - ask across the nation. Why does the Democratic Party have so little
minority participation at its upper echelons? How can a party claim to be
the home of the "morally outraged", or the "intellectual" party, or the most
"inclusive" party, when it excludes us from the inner circles of power?
They say the proof is in the pudding. But there wasn't enough chocolate
in the last batch of Democrats in the White House to even pretend to be a
swirl. Black folks like Hughes, who have to balance their own books to
keep their companies afloat, are increasingly interested in seeing the Dem-
ocratic Party balance its own.
So am I.
11
When I Reached The Tipping Point
And until last month, if you stood in our kitchen, or ran into me at the cigar shop, I would play devil's
advocate all day long.
There were several things that got to me lately. The main thing, or as Malcolm Gladwell so aptly de-
scribes, the “tipping point”, was probably the predisposition of the media at that time to crown Hillary
as the de facto winner of the Democratic primary before a ballot was cast.
One of the other things that started to get me hot under the collar was the way the black political es-
tablishment, here and elsewhere, was going to play the same old game they've always played, with
same old negroes leading the march behind the Clintons, just as I was trying to assemble for the
umpteenth time my short story collection about redefining what it means to be black in America without
the baggage of the past weighing us down.
And now that I've seen the movie The Great Debaters (terrible title), which S. swears is a Oprah Win-
frey propaganda piece designed to help make smart black people more palatable to the public, it has
hit me, hard, that everything we African Americans have achieved up to now is really just window
dressing when the same old white guys can say the same old shit - "America isn't ready for this yet"
- without blinking an eye.
Which America is this?
Obama is still a little weak in the knees - in some instances, he reminds me of John Edwards four
years ago, back when he seemed a little light in the britches for this. He's not a natural fighter, which
we've come to expect in our politicians. Duking it out in the trenches isn't his style. He looks a little un-
comfortable having to spout the type of bullshit rhetoric a seasoned politician can deliver on cue,
knowing damn well it can all be ignored when we aren't looking, which is most of the time, and obfus-
cated for those few times that we are.
And there are moments, when I watch him stumble over the answer to a question for which he has
not properly prepared, when I wonder if it is too early in his career for him to be running. If this was
the original Clinton, running for the first time, I don't think Obama would have a chance. Not against
a hungry, ambitious, young Bill.
But against Hillary and Edwards?
At this point, lightweight or no, I think he has earned a significant part of his success. How much of it
is attributable to Republicans who are sabotaging Clinton in hopes of fielding a much more vulnerable
opponent is hard to say, but unless you were born yesterday, you know there is a lot more going on
behind the scenes.
So I've thrown in with Obama, stuttering, cocaine sniffing and all.
12
Rejecting The Conventional Wisdom Of "Electability"
Monday, January 7, 2008
The Dems are The Three Stooges when it comes to organizing their electorate. But the fundamental
problem they have from an ideological standpoint is the things they stand for work against the me-
chanics of building an efficient vote producing formula. Having to serve so many diverse interests
makes it that much harder to create a simple playbook their troops can follow.
We talk a lot about the white vote, the black vote, the woman vote, the AARP vote - what about the
"other" vote - the naturalized immigrant and first generation voters from Asia, India, Mexico, the
Caribbean isles? What about the Western Europe transplants with populist roots?
If Obama can sidestep the "left wing liberal" label I see sprouting from conservative political websites,
and position himself, a la Bill Clinton, as a moderate centrist, he has a fighting chance. Ross Perot
was crazy and he got almost 20% of the vote when he ran - 19 million people, most of who were NOT
new voters who were tired of the same old shit.
I don't know where the Republican machine is these days - no idea whether they still have it in them
- but with a costly war lingering in the background alongside a smoke and mirrors economy that is
starting to hurt their base constituency, they have an uphill battle ahead of them.
All I know is, if Oprah Winfrey can get hundreds of thousands of white women to buy a book in which
the first words are "They shoot the white girl first", [Paradise, Toni Morrison], I am willing to bet that
the right appeal to HER base down the stretch will generate a lot of split ticket households.
The difference between Obama and Edwards is like the difference between stocks and CD's.
With a CD, you know how much interest you're going to get. The question is, is it going to be enough
interest to meet your needs?
With a stock, it could go up, it could go down, it could drop like a rock at the slightest hint of bad news,
but man, when you get one that's on the move - the bottom line is despite all of these short term fluc-
tuations, and the potential for total disaster, you've got to believe the upside of an Obama candidacy
is worth the risk you’re taking with your vote.
Are we that afraid of failure that we can't take a chance? Every election I've seen since, which is every
election since Ford ran against Carter, has been framed as if our country will descend into chaos if
my side loses.
A Republican was in office when abortion became legal.
A Democrat managed the biggest wartime conflict we've ever been in.
A Republican brought the country to war over slavery and states’ rights.
A Democrat dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.
13
Rejecting The Conventional Wisdom Of "Electability"
Conventional wisdom would have prevented our ancestors from rubbing those two sticks together
back when we were huddled together against the cold night air. It would have discouraged anyone
from thinking of how to get a machine to fly through the air.
If we can put a man on the moon, I don't see why we can't put this man in the White House. The thing
that really gets at my gut these last few days is the refrain "the country's not ready yet".
The country wasn't ready for slavery to end.
The country wasn't ready for segregation to end.
This mythical "readiness" does not exist.
So if you believe, just a little bit, in all the things you say you believe in when it comes to race relations,
then you need to do what you can to stand up for the principles you claim to hold dear and reject the
conventional wisdom of "electability".
Race & Class - Here We Go Again

Sunday, January 13, 2008
White America puts the characteristics of black people in an imaginary box they carry around with
them. I know they do because I carry the same box. Despite all my efforts to discard it, it's there, right
next to the ones I carry that hold the characteristics of Hispanic America, Asian America, Eastern Eu-
ropean America, and India America.
But insert the phrase "middle class" in front of all these monikers and half the stuff in these imaginary
boxes are irrelevant. Add "upper middle class" and you can put every supposed difference that's left
into one box.
I have a client who came into the office on Thursday to drop off some documents for her loan. An
Indian woman, her husband is the stateside CFO of a midsized Indian corporation that does a lot of
business in the US.
14
We talked for awhile about the loan while I made copies and filled in some blanks on the forms her
husband had signed. A vestige of the tension remained from the negotiations over fees earlier in the
week, which is pretty natural. So I put it out there just to get the issue of lingering distrust on the table.
"Are you comfortable with this loan the way we've got it set up?"
She replied that everything was satisfactory, but of course her job was to secure the best deal for her
family. The way her eyes looked, the way the corners of her mouth were indented, it seemed even as
she spoke to the contrary that something else might be wrong. Or she was dropping another package
off at a competitor when she left my office, with the intentions of making it a horse race.
I gave her a copy of her appraisal report. We went through it. I made the appropriate gestures towards
the decor of her home as we looked at the pictures, because flattery still works. I put all the copies
she needed into a folder and presented it to her. While she tucked it away in her carryall, she men-
tioned that the house was pretty big "for three people".
So I asked about the child. It turns out her daughter is in high school, and wants to be a doctor. I ask
where she's looking to go to college, and she mentions my alma mater. "They have one of the best
medical schools," she says, the pride in her voice showing as if her daughter has already been ac-
cepted.
When I tell her that it has gotten a lot more expensive since I graduated, the look in her eyes changes
- to what exactly I don't have the time to describe, but if you have any accomplished black friends
they can tell you what I mean.
The next ten minutes she peppers me with questions about how to get her daughter in, about how to
apply for various programs, as if I have a hotline to the admissions office.
I have to literally drag her out the door to get her to leave. When I tell her as she heads to her car that
she is in good hands, she looks as if she actually believes me.
In this instance, class consciousness was more prominent than race, although most middle and upper
class Indians feel they are a cut above African Americans.
Barack Obama and his wife are both lawyers, Harvardites no less, products of solidly middle class
families who obviously valued education and a strong work ethic. But if I were to substitute the name
"Scott Burks", you would probably assume from that sentence that this is a white family.
The New Negro is different. They are under 50. They have white friends that are higher on the friend-
ship totem pole than a lot of their black friends. They have the means to enjoy the freedoms the sixties
opened the doors to - because "you are now free to move about the country" doesn't mean anything
if you can't buy a ticket.
But the main thing is, they are not angry ALL THE TIME. They have an arm’s length relationship with
the imagery of Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters and John Lewis, black leaders whose very presence
15
seems to bring in that gospel background music on cue, as if they are stuck in a time machine.
The sixties were almost FIFTY years ago. And so far, Barack is doing a fairly good job of leaving them
there. It will be interesting to see how much of that comes out in South Carolina - because in politics,
to say "MLK" is the quickest way to say "I won't forget you, brother".
But the pollsters need to get their shit together, because there is no more "black vote". Stand ten black
folks in a line (or in my kitchen, which is I where I got the numbers I am about to give you) and you
will get 4 for Clinton, 3 for Obama, 1 for Edwards, 1 for Jim Huckabee and 1 for McCain.
Even in South Carolina, my home state, people are learning to think for themselves a little.
We shall see.
Tone Deaf Campaigning

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Hillary has the same problem our governor here in Georgia had last year - relying on advice and coun-
sel from staffers who are probably ill equipped to understand the vagaries of the kind of black people
who make up the majority of South Carolina's electorate.
I am watching this next primary closely because SC is my home state - I grew up with some of the
Lowcountry pols who will be getting out the vote, and my father went to South Carolina State College
around the same time as Jim Clyburn, the congressman who was "disheartened" by Hilary's suppos-
edly disrespectful commentary about MLK.
Given the risk/reward ratio, the Clinton camp needs to leave the "what I think is important to you peo-
ple" rhetoric at home - her camp runs a very, very high risk of hitting the wrong chord. One imagined
slight, one catch phrase, one Tommy Hilfiger type rumor, one naked growl at the black man who is
running for president - that's all it takes and she's back to being Miss Ann, the same Miss Ann whose
thumb these folks just got from under LAST WEEK.
With almost two weeks to go, I think she is going to the typical Type A white guy thing - when all else
16
Tone Deaf Campaigning
fails, just charge right ahead - and miss the boat entirely.
The Deep South, even today, is not exactly what it appears to be at first glance.
Hillary, that white guy with two degrees and an American Express card in his pocket that you pay 20K
a month to give you advice has no way to connect with the vibe in the hoods that ring Charleston, in
the barracks that populate Columbia, in the swamps that cover the Pee Dee, in the foothills that push
into the Piedmont from North Carolina and Tennessee.
These are the little guys, who have been hornswoggled and finagled out of their fair share of oppor-
tunity and their hard earned wages all their lives. It doesn't take much to rile them.
Ready To Join The Club

Sunday, January 27, 2008
My phone rang off the hook last night.
My mother called as I sat in the basement, watching Barack and Michelle wave to the crowd while the
enervating strains of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” blared from the surround sound. I
was actually on my cell phone with my best buddy, pointing out the South Carolinians I still remem-
bered who stood behind the candidate as he made his speech, when S. walked across the room, the
house phone to her ear , mouthing the words “your mother”, her eyes dancing.
I told my buddy my Mom was on the line and took the phone from S.
“We won!” came through the earpiece as soon as my mother heard me say “hello?” My mother, who
hasn’t exercised in God knows how long, who has been retired for years, a woman who just turned
sixty nine on Friday, sounded like she was twenty years old again.
We talked about the returns, the super early projections by the networks that came out practically the
minute the polls closed, the candidates who had filled the college auditorium in my home town of Or-
angeburg as late as a few days ago, the sentiments of the man on the street – it was as if the electric
charge in the air in South Carolina was being transmitted through the phone line.
The irony of it all – her enthusiasm, her jubilance, even the statement “we won” – is that she and my
father have been Republicans for over thirty years.
17
The thing we talked about the most was the “O” Train – the Obama phenomenon as a result of a
craftily constructed and EXTREMELY well managed cadre of top notch political operatives. In Horry
County, the only county of 46 that Clinton won, she only did it by 6% - 39% to 33%. Instead of swal-
lowing the pablum that commentators love to swill on morning talk shows and news blurbs, most of
the people I know do what I do - hit the raw numbers, extrapolate them against raw census figures,
and see what patterns emerge to us.
After half an hour, my mother gave me the number of one of my father’s contemporaries here in At-
lanta, an old DC bureaucrat who’d retired down south.
So I called him.
“Man, this thing is getting interesting,” he said. He and I exchanged greetings, then I proceeded to lis-
ten as he deconstructed what he saw as the high points and the low points of the Democratic
presidential primary.
“I’ve given money to the DNC for years,” he said. “And I was pissed – pissed at Bill Clinton for showing
his ass because his wife wasn’t getting a free pass, and pissed at Dean (Howard Dean, chairman of
the DNC) for not reigning Bill in. So I called up there to talk to somebody and let them know how I felt
about it.”
He and I both just about fell all over ourselves as we gave Roland Martin, a back bencher (ain’t that
a bitch – all the black commentators on CNN were in the back row) a metaphorical high five for saying
something along the lines of “Obama appeals to the hip hop vote - the young white voters” without
blinking an eye as he looked into the camera.
The thing that has been making me hot under the collar the last few weeks came back as I listened
to the post primary spin from ex-president Bill Clinton. I might as well be one of the extras listening to
the radio in the movie The Great Debaters back in the 1930’s.
What the hell is this “well you know, Jessie Jackson won there in ’84 and ‘88” shit? He might as well
would have told Obama, “Nigger, you need to get your ass back in that barrel with all them other nig-
gers. We’ll let you back out when we need you.”
What the hell is that finger waggle at the camera, finger waggle and sanctimony – is that the finger
you sunk into Miss Lewinsky, you post pubescent poon hound? Is that the finger you stabbed at the
air as you stared into the TV camera and said “I did not have sex with that woman?”
Why do I feel like we need another March on Washington every time Hilary comes on TV looking like
Miss Ann who is going to tell us black folks “she knows what’s good for us nigras?”
I don’t know what “experience” means. Maybe it means Hilary Clinton should be able to handily whip
an upstart politician with a wisp of national exposure. Maybe it means when Obama is able to pull t
gether a team that can go to a full court press on a county by county basis in EVERY state against Hi-
lary, she should be able to shift more troops into place to get more support. Or maybe it means that
18
she has a deeper treasure trove of insults, put downs, veiled references and racial code words to dig
into when the heat is on her ass.
I hope Bill Clinton keeps running his damn mouth. The more he talks, the more he is likely to say
something stupid.
I hope Obama continues to utilize Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope” fighting style and let these two talk
themselves out of contention. Although I think the Tiger Woods method is better – just ignore the sum
bitches and play your own game.
I’m not interested in overcoming.
I am ready though, like a lot of the rest of my brethren, to join the club.
What The Raw Numbers Suggest

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The old "you have to be twice as good" adage seems to be true as Obama finds himself running
against two Clinton candidates, one actual, one de facto.
The thing that I find reprehensible as I cruise the internet to get a sense of what the mood is in the
country is our insatiable need to label everything: red state, southern bloc, women vote, pro-lifers,
evangelicals, as if we sprout an ideological single issue third arm during elections with which to cast
our ballots. The great thing about America is its unpredictability. Otherwise, I would still be on the back
of the bus.
If you look at the raw numbers without the spin that the talking heads put on them, especially on a
county by county basis, going all the way back to Iowa, you will realize, the way a football coach who
went 7-9 last year often does, that many of the ones that were lost were not lost by any considerable
margin. At this point, the registration of new voters seems to be working to the advantage of the chal-
lenger - it seems to be the biggest factor in these results that defy prediction.
Between the furious level of campaigning, the Democratic National Committee's 50 State Strategy to
enlarge the electorate that Howard Dean initiated a while back, and the small shifts in demographics
over the last four years, I would not be surprised to see a lot of the current conventional wisdom re-
garding the each candidates primary performance at the state level overturned.
19
My Eyes Are Tired
Friday, February 08, 2008
My eyes are tired, but that's just about what it takes to get beyond the loaded phrases, couched terms,
arched references, veiled threats, tilted arguments and foregone conclusions to see what is really
going on these days.
I email a small cadre of friends a missive every couple of days that seeks to piece together in one
place a complete look at the primary races.
Even though I live in Georgia, the South Carolina race was closer to my heart - after all, it’s my home
state. I eyeballed the returns county by county, cutting and pasting them into a Word file. Then I took
a look at the most recent census figures I could find that broke down each county's residents by race,
age, and gender, cutting and pasting them in underneath the corresponding county's primary returns.
What you saw there two weeks ago is what you are seeing now - but only if you looked at the raw
data for yourself, because the media spin doctors, who attempt to pass themselves of as journalists,
create more spin than the professionals the campaigns are paying.
After seeing several of my emails, my best buddy called me one day and blurted out "the media is
bullshit" before I could say hello.
I don't even watch the talking heads much anymore. I am spending way, waaay too much time trolling
the polling sites and the county by county results in each state to sort of "take their temperature" with
my own thermometer.
Obama running neck and neck with Clinton is a lot like the Giants hanging with the Patriots all the
way to the two minute drill. "This guy/these guys aren't supposed to be here."
I give kudos to the Obama campaign strategists - they have broken this down to man-to-man defense,
running a full court press in practically every state against Goliath, and it is working.
Couple that with Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy he put in place the last couple of years and the
brand new voters the party has been helping to cultivate are coming out of the woodwork, people
whose habits have not been tracked before, people whose influence is being measured after the fact
for the first time.
It’s going to be a dogfight to the end.
The only way to know this, though, is to scroll past the pie charts and moving average graphs to the
raw numbers themselves - they tell you what's really going on.
20
The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question
Sunday, February 10, 2008
I think the thing that the Obama camp has used masterfully to their advantage is the perception that
they are supposed to be the weak sister in this race. I don't think anyone on the outside trying to look
in can understand the enormous amount of preparation that had to go into just the decision of whether
or not a brown skinned man could be a viable presidential candidate.
The hardest job for the Obama inner circle was the sales pitch they had to make, both to themselves
and the key staffers they were asking to sign on. The kind of people they have carrying the water for
them do not sign on to lose. Making them believers must have taken an extraordinarily calculated and
detailed plan of attack, knowing as they must have the amount of opposition these people would face
from families and colleagues alike.
These people are not doing a job. They are on a mission. Their sensibilities are likely to be extremely
heightened, understanding as they do that any misstep, large or small, could doom all their efforts.
Running a campaign like a corporation, looking for the easiest and quickest way to win the most del-
egates, only works when you and your opponent have the same type of game plan.
I believe the Obama campaign, understanding from the beginning that they were likely to be the tor-
toise in this race, looked at the mathematics of gathering delegates differently.
If you take the two candidates faces away for a moment, you've got Harvard Law versus Yale Law, in
my mind.
At the end of the day, though, after all of this high-minded conjecture, the sixty four thousand dollar
question is pretty much the only one nobody wants to say out loud - does Obama, with his black face
and funny name, frighten enough people to make Clinton the nominee?
All I can tell you, from my own roost here in the metaphorical land known as Afro-America, for a lot of
people this is pretty much the turn of the century version of the Joe Louis fight for his first heavyweight
championship. It’s almost like the thirties again, except TV's have replaced radios, and the rounds are
weeks instead of minutes. But blood is in the air now, same as it was then.
It will be a sad day indeed in the Clinton camp when CNN has to post her name BELOW Obama's.
To have to look at that graphic day in and day out for the next three weeks will be pure torture. Right
now, I would imagine that she is feeling a lot like Phil Mickelson on one of those Saturdays when he
is leading a tournament with Tiger two strokes behind.
If there ever was a time to put your money where your mouth is, it is now - if I were in the Obama
camp I would empty the coffers to get people on the streets of Texas and Pennsylvania. If you look at
California, a lot of the votes were cast weeks before the actual election date - hard to say what might
have happened had most of them been cast on the same day.
My TV is getting tired - I need to let it cool off. I haven't watched TV this much in fifteen years.
21
Better Than The Super Bowl!!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
This is better than the Super Bowl! This is going down to the wire! It kind of reminds me of my run for
student body president in high school! ( I lost). I will be in front of the TV ALL NIGHT Tuesday!
Clinton, Obama in close 'Super Tuesday' races.

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton are running
neck-and-neck in California, New Jersey and Missouri two days before the
sprawling "Super Tuesday" presidential showdown, according to a
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.
Obama has a slight lead in California and is virtually tied with Clinton in
New Jersey and Missouri heading into the biggest day of voting ever in a
U.S. presidential nominating campaign, with contests in 24 states.
Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black U.S. president,
also has a comfortable 20-point lead in Georgia fueled by a more than 3-
to-1 advantage over Clinton among black voters.
(Writing by John Whitesides; editing by Todd Eastham) (For more about
the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online
at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)
If you look at the actual states that are holding primaries, you will see that there’s not much polling
data publicly available on Utah, Tennessee, Idaho or North Dakota.
My own analysis says that in addition to the states mentioned in the Reuters Poll above, Alabama,
Connecticut and Colorado are statistical ties – less than five percentage points separate them.
Add Georgia and Illinois, two states that are currently seen as being “in the bag” for Obama (which
means I’ll believe it when I see it) and you’ve got eight states in play.
As a side note, Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota are caucus states – not very many delegates in Alaska and
Hawaii, but the caucus process lends itself more to peer pressure – will be interesting to see what the
outcome is in these states.
22
Under The Hood Of The O-Train
I wanted to know what the real deal was behind the “O-Train”.
Is it the smile? The near Sidney Poitier level of courtliness? The much vaunted “charisma” that
seems to work its way into the opening lines of any article about Barack Obama?
Or could it be simply - superiority.
Because he seems to have a superior level of fund raising, superior advisors, superbly crafted
speeches – from the outside looking in, it appears that he has met and exceeded his challengers at
practically every organizational detail…
…that’s what I really want to know – what do the nuts and bolts of their operation look like?
A little research turned up the playbook and the beginnings of its execution. Again, hats off to this
wonderful internet (which I’m sure will be more closely regulated in the future) for providing access to
ACTUAL INFORMATION when a brother wants to know how things work.
'Camp Obama' Trains Campaign Volunteers
"It's not rocket science," [Reimer] says. "What we have to do is give them the tools to
create a plan and just keep in touch with them as they create their plan and execute it.
Winning an election is just a matter of breaking it down into manageable pieces, so we
show them what those pieces are, and then turn them loose. As long as we can do that,
there's no problem. They can make it happen."
Stories and Numbers - a Closer Look at Camp Obama
The purpose of this weekend training, Ganz explained, was not only to learn skills, form
teams and get organized--but much more importantly, to learn how to tell our own stories,
how to "put into words why you're called, and why we've been called, to change the way
the world works."
Those "stories of self" and "stories of us" were to be the most powerful tool for these
campaigners--along with the ability to teach others how to tell their stories--back home
recruiting and motivating volunteers and building relationships.
The Obama Camp Has Its Own Memo...
We will have the strongest organization and deepest financial base in the Democratic
field. If we have more momentum than other leading candidates heading into February
5th, it will allow us to marry the success in the early states with our organizational supe-
riority, a potent combination in what will be a quasi-national primary by that point.
23
Watch Out For The “Jedi Mind Trick”
This quote:
“White folks, and white men in particular, have always found ways to alter,
bend, or just totally ignore the rules they've made up when something
doesn't suit them.”
from my very own The Black Folks Guide To Survival resonated - DING! - inside my skull as if I had
been hit over the head with a frying pan while reading THIS QUOTE from Mark Penn, the Clinton
campaign's chief strategist:
Two days later, after Obama’s eighth straight victory, Penn told reporters: “Winning Democratic pri-
maries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee
would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.”
Dude! One of the boldest uses of the Jedi Mind Trick (trying to get me to believe the opposite of some-
thing I know to be true) I've seen in recent days. "Winning" is now meaningless. Damn!
The amount of chutzpah it must take to be able to say this with yet another likely loss staring you in
the face has to be incredible. This guy has got the wrong job - he should be selling ice to the Eski-
mos.
But back to my own words. This section of The Black Folks Guide To Survival:
"alter, bend, or just totally ignore the rules THEY'VE made up"
strikes at the heart of what we see when we look at politicians and corporate chieftains - an unwilling-
ness, in many instances, to deal squarely with the facts as they stand before them.
For The First Time In My Adult Lifetime...

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
I guess I'm "fired up" and "ready to go" - and I'm not talking about what's happening on the campaign
trail either.
I could knock Jeffrey Toobin's smarmy, over paid ass all the way back to the kibbutz he crawled out
of - his disingenuousness about Michelle Obama's recent comments makes Hillary's crocodile tears
seem sincere.
24
For The First Time In My Adult Lifetime...
How does he and his ilk sit there on national TV, as well educated and connected as he and his
brethren appear to be, and say with a straight face that Michelle Obama's line "“For the first time in
my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country" is an aggrieved pronouncement that strikes a "dis-
cordant note" in an otherwise well orchestrated campaign by her husband?
Because if you are black, or brown, or yellow (although Asians in America have a propensity to self
identify themselves as equal to being white) the thing you are feeling right now, that thing that threatens
to tear through your chest, is the same thing she's feeling, because it looks like some of the diversity
rhetoric we’ve heard for years is about to be matched for the first time by actual deed.
When Ed Rendell, the governor of a major state, can stand in front of a microphone and say with a
straight face that "I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-
American candidate", he is stating a fact - there are still many parts of the country where my brownness
is only tolerated.
The thing that is in some ways more disgusting than Hillary's efforts to set the agenda as she endeav-
ors to frame her arguments as if she is still the front runner in this race are the attempts by the gaggle
of reporters from the major news venues covering this phenomenal political drama to marginalize the
success of the superior campaign run by Senator Obama.
I almost feel like I am watching the scene from the 60's movie In The Heat Of The Night where Rod
Steiger, who plays a southern police chief, has learned that Sidney Poitier, who plays a detective from
Philadelphia, makes more money than Steiger's character does and has a better education – at that
point, Steiger's only answer is to belittle Poitier and to remind him of his limitations as a black man in
the south.
The tension in that scene isn't much different than some of the tensions I see fifty years later as black
people become better educated and more affluent. I can understand the discomfort if I look like a
gang banger, or a rap star, but when I wear the same clothes, display an advanced mastery of the
King's English, possess at least one post secondary degree, and have an equal if not greater under-
standing of the way our laws work and how our economy functions, I have no choice but to blame the
white man's discomfort with me squarely on him.
Given that everything else is pretty much equal - well connected, well versed, well funded Ivy League
trained lawyer versus well connected well versed well funded Ivy League trained lawyer - can the
country accept the idea of having a brown man as their next commander in chief? If leadership de-
pends in part on a certain level of submission by those who are being led, can our country submit to
the leadership of a brown man, even one as well educated and accomplished as Obama?
Ken Chenault is the CEO of American Express. Stanley O'Neal was the head of Merrill Lynch until a
few months ago. Colin Powell has been Secretary of State. But no one is on TV more than the pres-
ident of the United States. If it is Barack Obama's brown hand that ends up waving to the world from
behind the podium at White House press conferences, he will represent all of America to the world. I
cannot begin to tell you how much that moment will mean to me and those who look like me, who
have waited too, too long to be fully accepted into the fabric of American life in its totality.
25
Good Old Fashioned Letter Writing
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Nothing like good old fashioned letter writing to share your thoughts when the person you are trying
to share them with isn't someone you can just call on the phone or chat with while you are getting
your mail. I figure if I send enough of these the staffers in charge of reading the emails at www.barack-
obama.com might see about getting these to the Boss Lady.
March 6th
Mrs. Obama,
I will admit that I have been a little disheartened the last couple of days as I watched the Clinton cam-
paign do the victory dance over and over again on the leading news websites.
Two things have bucked me up.
The first is something your husband said fairly frequently a couple of weeks ago - "we weren't sup-
posed to get this far". You, your husband and his staff have done a TREMENDOUS job of bringing to
life a credible, well organized, full fledged presidential primary campaign that appears to have been
designed from the outset for the daunting task of attempting to get a brown skinned man selected as
the nominee of the Democratic Party. I am proud to support the well oiled machine that allows Barack
Obama make getting here look easy.
Which brings me to the second thing that keeps me going - a belief that whatever vile trash, ridiculous
bullshit, or utter nonsense is thrown at Mr. Obama, he has the temerity to resist lowering himself to
responding in kind. The moral suasion we were able to rely on and ultimately triumph with in the sixties
stemmed in part from the indelible images of our best and our brightest, their will embodied in the
forthright thrust of their chins, their class displayed in the quiet elegance of their Sunday best attire,
the entire attitude of their bodies and their beings telling their opponents that they were in it for the
duration - and that their only option was to prevail or die.
I've talked to several of my friends today and tonight, and it seems we all agree on the same thing -
that your husband has to remain as far above the fray as humanly possible. Do whatever it takes to
get his swagger back - the regal air about him when he has it makes Mrs. Clinton look like a cross be-
tween Joan Collins and Roseanne Barr, complete with all their cackle, hiss and sputter.
Your strategists are top notch, but America is already reluctant to accept the possibility of having a
black president - "delegate math" is not going to be convincing unless the gap is big enough, and
there is a definite perception that Mrs. Clinton has lost steam. So for God's sake, break the bank in
Philadelphia and North Carolina. Spend all you have plus ten percent, because baby, we really need
this - not just me, not just black people, not just Democrats, but the entire country, even those that
don't realize it yet, REALLY, REALLY need the two of you to get over this last hump.
It'll probably get lost in the shuffle, but I'm going to send it anyway. It will make me feel like I got my
two cents in.
26
I Want A President Who Is Smarter Than A Fifth Grader
Friday, March 07, 2008
There is something I've had on my mind that I've wanted to express all day, but I wasn't around anyone
who was going to take me seriously ( it's a bad sign when you are surrounded by the great unwashed
all day).
We ask people who are arguably much, much smarter than the average citizen, at least these days
(and I will include your president George Bush here, because even if the conventional wisdom pegs
him as a retard, he is STILL smarter than most of the populace, however you want to slice that) to
"dumb down" when they run for office.
Putting the limitations of having an average IQ aside, it is very possible to communicate in a meaningful
way with someone who has less intellectual firepower about complex issues and ideas if they are pre-
sented in a manner that shows a logical progression at a speed that allows proper mental digestion
by the recipient.
But we don't want that. We want to be experts on the professional draft pick prospects of HIGH
SCHOOL seniors who are four years away from being eligible to play in the NFL. We want to be ex-
perts on the origin, care and feeding of hand rolled cigars. We want to become intimately familiar with
the intricacies of human growth hormone and its possible use or abuse by professional baseball play-
ers. We want to memorize the property settlement details from Shaquille O'Neal's divorce so that we
can accurately debate them at a cocktail party in the future. We want to be oenophiles capable of se-
lecting the best wine even when we are subjected to a blind taste test.
I am constantly amazed at the amount of minutiae people master that will have absolutely no effect
on the lives they live. Meanwhile, they are often prone to base their knowledge of political proceedings
on the last three sound bites they heard while they were flipping the channel between a Kobi Bryant
jump shot and a Roger Clemens fastball.
I just needed to get that out.
Simplifying The Positive

Saturday, March 8, 2008
Mr. Obama
Mrs. Obama
Obama ’08 Campaign
March 8, 2008
27
I’m just a guy in Atlanta who has been spending waaaay too much time in front of his computer this
last week in an emotional stupor because…well, because the guy I voted for back in the Georgia Pri-
mary, the same guy I get to see on TV every night, the one who looks more like me than any presi-
dential candidate ever - yes, you, Mr. Barack Obama - seems to be in a quandary.
“Seems to be” is the operative word here.
I know the hundred thousand watt minds running your campaign are probably burning brightly enough
to light up all the buildings in downtown Atlanta, but the thing is, in regular America, the one that or-
ganizes its week around “American Idol” or “Lost” and plans bathroom breaks during the commercials
– to this America, anything more than a momentary pause in your campaign’s activity is a negative.
The great unwashed, with whom I work everyday, fill coffee breaks and smoke breaks with the top
sound bites from the day before.
“Looks like your boy has had it,” has been a common remark this week.
So I’ve gone through all the sports analogies – Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope”, Tiger Woods malev-
olently self-contained A-game, Michael Jordan’s soaring “Air Jordan” style of play - trying to come up
with something that can help get you back in the saddle going forward.
These guys were not dirty players, they didn’t break the rules of play – your kind of guys. The things
these three have in common, though – speed and quickness, combined with superior execution of
technique – is only half of the equation. The other half of what made these guys so dominant was
how their personalities accentuated their styles of play.
Even though I am tempted by the image flashing through my mind of your long brown arm stretched
above a canvas ring, the Everlast glove at the end of it smushed against the jaw of Mrs. Clinton as
you, your head turned sideways, smile broadly at the camera, I will reel myself back to reality.
The political arena is more like a golf tournament, replete with overflowing galleries, battalions of pho-
togs, designated meet and greets, and elevated teeboxes, which serve as the players podiums when
it is time for their clubs to speak. I wish it was as simple as putting on a red shirt because it’s Sunday
and you have the fifty four hole lead, but you’re not trying to come in with the least amount of votes at
the end of the day.
You opponent has simplified the negative. You can simplify the positive.
Have some fun, man!!! I do not want to see your dour face on TV every night, not because you can’t
be dejected, but because I don’t want Mrs. Clinton’s supporters to see you like that. And because your
face lights up when you genuinely laugh – that beats the Clinton wrinkled staredown everyday of the
week.
The main thing is, DO NOT let these ten cent hustlers from Arkansas define you. There are many,
many ways to create positive sound bites to crowd out the garbage the Clinton campaign is pushing.
But if garbage is all people have to go on, you are screwed.
28
P.S.
Also, get the press release count up. The weight of all that garbage floating around the internet and
the news media weighs heavily on the weak minded, who are looking for an excuse to fall back on
the very real “I told you his ass was too black to make it” sentiment that is beginning to raise its ugly
head around the water cooler at my office.
From the ‘burbs of the ATL
No Puppet
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
After listening to the speech Barack Obama gave on Tuesday for the second time tonight, I feel the
need to say something, even though, in the wake of the masterfully crafted speech that this presidential
candidate ostensibly wrote himself, I am sure that whatever I write will come up far short of what he
accomplished over the last few days.
To speak about race and America in the way that he did, with all that he has at stake, was simply
beautiful. From the stark, even tempered delivery to the calming royal blue background to the massing
of the American flags in the background, it all was calculated to add a large measure of gravitas to
the words he spoke. His cadence was conversational rather than the halting declarative style we have
come to associate with political speeches. His eyes were serious most of the time, a look that is not
one the public is used to seeing grace his countenance.
The plain-spoken affirmations Obama made:
"I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community."
"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"
"That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends.
But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table."
"But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without
understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists
between the races."
29
No Puppet
"And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided
or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too
widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."
direct, forthright, and without equivocation - this is no puppet, as so many black politicians have be-
come, or some beige sensation who appropriates the exotic essence of the African American experi-
ence and ignores the rest, but a candidate who is firmly in charge of himself and his message.
The boldness of his rhetoric reminded me in many ways of a lot of the things I have written on this
very board to you guys - but without the spotlight of a hundred TV feeds or the glare of a rabid press
corps waiting to dissect my every word. As he proceeded to go on to describe white resentment to
black anger, I felt that he was having the ultimate metaphorical conversation with the two halves of
his own identity.
I don't know where this thing is going, but I am DELIGHTED to have such a capable representative
of the darker slice of this American pie in the running to become the next president of these United
States.
Math Any Ten Year Old Can Do

I was just on the phone this morning with a friend here in Atlanta. I’d called her to inform her about the
recent death of a young man we both knew, because we hail from the same town in South Carolina.
It turns out she happened to be home this weekend, and had just found out herself. She was actually
in the process of getting ready to go to the funeral when I called.
“Yep,” she exclaimed, “I know it’s got to be hard on his daddy. I guess I need to go sit in the church
today. For his father.”
We traded a few remarks about the dead son. We spoke about the funeral, and where it would be
held.
“You know the pastor can’t let you leave a funeral without making sure he’s taken you there,” my friend
said. “He’s going to preach to us until he thinks we’ve got the spirit.” In the next breath, she brought
up the controversy with Reverend Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor. “Speaking of pastors – how long
you think they’re going to keep our boy on the ropes with this thing?”
30
Math Any Ten Year Old Can Do
I proceeded to talk about what the lack of diversity in the places that matter in America really means
– that the overly homogeneous press corps we want to rely on as a Fourth Estate who represent ALL
of our interests seem to only attend white churches. If there were more than a token amount of minority
journalists and news reporters in this group, I asserted, maybe we would see some stories about kinds
of churches she and I grew up around, where preachers understood that their job was to entertain as
well as enlighten in order to maintain and grow their congregations.
She asked me if I thought it was a death knell for Obama – if the loss he was anticipating in Pennsyl-
vania would put Clinton back in the lead.
“BACK in the lead? Lead of what?” I practically shouted into the phone. I proceeded to tick off the
facts – “math any ten year old could do” is actually how I put it – that strongly suggested that this race
would end up after the North Carolina primary the same way it did after the Texas/Ohio contests –
with no net change to either candidate of delegates won, and no net change in the number of actual
votes – now standing at 700,000 – by which Obama was leading Clinton.
“You need to turn that news off,” I continued, “and just use the links I send you to keep an eye on the
raw numbers. If you listen to these people in the media, they will have you believing that 9 is greater
than 10. That 1246 is greater than 1414. That 12.5 million is greater than 13.2 million.”
She laughed. “I see your point.”
On Obama Not Going To Memphis

Friday, April 4, 2008
Being black in America is not a punchlist - we are as capable of remaking our own realities as anyone
else. It would be nice if Obama could pay homage to every tradition the black community has, but if
he doesn't, does that make him less black? Less committed?
When I hear Tavis Smiley complain when Obama doesn't come to the Black Summit conference he
hosts (although Michelle Obama was offered as a substitute), or read an op-ed piece by Cornel West
berating Obama for not laying a wreath on Martin Luther King's grave, I have to wonder if these two
have been hypnotized by the green light atop the television cameras that seem to be constantly trained
on them. I would hope, especially among our most educated class of African Americans, that we have
the ability to understand that some battles are less important than others when we are trying to win
the war.
If we never honor Martin Luther King again his spirit would be alright, especially if we are making the
kind of headway he himself dreamed about. A martyr who believes that his memory shall retain the
31
On Obama Not Going To Memphis
same importance in the grand scheme of things forever isn't a martyr. King knew the cost he would
have to pay. He understood what he would have to give up - his life - in the struggle he was committed
to carrying out.
I can't speak for what he would say today, but as a thinking black man, I know that if it comes down
to it, I am comfortable enough with Obama's cultural identity and the choices he has made in his life
regarding black america that if he feels he needs to campaign for more votes and put being black on
the back burner for a little while, that is fine with me. Whatever he does in the short term, he will be
black for the rest of his life.
Attending An Obama Fundraiser

Monday, April 7, 2008
S. and I went to a fundraiser here in Atlanta for Barack Obama yesterday – a lunchtime gathering
atop the Suntrust building just where Midtown meets downtown, at the corner of 10th Street and
Peachtree. In some ways it was a homecoming of sorts. S., who years ago was a downtown lawyer,
now works out of the house, in an alcove upstairs that gives her a view of our suburban street through
the large window that runs from the first floor to the second. She is usually in a sweat suit, the speak-
erphone blaring the acronyms of the arcane business practices of her employer. The dog sits in the
corner of the couch behind her as if he is a miniature bodyguard, his eyes closed but body alert.
I, who used to work out of the house, have been back in the office in the mortgage business for a year
and a half now, and seem to spend my days in a never ending episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, ex-
cept these sweathogs are not teenagers, and they are not acting. So I took the morning off, since
going to work for an hour didn’t make much sense, and took a leisurely stroll around the internet, a
leisurely shave, and a long shower – all of this was so unhurried that I end up rushing to get dressed
so we could leave on time. S. put on some real clothes for a change. I threw on a blazer to dress
things up and we were off.
One of the amazing things about Atlanta is you can live just twenty miles from downtown in the sub-
urbs, but it will take you an hour door to door to get to your destination. The closest exit to the event
was closed, so we took a detour that had us traipsing through one of the many construction zones in
the city. “When did they build that?” was a constant refrain, as if we were tourists visiting someplace
we haven’t been in awhile. New skyscrapers, new condo developments, newly renovated streetscapes
that opened up the sidewalks and made them destinations had brought new life to what used to be
deserted industrial warehouses and sterile office building facades. I hadn’t seen that many people on
the streets in Atlanta in the daytime ever.
32
As we walked into the lobby of the building, a greeter asked if we were looking for the Obama event.
She turned out to be a lawyer that S. had known in back in her downtown lawyer life. She pointed us
towards the elevator bank. We ended up waiting for the elevator with the mayor of Atlanta, Shirley
Franklin, and her body guard. All of five feet tall, Ms. Franklin was extremely approachable, and she
and S. ended up talking about their children and a school they had in common while we were whisked
skyward.
We ended up high above the street in a large room overlooking Piedmont Park. Ordinarily, it would
have been a great view, but I don’t think I looked out the window twice the whole time I was there.
Shit, I was in there! David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, the mastermind behind this incredible
campaign, was going to be the keynote speaker! I was so hyped I forgot to be pissed at the type of
overdone hobnobbing that usually goes on at these kinds of gatherings.
My best buddy from college waved from across the buffet table, full plate in hand. “What’s up, dude,”
I offered back to him as I shook the hand of someone S. introduced to me, someone whose name I
didn’t really hear. My buddy was glad to see me – I only had to shake hands with the two people he
standing next to him before we could chat for a minute.
While I was getting my plate, I noticed the name tag on the woman across from me. her last name
was the same as mine. Her voice said what was on my mind. She had the kind of eyes that were
made to draw men in to her, the kind of eyes she’d had to tone down to fit into this scene, her life, her
career. They got away from her for a few moments, though, as we worked our way down the opposite
sides of the buffet table. Her husband ended up being from South Georgia – no direct relation, although
his ancestors may have originated from the same plantation.
S. was going full bore, working the room like an old pol before running into some young lawyers from
Louisville. We all ended up parking our plates at the same high cocktail table, standing and eating
and talking. There were the usual suspects – the state senators, the legislative aides trailing behind
their bosses, whispering in their ears that they needed to keep an eye on time since the Legislature
was nearing its last day in session.
There were the usual black folks – mostly lawyers, mostly women, mostly middle aged, although far
fewer of the blondish haired greenish eyed pale skinned black cognoscenti that you normally saw at
something like this. The white people there were not the people I was used to seeing at these kinds
of things. Some of the older ones, especially the trial lawyers, were full of bluster, used to mingling
with anyone, all of them with an eye on who was who and how it might help them down the road. The
younger ones were exuberant, expectant even, as if their participation in the campaign of an outsider
candidate was a way to balance their lives of privilege.
It was the forty and fifty-something white lawyers from the downtown firms who seemed to be the
most out of place. Many of them appeared to have lost some of their legal vigorousness when they
came in the door. Instead of the normal air of superiority they operated with, they seemed to be re-
signed to whatever the fate of casting their lot with Obama might bring their way. One of these guys
ended up at our cocktail table. He had worked with S. years ago.
33
“You know,” he said, his fork full of chicken, “I’ve got four daughters. I was for Hillary, you know – I fig-
ured she would be a good role model for them.” The chicken threatened to slide off the end of his fork
as he shook his hand to underscore his words. “But lately, the way she was campaigning…I just could-
n’t see how she could win this thing. So I guess I’m for Obama.”
I looked around as I ate, trying to see where Mr. Plouffe was. It hit me as I settled on the mayor and
her entourage that he was probably the young white guy talking to her. He looked exactly like I thought
he would – dark haired, with the kind of five o’clock shadow that would make Jack Lemmon look like
a eunuch, a slender, sharp eyed man who was always in motion, even when he was listening.
The crowd got louder as more people entered the room. Those who were networking looked a little
disappointed. The cost of admission was not paying off. These weren’t decision makers, the network-
ers were discovering, but well dressed corporate and political flacks, pinstriped and cuff linked, po-
maded and perfumed, a Ralph Lauren ad with middle aged people in it.
My buddy and I were shooting the shit with some hungry looking lawyers from Savannah when the
person introducing the speaker asked for our attention. We faded to the back, making our way back
to the vicinity of our original table, where S. was holding court with two other tall women. Mr. Plouffe
came on like gangbusters, without further ado, without some long, drawn out acknowledgement spiel
to pay tribute to every elected official in the room – basically, he thanked the mayor and the super del-
egates in attendance and started into HIS stump speech. I leaned over and whispered to my buddy –
“he’s more Obama than Obama”.
This was it – I was looking at the guy who pulled the levers, the guy who deployed the troops, the guy
who stayed up all night every night so the candidate could look like he was well rested, the guy who
probably knew more about this Democratic presidential hopeful than anybody else in the world but
his wife. How much, I wondered, did you tell your campaign manager, if you were the candidate, about
the things in your closet that nobody knew about yet? How close to the truth did a campaign manager
want to get when a faux pas from his candidate's past surfaced?
The mayor sat down in a chair near the front of the room but off to the side. She went from practically
invisible to gone among the six feet and over crowd, her hulking bodyguard the only indication she
was still in the room. David Plouffe was Turbo Barack for the first hour, speaking about three times as
fast as the candidate, his sentences sounding as if they were downhill sprints, his hands, his head
bobs and his volume the only indicators of any intonation. It was as if I could see my last three months
of following Obama online coming alive as he referenced just about every highlight and low moment
of the recent campaign history and the reactions by the press. My chest swelled a little. I looked around
the room at the black people. Some of their eyes (including S.’s) were moist as Plouffe stated em-
phatically “he will be the nominee in June”. Many of their faces held smiles so wide I thought their
brown skin was going to split. Even the seasoned black pols had an extra twinkle in their eyes. And
then there were those who were simply beatific, as if they had known all along the Rapture was com-
ing.
After an hour of standing, though, the natives got restless – like me, they were not the kind of people
who sat still or stayed quiet this long in the course of a normal workday. Plouffe was staring to wind
34
down, promising, as he pounded the Obama themes, that he would take questions. His throat must
have gotten very dry – a thin, white string of saliva appeared, stuck to the roof of his mouth and his
tongue, elongating with each word, mesmerizing and repulsing me at the same time until he swallowed
it.
The higher ranking elected officials – the longtime state senators, the mayor, the next candidate for
mayor – were bored in the way a professional politician got bored, standing stock still, head held high,
lips pursed in a permanent smile, their eyes the only thing that gave them away as they scanned the
room, calculating how much longer they had to stay to make their presence official. The rest of us
were restless the way indulged children were restless, fidgeting, texting, whispering to our neighbors,
shifting our weight from one leg to the other. I surveyed the landscape, taking notice of the two or
three long legged beauties around the room, but my mind wasn’t on women this Wednesday afternoon.
This was business.
It was almost maudlin, standing there in room high above the city, besuited, bejeweled, listening to a
man talk to us about the ideals of a grassroots campaign, about the power of the small donor, about
the door to door canvassing efforts – things that very few people in this room were going to do after
writing a check. The questions were predictable – some funny, some serious – veering from the Rev-
erend Wright controversy to the Fox News bias. The younger questioners tended to want to know
how they could put Georgia in play for the Democratic Party. The answers were amazing – exhaustive
campaign rhetoric mixed with a “you didn’t pay to hear that shit so let me tell you what I really think”
directness that was about as close to a straight answer as you can probably get from a campaign.
The question that set the tone for the last ten minutes or so of the gathering was “what are you doing
to raise Obama’s numbers with the blue collar voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana?” An earnest faced
white woman had asked the question. Plouffe looked a little constrained, as if he wanted to say out
loud what it looked like he was thinking – “we have been fighting an uphill battle to try to get lower
class white voters to vote for a black man.” He slowed down for the first time all day, and managed,
over the next five minutes or so, to share some of their broader strategies about how they planned to
increase Obama’s chances among this mythical heartland voter without saying the word “white”. The
closest he came was when he offered that “these people” were not like the people before him – that
they needed a different kind of inducement to be persuaded to take the Obama campaign seriously,
one that, in his opinion, was going to rely heavily on centers of influence from within their ranks who
could legitimize Barack Obama and what he stood for by fomenting discussion among their peers.
I was struck, as he said this, by the combination of the perverse, the profane and the profound that
make up the political landscape, and our naïve efforts to attempt to segregate these elements, as if
we could somehow purify this process, taking out the bad and leaving the good. In an hour I would be
back among those who had never given a dollar to a political campaign in their lives, who couldn’t
spell “gerrymandering” if you spotted them the first ten letters, people whose political knowledge came
in sound bite increments on talk radio. S. would be back to answering the same emails she got last
week and joining conference calls to offer expert advice that would be rejected for something more
expedient.
The dog would be back to work, his eyes closed, but his bark at the ready.
35
The Chit Chat Hour
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
All the churches I've regularly attended have had black pastors. My mother's father was one of the
founding members of the Methodist church her sisters still attend. It sits in the middle of nowhere, on
land that was unsuitable for farming, next to the turn of the century school building where my grand-
mother taught school.
I went there in the summers for Vacation Bible School. I've been there for regular services many, many
Sundays. I've attended funerals there for three of my aunts and uncles.
The thing about the Methodist church that seems to keep a pretty good balance between the needs
of the parishoners and the aspirations of the pastor is the rotation system the Methodists have that
move the pastors around every few years. The church is associated more with its leading members
than with its pastor, and they have been successful, at least so far, in putting the resources of the
church more towards the needs of the members in their regular lives instead of larger buildings.
The sermons kept your attention sometimes and put you to sleep sometimes. The pastors tended to
be educated, and most of them prepared actual texts for their sermons.
The church my father's parents attended was Baptist. It was at the county line, under a stand of huge
oak trees, a wooden building with no air conditioning. The minister was old and wizened, with a smile
that seemed pretty devilish for a man of the cloth. He farmed during the week and preached on Sun-
day. The thing I remember about him is the way he used the bible verses as a guide to a stream of
consciousness chant, a sing song rythmn that he emphasized with a stomp of his shoe upon the
wooden floor. It seemed to end up being the same chant week after week.
The churches I see here in Atlanta probably aren't that different from Reverand Wright's old church in
Chicago, except here they preach black prosperity. After a church gets a few hundred members, the
pastor becomes a manager. After a church gets a couple thousand members, the pastor becomes an
administrator. More than five thousand members and the minister is an executive, leading an enter-
prise with cashflows and payrolls more reminscent of a mid-sized business.
Leaving all that power and adulation has to be hard.
What I can't understand is how such an educated man like Reverand Wright, who has dedicated his
life to uplifting black people, can put himself in front of the press and the TV cameras at this moment,
knowing full well what his continued presence on TV sets around the country can do to thwart one of
the most uplifting experiences in black American history to date.
There are more than a few black people in America, college educated people who have never owned
a gun or struck anyone in anger, who would be willing to draw a bead on Reverand Wright today.
The old adage "black people are like crabs in a barrel" stayed with me all through the night.
Even now, a day later, I feel like I'm in a movie. Of all the things that could happen, this is the LAST
thing I would have thought anyone with half a brain would do, let alone a learned and accomplished
man who has risen above some of the same challenges Obama is facing.
36
The Chit Chat Hour
Everyone else has stepped back except Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton. Wright knows that there has
been a noticeable absence of rabble rousing by the usual rabble rousers the last few months. More
importantly, he knows WHY this is so.
The chit chat hour has begun in my office - Rev Wright's antics are being debated by a couple of
people about ten feet away - they are incredulous, even though they understand that much of this
grandstanding is calculated.
I'm not in a civil enough mood to join the conversation right now.
The irony is, I've posted statements similar to the some of the ones Rev Wright has made on this very
website.
What I am afraid of is the public at large. I can't get to the place yet where I can trust that enough of
the voting public is able to successfully parse fact from fiction in a way that does not obscure the good
things about the Obama campaign.
I'd like to believe that I am smart enough, am sophisticated enough, to not need to have a hero, but I
succumb once in while to the rapture of what could be, to the shining light of possibilty.
The machinations required to sustain the candidacy of this black man running for president of the
United States has caused me to be more introspective than I have at any time since I was a teenager.
Am I able to be more than I am? Am I doing what it takes to be more than I am? Are my life goals
perched high enough? Have I done anything that was really worthwhile in these forty one years I've
been alive?
I can understand the need to confront the ugly truths that are an important part of America's history.
But to me, some of the same people who are putting $10 and $20 a week into the Trinity collection
baskets on Sundays are some of the same people who are finding ways to send Obama $5, $10 or
$15 when they have it.
To risk squandering the hope of those hundreds of thousands of people all over this country who have
never given to a political campaign before is mind boggling to me.
In a couple of days this will pass. I'll revert to the things I know to be true. There will be no real surprises
in the upcoming primaries. But until then I will shake my head in wonder every few minutes as I try to
see the utility value in Rev Wright's recent actions.
37
Does Obama Need To Come Out Hard Against Rev. Wright?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
My buddy and I went at it this morning. He wants Obama to come out hard - not to denounce Wright,
or dissassociate himself from Wright, but to tell Wright publicly that he needs to "shut his mouth" for
the good of the campaign. I couldn't believe I was hearing this come out of my pal's mouth - he is an
accomplished lawyer who has been the campaign manager for a couple of local judiciary elections
himself.
"Dude," I said, "there is NO way he can say that."
"What do you mean he can't say that? If he can't show the American people that he can handle one
loud mouth negro, then why should they believe that he can rule the country?"
"Come on, man," I said. "You cannot manhandle a negro like this. He doesn't have anything to lose.
And he will use whatever you do against you, to show how he has defied yet another attempt by 'The
Man' or his surrogates to silence someone who is speaking truth to power. That's the new black political
phrase, you know - 'speak truth to power'."
We went back and forth awhile, until the need to get back to work intruded on our argument.
There is a reason Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, Sidney Poitier was Hollywood's first leading
man, and Obama is likely to be the first black Democratic nominee for president, the same reason
that Michael Jordan still gets more love from NBA fans than Shaq, Kobe, and Iverson combined, the
same reason that Tiger Woods has the fans twenty deep around the greens.
My buddy wants Obama to show some teeth to Wright. I think its a waste of time, that the news cycles
are so short now that this will die back down next week of its own accord, especially after the primary
results come in and everyone has to re-handicap Hillary's odds of winning the nomination.
Now, if Obama had gotten to where he is today by being direct, by being forthright, by confronting is-
sues head on, I might have had some kind of reason to agree with my buddy.
To ask a man to do something against his nature is the worst kind of political pandering, especially if
its sole reason is to "look presidential". We haven't had a coalition building president in a long time. I
am finding it refreshing that we have someone who does not have to resort to he-man antics to get
his point across. The warrior king is a relic. Our presidents these days are exactly what the title says
they are - chief executive officers.
If Jackie Robinson had thrown things back at the people who threw things at him from the bleachers,
had hunted down those who made death threats against him, had taken his bat to the players who
taunted him on the field with racial epithets, he wouldn't have lived as long as he did - hell, he wouldn't
have played as long as he did. If Michael Jordan had supported Jessie Jackson for president - publicly
- if he had divorced his wife years ago and dated the kind of chicks he really wanted - a lot of the air
would have been let out of His Airness's image.
Obama and his strategists have done pretty well so far. I think they can get things back on track and
continue to execute their gameplan without overhauling the Obama personality at this late date.
38
This Is Not A Horse Race
Thursday, May 1, 2008
One of the fallacies that has been propped up by our main stream media journalists for the last month
and a half is that this primary is still a horse race. What almost all of them conveniently ignore is the
tremendous amount of energy, time, money, and an improbable shift in the actual demographics of
the remaining states that would be needed for the Clinton campaign to garner more than the 50%
total of the outstanding pledged delegates she is projected to get based on current state by state es-
timates.
Which is why if you are unfamiliar, as most Americans are, with the way delegates are actually accu-
mulated through the proportional vote totals of individual congressional districts, we are more likely to
think that this thing works the way it does in sports – that Clinton COULD upset Obama if she could
“run the table” in the remaining contests.
But “running the table” – Obama having no net gain in delegates – is impossible. He would have to
get less than twenty percent of the vote in each of the remaining states for Clinton to get within spitting
distance. Most of the larger congressional districts out there have 4 to 6 delegates at stake. 62.5% of
the vote in that district is needed to go from 2-2 or 3-3 to 3-1 or 4-2. In order to blank an opponent,
the opponent has to have a vote total that is below the threshold needed to gain at least
one delegate, which is usually 15%.
The thing that is maddening to me is that every journalist in the country who is on the political beat or
is a political columnist sees this kind of information about each states delegate allocation methodology
all day every day. Yet their headlines suggest that Obama is hearing Clinton’s footsteps as she gains
on him. These are the numbers as of yesterday, which is already off when you include the guy below
for Obama:
Clinton is 430 delegates short of the 2025 needed to nominate and has to capture 62 percent of the
408 pledged delegates yet to be selected and the 286 superdelegates yet to commit in order to get
there.
Obama needs just 295 delegates of any stripe to close it out.
295.
That’s it.
There are 191 delegates at stake over the next 6 days (May 3rd and May 6th). From where we stand
right now, Obama looks to pick up 95 – 100 of them.
In the 14 day stretch after that (May 20th), there are 131 delegates at stake. From where we stand
right now, Obama looks to pick up 55 – 60 of them.
There are only 86 pledged delegates left to fight over between May 20th and June 3rd. From where
we stand right now, Obama looks to pick up 35 – 38 of them. If you add 95, 55, and 35 – the low end
of the estimates – you get 185, which puts him 110 delegates away.
39
This Is Not A Horse Race
In this scenario, Clinton gets the balance of the 408 delegates outstanding – 223.
If my math serves me correctly, from where she is right now, this would put Clinton 207 delegates
away – only a hundred delegates but twice as far from the prize.
Something tells me there are more than 110 superdelegates who are wearing an “O-Man” t-shirt under
their dress shirts. There are a lot more people who will be ready to get to the end of this thing in the
next two weeks.
110 and counting.
Right Back Where We Started From

Monday, May 05, 2008
Judging a political contest is like handicapping a horse race – you study a horse, know his strengths
and weaknesses, how fast he is, what kind of track he runs better on, and stack him up against the
rest of the field. Then you do it again for each horse in the field.
The real question today is whether Hillary Clinton can raise enough cash to keep her in the race –
as to the concept that perception is reality, if she can win big enough in Indiana (whether by one
point or ten, its hard to say what the magic number is today) she can continue to beat the fund rais-
ing drum.
Even as I write that last sentence, though, I know as well as anybody that her big donors are
tapped. Her internet cash haul is growing, but as Obama’s people will tell you, it takes a lot of effort
to garner all those small donations week after week.
If she can pull Indiana out and win North Carolina (about as likely as my hair growing back) then the
O-Man is on the ropes, even though he would still be closer to the goal – the tea leaf readers will
sense shifting momentum and trumpet it across the airwaves.
I don’t see Obama winning Indiana, and I don’t see Clinton winning North Carolina – if Obama’s
urban congressional district routs hold up (that’s where the highest delegate counts are), though, he
could net 10 more delegates than Clinton tomorrow…
…which would put us right back where we were two months ago.
40
183 To Go
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
183 to go.
That’s the number I stayed up until three o’clock in the morning ON A WEEKNIGHT to find out. That’s
the number of delegates of any variety – pledged, super, rocky road, mint chocolate chip – that Barack
Obama’s campaign needs to be able to plant the flag of victory at the Democratic National Convention
later this year.
If you watched the Hillary Clinton victory speech in Indianapolis last night, you saw what I saw – a
woman who was going through the motions as she spoke, her voice hollow, her posture limp, her
eyes vacant as she willed herself to recite the meaningless campaign rhetoric to a crowd who could
barely fake the listless level of enthusiasm they showed. Her husband’s face was red, his crimson
cheeks and cherry colored forehead much more revealing than the professional politician’s innocuous
smile he wore as she droned on about her will to win, her resolve to stay in the race, and her need,
now more than ever, for more money to continue her odyssey towards the nomination.
I was on the phone with my brother as she spoke, spinning an alcohol-induced conspiracy theory
about the lone county in Indiana that was refusing to report ANY vote totals as we got closer to mid-
night. I stopped in mid ramble – “Dude, this sounds like a concession speech – let me call you back!”
– as her halting words came through the speakers. I didn’t need the detail of high definition TV to see
her in a way the majority of the political commentators tried desperately to avoid describing accu-
rately.
183 to go.
I think in a lot of ways it is harder for those of the pundit class to accept the fact that Hillary Clinton
has absolutely no chance of earning – I’ll say it again here, EARNING – the Democratic nomination
as the candidate the party will back for the presidency of the United States of America than it will be
for the man in the street. These people have had to face the thing that the rest of America has been
able to avoid up to this point – that in November, if you want to support the Democratic presidential
candidate, you will be touching that screen or pulling that lever or checking that box for a man with
brown skin.
If its still hard for me, a confessed political junkie these past few months, to deal with the enormous-
ness of a black man who is one step away from being the president of this country, I know it must be
three times as hard for those who have always expected to be led by someone who looks like them
instead of someone who looks like me.
183 to go.
The Clinton campaign has canceled Hillary’s round of post primary public appearances on TV and
radio that were scheduled to begin in a few hours. If you heard what I heard in the tone of Hillary Clin-
ton’s voice as she claimed victory for the Indiana primary, you would recognize the sound of a woman
who is wondering what just happened.
I know the feeling myself.
41
183 To Go
Although the campaign I ran for student body president of my high school almost twenty five years
ago was not in the same league as a presidential bid, the dynamics were similar. I was the favored
candidate, with lavish red, white and blue trimmed campaign boaters my supporters fought over, pro-
fessionally rendered campaign posters, a slick slogan, and access to the school intercom as a voice
behind the morning announcements. My opponent was a girl from across the tracks who was never
organized and always late to everything.
In a student body of two thousand students, I lost by twelve votes.
The student council advisor was almost in tears. “I counted them three times,” she said to me. “I’m
sorry.”
I had been so sure of victory that I had worn one of my campaign boaters to her office. How could I
have lost? What went wrong? Who the hell were the thirteen idiots who couldn’t see that I was the
better candidate?
After the anger faded I was embarrassed, ashamed that I had thought so much of myself, and humil-
iated by the thought of being beat by someone with less advantages on her side. It took awhile for me
to see the things I’d done wrong. The things I’d ignored. And to understand that I had put more faith
in symbols, like campaign hats, than the kind of substance that could make a few more students be-
lieve.
Mrs. Clinton has lived in another world, one that some have dubbed HillaryLand, for the past fifteen
months. Emerging from the confines of this cocoon will be painful. It will be embarrassing, even though
she will try not to show it.
She will survive.
Meanwhile, the O-Man will continue on his quest – on our quest – to be seated behind the desk in the
Oval Office.
No red, white and blue trimmed Styrofoam boaters required.
177 To Go
Friday, May 09, 2008
177 to go.
42
177 To Go
My phone was ringing off the hook last night from friends and acquaintances who know I am up to my
ears in the minutiae of this primary.
"Why hasn't she dropped out yet?"
"What more do they want from him?"
"Why isn't this thing over yet?"
"What trick is the Clinton Camp going to pull next?"
For people who don't follow the political goings on in their own town, for those who could normally
care less about the national political scene "because they are going to do what they want anyway",
this is a harsh introduction to watching big time politics. There are so many conflicts within the Dem-
ocratic Party right now - young versus old, black versus white, the future versus the past, the many
versus the moneyed few - that it will take a while for all of these things to settle down.
I wouldn't want to imagine being Hillary Clinton right now. This would have been an easier pill for
Obama to swallow - remember, as he puts he, he wasn't supposed to get this far. But to be the front
runner, the favorite, the one to beat - to already know what changes you were going to make in the
White House bedroom to get rid of the stuff you didn't like the last time you lived there - it has got be
one of the most horrible political and personal experiences a candidate has gone through in genera-
tions, somewhere up there with the"Wilkie Wins" headline THAT presidential hopeful went to sleep
on.
I've told my friends to turn their TV's off - to go do something fun, or get some sleep, or reconnect with
their families, or whatever it is they normally do to kill time - because everything else from here on out
is just noise, mindless chatter to fill the airwaves until the conventions.
And for my more conspiratorially minded associates, I've had to reassure them that there will be no
secret ballot, no "stealing" of the nomination, no magic wand that will help her snatch victory from the
jaws of defeat.
Rest easy, I've told them - Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. "You can take that to the
bank."
177 to go.
43
The Last Primary
The phone calls have tailed off. The emails have slowed. The constant, near maniacal search for any
information about Barack Obama’s chances in the next state level contest has petered out.
“I guess it’s over,” a friend of mine said yesterday.
“You know,” I said, “when you cut the head off of a snake, you’ve still got to be careful, cause that sum
bitch is liable to bite your ass for quite a while afterwards.”
This is the part that Hillary has been waiting for – an arena in which she and her cohorts can do what
they do best – plead, cajole and arm twist a small group of like minded people until they get what they
want. And if you are black, you are probably going to do what a lot of my friends will be doing next
week – wondering if she can really come back from the dead and burst the bubble on this fairy tale.
There is practically NO way Hillary can come out ahead. The "popular vote" may be "popular", but
that has no real bearing on how the Democrats choose their convention delegates.
The thing that makes me stay up too late every night, tapping away at this keyboard, is the anger I
can't let go watching her campaign heavyweights trot out this "mangy dog with fleas" idea that Florida
and Michigan are ENTITLED (yes, I'll say it out loud) to be a part of their political party's selection
process.
Assassinate - Rhymes with "playahate"

Saturday, May 24, 2008
My flabber has been gasted.
I am fresh out of rage.
Hillary Clinton has graduated from simply calling "a spade a spade" back in South Carolina to remind-
ing us that "I am leading among working class white voters" after Virgina to hauling out the granddaddy
of them all, the "let's just burn/shoot/stab a negro because...well, he hasn't done anything wrong,
but...well, because we can."
I don't know whether this latest episode "screwed the pooch", "jumped the shark", or was an example
of "all balls, no brains."
But what I do know is that Hillary Clinton is first and foremost a lawyer.
44
Assassinate - Rhymes with "playahate"
My best buddy is a lawyer. Hell, S. is a lawyer. And if there's one thing I know about even half assed
lawyers, they are much, much more cognizant of the importance of what comes out of their mouths
than the average citizen.
The thing that pisses me off more than what she said is the way the news pundits - AKA "the people
who interpret the news for those too dumb to think for themselves" - gloss this over, paraphrasing the
Clinton spin doctors - "her reference to Mr. Kennedy's assassination appeared to focus on the timeline
of his primary candidacy and not the assassination itself" - in order to soothe the masses.
I watched the tape of her interview with the Argus Leader in South Dakota. There was no dependent
clause after "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California" to modify the
declaration that stand-alone sentence made.
Don't try to PLAY us with that throwaway sound bite shit, Mrs. Clinton. And don't sit there circling the
wagons around your girl when she goes too far, those of you in TV pundit land, with that ridiculous
conjecture you don't even believe yourselves about why she said what she did.
Hell, I couldn't even see Baghdad Bob saying the kind of things she is capable of saying with a straight
face.
Hillary, you don't fight against sexism by making snide remarks or having a "I can't believe you people
are letting this happen to me" attitude written across your face every time the camera turns your way.
If you need a quick tutorial on this, you can turn to your husband, a man who can LITERALLY charm
someone's pants off, a man who intuitively knows, better than just about anyone, that you catch more
bees with honey than you do with vinegar.
If Clinton's campaign coffers had more money in them or IF THE DELEGATE COUNT WAS CLOSER

my dander would be up. Waaaay up.
But these things that have come out of her mouth lately remind me of a two year old who threatens
to do something terrible if you don't give them what they want.
I'm not all that current with urban slang, but I'm pretty sure I can get this closing thought right.
"Don't playahate, congratulate."
As the notorious comedian Katt Williams asserts in one of his monologues , "Haters hate. That's what
they do."
So hate on, Hillary.
Hate on.
45
Office Politics
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
49 48 47 delegates to go.
I was leaving work fairly late last night when I ran into two co-workers standing around the reception-
ist’s desk (which is usually empty because we don’t have a receptionist), talking about Obama. I could-
n’t quite make out what was being said, but the man was very emphatic, gesticulating as he spoke,
his head shaking a little as he brought home his point. The woman smiled when I passed them head-
ing for the door.
“What do you think about this…this…this liberal flip flopper Obama?” the man asked me. He continued
before I could answer. “He would turn us into a socialist state. Am I right?”
“Politics in the office isn’t a good idea,” I said slowly, although I was very curious about their conver-
sation, and how he had gotten to the idea of a “socialist state”. Although I had my hand on the door, I
wasn’t moving.
The woman grabbed her handbag. “I need to get home to my son,” she said. I stepped back so she
could get through the door.
“Alright,” I said to my co-worker, “there’s nobody else here. So where did you get this idea that we
were going to become a socialist country if we elected Obama?”
“Actually, either Obama or Clinton will take us there. Hell, McCain might too if we take our eyes off
of him long enough.” His voice was rising as he spoke, but the way he looked at me was a bit wary,
as if he was gauging my reaction to the things he was saying.
“What are you basing that on?”
“Look at their plans. Look at their platforms. All this stuff they want to provide – who’s going to pay
for it? They don’t have the money in the budget now, so they must be planning to raise taxes. Do you
follow me?”
I frowned. “A lot of what they plan to do will never get off the ground. You know that. Kind of like one
tugboat trying to move an ocean liner. It doesn’t move it very much. That’s about all the president can
do – move us a little bit left or a little bit right.”
“Well, when you’ve got a guy who has sought out the most radical, the most extreme socialists and
communists and anarchists all his life, you’ve got to wonder what’s going on in this guys head, don’t
you?”
“I’ll admit, I haven’t read more than a few pages of either of his books, but I am pretty familiar with the
timeline of his life. So when did all this happen?”
“When he chose to go to the most corrupt, most liberal educational institution in the United States.”
“What school was that? Columbia?” Now I was puzzled.
46
Office Politics
“No, Harvard.”
“Harvard? You mean Harvard University? Do you know what kind of people go to Harvard? The kind
of people who want to get somewhere in a hurry. The kind of people who strive for big things. The
kind of people who want to ‘join the club’.”
I was simply amazed that in fifteen minutes, this man, who looked white but had a Cuban mother, a
man who was the son of a college professor at a university here in the Deep South, had painted a
picture for me of a candidate I did not recognize. It was as if he had overlooked all the good stuff, the
things we could verify and substantiate, to focus on the conjecture, the rumors, the innuendo, basing
his entire view of Barack Obama on these fevered musings of the discontented.
We had been dancing around it for awhile now, so I decided to put it out there, to see how far I could
get his eyebrows to jump.
“You know what I think the real problem is?” I think there is lot of America that really didn’t pay much
attention to this primary – yeah, there’s a black guy running for president, good for them – until now,
when the reality is, this guy is likely to win the nomination and be on the ballot in November. Pushing
that button is going to be hard.”
His eyebrows didn’t jump, they flattened out. His chin tilted down. “It’s gonna get ugly. That’s all I can
say. It’s gonna get real ugly. You’re going to see people saying things they haven’t said in a long time
to each other. At each other.”
“Something like the sixties, I would imagine.”
The wariness continued as we went back and forth, trading euphemisms and vague generalities, until
he charged in with a declaration.
“Political correctness,” he said as his eyebrows inched skyward again, “is ruining the way we can
communicate with each other.”
We stared at each other for a minute, both of us looking as if we were imagining the coarser ways,
the violent ways, the misogynistic ways blacks and whites have communicated with each other in this
country over the years. A few more exchanges and I was out the door, headed home to an internet
full of anonymous people who were very, very happy to show the world how politically incorrect they
could be.
But can this trumpeting of the dark and vile thoughts within your heart, a trumpeting that I too am guilty
of participating in, can this be considered communication? Or are we staking out our territories for the
battle ahead?
With only 49 48 47 delegates to go, I should feel good. I should be exuberant.
But the struggle, it seems, has only just begun.
47
Keeping The Tally From Our Eyes
Thursday, May 29, 2008
"As you sow, so shall ye reap"
All these machinations that we will be privy to before the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee
meets this weekend to decide how to handle the mess the Michigan and Florida state delegations
have become will probably give us some new numbers to live by.
The end result of all the posturing and protesting that will take place Saturday at the Marriott Wardman
Park Hotel in Washington, DC will most likely be the emergence of a new goalpost – maybe 2208 del-
egates this time – that Obama or Clinton will have to acquire in order to claim the nomination.
I have heard this story before.
Growing up, my father used to tell us colorful yarns about his uncles and aunts and cousins who grew
up around him in the country. One of the stories that has stuck in my mind for years was the one about
an old plantation, located a few miles from my grandfather's house in the Lowcountry of South Car-
olina, that became a sharecropping operation after their slaves were freed.
His cousins had lived on this plantation's grounds for generations. They were still there at the middle
of the twentieth century, even as the civil rights movement was fomenting around them. They worked
the landowner's land by day and lived in the landowner's shacks by night.
Stores for groceries and clothes were far and few between – moreover, you needed to have cash
money to purchase any goods. But sharecroppers didn’t need to go to local stores – the landowner
had a store he operated especially for his help. This commissary was a place were the sharecropper
could buy clothes and food on credit until harvest time, when his share of the crop went to market.
The theory behind sharecropping suggested that the tenant farmer had an opportunity to earn enough
money to pay off what he owed to the commissary and put the rest aside. In practice, this never hap-
pened – no matter how much money your efforts yielded, the amount you owed was always higher
than what you earned.
The ledger was not open for inspection – it was this part of the story, more than any other, that made
my blood curdle every time I heard it. This power the landowners had, an authority so vast it allowed
them to alter the details of previously agreed upon terms, a control so absolute it permitted these
landowners to change the amount of money these hardworking men and women owed to them with
nothing more than the stroke of a pen - this kind of power scared the hell out of me as a child.
My father would pause here, letting his description of the commissary arrangement sink in for a few
seconds, answering questions from me and my brothers - why didn’t your cousins have any MONEY?
- as well as my mother - you mean to tell me your cousins were still on the old plantation IN THE
FIFTIES?
Then he would plunge into the Brier Rabbit part of the story, relating to us how his cousins, having
had enough, vowed to leave at the end of the next harvest. And the only way to leave was to pay off
48
Keeping The Tally From Our Eyes
their debt. So the head of the family went to the commissary that fall and received his allotment from
the harvest. It was weighed, a figure was arrived at, and he carried his scrip to the commissary, where
he applied it to his bill. But this time, instead of taking a verbal accounting of how much more he owed,
he asked the landowner to write it down.
The landowner handed him a slip with a figure on it. That’s all he walked out with – no flour, no sugar,
no coffee, no salt pork, no rice, no toiletries – nothing but that slip of paper.
My father’s cousins went to work in earnest then, making what they had last as long as possible, bor-
rowing what they could not do without from relatives like my grandfather, going back to basics as they
hunted, fished, and gathered practically everything they ate for the next twelve months after toiling in
the fields all day.
So the next fall, when it came time for harvest, when it came time to settle up with the landowner, my
father’s cousins had amassed enough scrip to settle their tab. It is this part of the story that I have
probably romanticized above and beyond the imagery my father provided, adding extra heft to the
pasteboard suitcases they had packed to the gills, extra shine to the moonlight as they trudged away
from their empty shack under the cover of darkness, an extra gleam in their eyes as they headed for
the main road, their next stop the train station, their destination, New York City.
It is stories like this, stories told and retold, most of them containing more than a kernel of truth at their
center, that make me and people like me wary whenever we see business that is meant to be public
conducted in private, whenever we see men with knowing smiles emerge from smoke filled rooms…
whenever we sense that someone is keeping the tally in the metaphorical ledger book from our eyes.
The Democratic Party Rules & Bylaws committee has a hard job to do. I don’t envy them. The piles
of delegates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are standing on aren’t much different than the planta-
tion token pictured above this commentary. Whether or not these delegates will retain their original
value or be assigned a new unit of measurement is entirely up to the landowners, oops, I meant com-
mittee members, who will convene this Saturday, just before the candidates begin to harvest the fruits
of their campaign labor.
Half Dollars and Half Delegates

Who these people on the Democratic Party Rules & Bylaws committee are and why they are important
appear to be glossed over by the mainstream press – giving credence to Hillary Clinton’s aggressive
efforts to sway the outcome seem to be their only interest.
The Americans I talk to seem to see something different – to them, Camp Clinton has begun to act
49
Half Dollars and Half Delegates
like a band of desperadoes who have fought the long arm of the law off as long as they could, and are
now holed up in their hideout, their supplies running out, their water running low, about to mount their
final fusillade of bluster and conjecture.
But the posse, 28 strong, who will be wearing the sheriff’s badges tomorrow are the members of the
RBC. Thirteen of them publicly support Camp Clinton, which means there is an enormous amount of
last minute arm twisting going on behind the scenes. 15 votes will be needed to pass anything, with
two additional at-large members on hand in case there is a tie.
The RBC will conduct its business school board style, in front of an audience of several hundred spec-
tators and members of the press. I cannot imagine what deliberations they will have to hear, or what
evidence they will have to examine, but the committee chairs have already requested that the com-
mittee members retain their rooms “in case we have to reconvene on Sunday”.
The dilemma the committee faces reminds me of a story from my childhood that took place back when
I was about five or six years old. We used to go visit my mother’s mother fairly regularly back in the
seventies. My grandmother was pretty old at the time, and was often bedridden.
There was a ritual we went through whenever my parents announced that we were about to leave
that involved making one last trip to grandma’s bedroom to say goodbye. She’d say a few words and
then wave me and my brother over one by one to present each of us with a Kennedy half dollar. There
was nothing in the world that made me feel as rich as I did holding that big silver coin in my hands.
Once, when we were leaving, my grandmother said, “I haven’t been able to get out lately, so I’m going
to give you a paper dollar this time.”
I was ecstatic – a whole dollar!
Then she told me WHY she was giving me a whole dollar. “You give half of that to your brother.”
I immediately turned to my brother, held the dollar up in front of his face, tore the bill cleanly in two,
and handed him his half.
It is a story my aunt’s repeat even now, laughing at the naiveté of a child who didn’t understand that
having half of a dollar bill was like having nothing at all.
Camp Obama has offered to compromise with Camp Clinton over the Florida and Michigan delegations
– either recognize half the delegates from each state, or recognize all of them, but allow them to have
half votes. Which would pretty much put Camp Clinton in the same boat my brother and I were in that
day we stood in my grandmother’s bedroom, each of us holding our own worthless halves of a dollar
bill in our hands. The DNC's lawyers, much to Camp Clinton's chagrin, have recommended just this
week a course of action much along the same lines Obama's group has laid out.
Which is why when you turn your television to CNN or Fox News or MSNBC anytime during the next
twenty four hours, you will probably hear that Clinton supporters are going to be demonstrating outside
50
Half Dollars And Half Delegates
the hotel hosting the meeting.
"With a click of a mouse in the mid-Atlantic, we could get thousands of people there," Obama's cam-
paign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters yesterday. "But in the interest of party unity, we are not
encouraging a protest. We don't think a scene is helpful as we try to bring the party together."
The meeting Saturday might last all day. It might even go over into Sunday. There will come a point
during the proceedings, however, where the RBC committee chairpersons will realize it's time to get
to the end, much like my parents used to do on those Sunday afternoons at grandma's house when
they announced it was time to go home.
They will very likely award each candidates half-delegates to take home with them, much the way my
grandmother handed her grandchildren those Kennedy half-dollars she had saved during the year.
Puerto Rico Voters Will Lay Low On Sunday

Back to basics.
While the drama of who will receive how many delegates from Florida and Michigan gets underway
today, Puerto Rico gears up for its primary tomorrow. Their polls are open from 8 am to 3 pm.
My man Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com gives us his take on what the voter turnout is likely to be:
And as such, taking the high and low end of the range, we'd estimate that
somewhere between 34.7 percent and 64.0 percent of Puerto Rico's 1.27
million "likely voters" will actually turn out to vote. That would represent a
turnout of between 441,000 and 813,000.
Puerto Rican officials expect a turnout of about 500,000. Joe Sestak, who
might be echoing the expectations of the Clinton camp, says 450,000 to
500,000. Puerto Rican elections expert Manuel Alvarez-Rivera guesses
600,000. The record for turnout in a Democratic primary is 870,000, when
Ted Kennedy made a visit to the island in his challenge to Jimmy Carter.
51
Puerto Rico Voters Will Lay Low On Sunday
The word around the internet is that the electorate in the PR will be less motivated to get out and vote
for a variety of reasons, including the obvious one – this thing is pretty much over already.
“Traditionally people in Puerto Rico see the primaries as something far removed from their political
reality,” said Angel Rosa, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez.
“They don’t see this primary as any kind of opportunity to send a message to the United States.”
Nate Silver’s number crunching turned up an interesting phenomena, a sort of Get Out The Vote
Catch-22. One of only things Clinton has left to talk about is the “popular vote”. Although it has always
been an irrelevant statistic in the Democratic nomination process, it is a concept that seems to have
become popular with the public after the 2000 general election meltdown in Florida. In order to get
closer to Obama’s popular vote tally, Clinton needs to have a net gain of hundreds of thousands of
votes in the last three primaries. Puerto Rico presents her best chance of gaining large numbers of
votes. However, as Nate Silver says below:
Moreover, there may be something of an inverse relationship between

turnout and Clinton's performance. The GQR poll says that Clinton's mar-
gin is 19 points among likely voters, but only 13 points among all voters.
So if Clinton wants to maximize her percentage of the vote, she might hope
for a lowish turnout. However, Clinton not only needs to maximize her per-
centage of the vote; she also needs to maximize turnout.
Basically, it looks like Camp Clinton finds itself entangled in a Gordian Knot, better known as the Dem-
ocratic primary system. The harder they pull against it, the tighter the party rules Clinton's top advisors
spent the last ten years perfecting are going to choke their own campaign.
The good thing is, the folks at Camp Clinton only have four days left to torture themselves (and us) -
the last primary will finally be over Tuesday night once Montana and South Dakota close their polls.
Hallelujah!
"Im-potent" People Versus The Grand Poohbahs

I’ve been watching the Democratic Rules & Bylaws committee meeting in DC on C-SPAN for the last
couple of hours. This “im-potent” group has adjourned for lunch after hearing oral arguments all morn-
52
ing. I ate mine while I watched these clowns, devouring some ribs left over from Monday. They will be
back at 4:15 pm, when the “im-potent” committee members will debate among themselves what reme-
dies they will formally consider putting up for a vote.
When I first turned it on, I thought what I was seeing was simply hilarious – a cross between the O.J.
trial and a meeting of Fred Flintstone’s Moose Lodge, the pace and the television crews reminiscent
of the Trial of the Century, the “hail-fellow-well-met” salutations to platform guests that seemed to go
on FOREVER suggestive of Flintstone’s lodge brothers and their “im-potent” Grand Pooh Bah.
The long lists of high minded introductory platitudes between sworn enemies, knowing that off camera
they hate each others guts, had me howling. Alexis Herman wielded the gavel like a high school prin-
cipal – more accurately, a high school principal played by actress Jenifer Lewis, who has a strikingly
similar demeanor and sharp edged Southern drawl.
The state representative from Florida who spoke had me thinking he was running for office the way
he beat the podium to make his points. Carl Levin, the senator from Michigan, practically breathed
fire as he railed against Iowa and New Hampshire’s lock on the beginning of the primary process.
The “im-potent” representative who spoke for Obama, Former Michigan Rep. David Bonior was a typ-
ical Obama spokesperson – I’m going to have to write his campaign about this weakness they seem
to have – a dry, straight forward speaker who was prone to stammering when he was asked a question.
The ex governor of Michigan, Jim Blanchard, who spoke on behalf of the Clinton campaign, was about
as much of a huckster as you could stuff into a size 48 suit, a man who looked like he learned to
backpedal before he could walk.
I don’t know if there’s really a difference between the white women on the committee who support
Clinton and those who support Obama. Maybe it’s the way the Clinton supporters have to steel them-
selves before attempting to justify their positions, making them a little anxious as they speak, that
gives them a different vibe from the white women who seem to understand that righteousness, at least
as it applies to today’s events, is on their side.
I was scanning the room as the cameras panned along the rows of committee members, the voice of
Michigan’s ex-governor droning on in the background, looking at the faces of the black people who
sat around the table, a group that was largely silent while I was watching. I was kind of upset with
Donna Brazile, who seemed to be alternately bored and annoyed, for not making any attempt to speak.
All of a sudden, you hear her name being called, and then she turns on her mike. Brazile’s face has
the scowl she has perfected this primary season on CNN. She makes the obligatory hot air introduc-
tions to the "im-potent" peoples.
“I know we’re hear today to make some decisions in the interest of the party. Political decisions is
what we’ll be making. We all know that. But since you brought your momma up earlier, Governor, I’m
gonna bring my momma into this too. I know, since you look like you were raised right, since you have
grown into a fine man, I KNOW your momma must have told you the same thing my momma told me
- you gotta play by the rules.”
53
She brought the house down.
But her ending comment, which didn’t have the same impact because people were still talking about
her last statement, was actually more apropos. “And I’m sure your momma also told you something
else. That when you change the rules in the middle of the game, or at the end, that’s called cheatin’.
That’s right, cheatin’.”
All the posturing, message sending, feather ruffling, sidestepping, backpedaling, and lines being drawn
in the sand – it all stopped for a minute as Brazile hit everyone in that part of their psyches where the
memories of their own mother’s sense of decency and common sense resides.
The irony of Brazile invoking the image of her brown skinned mother as a brown skinned man battles
for the Democratic party’s nomination must have provoked Alexis Herman – a few minutes later, just
as she was about to adjourn the meeting, she stopped to recognize Rep. John Conyers, announcing
not only his name but his position as the House JUDICIARY Committee chairman.
It’s 4:09 pm. Time to get my peanuts and beer for Round 2.
"Im-potent" People Versus The Grand Poohbahs - Part 2

Sunday, June 01, 2008
This second half of the meeting recap is late – after watching what appeared to be a surreal discussion
session by the committee members, during which floor supporters of Hillary Clinton proceeded to
show their natural asses, and committee member Harold Ickes progressed from veiled sarcasm to
some sort of tepid outburst, working the words “ass” into at least two comments, I took a cigar break,
joining S. outside with a glass of wine to decompress after viewing the meeting practically in toto.
“Baby,” I said as I puffed on my cigar, “the world is upside down right now. Black people are now the
voice of reason, and white folks have lost their minds. I knew this was coming, but actually seeing it
happen…damn.”
The "im-potent" people who were the stars of the meeting before lunch were quiet now. The screaming
Clinton supporters who raged on during statements by the committee members were ridiculous – in
the vein of Donna Brazile’s remark, my mother would have said “they don’t have any home training.
That’s why they are acting like that.”
54
"Im-potent" People Versus The Grand Poohbahs - Part 2
If I was Hillary, I’d tell Harold Ickes not to invoice me for this meeting. The thing that got me more than
his bizarre performance was the incredible comment by Wolf Blitzer afterwards that made Ickes to be
“in a rage”. It was “vintage Ickes” on display, Blitzer continued. Actually, if that was “vintage Ickes” I
can see why the Clinton campaign is in disarray. Why did they rely so much on people who have never
really WORKED at anything but trading on their names or some great thing they might have done
years ago?
Alexis Herman was the undisputed ruler of the dais – Roosevelt’s grandson did not have the seasoning
Herman had picked up as Labor Secretary in – wait, didn’t she gain her claim to fame years ago in
the first Clinton White House? Her expressions were hard to read as she listened to deliberations.
In any case, she didn’t have to vote, there was no riot, and they got to go home today after deciding
to halve the votes of both the Florida and Michigan delegations, allowing the full delegate slates to go
to the convention in Denver.
Next stop tomorrow afternoon - Puerto Rico.
Can Obama pull out an upset here?
Upsetting The Natural Order

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
My best buddy called me mid morning yesterday at the office. While we were talking, I asked him -
“have you seen the video clip of Rev Pfleger?”
Rev Pfleger was the Chicago Catholic priest who has caused the latest controversy as a guest pastor
at Trinity United Church of Christ, the church from which Barack Obama recently resigned.
“No, I haven’t,” he said. “What’s it about?”
“It’s…it’s ah…” I leaned closer to the corner of my cubicle and lowered my voice. “You’ve got this white
priest in front of this black congregation, and he –“ I paused as someone passed my desk. “-he is…
he’s telling the congregation how he thinks Hillary Clinton sees the primary-“
“Okay.”
“Its HOW he’s saying it – it’s like he’s a comedian – like he’s Steve Martin playing a black preacher”
55
Upsetting The Natural Order
“What!”
“I can’t talk about this at work. You just have to see it – I’m sending you a link.”
My best buddy, who is notorious for not reading his email, not only watched the video, he even sent
a reply to the message – a rarity. ""Where was this guy when I was growing up in Brooklyn?" he wrote,
an allusion to the cultural gap between him and the priests of his childhood.
He called me back, but I was on the phone with a customer. Then he called me about five o'clock.
“What the hell? I mean, what he said is pretty close to the truth…but...” He stopped, sighed, sighed
again. “I don’t think America - I mean white America - is ready for this much honesty.”
I couldn’t really respond to him the way I wanted to, so I told him to call me later. He did – two more
times, in fact, before the night was over.
“I didn’t see a priest," I said "I saw a comedian. Remember the part where the reverend paused, then
turned to the side and hoofed it across the pulpit, his body bent forward, his right arm trailing behind
him as he wailed “it’s a black man, and he’s stealing my show”? That – that was a Jackie Gleason
move, straight out of The Honeymooners.”
It was seven thirty now, an hour when my buddy was usually spending time with his wife and kids,
when he called again. “This stuff,” he said, “– this kind of stuff – you know, the natural order of things
is upside down right now.” A somber tone of resignation underlined his words.
“Brother,” I said, “the thing about the civil rights movement they never show you on TV is that most
middle class black people - people like you - wanted Martin Luther King to shut the hell up. To tone
his rhetoric down. I know I’ve been joking about them breaking the firehoses and the dogs out again,
but the reality is that this thing is going to be hard. Hard for all of us.”
And as I watched the news shows later, I thought about the reasons why I wanted Barack Obama to
be the next president of the United States. I hadn’t really gone all that deeply into his website. I had
no idea how he planned on handling nuclear proliferation. And I wasn’t paying attention whenever he
detailed his strategy for saving Social Security. Whether or not Barack Obama ended up being the
worst president in the history of presidents was almost irrelevant to me - what mattered to me most
was how having this intelligent black man's face on TV every week would inspire young black boys
and young black men to do big things with their own lives.
What I really think we desperately need to get from all of this is a realignment of the “natural order” of
things, not just in America, but in black America. I want to see our own cultural totem pole recarved,
with a smart black man in a blue suit at the top. With black men and women who teach our children,
who heal our sick and keep our streets safe just below that image. I don’t want to take the rappers
and the singers off of the totem pole – just slide them down a few notches from where they are now.
56
THE SILLY SEASON
The breathless pace of the primary season was over.
Going forward, my buddies ended up playing a bigger part in the posts I wrote, with many of our con-
versations repeated almost verbatim as we wrangled with the way the public was handling the Obama
candidacy, and with our burgeoning feelings about the possibility of having a black president of the
United States of America.
My brother suggested that I use a picture in every post, an idea which the old fiction writer in me de-
spised at first as the kind of gimmick you needed if you wanted to keep kindergarteners preoccupied.
But he was right. Whether the pictures themselves caught the reader’s attention long enough for them
to get into a post, or whether the image itself made me do a better job as a writer, I’m not sure, but it
certainly contributed to an increase in the number of visitors my blog had.
And it increased the time it took to post something.
The posts themselves became more analytical and more anecdotal, with the emergence of an autho-
rial voice that combined the immediacy of informal dialogue with the accessibility of common everyday
analogies. I was figuring out how to do all of this in a lot less words, although my pieces were still
much longer than the average blog post. And I got a lot better at coming up with a final ironic coda, a
finishing touch we Americans have become used to in our popular culture.
Thanks to the magic of the RSS feed, I was exposing my posts to readers nationally and internationally,
courtesy of traditional newspapers like the Chicago Sun-Times and international news giants like
Reuters, whose website news editors selected pieces of mine now and again from Blogburst, a blog
syndication service, for publication in their internet editions.
I was also picking up a few readers who wrote political op-eds for a living from a small but influential
conservative website, Culture11, where I had mistakenly registered my blog feed before familiarizing
myself with their niche.
It felt good to be quoted by the pros occasionally in their columns.
In some small way, I felt as if I was actually participating in the national conversation, in a way that I
hoped was helping to expand the American political narrative.
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Let Me Hear It Just One More Time
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The REWIND button on my remote control is my new best friend.
I was still pushing it at two o’clock in the morning, hitting PLAY right where Senator Barack Obama
soberly intoned “new and better day to America”, so I could hear him say “I will be the Democratic
nominee for President of the United States” just one more time before I went to bed.
Usually, on primary night I am eager to see the comments by the talking heads, mainly to give some
sense of perspective to the information about the Democratic primaries that I regularly gather on the
internet. But last night, after the panelists on the CNN set started dissecting Obama’s speech – “why
didn’t he say anything about being the first African American candidate?” – I hit REWIND for the first
time, releasing it just after the thunderous applause had died down before the Illinois senator began
to speak to the crowd in Minnesota.
Having read the text before the speech was broadcast, I’d been struck by the number of times I saw
the word “change”. But when Obama delivered his speech, the repetition of the word “change” worked
FOR him. It allowed him time to extend his arms, to pose for the crowd and the cameras,
After calling my mother – our new ritual this spring, the post primary recap - she and I exchanged a
few words. "Why are they worried so much about him acknowledging that he's black? They don't think
he knows that? That we know that?" After hanging up I hit the LIVE button. Now the talking heads
were concerned with Hillary Clinton.
What should Obama do about her?
The electricity in the air between the talking heads was palpable. The biggest upset of all time in Amer-
ican political history had just been confirmed, and they had been right in the middle of it all the way.
They had been on our TV’s every night, agonizing over what states to count, and which kind of votes
counted the most, or arguing over whether the super delegates mattered more than the delegates.
Often reduced to spinning arcane theories, spouting bizarre political trivia, or entertaining ridiculous
ideas from campaign surrogates, they looked for the most part like they were ready to deal with yes-
terday’s events. But much of their rhetoric, especially from the late night crew, still seemed to be stuck
in mid-March rather than reality. The “what does Hillary want?” dialogue in particular was intruding on
Obama’s moment. My moment. Our moment.
No problem.
My REWIND button was still there. Now, after rewinding, I fast forwarded through the speech to the
good parts – the two points in the sermon where Obama began to preach. The first, a run on rant
about education that invoked shocking images from the poorest school districts in my home state of
South Carolina, got me in the gut because I know just how bad they are.
By the time he got to the second and final climax - the “this was the moment” refrain - Obama was
good and warmed up. The framework of his stump speech at the ready, he used simple images to
stand in for his core issues and allowed himself to open up emotionally – as much as his demeanor
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Let Me Hear It Just One More Time
would allow - his speech practically a chant now, completely capturing the attention of his audience.
That’s what Barack Obama did last night in St. Paul, Minnesota. He let us see more of his energy
than we have ever witnessed from him on a national stage. He used his natural cadence like a
metronome, exploiting the authoritative but soothing quality of his baritone voice to help him keep the
crowd from devolving into a celebratory spectacle. He showed us, in many ways large and small, that
he is ready to fight the hard fight ahead to become the 44th president of these United States.
My REWIND button will be getting another workout when I get home tonight.
Guess Who's Coming To The White House

Friday, June 06, 2008
I talked to my best buddy on the phone yesterday about Tuesday night’s historic moment. Our boy
Obama would be the Democratic nominee in this year’s presidential election.
“Were people talking at your office?” he asked me.
“Not really. They aren’t the politically oriented type, for the most part. And there isn’t anybody who
talks about politics in the office.”
“They weren’t saying anything?”
“Dude, there are only two black people in my office – me and the other guy. Most of the others are
Republicans. Or they just don’t give a damn.”
“Man, in my building, everybody was talking about it – in the elevators, in the lobby – and when they
saw me, they smiled a little harder. Some of them said they thought this was great for the country.”
“Really?”
“Come on, man – you know what kind of people are in my building. They’re lawyers, middle-level pro-
fessionals, the kind of people who are used to rationalizing things. They can rationalize anything so
long as it doesn’t change their lives too much.”
These people my buddy talked about are right here in Atlanta, but it seems that they match to a “T”
the profile of Obama’s strongest demographic – college educated professionals who make over fifty
thousand dollars a year. These are kind of liberal-minded parents who raised the army of young cam-
59
Guess Who's Coming To The White House
paign volunteers vital to Barack Obama’s success.
My buddy asked me a question. “So what is Barack going to do about Hillary?”
“You remember the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?
“Yeah, yeah, I know that movie.”
“The unique thing about that movie was the way the characters related to each other. Sidney Poitier’s
character was arguably the most intelligent man in the film – a renowned black doctor. I mean, the
thing he had to do to navigate the tensions between him and Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn,
who played the liberal-minded parents of the young white woman he wanted marry, was to stay calm,
to be forceful but not arrogant, to be magnanimous – kind of the way you do when you want to let an
opposing lawyer off the hook, even though you’ve got him by the short hairs.
The images from the movie of the palatial San Francisco home that served as a backdrop for the in-
tensely emotional drama of two parents coming to grips with the idea of their daughter in an interracial
marriage stayed with me all night. The obvious irony of Barack Obama’s own background was not
lost on me – maybe subliminally, I had chosen to use this film to explain what I thought because it
was on some level a conversation Obama’s father must have had with his in-laws, even if it was after
the fact.
After their initial shock, Hepburn and Tracy realized they couldn’t sway their daughter, so they took
another tack, asserting that an interracial marriage would harm the children from the marriage.
"She feels that every single one of our children will be President of the United States," Poitier defiantly
told Tracy. "And they'll all have colorful administrations."
The most amazing thing about this movie when it came out was the way Poitier held his ground
throughout the entire performance, conceding nothing to Katherine Hepburn, standing his ground ide-
ologically with Spencer Tracy. Through it all, Poitier exhibited the kind of nobility, grace and self restraint
that we are being re-introduced to today through Barack Obama as he stars in his own production,
Guess Who’s Coming To The White House.
Obama: Metaphorically Black or Literally Black?

Monday, June 09, 2008
Surfing through the political-oriented blogs Sunday, I tried to get a sense of the reactions to Hillary
Clinton’s concession speech. Frankly, I was surprised by the number of comments from those who
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Obama: Metaphorically Black Or Literally Black?
still didn’t think Barack Obama was "black" enough to lay claim to being the first African American
presidential nominee of a major political party. The fact that he was raised by his white mother, his In-
donesian stepfather, and his two white grandparents has convinced these holdouts that Obama’s up-
bringing disqualifies him from the right to claim to be African American.
Of all the things we as black people have done to ourselves since we’ve been in America, none of
them is more preposterous than this need to authenticate ourselves through this imaginary, ill-con-
ceived litmus test, a measurement whose many permutations all contain the same common denom-
inators – to have experienced at some time during your life a certain amount of shared suffering,
poverty, or poverty-level subsistence.
But if the properties of "whiteness" are mostly mythical constructs, then the opposite must also be
true – this thing we know as "blackness" is more circumstantial than factual, more anecdotal than fun-
damental. If you are black today in America, you are:
More likely to be found on the internet than at a dogfight.
More likely to shop at Home Depot than at a swap meet.
More likely to wear a pair of Dockers than a pair of baggy jeans.
More likely to repair a crack in the driveway than sell crack on the corner.
More likely to contribute to a 401(k) than collect welfare.
More likely to live in a suburb than in a ghetto.
It is an "otherness" that a young, beige-skinned Obama experienced, growing up in mostly all-white

environments, an"otherness" that all of us who look like minorities share. This is what qualifies his
claim to be an authentic black American. The outsider perspective is a valid common characteristic of
African Americans. It is the way an individual has been forced to see the world and how the world has
decided to perceive him that binds us, not how much grape Kool-Aid we drank as a child.
Questioning any of the conventional wisdoms that underpin the belief systems of the mythical "au-
thentic" African American prototype can still bring from some quarters an instant arching of incredulous
eyebrows, or an immediate fluttering of fingertips across keyboards, both actions radiating a deep
loathing towards anyone even daring to think about re-imagining the darker nation. To these holdouts,
both black and white, the melanin in Obama’s skin, a signifier that automatically awards him "outsider"
status in the United States, is not sufficient enough to allow him to claim allegiance to his own com-
munity.
If we can agree that a culture can be shaped - that it can retain some characteristics and discard
others over the passage of time - then I will be pushing mightily to throw away the dogfighting, the
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Obama: Metaphorically Black or Literally Black?
crack selling and the ghetto dwelling that we have been passing off as black american culture lately.
These negative images we have raised to the level of cultural signifiers are a type of metaphorical
posing, a commitment to "keeping it real" that ignores the literal truths we see before our very own
eyes every day.
Thinking Out Loud

Barack Obama finally has an enemy he can fight to the death.
He has had to handle Hillary Clinton and her husband with kid gloves ever since South Carolina, when
they brought race to the forefront of his campaign. He has had to ignore the ghosts of Bill Clinton’s
past. He has had to remember Hillary was a woman.
But now that John McCain is the target, campaigning for Obama should be lot easier - if they will ever
get this thing started. Right now is like the two week hiatus leading up to the Super Bowl, when each
league's champions, who have been playing their hearts out week after week, suddenly get too much
time off.
My best buddy and I talked on the phone Monday night about the state of the American political theater
in the aftermath of Barack Obama clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. Now that we
were a couple of days beyond Hillary Clinton’s last gasp since she suspended her campaign on Sat-
urday, we could focus on the championship bout ahead between Obama and John McCain.
The conversation rambled back and forth between Obama’s strengths and McCain’s weaknesses for
awhile before the war in Iraq and the price of oil took over.
“Man,” my buddy said, “I don’t know – doesn’t look like gas is coming back down anytime soon, does
it?”
“Didn’t you tell me your retired uncle went back to work in the Pacific Rim for his old oil company?”
“Yeah – he said the money was too good.”
“Dude, the oil industry’s got incentive to drill new wells now that the price is up. I mean, think about it
– the price of gas has been about the same for almost twenty years. It had to go up sometime.”
“You’ve always been an idealist!” my buddy exclaimed. “I’m telling you, man, the price is too damn
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Thinking Out Loud
high! It’s got everything going up. Food, building supplies, plane tickets – man, this thing is ruining the
economy. You add this war on top of it, nuclear weapons in the Middle East, global warming – you
know, I’m not sure if Obama really needs to be getting into office right now.”
As soon as that last sentence left his mouth, my mind went into overdrive. “Well, he couldn’t have
picked a better time to run. McCain is the weakest candidate the Republicans have had in years.”
“You think McCain is weak?”
“Come on, we all know he’s a tough guy, but right now it’s about party politics, and McCain…McCain,
he’s not the one the party wanted. Which is why he’s having trouble raising any money.”
“I guess they figure he’s probably not going to win, so why throw good money after bad? They are
Republicans.”
“Makes sense.”
My buddy was rolling now, his conspiratorial bent beginning to show. “Bush and Cheney are probably
packing their shit, packing and laughing all the way back to Texas.”
“Cheney’s from Wyoming.”
“Wherever the hell he’s from, they’re probably high fiving each other. No, hold up – they’re fist bumping
each other! They’re probably saying ‘we’re getting out of here just in time!”
The old saying “birds of a feather flock together” is true – I am in some ways more of a conspiracy
theorist than my buddy is. “Dude!” I yell. “THIS is the okie doke! They set Obama up! They put up the
weakest guy they can with a straight face, then don’t give him any money.
How could McCain win with no money?
Then everything goes to hell in a hand basket – no jobs, gas $10 a gallon, Iraq is a mess, illegal im-
migrants coming out of the woodwork, everybody mad at Obama – then the Republicans come back
with their REAL candidate in 2012 like the knight in shining armor!”
There was a few seconds of silence on the line. “Man, I think this campaign stuff has gone to your
head,” my buddy said. “You need to get out more.”
“Come on, I’m just thinking out loud.”
If I was true conspiracy theorist, paranoid, fearful, suspicious of everything and everyone, I’d have to
do some research on this. Although this lull in the drama that has held the nation’s attention for the
past five months is a much needed break, it will be times like these when Obama’s campaign is most
vulnerable to the idle minds in the public as well as the press who have overrun the devil's workshop.
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Off The Record
In an innermost recess of CNN:
"The Oh-bahma Admini-stration-"
"Say it slower this time, Charlie. You're our best anchor - the phone will be ringing off the hook if you
sound like you're spitting his name out."
"The Ohh-bahh-mah Ad-min-i-stra-tion-"
"Charlie - I didn't say sound like you were an idiot!"
"Dude, I got nothing to wrap my tongue around. Bush? 'Buh.' Clinton? 'Ccc.' Bush? 'Buh.' Reagan?
'Ruh.' THOSE are presidential names. I mean, Jesus Christ, his name starts with a vowel!"
At a presidential campaign headquarters:
"That son of a bitch must of worn a rubber every time. You can't find not one woman he abused? Are
we even sure he's a man?"
"Senator, I understand your-"
"He has screwed someone, I mean screwed her and screwed her over - maybe in college - and now
she wants to get him back. We just have to find her."
"Senator, our investigators are drawing blanks-"
"Jimmy, investigators do not draw blanks when their client is running for the presidency of the United
States. I don't care who she is, I don't care how much you have to pay her to say he raped her. Raped
her and beat her up. Just make sure she's blonde. Blonde and pale."
At a hotel bar after the NAACP national board meeting:
"So Roy, off the record, what do you think - is he black or what?"
"Gotta a black wife, go to a black church-"
"I don't mean that. What I'm saying is, how do we know he won't pull a Tiger Woods?"
"That Cablasian stuff? Come on, man - Tiger doesn't even believe that."
"Goddammit, Roy, you're beating around the bush. Will he still claim us if he wins?"
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Off The Record
At a soul food restaurant/beauty shop/nail salon:
"Chile, that Michelle Obama got her a fine light skinned man."
"What you talkin' bout fine? You see them ears?"
"Chile, he give her girls that good hair. Ain't nothin' wrong with his ears."
"I get stuck with a man like that, first thing I'ma do is feed him. Ain't he skinny?"
"Chile - that man wear a size THIRTEEN shoe!"
At an American Legion Hall:
"I got underwear older'n that Hussein fella `sposed be runnin' for president."
"Didja heered Limbaugh say he used to be a drug dealer?"
"I still don't unnerstan' how they put that boy in the Senate."
"Didja ever know anybody whose mind wadn't OFF once they been on them drugs?"
"I ain't got nuthin' `ginst colored, but...you know whut I'm sayin' here..."
In the mall-sized parking lot of a prominent southern Baptist church:
"We in the final hour of this thing, and this little redbone negro who call his self a preacher got to
SHOW HIS ASS every night on TV."
"Why hasn't she dropped out yet?"
"I'll bet that little negro is gettin' paid off. Selling us out for a bag of silver."
"Why isn't this thing over? You still didn't tell me what you thought about this new dress."
"I wish I would run up on him, talking `bout he a man of God. He'll be praying for me to take my hands
from `round his neck!"
65
Off The Record
In a living room in a western state after dinner:
"Goddamn Democrats gonna turn me into a Republican! Turn that TV off, will ya honey?'"
"Dear, it's going to be alright. Didn't you tell me your new boss is black?"
"Yeah, but that's different. This is for the PRESIDENCY...to be the president of the United States!"
"Let's see...eats arugula lettuce...dotes on his children...doesn't really like beer...goes to church reg-
ularly - even if his pastor was crazy...sounds like a good husband."
"What the hell is arugula lettuce? Why are you telling me this?"
"Well, other than the thing with the lettuce, he sounds a lot like you, dear."
Secret Black Frequency

Sunday, June 22, 2008
Is there a secret black frequency I must tune into when I see other black people in mixed settings?
Like Barack Obama, I seem to be getting this African American thing wrong lately, as if a few pages
of our Keeping It Real handbooks are stuck together.
S. and I sat in a restaurant a week or so ago with some friends of ours, ex-neighbors we’ve known for
over ten years. We were in the middle of catching up on who was doing what in our old subdivision
when a black woman approached our table.
The friends of ours were white, two northern transplants from Pennsylvania and New Jersey whose
sensibilities had clicked with our small town Southern and Midwestern selves long ago. The female
interloper was black, like S. and I.
"Don’t I know you from somewhere?" the woman said, looking directly at S.
S. turned and looked more closely at the woman. "I think it was at a party – it might have been a party
at our house. Yeah, that’s it, don’t you remember her?" S. said to me.
I raised my eyebrows towards our friends, who had been in the middle of an animated discussion
about a wedding they were going to attend the next day, and then peered at the woman.
66
"No, not really."
The woman stood there anyway, as if there was some kind of magnetic force emanating from the end
of our table, continuing a line of patter across my back with S. about the mutual friend they shared.
S. went on for a few seconds, while I smiled at our friends, who were waiting patiently to get back to
their story. S.’s tone began to change, becoming more distant with each word as she attempted to
signal to the woman with the pitch of her voice and her clipped responses that this exchange needed
to come to a close.
The woman kept talking, probing with each word for a sign of solidarity, a sign that we still remembered
where we came from. There was something extra in her gaze that seemed to penetrate a little more
deeply when she looked at us than we she glanced at our friends. It was the same something implied
in the way she paused after certain words she said, as if we were Navajo code talkers, speaking an
indecipherable language at a frequency level only black people could hear.
Our friends kept smiling, their eyes darting in the woman’s direction every few seconds, until S. was
forced to introduce the woman to our friends.
We practically had to shoo the woman away from the table.
For a few minutes after the woman left, there seemed to be a distance between us and our friends
that had hadn’t been there when we had arrived at the restaurant. It slowly dissipated, disappearing
all together by the time our food arrived.
The friendship we have with our ex-neighbors is one born of proximity that has grown to a level of
genuine fondness as we discovered over the years that we had the same sensibilities, the same types
of college experiences, the same types of parents.
I understand all too clearly that there are things my brown middle class brethren who have self seg-
regated themselves will have to overcome in order to have these kind of friendships. "This is our mo-
ment", the Obama mantra that sends audiences into a frenzy whenever he utters these four words,
speaks to more than the idea of electing America's first black president. To me, "this is our moment"
also means that it is time for us as black Americans to reach out across our own personal boundaries
and connect more fully with the larger world around us, like the Irish did, like the Italians did, like the
Jews did, like the Asians are doing now.
This is one of the things about the Barack Obama phenomenon that the mainstream media culture
hasn't picked up on yet. It still seems to be obsessed with the kind of tribal imagery more reminiscent
of an old Tarzan movie - African drums speaking to each other across the plains in the middle of the
night as the great white hunters sit fearfully by their campfire - than it is of reality. A ridiculous number
of hours were devoted to deconstructing the "fist bump" that Barack gave his wife Michelle before his
speech in Minnesota to claim the Democratic nomination, as if it were a signal for the rest of us black
folks to start executing our secret plan to take over America.
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S. and I know where we came from. We know who we are. Hanging out with black people exclusively
isn't going to make us any blacker. Hanging out with white people all the time isn't going to make us
any whiter. But even though I feel this way, I can understand the black woman's reluctance to ac-
knowledge that our white friends could be just as important to us as she was. For me to get to the
mindset I have today was a constant struggle against ingrained prejudices and a fear of the unknown.
To this woman, and to others like her, all I will say is this - the TV commercial promoting Southwest
Airlines is absolutely right – "you are now free to move about the country".
Claiming The Chinese

I returned a phone call to my buddy on the way home yesterday while I was in the car.
We chit chatted a bit. “Dude,” I said, “I thought you were at the office late because you were working.
Is that a TV I hear?”
“I’m just watching the news. I’ve gotta wait on my IT guy to get finished. Oh – I know what it was I
called you about. There was this Chinese guy on TV a little while ago, complaining about the price of
gas. He said ‘it’s the Americans who are keeping the price so high, driving all those big cars and trucks
all the time.”
“What sense does that make? There are more Chinese than there are Americans. China is about to
become the biggest consumer market in the world.”
“That’s what I was getting to – this guy was at a gas station, standing beside his Mercedes S550,
watching a guy fill his tank. And he says we’ve got big cars? He had on some expensive shades,
some nice khakis – you know, like the guys in our neighborhood wear. The way he was standing, his
body language and all, he could have been one of my damn neighbors.”
“Sounds like that Indian chick I had a class with in college. You know the one I’m talking about, she
was kind of skinny, with a bob hairstyle. She always wore a Polo shirt with the collar turned up. Khaki
shorts and K-Swiss sneakers with white socks. You never caught her in anything else. She wouldn’t
even give me the time of day.”
“There you go again. Every woman wasn’t trying to check you out-“
“No, no, she was too skinny for me. But we had at least one class together. I saw her every day. What
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I couldn’t figure out was how an Indian as brown as her could will herself to be white. I mean, she was
dark as hell. Came back from spring break looking like Vijay Singh. But the way she walked, the soror-
ity she was in - she would hide behind those damn aviator shades and act like she fit right in with the
white girls.”
“I know what you mean. This Chinese guy, looking at him – something was wrong with that picture,
man. The world…the world is turning upside down.”
“Not really. Think about all the other people who came here as a minority and became white later.
Look at the Irish.”
“Yeah. You’re right. The Italians did it too. My partner, he’s Italian. His father is almost as dark as me
if he gets some sun. I guess they all got in here and hurried to marry somebody paler than them.”
I thought of the irony of our conversation – my buddy’s own West Indian heritage has produced fea-
tures that are vaguely Indian, and his wife is most definitely paler than him. “The Asians are trying to
do the same thing now.”
“What do you mean, trying? They’re already doing it,” my buddy said. “I mean, if I was in charge of
being white, I’d claim the Chinese. The white man’s numbers are getting low, now that all the other
imports want to revert back to their original tribes.”
“You sound like Dave Chappelle with that “Racial Draft” skit he did on his show. I think the South
Africans have beat the U.S. to the punch - they've decided that the Chinese are black.” I had to laugh
at myself as I shared this tidbit that I'd picked up from internet earlier, a racial mind bender I'd come
across in the middle of my lunch break.
“I’m serious. You watch, the Chinese are going to be the newest addition to the white race. I mean,
look at the numbers – it’ll keep them in the majority forever.”
“This election is going to have us looking at race in a whole new way in this country.” I laughed again
as I hung up, but the uneasy sentiments behind our crude commentary showed that the concerns
about the uncertainty of change were as real for blacks as they were for whites.
The press is already splitting Barack Obama in two - dissecting his background, questioning his alle-
giance he has to black Americans, spinning theories about what it means to be a black man with a
white mother - basically, they are inventing psychological dilemmas for Obama he has already come
to terms with long ago.
Whether America wants to deal with it or not, the illusory tenets of whiteness have shaped the policies
and practices of our nation for just about all our existence. Even now, as the nation gingerly experi-
ments with the idea of a large scale diversification of our viewpoints, it is discovering that a lot of the
minority views are in opposition to the version of living the mainstream of America tends to follow.
This reluctance, even among those who consider themselves to be open-minded and fair, to accept
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Barack Obama’s candidacy as a fully legitimate outcome of “all men are created equal”, is in a lot of
ways a signal of the unease many of our neighbors and coworkers and friends are feeling right now,
an unease that is caused by the specter of self-examination. It is not black America, though, that will
be under the microscope this fall – it is the limitations and failings of white America that will be called
into question as the country examines what this candidacy really makes us see in ourselves.
Barack Obama: The Hunchback of Cyberspace

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Barack Obama has appeared in Unity, New Hampshire with primary opponent Hillary Clinton to put
the campaign trail rhetoric behind them. He has given a speech about his personal brand of patriotism
in Independence, Missouri to reassure voters that he "believes in America". I guess his next stop will
have to be Compromise, Mississippi, where he will engage in an online town hall meeting to quell the
internet firestorm that has erupted over his support for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
All of a sudden, it seems, Barack Obama has become the cyberspace version of Quasimodo, the
Hunchback of Notre Dame because he has changed his mind on how he intends to vote on this bill.
The truth is, the number of laws that already weaken the protections of the Constitution are too nu-
merous to count, and our legislators are piling even more on as we speak. If you believe Obama is
anything but a consummate politician, you aren't as smart as you think you are.
Personally, I’m tired of these one note FISA whiners, these mocka chocka frappacino sippers who
probably waste their spare time measuring carbon footprints when they could be brainstorming how
to get back the rights they've already given up long ago.
If the government already has the NSA, the CIA, and an unknown number of black bag organizations
wreaking havoc out there in cyberspace, why are so many people with good sense wasting their breath
and their brainpower on this Mickey Mouse bill that doesn't really control anything? We have been
watched and listened to for decades, and it will continue, no matter what laws get put on the books,
because the people in charge are scared of what we might do when nobody is looking.
That's probably what's gotten me riled up the most about these internet protesters who wanted to put
Obama’s vote on the hot seat this week. What I am reading is ludicrous - there is no way Obama is
going to take his middle of the road self and make a John Wayne stand against anybody. He hasn't
operated that way his whole life. He is a finesse player, taking the advantage when he can get it,
laying off when he can't.
I really think this is a cover for many of my paler internet brethren who were looking for a reason to
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Barack Obama: The Hunchback Of Cyberspace
turn tail, much like the rednecks in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky who hid their dis-
pleasure with the hue of Obama’s skin behind their dislike of his lack of “patriotism”. The specifics of
what these netziens are saying is immaterial to me - it is the "I am righter than you, I am smarter than
you, I am morally superior to you" vibe that gets me hot, because I've seen this before. It immediately
brings to mind the Christianity zealots whose religious piety is so sacred it doesn't allow them to frat-
ernize with the very people they profess to be called to help.
The last black guy who successfully acted like a saint on the national stage was Sidney Poitier. Maybe
Obama could get Poitier to come on tour with him. Maybe he could get Morgan Freeman too, for the
people who aren't familiar with Poitier's work. Hell, Will Smith can get some of this too - he ain't rapping
no more.
All I know is, a campaign platform isn't built with one plank. A party doesn't campaign behind one
issue. And if we want to get right down to it, America nor its citizens can make no claim on any kind
of ideological purity - we have been a nation of opportunists since our inception.
I wish all of the Obama supporters who are willing to fall on their sword if any of their ideals are blem-
ished could serve for just one session in Congress or the Senate. The amount of horse trading that
has to go on to get ANYTHING to move forward would probably blow their minds - and that's between
representatives in the same party!
Ghandi would have been unelectable.
Jesus would have been last in the field, if he could quit giving away his
belongings long enough to accumulate the qualifying fees.
Mother Teresa would have so few sound bites you would forget she was
running.
If you believed Obama was anything but a consummate politician, you aren't as smart as you think
you are. Personally, I won't be asking Obama to fall on his sword over this.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this is the first of many Trojan Horses that will
deployed via the internet - unnamed, unknown agents, scattering under the cover of electronic dark-
ness to infiltrate pockets of known Obama sympathizers, with the intent of turning Obama supporters
against their candidate by fomenting outrage, by suggesting that something drastic be done, much
the way some of our Hollywood actors and actresses pledge to leave the country every four years "if
you elect __________ for president."
71
Descended In Blood And In Spirit
Thursday, July 3, 2008
America works for me. It might not be the country I want it to be, but it’s the one I've got. It’s going to
have the same warts whoever gets elected this fall. Sanctimony is out of style and humility just went
on sale in the part of America I live in.
I have not served in the military.
I do not own a flag.
And I’m not sure I know all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.
There are some days, when I am upset or angry, when the things I say about this country I live in
make the incendiary sound bites of Rev Jeremiah Wright sound like love notes. Me and the people
who look like me are here because America was is addicted to cheap labor (see "Mexican immigrants,
who you want to be deported, but ONLY after they finish building your homes, cleaning your homes,
cutting your grass and washing your cars), but we've made a way out of no way, rising all the way to
Most Favored Minority status after hundreds of years of oppression. If you add up all the other things
like these that I have been known to complain about, you might come to the conclusion that I am un-
patriotic.
You would be wrong.
I LOVE America - not the poster of Uncle Sam, or the image of the White House beamed around the
world daily, but the people who live here. The government is NOT America. "We the people" - remem-
ber those words? The preamble to our one and only Constitution? "We the people of the United
States, in order to form a more perfect Union..." is a declarative opening that states precisely what
took place at the inception of our nation. The power that those colonists gave to its governing body is
the same power you give your government today.
As a country, as a people who can unite for common causes, we have done some great things for
ourselves and for the world. There's nothing wrong with celebrating our accomplishments. An endless
loop of patriotic sounding jingles and incessant flag waving, though, is not necessary. Feigning naivete
when we know damn well what levels of depravity and greed flourish in our American government,
even as these revelations are unearthed, is unconscionable and juvenile.
We have to fight the fight now, because its not over, not by a long shot. I can't spend all my time wor-
rying about legacies, or historical images. To get from here to there in anything, I 've got to spend as
much of my energy as I possibly can dealing with the unknown and unseeable future as it happens.
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolution-

ists and rebels -- men and women who dare to DISSENT from accepted
doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest DISSENT with dis-
loyal subversion."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Descended In Blood And Spirit
"You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in

groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself
as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become
an American."
Woodrow T. Wilson
"How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is

not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a
fearful master."
George Washington
My inner curmudgeon will be on break this weekend. Whether you sit around a grill tomorrow, or gather
at the beach, or celebrate urban style by taking it to the streets, remember, as you relish the food and
the drink and the camraderie of your friends and family while enjoying this celebration, that we are all
descended in blood and in spirit from those whose blood, sweat (that was our part) and tears earned
us the freedoms and the liberties we cherish as Americans today.
Where Is A Flag Pin When You Need One?

Friday, July 04, 2008
Salem Poor * Oliver Cromwell * Lemuel Haynes * Primas Black * Prince Whipple * Charles Davis
* Joshua Dunbar * Samuel Dunbar * Prince Easterbrooks * James Forten * Doss Freeman * To-
bias Gilmore * Peter Galloway * Primas Hall * Job Hathaway * Ebenezer Hill * Thomas Hollen *
Peter Jennings * Abrose Lewis * Titus Minor * Jerimiah Moho * Pomp Peters * Cato Prince *
Esek Roberts * Caesar Sankee * Prince Vaughn * Sipeo Watson * Cuff Whitemore * Jesse Wood
These are the names of a few of the African American men who served as soldiers in the Revolutionary
War. I was trolling around the web, looking for a flag to post on July 4th, until I remembered that "I
didn't own a flag", as I stated in yesterday's post. Putting one up on this blog, it seemed, would go
against everything I said yesterday.
So I spent a little time on Google and started learning a lot. 5,000 black men served in the Continental
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Where Is A Flag Pin When You Need One?
Army. 12,000 Blacks served with the British from 1775 to 1783. Since we have a hard time today
counting everybody, even with all the technology we've got, if I were you I'd consider these educated
guess from culling the records that still survive. In any case, there were significant numbers of black
people, from the beginning, who were willing to enlist in the what was essentially a start-up.
“African Americans - free, slave, and ex-slave - fought side by side with
white colonists seeking independence from British domination. GEORGE
WASHINGTON, as Commander of the Continental Army, forbade the en-
listment of Blacks - free, slave, or ex-slave - during the early stages of the
war. He later learned that the Royal Governor of Virginia, John Murray,
Earl of Dunmore, was enlisting slaves and indentured servants into the
British army with the promise of "freedom to all slaves who would join the
King's army." Dunmore's tactic of lifting the ban on Blacks enlisting in the
British army led George Washington to change his mind, and, therefore,
Blacks later joined the CONTINENTAL ARMED FORCES.”
[Excerpted from African American Patriots of the Revolutionary War]
100,000 African Americans either perished or disappeared during the American Revolution. The ones
who were left essentially got the okie doke - "okay, boys, y'all put up a good fight. But y'all need to get
on back to them fields, ya hear?"
And now, 225 years after the Revolutionary War ended, we have come full circle. We have a man
running for the presidency of these United States whose parentage is similar to the original blend be-
tween colonial era whites and blacks that produced so many of the soldiers who fought in our inaugural
war:
divers freeborne English women forgettfull of their free Condicon and to

the disgrace of our Nation doe intermarry with Negro Slaves
[Archives of Maryland, 1:533-34].
Can you get more American than that?
Where is a flag pin when you need one?
74
"Mike Check, One Two One Two"
My buddy called me Tuesday night. "Hey man-"
I cut him off. "You calling me about that damn Jessie Jackson, ain't you?"
"Did you see this negro?"
Naw, but I've been reading about it on the internet. Just when you think this election can't
get any crazier-"
"So you didn't see it?" my buddy asked me, sounding as if he was unable to comprehend why my
eyes weren't glued to my TV.
"No."
"You've GOT to see his face."
"Didn't I tell you this was going to get wild?"
"I don't think we we've really seen crazy yet. Dude, these are BLACK FOLKS doing this! Can you
imagine what'll happen once the white folks chime in?"
"Yeah," I said, "it's going to be a long year."
Training The Boss

Saturday, July 12, 2008
The sausage making has now begun in earnest, and some of us, it seems, cannot believe what we
see going into the casing as Mr. Obama gets down to the cold, hard business of playing politics back
in the Senate. This is a very vocal contingent, and one that has lately been spending an inordinate
amount of time on the internet bashing Obama for his .
The Wall Street Journal article Thursday about the downturn in recent Obama's internet fundraising
efforts has been particularly satisfying for these "netroots", and has emboldened some of them to
make the far-reaching claim that it is the lack of support from their contingent that has caused the
slowdown in donations.
The phrase that gets my blood boiling the most - "training him like a puppy" - is one I see a lot on
75
Training The Boss
Daily Kos, which is probably the largest progressive site on the web. The top dog over there, founder
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, made a huge to-do a couple of weeks ago when he took center stage to
announce that he was withholding his donation of $2300 from the Obama campaign because of his
new stance on the FISA bill.
Since when did we send our presidential candidates to obedience school?
Did anyone try to "train" Kerry, or Gore, or Clinton when they had to make hard political decisions?
Why does THIS candidate need to be "swatted for messing on the carpet"?
And if Obama gets to the White House, what are they going to do then when he does something they
don't like? Withhold their income taxes?
These people have been watching too many of those movies with a in them - you know, the ones
where we handily dispense wisdom with a smile until the leading man or woman defies all logic and
takes a heroic stand. That shit works in the movies, but in real life here in America there are two truths
that are self-evident.
You will not elect a black man to the presidency of these United States without truck loads of
campaign money.
Truckloads of money will be needed to give this brownskinned presidential candidate anything close
to parity, even against a candidate as weak as McCain. These truckloads of money need to be deliv-
ered today and tomorrow and next week - not at the last minute in October to waste on TV ads that
don't work. Obama is going to have to "put a body on a body" - his street teams will be dragging people
from wherever they can find them for the next 90 days to get them registered, because if we were to
vote today he would probably come up short.
You will not get a pure idealist elected president in a country of 300 million people.
I have no official statistics on this crew of "netroots", or progressives, as they call themselves, but I
am certain they are mostly self righteous members of the white middle class. You know the ones I'm
talking about. McCain's aide Phil Gramm had it wrong about the "imaginary recession" we think we're
in, but he had it right when he called us a nation of whiners – this bunch fits the bill to a “T”. When
they aren’t bitching and moaning about Obama, they are complaining about their kids, or their job, or
the lollipop their mother made them share with their sister in the third grade – there is nothing in the
lives of these self centered, self appointed PC police but the indignities they are forced to suffer through
for yet another day.
Some of the quotes I've seen at the DailyKos, like these below:
"My wife and I were literally "weeping for joy" as we donated money for
CHANGE... but we are not donating a dime for "CENTERISM"."
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Training The Boss
"Obama is still somewhat of an unknown, even to us, and when he sud-

denly looks like some weird kind of Republican, votes and dollars will dry
up somewhat."
"The sheen, is definitely off. The FISA Flip-flop and a move to the center.
He did it to himself."
sound like preteens whining when the parents promise something and forget to do it. "But mommy,
you PROMISED!" Obama is not going to kiss your ass every time you get a boo boo. Being inclusive
doesn't have anything to do with being servile - it just means that your opinion will be heard and con-
sidered.
I've been the only black guy in the room enough times to know what happens when I show up some-
where I'm not expected. ESPECIALLY when I seem to be in a position of influence. So if you are
having second thoughts about Barack Hussein Obama being the standard bearer for your party, quit
beating around the bush with these smoke screen issues and just say what's really on your mind.
Hit The "SEND" Button One More Time

Monday, July 14, 2008
I've been a reader of The New Yorker magazine since I was twelve years old. The town I grew up in
was too small to have a bookstore, but it had a newsstand that was pretty cosmopolitan for South
Carolina, with magazines like Utne Reader and Mother Jones and alternative weeklies like The Village
Voice.
The New Yorker, as I came to find out over the years, was a legend unto itself, the brainchild of Harold
Ross, country boy made good. In later years, the magazine's fabled zeal for accuracy and fact check-
ing of the articles it published took on a life of its own, and was the impetus for the best selling book
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, which is one of my personal favorites.
William Shawn was its venerated editor for decades - a steward of the old school, he was opposed to
anything more than a modest use of profanity, even in the fiction selections. His succesor, Bob Gottlieb,
didn't last very long. Tina Brown showed up in 1992, fresh from the helm of Vanity Fair, determined to
"take the boring tone" out of the magazine.
She succeeded.
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Hit The “SEND” Button One More Time
This week's cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as radical Muslim terrorists hits me pretty
hard. I learned so much about the world outside of South Carolina from the well written, well re-
searched articles in this magazine.
I haven't had a subscription in years, but I occasionally buy a copy, if it has more than one article I
want read, and I always pick up the fiction issue. The July 21st issue, on sale today, contains an in-
depth article about Obama's rise in Chicago politics, with interviews of several of his closest advisors
during his State Senate and his U.S. Senate campaigns.
But you wouldn't know that by looking at the picture. It's all there - the fist bump, the muslim headdress,
the jacket, the militant Angela Davis afro, an American flag burning in the fireplace, with an assualt
rifle and a picture of Osama Bin Laden thrown in to round things out.
This looks more like something dreamed up by PUMA (Party Unity My Ass), a modern day version of
the White Citizens Councils that popped up after the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision, or
one of the hundreds of niche websites dedicated to hating and eradicating Obama.
Is the possibility of having a black president THAT terrible? I think the rank and file of America and the
middle management of America are okay - they've been working and living with blacks, Indians and
Asians for years. The upper class and the rich are the only ones who continue to inhabit settings
devoid of any minorities.
If you know anything at all about magazine publishing, you understand how important the cover is. It
drives newsstand and grocery store sales, and provides media buzz to help win over new subscribers.
So this idea had to pass muster not only with the art director, but the magazine's editor, who is in
many ways a proxy for the publisher. I don't know anything about David Remick, the current editor,
but will be one of many, many emailers who will tell him that he has let his magazine sink to an all-
time low.
I hope Tom Joyner is rallying his listeners. I hope you take the time to send an email, even if it is
nothing more than a picture of Obama, to Mr. Remick. I hope those of you who frequent this internet
hit the "SEND" button on our computers until your fingers get blisters.
The man on the street is not the enemy. It is the man who wants to control what you see on TV and
what you read in the paper, the man who lives in the executive suite, the board room, or the cabin of
the private jets crisscrossing the skies.
Here's the email address.
themail@newyorker.com
Go ahead, hit that "SEND" button one more time.
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18 Million Cracks Votes Dollars
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Barack Obama has been taking heat from all sides the last two weeks. His supporters (see Jessie
Jackson) are stabbing him in the back. His friends (see Bernie Mac) are putting him on the hot seat
with locker room humor. His donors (see Average Americans) have cut back on their donations so
they can go to the beach. And in the midst of all this turmoil, Hillary Clinton and her supporters have
emerged, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to stick it to Obama for not doing more than he has so
far to help retire her campaign debt.
The quote by one of her supporters Obama solicited recently was gutsy – "I’m waiting to see what
you’re going to do about Hillary’s debt. And I’m watching to see what you’re going to do for her before
I donate."
The DNC is broke, the staffs of both campaigns are gasping for air after a marathon slugfest, the Re-
publicans are on track to raise 95 million bucks this month for John McCain, and you are holding your
support for your party’s standard bearer over his head because he isn’t working hard enough to pay
off the debt of his primary opponent?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
As I scrolled through some of the hundreds of websites committed to derailing the Obama nomination
in Denver, seeing the constant refrain – “she’s got 18 million reasons to take this to the convention” –
a thought hit me like a freight train. Why not ask these “eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling” to
retire her debt, if they are so dedicated to the idea of resurrecting her candidacy?
I didn’t even need to whip out my calculator to do the math.
Eighteen million supporters could send her ONE DOLLAR apiece.
Okay, maybe that’s not realistic, seeing that gas is over $4.00 a gallon, and a good number of these
people are headed to the beach.
So let’s say…hmmm…let’s say nine million supporters send her TWO DOLLARS a piece.
I don’t know, though – a fair number of this nine million might need to put that money on a PowerBall
ticket.
And let’s face it – now that the primaries are over, and we don’t have Hillary chanting “w-w-w Hillary
Clinton dot com” at the opening of her speeches, some of these supporters may have lost interest, or
have forgotten how to get to the website.
So let’s knock this down to a number that is more representative of her hard core constituency.
One million supporters could send her EIGHTEEN DOLLARS a piece.
Am I making any sense here? Is this a trick question we need to ask on "Are You Smarter Than A
Fifth Grader?"
79
18 Million Cracks Votes Dollars
If you apply the 80/20 rule, and forget about all the bitter, disgruntled malcontents who are usually
loathe to put their money where their mouth is, you’ve still got two hundred thousand supporters –
couldn’t they skip a few quadruple expresso shots, now that there isn’t a Starbucks on every corner
any more, and pony up ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS a piece?
If you take Hillary’s personal IOU off the table, you could drop this to FIFTY FIVE DOLLARS a piece.
Just thinking out loud here.
Obama Beats The Street

Thursday, July 17, 2008
"Statistics are people with the tears washed away."
Sociologist Ruth Sidel
On Wall Street, short sellers move in for the kill whenever they sense weakness in a company's fi-
nancials (see Indy Mac, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), pounding its stock relentlessly until better numbers
are released. Barack Obama found himself in a similar situation this month when a Wall Street Journal
article reported that his campaign would only take in "likely just over 30 million".
News pundits went into overdrive, spinning all sorts of theories as to why the Obama fundraising ma-
chine seemed to be sputtering, attributing the slowdown to everything from the recent dust up with
Democratic progressives over FISA to the reluctance of Hillary Clinton supporters to get behind
Obama. Had Obama made a fatal error by shunning lobbyist and PAC contributions? many wondered
out loud.
Well the numbers are in, and it looks like Axelrod and Plouffe have continued to play a masterful game
of managing expectations, much like CFO's do in the corporate world in order to keep the stock ana-
lysts who follow their companies bullish about their future prospects.
Wells Fargo beat the street's estimate yesterday, sparking a market rally that erased some of the
losses sustained over the last couple of weeks.
With 52 million dollars in donations reported today for June, the Obama Campaign has beat the Wall
Street Journal's expectations. Can a rally in support of him be far behind?
80
Obama Is My Slave
An Israeli-born t-shirt “designer” named Apollo Braun is being sued by a

woman who bought a shirt of his that reads “OBAMA IS MY SLAVE.”
Nathanaeli Nassimi, a 25 year old Manhattan graduate student, was as-

saulted Tuesday night when a group of four teenage girls saw her wearing
the shirt and took offense. According to Metro, the girls cursed at her,
pushed her, then followed her around Union Square as one of the girls
pulled the earphones out of her ears and another spit in her face.
Now the woman is suing the designer, not the four teens (!), for in his
words, “all he’s got.”
Braun, real name Doron Braunshtein, claims that what allegedly happened
to this woman is not his fault, and that the offensive design doesn’t reflects
his views but “those of ordinary WASPs.” He says, “For a lot of people,
when they see Obama, they see a slave. People think America is not ready
for a black president.”
The lawsuit is a nonstarter as Braun is protected under the First Amend-

ment. But this is not the first outrageous t-shirt Braun, who “can’t stand
Obama,” has designed.
Other shirts of his include phrases like: “Jews Against Obama,” “Obama =
Hitler” and “Who Killed Obama?” The “Who Killed Obama?” shirt is re-
ported to have sold over 1,200 pieces.
Why does Braun loathe the presumptive Democratic nominee so? He says
Obama “reminds me of Adolf Hitler,” and despises the fact that “he is a
Muslim.”
July, 2008
Metro New York website
The circus-like atmosphere that is starting to develop in response to the Obama candidacy reminds
me of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Maybe it's because Braunshtein brings back memories of another
waif-like, blond haired young man - Brian "Kato" Kaelin - who figured prominently in the trial, despite
the minor importance of his testimony.
Opportunists both black and white are starting to come out of the woodwork, demanding their fifteen
minutes of fame while Obama gathers steam for his historic presidential bid. Couple the protection
the First Amendment affords Americans with a need to be the center of attention from the media, and
we are almost guaranteed to see something like this every week between now and November.
The drumbeat on the airwaves by the talking heads every night keeps the tempo of this tune - is he a
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Obama Is My Slave
Muslim, does he recite the Pledge of Allegiance, is he a radical Marxist, is his birth certificate real, did
he deal drugs - while individuals like Braunshtein step up for their solos.
Who is listening to these twisted lyrics?
Ten percent of America admits openly that they believe at least some of these allegations, and many
more seem to be sympathetic to the sentiments of Braunshtein and others, who have turned the de-
monization of Obama into a revenue stream.
Obama: Speech Creator-In-Chief

“We are governed by words, the laws are graven in words, and literature
is the sole means of keeping these words living and accurate.”
Ezra Pound
Barack Obama is the chief speechwriter in his campaign.
It may seem to be a small thing, but it is his ability to tailor the cadence and tinker with the individual
word choices that allows his rhetoric to work so well with his unorthodox style of delivery.
For the most part, his speeches are simply constructed around the same story he has been telling
since the Democratic convention in 2004 - which is his own life story, expanded or contracted to frame
the issue of the day, combined with the onward and upward supplication of “this is the moment, this
is the time”.
In yesterday’s speech in Berlin, he artfully used the words he traditionally has employed to illustrate
himself and his journey – “imperfect”, “improbable”, “mistakes” – to describe America itself.
Obama’s head speechwriter, a 26-year-old who used to write for Kerry, says his job is like “being Ted
Williams’s batting coach.” The campaign says Obama would write all his own speeches if he had the
time.
I can see him, like he's pictured above, reading through draft after draft, pen in hand, striking unwieldy
phrases, reducing complex transitions to simple images, much like did at the Harvard Law Review
and later with his own two books.
His precise use of language is deceptive. The occasional academic term that pops out usually means
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Obama: Speech Creator-In-Chief
there is no other word that will do. Obama seems to have become more comfortable, as this year has
progressed, with exploiting the power of alliteration and repetition to create a crescendo effect, much
like a drum roll, that he sprinkles throughout the body of his speeches to keep the audience involved.
Excerpted from Raise High The Rafters by Sam Anderson:
A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our
expectations have sunk so low. In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Pres-
idency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by Ameri-
can presidents to a thorough statistical analysis—and he finds,
unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline.
A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college

reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend contin-
ues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the
level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.” (“Iran’s crawling with bad
guys: BAP!”)
Since 1913, the length of the average presidential sentence has fallen from
35 words to 22. Between Nixon and the second Bush, the average presi-
dential sound bite shrank from 42 seconds to 7. Today’s State of the
Unions inspire roughly 30 seconds of applause for every 60 seconds of
speech.
Obama and Ludacris: Apples to Apples?

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Do all black people have to stand at attention, smiling and clean shaven, our black suits crisply
pressed, our bowties level, as if we are the Nation of Islam?
Nope, can’t do that – an army of silent, well organized, well trained black people mobilizing voters
throughout the country might be the wrong image to have on the airwaves this fall. Might look too…
too…militant.
All sarcasm aside, I will be the first to say black people in general need to step up their game to get
what we want out of America. But if we don't, are we guilty of being race traitors? Of letting our people
down? Of letting...gasp...Barack Obama down?
If Obama is going to have to apologize for everything an individual black American says or does that
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Obama and Ludacris: Apples to Apples?
is unacceptable to mainstream America, then he needs to quit while he's ahead.
Black Americans are not the nation's Model Minority (see Asian immigrants). We are America's Most
Favored Minority, but 99 percent of us couldn't get elected president if you spotted us 250 electoral
votes, the same way 99 percent of white Americans have no chance of appealing to a large enough
number of voters to be elected.
Ludacris, an Atlanta based rapper, has a new song out that contains a line that has ruffled the feathers
of our ever-vigilant news pundits.
"Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant" is the line that has garnered so much attention from
the otherwise innocuous rap song by Ludacris titled "Politics".
The "Hillary" in question is of course none other than Hillary Clinton, ex-presidential candidate. This
is the same Hillary Clinton who was the subject of a Saturday Night Live skit by comedienne Tina Fey
earlier this year that poked fun at Hillary's image as a tough as nails competitor. In her skit, Fey said
it point blank -"Hillary is a bitch" - but asserted that "I'm one too", and that "bitch was the new black".
The ever vigilant, pursed lip, pained eye fraternity, their pale faces staring out from our TV's, jumped
right on the lyrics of the Ludacris song last night. They will intone with great seriousness over and
over during the next few days why Obama's associations are problematic and why the music he has
on his iPod should be vetted, as if it contains one of those songs that says "Obama is the Anti-Christ"
when it is played backwards.
These are the same pundits who have proclaimed that we are entering a "post-racial" society with the
advent of Obama's candidacy, but the way they have responded to what should be a trivial non-event
signals they don't really believe what they are saying.
Ludacris has never held himself out to be anything other than a young brother looking to have some
fun and make some money. He made his name in Atlanta, first as a radio jock, then as a local rap act
who sold tapes out of his trunk. The people who are buying what he's selling, who are mostly young
and are mostly white, know what they are getting.
McCain's campaign was half right - we do need to compare apples to apples when it comes to under-
standing who Obama really is.
Instead of comparing Obama to Paris Hilton, or Brittany Spears, or even Ludacris, why not compare
him to other "apples" like himself - people like Ken Chenault of American Express, or Dick Parsons,
formerly of Time Warner, or John Thompson, currently at Symantec - chief executive officers of some
of America's largest companies, companies that have prospered under the competent leadership of
the African American men at their helm.
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Obama, America, and Race
Friday, August 01, 2008
There are times when I wish Barack Obama could take off his white hat and put a black one on for a
while, the way Bruce Wayne does when he becomes Batman, The Dark Knight. Then he could make
his enemies the villains. Kick a little ass and take a few names.
Or, if he was so inclined, he could take a walk on the wild side, and get to do what the villains do.
There's nothing like wishful thinking, but it doesn't win presidential campaigns - so I don't expect to
see Obama traipsing around in a cape and a mask in the middle of the night.
I don't know why the McCain campaign even waited - they should have cut the pretense and hauled
out the tried but true "race card" strategy from the beginning. It could have saved them a lot of cash -
they would have had free campaign advertising every night for the last six weeks. Between this and
the pundits like Sean Hannity, who have an innate ability to work O.J. Simpson's name into any dis-
cussion of Obama, I will expect to see everybody from Mike Tyson to Mike Vick paraded across TV
screens in the coming weeks.
Race is still the biggest problem America has, so it’s no surprise that we end up talking about it a lot.
But it is hard to talk about abstract ideas when I am actually living them, and harder still to say those
unpopular but true things that need to be said to accomplish anything worthwhile.
And it doesn’t help that the few thousand people in New York and LA who control and produce prac-
tically all of the media imagery we see, who as a group are more mentally (and racially) homogenized
than the last gallon of milk you bought, have absolutely no qualms in meeting mainstream America's
need to be titillated, shocked, or riveted by a constant parade of reverends, rappers, and reluctant
campaigners.
The few black columnists and pundits out there often spout half baked theories, honing them in front
of other learned blacks and professional brown nosers (pun intended), until they have convinced them-
selves that they have unearthed a gospel truth explaining the actions of the black masses.
From what I can see, Obama is doing exactly what all of us who were smart but wanted to be "in" did
- never let them see you sweat. We all downplayed how hard things were, how much effort it took,
how little sleep you'd had.
To assume, because Obama doesn't constantly use racially tinged rhetoric, that he can somehow "es-
cape" how he looks, and how Americans are prone to feel about someone who looks like him, is one
of the most ridiculous propositions our friends in TV land have debated for the last few months.
So far, Obama's been able to turn the good fortune smiling upon him into opportunity because he
seems to be a guy who has always done his homework beforehand. But despite all of his campaign's
careful planning and preparation, he will have to struggle with the racial consciousness of those Amer-
icans who used to blindly vote for the Democrat on the ticket all the way to the ballot box.
Senator McCain's campaign will make sure of it.
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How Many Licks Does It Take To Get to the Center of Barack Obama?
Saturday, August 02, 2008
"Mr. Turtle, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" was the
opening line of a Tootsie Pop commercial back in the seventies.
Mr. Turtle answered the cartoon boy. "I never made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl."
The boy approached a scholarly looking cartoon version of an owl, its great unblinking eyes staring
at us from our television screens, and repeated his question. "Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to
get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop."
Mr. Owl said "let's find out" and proceeded to unwrap the hard shelled bit of flavored candy on a stick
with a chewy Tootsie Roll center. The owl's tongue extended slowly from its mouth to take deliberate
licks of the candy, pausing after each lick to update the count.
"Ah one...ah two...THREE."
After the third lick, the beak of the owl suddenly opened, and the bird crunched the entire ball of candy
from the end of the stick.
"Three," he declared to the boy, his feathers unruffled, his unblinking eyes staring out into TV land.
Maybe this popped into my head tonight because the center of the Tootsie Pop was brown, like Barack
Obama. Or maybe this popped into my head because in throwing down the race card gauntlet, it
seemed that Senator McCain, like the owl in the commercial, couldn't wait to attack the soft spot in
the Obama campaign.
Brown skin is at the center of this latest debate - a light brown, to be exact, but brown nonetheless.
And if we don't know anything else in America, we know our signals.
Green means go.
Red means stop.
Yellow means proceed with caution.
And brown?
It means "welfare".
It means "baby daddy".
It means "affirmative action".
It means "drug addict".
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How Many Licks Does It Take To Get to the Center of Barack Obama?
It means "known felon".
It means "crack head".
This imagery is so pervasive that Courtland Malloy, a black op-ed writer who often challenges main-
stream assumptions about blacks, admitted in his column yesterday that when he saw an African
American youth in the woods behind his house one day last week, he immediately jumped to the con-
clusion that the young man was up to no good. Dressed in a county uniform, the young black man
was employed by his local government as a mosquito control technician.
All of the record breaking fundraising, all of the surgically precise campaign strategies, all of the stirring
speeches, all of the voter registrations - all of this can be negated in a few weeks if Americans, both
black and white, subconsciously connect the dots the way the Republican strategists want.
Over eighty years ago, James Weldon Johnson said, "I am sure it would be safe to wager that no
group of Southern white men could get together for sixty minutes without bringing up the race question.
If the Northern white man happened to be in the group, the time could be safely cut to thirty minutes."
He could be describing America today.
Talking about race, especially between the races, is uncomfortable. It calls into question an individual's
own sense of morality. It forces us to examine closely all those inequities we have learned to rationalize
instead of challenge. And nobody knows what the answer is that will get us from where we are now
to where we say we want to be. To truly erase the stereotypes and misconceptions that revolve around
race in modern society will be as monumental an achievement as it was for those people who thought
the earth was flat to finally accept that it was really round.
"White House Is The People's House"

Just when you thought you had the “O-Man” figured out, he did it again – he went back to his bottom-
less rhetorical well to come up with another gem of a speech while on the campaign trail.
Obama has been under a little pressure these last few days from parts of the black community who
feel that he hasn’t been forthright about recognizing “black” issues. His whirlwind campaign made a
quick pitstop in Orlando Florida today. Addressing the Urban League Conference, Obama dropped
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several kernels of knowledge:
"You know that civil rights and equal treatment under the law are neces-
sary, but not sufficient, to seize America’s promise – as Dr. King once said,
'the inseparable twin of racial justice is economic justice.'
You know that you can’t take that seat at the front of the bus if you can’t
afford the bus fare. You can’t live in an integrated neighborhood if you can’t
afford the house. And it doesn’t mean a whole lot to sit down at that lunch
counter if you can’t afford the lunch."
Remarkably, given the Urban League’s much noted commitment to African American
progress, I counted only three sessions out of the nineteen offered whose titles suggested that they
were going to be centered solely around black issues. The vast majority of the workshops were con-
cerned with education, getting ahead in corporate America, investments, the subprime mortgage crisis,
and globalization, which are the same issues ALL Americans face in their daily lives.
"The problems of our cities aren’t just "urban" problems any more.
When rising foreclosures mean vacant homes, abandoned streets and ris-
ing crime that spills over city limits – that’s a suburban problem and an ex-
urban problem too.
When tens of millions of people in our cities are uninsured, and our urban
emergency rooms are overflowing – that’s a suburban and ex-urban prob-
lem too.
When urban roads, bridges and transit systems are crumbling; when urban
schools aren’t giving young people the skills to compete, so companies
decide to take their business and their jobs elsewhere – that’s a suburban
and ex-urban problem too."
Tying the fate of our urban poor to the continued prosperity of America’s suburbanites is a pretty bold
stance for a modern politician. Hopefully those of us who have been feeling neglected will realize that
this elevation of our urban problems to the same level of importance as our mainstream ones can be
enforced by the bully pulpit of the White House if Obama gets elected.
"It’s time for policies that reflect the fundamental truth that we rise or fall as one nation. That’s the
truth at the heart of your Opportunity Compact – that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street and a
struggling Main Street.
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That when wages are flat, prices are rising, and more and more Americans are mired in debt, our
economy as a whole suffers. Our competitiveness as a nation suffers. Our children’s future suffers.
So we all have a stake here. That’s why your opportunity agenda is a compact – not a guarantee, not
a promise – but a call to responsibility.
Because we know that government can’t solve all our problems, and government can’t and shouldn’t
do for us what we should be doing for ourselves: raising our kids the right way, being good neighbors
and good citizens, becoming leaders in our industries and communities."
This new kind of bondage Obama is pushing us towards is the good kind. To expect him to strike a
fiery, unapologetic pose the way some members of the Congressional Black Caucus can is unrealistic
– Obama’s district includes both the postur-ers and the posture-ees. At the end of the day, the “O-
Man” shows us that he is “keeping it real”, presidential candidate style.
Does Obama Need To "Man Up"?

Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Shaft could never be elected president.
And if you go down the list of all the activist firebrands who have championed our causes for decades,
there are very, very few who would even come close to fitting the bill. There is a reason why Jackie
Robinson integrated baseball, the same reason why Sidney Poitier was the first moneymaking leading
black man – because they were “safe” black men with almost superhuman levels of emotional self
control. However much we might want to believe that America has learned to accept its diversity, re-
fusing to see what is right before our eyes is foolhardy, to say the least.
But a lot of people out here, a lot of black people, in fact, see Obama’s appealing nature, his tendency
to turn the other cheek when he is attacked, and his willingness to concede when he is wrong as
weaknesses.
Does Ken Chenault kick ass and take names at American Express? Hell no.
He does what every other chief executive officer does - he works through the proper channels. Which
is what Obama will be doing if he gets elected.
Let’s face it - the "O-Man" is a professional waffler - from his level of expertise, it looks like he's been
wavering between "almost" and "maybe "his whole life. And he can have a tendency to overthink
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Does Obama Need To Man Up?
things, as if we are a captive audience like his students used to be.
But if you add up all the things that are wrong with him, they still pale in comparison to all that's right.
I don't care all that much about his policies, because I know as well as everyone else does that Amer-
icans won't go for anything too far from the middle of the road, no matter how good a salesman the
president is.
What I care about is our young black boys - my vote will be cast for Obama so they can get to see this
brown faced man in his ever present blue suit behind that White House podium, or when he is crossing
the East Lawn to get into the White House helicopter, or when he is huddled with the rest of the world
leaders at a G-8 conference - because the reality is, too many of our young boys get the majority of
their info from TV, where Shaq and Kobe and McNabb and T.O. dominate the airwaves. Where rappers
posture, swagger, and stick out their chests at unseen enemies.
And where you can still see Shaft late at night on the classic movie channels.
What Do We Want? A Five Part Series

I’ve heard a constant refrain lately – at work, on TV, on the internet – from some of my black
brethren about Barack Obama:
He sacrifices black people to score points with whites and other non-
blacks.
If he doesn't have anything good to say about black people he shouldn't

say anything at all.
I was offended by his criticism of black people.
What gives him the right to call anybody out about anything?
He doesn’t need to “lecture black people” about personal responsibility.
He should be mindful of the tone he uses when he speaks to us.
He’s just saying what racist white people want to hear.
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What Do We Want? A Five Part Series
Next week, What Do We Want?, a five part series, will explore some of the issues that underlie this
intraracial discord.
Why do I think doing a five part series is important? Because there are an estimated EIGHT MIL-
LION voting age African Americans who are not registered to vote.
EIGHT MILLION people who have varied reasons why they may not have registered in the past.
According to the Obama campaign, there are 56 million unregistered voters nationwide, 32 percent
of the total eligible voter ranks. Of that number, eight million are black (which is also 32 percent of
eligible African-American voters).
Obama's Racial Ambiguity: A Blessing Or A Curse?

Monday, August 11, 2008
Barack Obama’s head peers out of a black and white television screen in
an Al Sharpton wig, his face sweating like a Baptist preacher as he shouts
rap lyrics into a microphone, his full length white robe bearing the slogan
“By Any Means Necessary”, the expectant congregation before him rev-
erently chanting “holla if ya here me”…
This is one of the racial boxes that I imagine the staunch group of black holdouts who insist he is "not
black enough" want to put Barack Obama in when they see him on the nightly news or the internet –
his standard uniform of a plain blue suit and unobtrusive tie, it seems, is just one more piece of evi-
dence that Obama is not really black.
Some of us have not full accepted his motives. Amazingly, there are those of us who will go so far as
to suggest that Obama has used his embrace of African American culture as a shortcut to success.
Some even feel Obama has been foisted upon us by the media and the powers-that-be. For these
American blacks, Obama’s "fade to black" development raises serious questions about his ability to
relate to the challenges and struggles of everyday black people.
What is it that forces us to demand fealty by our leaders to some unknown rulebook of acceptable
black behavior? Is the racial ambiguity that a staunch minority of us imagine Barack Obama has used
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to his advantage throughout his life problematic for the masses of us who have no such leeway in
how we are seen by mainstream America?
To really understand the disconnect between Barack Obama and those of us who are supportive of
the idea of a black president, but wary of this biracial man’s claim to his African Americanness after
being raised by a white mother and white grandparents, we have to take a step back and look at our
history here in America.
Most black authored racial literature here in America has been about black men and women dealing
with and entering a white world -- three classic examples are Frederick Douglass, Narrative and Life
and Times, Richard Wright, Native Son, and Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.
Out of these three classic books, Fredrick Douglass, who was the real life protagonist of his autobi-
ography, was the only main character able to successfully navigate life as an adult black male. In his
recollection of his life story, Douglass was generous in his descriptions of those who helped him on
his way to freedom, whether they were black or white.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man comes closest to echoing the undercurrents of the Obama phenomenon.
Like Obama, Invisible has questioned the who, what, and why of his existence from a young age.
There is a point in Invisible’s life, after he arrives in New York City, when he began to transform himself
from a college dropout to a productive member of society, where he discovered that the world allowed
him more latitude whenever he allowed those around him to see what they wanted to in him.
This year’s presidential campaign may be the true ending of the story Ellison wrote, but it was an end-
ing even he couldn’t have imagined back when he wrote his novel. For Invisible, the point at which
people stopped seeing him at all was the height of his existence.
And though we’ve had other models of self transformation by black men throughout our history, our
image has become stylized, both by the media and by our own mythological reconstructions, as Bigger
Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son – insisting against all evidence to the contrary
that we are self hating, self loathing people who harbor latent criminal tendencies we are prone to act
upon if we are not properly supervised.
Bigger was bigger – bigger than the Chicago ghetto he was from, bigger than the manservant job he
had, bigger than the crime he committed. He was all of black humanity, all of the perversities of us as
a group distilled into the essence of one fictional character, and even now, in the eyes of some Amer-
icans, he still symbolizes our supposed limitations to this very day.
We have been striving since slavery to shake off the strictures of bondage and discrimination in order
that we might fully inhabit all phases of American life. Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From
My Father, on the other hand, tells a story that is the exact opposite of our traditional tale of racial
transformation – it is the story of a man of amorphous race dealing with and entering the black world.
A lot of the racial ambiguity claims about Obama have been manufactured by the overactive minds of
professional pundits. And some of it is us, telling each other, "he’s not really black". But the reality of-
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Barack Obama’s supposed ambiguity – an ability to traverse the boundaries between white and black
worlds – is that he could have tried all he wanted to, but he could never have been anything other
than black in America.
There is no ambiguity for him – he has always known he was different, ever since his eyes could focus
on the image of his mother, ever since those same eyes were able to compare how she looked to
how he looked, ever since he has understood what was in the eyes of the people who looked at him
as if he was the one that didn’t fit in the picture they had of his family.
Obama and Racial Ambiguity: Acting White

Barack Obama has been accused by various black leaders and pundits, including Jessie Jackson, of
"acting white’. But if Obama has been raised by a white grandmother and white grandparents, is he
acting, or are his actions authentic?
The perception that Obama has been "acting white" is directly linked the assertion that he is ignoring
issues germane to the black community to better cater to the ideals it is presumed that white voters
must have in their presidential candidate.
To take this premise a step further, then – if Obama is accepted by mainstream America because he
doesn’t exhibit any of the traits of the stereotypical African American – those of us who do not use
standard English, who do not have conservatively styled hair, who are not highly educated are in effect
rendered invisible to white Americans, much like Ralph Ellison’s main character in Invisible Man.
Though a staunch few of us continue to lambaste Obama relentlessly for this betrayal, this inability to
be true to himself (although we often flip flop on this – one day he’s black enough, the next he’s all
white), to be true to his people, most of us have rejoiced in unison as he continued throughout the pri-
mary season to attract a significant number of white voters. The undeniable fact about being consid-
ered “African American” in this country is the visual difference – it is usually so distinctive, even for
guys like Obama, that there is no possibility that he could be mistaken for anything else but an outsider
like the rest of us.
Are these few, these holdouts content with being outsiders forever? If the things we say we want the
most from America – racial equality and equal access to economic opportunity – were here today,
would we be ready? Would enough of us be equipped enough, skilled enough, able enough to take
advantage of the situation?
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Obama and Racial Ambiguity: Acting White
If you take a hard look at the concept of identity, especially as it relates to Americans, you will find that
the roles we all play are not as static as they appear. Five hundred years ago there was nothing that
existed on this continent that defined a human being in the way we define ourselves now. The who,
what, why and how that each of our ethnicities possessed we when got here have been altered dra-
matically over the centuries. The boundaries that we have chosen to live by, or have been forced to
live by, are largely constructs of the mind of man.
Undoubtedly, Obama bumped up against some of these constructs as he began maturing from boy
to man.
One of the more curious features of American life has been the ability of our citizenry to merge common
customs of certain ethnicities - in particular, the characteristics of the Irish, the Italians, the Croations,
the French, the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish, the Russians, the Polish, the Czechs,
the Hungarians, the Austrians, the Danish, the Finish, the Romanians, the Norwegians, the Ukrainians
- into an über whiteness, a self image purer than the reality of those who wear its mantle. This white-
ness is as much a property, as much a state of being, as much as it is a trait - within the Big Tent of
racial and cultural amalgamation we know as "White America", it is a badge of membership, of be-
longing, that supersedes individual differences.
Blackness is no less a state of being.
Today's whiteness, like today's blackness, is the last in a long line of new and improved versions -
more refined, more efficient, sleeker - but not totally new. The advent of the Obama phenomenon has
put on the table of public opinion an important question that many of us African Americans seem to
have trouble answering for ourselves.
Is the authenticity of what we perceive to be "blackness", or "acting black" diluted or watered down if
we cross these artificial boundaries?
Does "No Negro Left Behind" Trump "Yes We Can"?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
While I’ve been waiting for the water hoses and the dogs from the usual suspects, I’ve been hearing
a constant refrain – at work, on TV, on the internet – lately from my fellow black brethren about Barack
Obama.
He doesn’t need to "lecture black people" about personal responsibility.
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He should be mindful of the tone he uses when he speaks to us.
He’s just saying what racist white people want to hear.
He sacrifices black people to score points with whites and other non-
blacks.
I was offended by his criticism of black people.
What gives him the right to call anybody out about anything?
If he doesn't have anything good to say about black people he shouldn't

say anything at all.
The boundaries of blackness are hard and fast for a certain segment of the African American commu-
nity – they cannot possibly be authentically black, they opine, if they don’t remember to eat a plate of
neck bones from time to time, or relish the thought of a fresh pot of collard greens simmering in fatback.
I myself am routinely admonished by these self proclaimed "authentic" blacks when I confess that I
do not like cornbread.
There is a stubborn subset of the black community that wants to have their cornbread and eat it too.
But if they are honest with themselves, they have to admit that all white skinned people do not enjoy
all the attendant privileges of whiteness. Southern rednecks, Appalachian hillbillies, Midwestern hicks-
they face a level of ostracism that is almost equal to what some of us encounter because we have
our hair braided, or because we wear hip hop clothing, or sport rows of gold capped teeth.
We have our own version of "No Child Left Behind" – it’s called "No Negro Left Behind". Among this
stubborn subset who insists upon following this doctrine, there are those who are willing to forego
mainstream American success in favor of honoring their inalienable right to express themselves
through their dress, manner of speech and modes of behavior. Closely related to this group is a less
confrontational faction, reluctant participants in conventional America who are committed to the idea
of pulling up Uncle Petey and cousin RayRay and sister Ne’Ne’ along with them, but are loathe to ad-
vocate any act of transformation – Uncle Petey, RayRay and Ne'Ne' are to be preserved in toto, as if
the slightest alteration to their demeanor, dress or decorum would invalidate their African American
membership cards.
So why do these steadfast people balk at having to change, if the things they are doing now are not
working? Self esteem comes from achievement, not someone patting you on the back. Achieving any-
thing worthwhile in this country means you have to connect to the rest of the people in it, whatever
they look like. In case we have forgotten our history, white people have had to "act" too to grow beyond
their own Italian or Irish or Greek or Spaniard or Eastern European roots - more of them have gone
from cabbage to caviar than some of us might be willing to admit.
Do we as black people, especially those of us in this stubborn subset, have enough intestinal fortitude
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to face our own pathologies and see them for what they are without worrying about who is watching
while we do it?
Is criticism that takes any of us to task for our weaknesses only to be administered by bona fide, cer-
tified 100% black leaders?
Barack Obama has been lambasted by by black preachers, black community leaders, and a lot of the
same black men who believe that Oprah Winfrey is their mortal enemy. My own co-worker, a well ed-
ucated black man from Alabama, was so incensed at Obama's Father's Day speech, even though he
didn't hear or read it in its entirety, that he vowed not only to revoke his support of Obama - he swore
he would get some "Vote for McCain" signs and parade them through black neighborhoods "his damn
self".
Obama could have done a Michael Jordan, and remained silent on EVERY issue that affected black
people. Just smile at us once in awhile, you know, and given us that sly little wink like Mike does while
we continue to buy his shoes. He could have just keep talking about abstract policies, the same way
all the other presidential candidates before have, and left Uncle Petey and cousin RayRay and sister
Ne' Ne' alone.
If Obama can see the mountaintop, and we can't, I would hope that we could trust him enough to be-
lieve that what he’s telling us works. That what we take to be ingrained in our DNA is largely an illusion
- if we had been indigenous to Siberian climes, for instance, we would be some brownskinned borscht
eaters.
One of the things we don’t really focus on in our own history is the fact that the black people who had
firehoses aimed at them and police dogs sicced on them for demonstrating against segregation were
some of the very same black people who sat at the table with the white foes of integration, once both
sides agreed they needed to talk.
Are those of you in this stubborn subset ready to sit at the table?
How Much Redress For Past Wrongs Is Enough?

Thursday, August 14, 2008
From "Let My People Go" to "We Shall Overcome", there have been various catch phrases over the
years that black people have come together around to survive and thrive in this country. And even
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now, as we have seemed to come together with the rest of the country to rally around the cry of "Yes
We Can", the campaign slogan of presidential candidate Barack Obama, I can't help but feel that this
phrase is an evolution of its precursor, "I Am Somebody", Jessie Jackson's rousing exhortation for us
to claim the full measure of ourselves that energized the crowds at his rallies and speeches back in
the seventies and eighties.
Many African Americans have finally gotten the opportunity to participate in the American dream –
home ownership, reliable health care, access to education, retirement plans, vacations – but even
then, there often remains, just below the surface of our psyches, a sharp sense of anger about the in-
justices of the past that our forebears and our parents faced.
To many of us, slavery was the Subsequent Sin – America’s fall from grace. The physical and psy-
chological horrors of this inhuman institution were so brutal according to the eyewitness accounts of
our forebears who lived through it, that even now, a hundred and fifty years after the practice was out-
lawed, the mere mention of the word "slavery" is enough to bring out our moral suasion SWAT teams
in full riot gear.
The result of slavery's all encompassing, world class level of subjugation was a brand of racism that
has created America’s own Gordian Knot, with the lives of black Americans at its center. The harder
mainstream America has tried to pull at the ends of this knot, the tighter it seems to coil around us.
There is no possible compensation that can make up for the injustices of being enslaved. Though
there will continue to be disagreements about what type of suffering deserves recompense; to what
extent, if any, the efforts made by the country to date could be considered an indirect form of repara-
tions; or whether or not any future efforts are even warranted, one thing becomes clear as this debate
continues - any attempt at a modern day solution would rearrange the superstructure of America.
Many of us have given up on any idea of reparations long ago. If you are in your middle forties, like
me, you probably never had them. And as nice as it may be to hear words of apology for the govern-
ment's role in the promotion and maintenance of slavery, it does little more than dull that sharp sense
of anger lurking below the surface. Given all this, there are still some black people who feel "funny"
about Barack Obama's African Americanness because they don't believe that he shares their experi-
ences, or that same sharpened sense of anger that they do; that he doesn’t feel deep down any need
to continue to desire some sort of retribution from white America.
Does this stubborn subset of us resent his lack of a direct connection to the American slave experi-
ence?
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama essentially declares that white America's will to make substantial ef-
forts to redress the country’s racial gap is not particularly strong.
However ambiguous some of us may consider Obama’s background, no one would have any trouble
picking him out in a sea of white faces. In fact, Obama has about as much connection to the civil rights
struggles of the 50’s and 60’s as I do – that is to say, he has as much connection to the movement as
most middle class blacks under forty five.
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The pains of segregation and overt discrimination are a largely oral tradition for this group of African
Americans – stories told and retold by our parents and relatives, protests seen over and over again
on TV, on PBS specials, and protest speeches that are replayed faithfully every January and February
to honor the efforts of those who came before us.
I have agonized myself over the dreams, talents and skills possessed by my forbears that were not
developed because of substandard educations, lack of access to capital, lack of anything approaching
what we would consider healthcare, or any access at all to mortgage loans, life insurance policies -
but a pound of white flesh today will not erase this bondage of yesteryear. A blue eye for a brown eye
will not resurrect the lives of those whose bodies were strung from trees. The dead will not rise again.
And there is no multivariate calculator I know that can compute an equation for "lost human opportu-
nity" or the ephemeral "crushed spirit".
We have beaten the drum for racial reconciliation so long that most of America has not only heard it,
they have also learned to trust our rhythm enough to reach out their hands to us. In spite of all that
has happened before, the last mile in our efforts to be fully invested in America can only be traversed
through a higher level of trust and collaboration with the rest of the country.
Even though this fall’s presidential campaign season will feature the first black man to seriously con-
tend for the presidency of the United States, in more ways than one, this election will not be about us.
It will really be about a large segment of mainstream America - white Americans - and the psychological
implications that will come along with being represented to the world by an African American. There
will be more questions in these minds about black Americans than there have been in decades.
There will be heated discussions. We will often argue. And in the end, both sides will probably feel
that they have compromised too much. But we can’t stay where we are. We don’t need to waste this
momentum that is accumulating right before our eyes.
Recarving Our Cultural Totem Pole

As much as some of us in black America may want it to happen, there will be no Shaft candidate for
president, kicking ass and taking names.
The president is an executive. He is usually a seasoned politician, no matter what moniker the press
or the peanut gallery hangs around his neck. A black candidate who doesn’t understand his
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strengths AND his weaknesses in appealing to mainstream America will be pigeonholed and margin-
alized, not only by the press, but by the professional operatives who help to run his campaign and by
the big money donors whose contributions make or break a candidate’s fundraising efforts.
The respect we are looking for, the status we desire in this society, the accomplishments and achieve-
ments we long to accumulate in the same manner as our paler brethren, can be obtained. But it will
not be a Barack Obama presidency that gives us this opportunity. “We are the ones we have been
waiting for”, one of the hallmarks of an Obama campaign rally speech, is not just an empty aphorism,
it is a literal truth – we black Americans hold a lot of our community's destiny in our own hands.
Has our history anchored us so securely to the past that we cannot make any more forward progress?
To take that question a step further, how do we rearrange the mythological constructs that shape how
we view others? More importantly, how do we get others to do the same when they encounter us?
One of the many people I've met on the internet recently, who is a woodcarving enthusiast, had this
to say about carving around the occasional knots she finds in the fine hardwoods she works with:
"A stubborn knot, metaphorical or real, requires patience -- and a very

sharp tool. You work it from all angles (the wood around a knot does not
grow in a single direction as the rest of the grain does) slowly, slowly paring
it down; you resharpen your tool (knots are very hard -- yeah, literally and
metaphorically -- and blunt a fine edge quickly) with care and precision.
You go at it again from all angles.
Once you've leveled it out, the evidence of the knot is still, always, there:
it becomes part of the pattern and beauty that is the wood itself. Imperfec-
tions in wood are what make it most fascinating.”
Making the changes we need to as a people to more fully participate in the more desirable aspects of
American life doesn't mean that our culture will disappear. If we can agree that a culture can be shaped
- that it can retain some characteristics and discard others over the passage of time - then I will be
pushing mightily to pare away the dogfighting, the crack selling and the baby mama drama that we
have been passing off as black American culture lately. These negative images we have raised to the
level of cultural signifiers are a type of metaphorical posing, a commitment to "keeping it real" that ig-
nores the literal truths we see before our very own eyes everyday.
What I really think we desperately need to get from all of this is a realignment of the "natural order" of
things, not just in America, where we are still fooling ourselves when it comes to racial equality, but in
black America too. I want to see our own cultural totem pole recarved, with a smart black man in a
blue suit at the top. With black men and women who teach our children, who heal our sick and keep
our streets safe just below that image. I don’t want to take the rappers and the singers off of the totem
pole – just slide them down a few notches from where they are now.
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Segregation of our bodies didn't work. Neither will segregation of our minds. Integration has allowed
blacks and whites to look at each other up close and personal. The question is, can we believe what
we see, because what I SEE out here in mainstream America are people who look a little different,
but want the same things I want - safety, security, prosperity, and an opportunity to enjoy living on a
regular basis.
Collaboration has to be the next step. Which means our lives won't look like they do now. The things
we will have to give up as black people will not make us less black, the same way the Greeks and the
Germans and the Polish and the Irish and the Italians and the Dutch are no less themselves for leaving
behind the parts of their cultures that don't fit in this society. And some of us, who will not be able to
cope, will find ourselves, like the rednecks and the hillbillies and the long haired radical hippies, rele-
gated to the fringe of our society.
You Don't Have To Drink The Kool-Aid

When I was growing up, we drank a lot of Kool-Aid. My favorite flavor was orange. We put so much
sugar in our Kool-Aid that it could have been considered a liquid confection. We went through it by
the gallon, especially in the summer months.
I took the art of making a good pitcher of Kool-Aid very seriously. I would take two packs of Orange
Kool-Aid, one pack of Tropical Punch, and empty them into a small pot of boiling water. I'm not sure
if the heat dissolved the Kool-Aid powder better, or whether or not the flavors seemed to blend together
better because they had gone through some kind of chemical bonding process when they were heated.
Then I added the sugar - two and a half cups - watching the slurry burble while the sugar crystals slid
into the steaming water.
A sugary, tropical flavored scent filled the kitchen as I stirred. A minute later and I was pouring the
contents of the pot into the Kool-Aid pitcher. Then I added tap water, stirred for another fifteen or
twenty seconds, and I was done.
My mother didn't drink any of this - she thought it was too sweet. She would pour a glass about half
full and add some water to dilute it. My father, on the other hand, loved this Kool-Aid as much as me
and my brothers did, so I often had to make two batches a day.
You might think boiling sugar and prepackaged Kool-Aid mix is overkill, the way some people think
the Obama Campaign is going over the top in its all out aerial and ground blitz. But these guys have
gotten this far because they have done their homework - I would trust that they have factored in the
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You Don’t Have To Drink The Kool-Aid
level of difficulty they will have between now and November to keep their candidate ahead of the com-
petition.
So if you are still on the fence about Barack Obama, if you still have reservations about the intricacies
of his background, or can't seem to wrap your mind around some of the details of the policies he is
proposing - I'd like to ask you to take a minute to do what I do when I see a discouraging news poll or
hear a political pundit tell America why we shouldn't be supporting this man - try to visualize something
positive about Obama that YOU care about.
If you've been coming here this week to check out the "What Do We Want?" series, I want to thank
you for reading. And if you think the Kool-Aid I've been serving here is too sweet, do what my mother
used to do - water it down a little.
I Wore My "Obama 08" Shirt To Work Friday

Sunday, August 17, 2008
I wore a t-shirt two days ago. This should be nothing out of the ordinary, but (a) two days ago was Fri-
day, and (b) I don't normally wear t-shirts during the week.
But my company is downsizing, like many others in the mortgage industry, so I ironed my navy blue"
Obama 08" t-shirt, the one with the Obama logo over the right breast, and took the long way to work.
I live and work in Alpharetta, one of Atlanta's northern suburbs, where it is pretty obvious that African
American men are a distinct minority. But if you are groomed and dressed like the rest of middle Amer-
ica, which means close cropped hair, clean shaven face, a wardrobe of conservatively cut slacks
whose hues revolve around the primary colors for men - blue, green, brown and khaki - and a collection
of polo style shirts to match, your brown skin doesn't seem to call much attention to itself.
My company's office is located in the Windward office park. I work for a small, struggling nationwide
mortgage brokerage that sits among the massive operations centers of GE, HP, AT&T and other cor-
porate giants whose names have boiled down to acronyms. Many of the jobs at the middle manage-
ment level in these companies pay well enough to allow these employees to maintain their households
on one income. So this live/work/play development has a large contingent of women who are stay at
home moms.
When I walked into one of the breakfast joints on Windward Parkway to eat, the hostess looked up,
and her eyes widened as she focused on the Obama logo on my t-shirt. A big smile leapt across her-
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face as she nodded her head up and down. She seated me in the middle of the restaurant, where I
proceeded to spread out my paper and check the headlines. From where I sat, I could see about half
of the place. Patrons who had to go to the bathroom had to walk my way for about fifteen feet before
they could begin to veer off towards their table, or the exit.
One woman, who sat on the other side of the restaurant, had a seat facing mine. She stared at my
shirt for a few minutes - just stopped eating, a look of disgust on her face.
Many of the women had small children - curious, full of energy - who were attracted to the red white
and blue circle on my chest that stood out from the navy background. Several of the women shooed
the children along, looking down or away as they passed me , as if they were trying to avoid eye con-
tact.
The waitress arrived. She had an amused look on her face. "Nice shirt," she said. She laid the menu
down in front of me. "You work for the campaign?"
That threw me - I never would have thought that I looked like I worked for the Obama campaign. "No.
I'm just a supporter." After a couple of seconds, I added, "you know, like trying to get people registered
to vote?"
She drew her shoulders up and professed that she was registered to vote. Her eyes still twinkled. "I
been watching all this on the news for months."
Normally, when I go somewhere, this is how I am - I talk to the people around me. If I catch someone's
eye, I try to make conversation, try to say something positive or funny to make a quick connection.
But to do that, you've got to be able to look at the person's eyes. Even the people who were seated
next to me, who seemed affable enough, and looked like my neighbors, or the kind of people who
worked in my building, seemed a little stiffer than usual.
Was my chest stuck out farther than normal today? Had I forgotten to do that thing which larger than
average professional black men all over the country are experts at, that act of compression, of com-
paction, that made outsized shoulders and forearms less threatening, that made outsized thighs and
buttocks less potent?
When I walked into the office, one of our remaining staffers saw me as I came through the lobby. She
usually waved without stopping if she was en route to someone's office or the break room. Today, she
broke stride for a few seconds. "Obama 'o8, huh?" She kind of half smiled, as if I was revealing some-
thing in public that she'd already suspected.
I don't usually mix politics and business, but when your company is on the rocks, this is the least of
your worries. Wearing this t-shirt, which might ordinarily have been a source of debate, didn't even
seem to register with most people - we were all busy scrambling to close out the business we had in
our pipelines. For the few who did notice, the lettering across my chest seemed to be magnetic - every
time I saw them, whether I was at the copier, or the fax, they would gaze at that spot on my chest for
three, four, sometimes five beats, as if they needed to reread it ever time they saw it.
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An older black woman I work with, who normally looked like she had the weight of the world on her
shoulders, smiled from ear to ear when she saw "Obama '08". "Great shirt."
"Yes ma'am," I said, "that it is."
With business slowed to a trickle, I'd done all I could do by three o'clock. I took the long way home,
stopping by the Barnes and Noble that was a few miles south of my office, right by Northpoint Mall.
Just getting into the store was interesting - several drivers snapped their necks around to look at the
shirt, one of them going so far as to start talking to themselves as they passed me. Inside the book-
store, it was like I had my own Secret Service detail. I started to understand how The Emperor Who
Wore No Clothes must have been treated - no one, it seemed, wanted to look anywhere near me.
The clerk looked at the cover of the latest issue of New York magazine I laid on the counter when it
was my turn to pay - the word "RACE" was in big red block letters, superimposed over a black and
white rendering of Barack Obama's face - but her face looked more concerned about the number of
people in line.
Later that evening, out of the blue, S. wanted to go out to eat. I thought about changing - she was still
dressed in the same clothes she'd worn to a business luncheon earlier, and I wasn't sure where we
were going - but I said "what the hell". We went south, about five miles closer to Atlanta, to a little bed-
room community called Norcross. It had been a whistlestop back in the heydey of train travel - now
the depot still standing in the middle of the single square block that comprised the commercial district
of downtown Norcross was a restaurant. A few mini-mansions had been recently tucked into a few
corners here and there, but for the most part, the town had retained much of its original character, a
mixture of newly renovated Victorian homes and well-maintained Post War ones.
The walk down the sidewalk produced the same non-looks from most of the people scattered along
the sidewalk who were waiting to get into the storefront restaurants we passed, but there were a few
raised eyebrows that were paired with sly smiles. Entering the pizza place on the corner, it was the
family hour - kids everywhere, some tables filled with three generations, the waiting area full. Other
than a couple of mothers at the front, who looked at us as if they were officers of the Nazi SS Waffen
corps, most of the people were too busy trying to avoid getting tomato sauce on themselves to care
about us.
By the time we left, it was getting dark. We strolled down the sidewalk. I hadn't seen another Obama
t-shirt all day. In fact, I hadn't seen ANY Obama advertising or campaign signs all day. The sound of
music seemed to be coming out of one of the storefronts as we got further down the street. We came
to the window of a coffee shop. It was packed with people, and a small combo was playing.
S. suggested that we go inside. The combo was on one side of the door, the audience on the other -
we had to walk right down the middle to get to a raised landing on the other side of the room. A few
women's faces on the lower level strained as we entered. The woman at the door called us back after
we had crossed in front of the crowd to give us tickets for free drinks.
Standing in line to get a couple of glasses of red wine, I felt someone bustling towards me. "Nice shirt"
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said the man. The girls behind the counter smiled. We traipsed back towards the rear of the building,
where we spied a courtyard. The owner was parked in front of a huge chocolate cake that announced
the one year anniversary of the coffee shop. "We've got a lot of your people here all the time," he said,
gesturing towards my t-shirt.
Two middle-aged black women sat at a table near the entrance to the courtyard. They gave us slow
motion nods as they ate their slices of cake.
The courtyard had two sections, half of it covered by an awning, half of it open air, dotted with the
kind of wrought iron tables that featured the umbrellas in the middle. Baby carriages and running chil-
dren dominated the covered area, so we navigated our way through the parents who were milling
about to the open air section.
S. sat - I stood at the railing along the rear, looking up and down the narrow one way street that ran
behind the storefronts. A few more people trickled outside - a tall, severe looking couple in matching
long sleeved Brooks Brothers shirts with the cuffs turned back, and a more casually dressed trio, one
man and two women. The severe woman spilled her wine setting it down on the table. They ate fast
and disappeared.
The trio had been in conversation for awhile when the man caught my eye. "We're pulling for him," he
yelled across the courtyard. The parents in the covered courtyard didn't turn their heads, but he was
loud enough for them to hear him. "We are too," I yelled back.
A few minutes later, a couple of mosquito bites convinced us that it was time to go home. We had to
pass the trio to go back through the coffee shop. The man reiterated his earlier comment. "We're from
Jersey," he said. "We're used to thinking differently than the people down here." The five of us ended
up talking for about ten minutes, the political patter giving way to the basic who what when and where
type of stuff you talk about when you first meet strangers.
I was ready to go home, but since I'd mentioned the bookstore visit earlier, S. wanted to get a new
book by one of her favorite authors. So we swooped into another Barnes and Noble that was between
downtown Norcross and home. The Starbucks I passed on the way to the bathroom was filled with
Asian teenagers and college students. They all had a name on their chests too - Hollister or Harvard
or Georgia or DKNY - and appeared to be involved in such intense conversations that they didn't seem
to notice me at all.
No one in this bookstore moved out of the way. Pretty much everyone here, even those who frowned
at the sight of the Obama logo, would look back at me instead of down at the floor. On the way out,
we ran into S.'s old boss, an ex-CEO of a satellite communications manufacturer. A small, handsome
man with a shock of white hair, he looked tired in the way that sixty something year old men do when
they have children under the age of ten. He was cordial, as always, filling S. in on the whereabouts of
the other officers of the company who had departed.
It wasn't until he'd walked to the register to pay for his book that a thought crossed my mind - of all the
people I'd run into all day, it had been mostly women, in particular women who looked like they were
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not in the workforce, who had demonstrated the most visible signs of animosity towards the logo on
my chest.
But the most interesting thing about Friday to me was, of the five black people I ran into that day -
which says a LOT about what part of the Atlanta metro area I was in - that of those five, only one, my
co-worker, was openly enthusiastic about seeing the Obama logo.
The two black women in the coffee shop? They had had looks on their faces that said to me, "negro,
why are you trying to get these white folks riled up?"
I Won't Be Getting A Text Message From Barack Obama

I called a friend of mine from college, who is now an anesthesiologist, when my father was scheduled
for surgery here in Atlanta last year, to see if she knew anybody on staff at the hospital where his
doctor was going to operate. She told me she'd gone to school with a couple of people who practiced
there. "Just text me the date of his surgery and the name of his doctor."
I had to confess - I had never sent a text message before. I wasn't sure if my phone was even set up
to send and receive them.
"You've never sent a text? You? Mr. 'Always Knows Everything About Everything'?" She laughed out
loud, a laugh I heard clearly because...well, because she had one of those damn headset things on,
transmitting each chuckle with digital fidelity.
Ordinarily, I would have said "to hell with it", but my father was involved - for a man who had never
undergone major surgery before, I thought it might help him relax if he knew the person putting him
under saw him as more than a set of vital signs wearing a wristband.
So I told her I'd figure it out. The guy at the phone company explained that I was already paying for
the service, but it wasn't activated. A few clicks of a mouse later, he had turned my phone into a text
machine.
Sending that first text message must have taken me twenty minutes. The period, I discovered, could
only be accessed by pulling up a chart and pushing the phone's main navigation button. The whole
rhythm of selecting letters of the alphabet reminded me of Morse Code, another method of commu-
nication that I'd failed to learn back in Cub Scouts. But I did it - I sent a coherent message later that
very same afternoon.
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I Won't Be Getting A Text Message From Barack Obama
Which is when I discovered the other downfall of text messaging. You had to wait for the person on
the other end to respond to your message. My blood pressure probably jumped twenty points when
the realization hit me that this was just like email, only a lot more aggravating, with a smaller viewing
screen.
I didn't understand the text message shorthand she used to reply. So I had to call her the first time to
ask her what the message said. I think this shorthand is a large part of text messaging's appeal, es-
pecially for those who always hated composition, or were terrible spellers, or couldn't fashion complete
sentences.
So I won't be getting a text message from the Obama Campaign this week. That's fine by me - I like
the fact that my cellphone rarely rings. But since I'm sure there will only be a few moments that elapse
between the time they send out the news and the time it hits the internet, its okay. I'll still feel like I'm
in the loop.
Despite what all the pundits on TV will be telling you, there will be no risk to the campaign because
they've chosen this unorthodox method to tell the world who Obama's vice president pick will be. I
don't feel left out, or slighted, because my fingers are too big and too stiff to easily work the keyboard
on my phone. I'm actually glad that they are working so hard to keep younger voters energized.
The thing I am marveling at, though, is the way that the Obama Campaign is wresting even more
power away from the traditional news media with this announcement. A lot of information, a whole lot,
is being disseminated straight from the campaign into the email boxes of millions of people, with the
only spin on it being the kind that makes Barack Obama look good.
I would be very tempted, if I had any idea what time this announcement might actually happen, to hit
a popular coffee shop, or a large bookstore, or a plaza on one of Atlanta's college campuses, just to
see what kind of reaction America's most connected generation has when they get the news.
Hard to believe that politics is getting to be hip.
Right Off The Bat

My Yahoo email account blew up today as I received several blast emails from some of my college
classmates, who are looking forward to going back to the quad for our twenty year class reunion next
month.
One of them was from a woman who had become an instant friend practically the moment I hit campus
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Right Off The Bat
back in 1984.
I hadn't heard from her in years. A self proclaimed product of the streets of Cincinnati, she was a ver-
itable whirlwind of energy - dramatic, direct, and ready to have a good time at the drop of a hat. From
day one, Miss Cincinnati and her roommate helped lessen the sudden impact of the realization that I
was a minority student at a major university, a feeling of anxiety that had overwhelmed me that Sunday
afternoon after my parents had waved goodbye.
What Miss Cincinnati lacked in scholarship, she made up for with an overabundance of style. She
was petite but feisty, with an innate ability to instantly rattle off a comeback if somebody started talking
trash to her. Although there were some who did not get along with her right off the bat, she could still
find a way to connect with them, in spite of their reluctance to want to get to know her.
You didn't think of Miss Cincinnati and her roommate, a Long Island native, in the plural sense - their
names seemed to be permanently conjoined into one long polysyllabic word, as if they were Siamese
Twins. You couldn't utter one of their names without adding the other one.
I hope the person Barack Obama chooses to be his running mate is capable of giving the Democratic
ticket this kind of synergy. Because at some point in the next couple of weeks, the name Obama will
be first half of a permanently conjoined phrase that will ring from the lips of cable news anchors and
talk radio hosts around the country. I hope Obama and his running mate get along right off the bat,
the same way Miss Cincinnati and her roommate did. Maybe this will help ease the nation's unspoken
anxieties about having a minority as the head of our country.
A running mate with more dramatic flair, someone who is more emotionally engaging - a person with
these traits would be an excellent complement to Obama's studied cool and detached manner. And if
they have even half of Miss Cincinnati's killer instinct to go for the jugular whenever she felt threatened,
they will be well equipped to help Obama wade through the heavy onslaught of smears and attacks
that will be directed towards him this fall.
Obama VP 3 AM Text Message Trails Networks

I was half asleep on the couch in the basement, with the TV watching me more than I was watching
it when Larry King's baritone announced just after midnight that CNN sources had confirmed that
Joseph Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware, would be Barack Obama's running mate.
If only I had signed up for that damn text message, I said to myself, I would already know this. But the
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Obama VP 3 AM Text Message Trails Networks
CNN reporter on the screen must have been reading my mind, declaring that the text messages the
Obama campaign had promised to send to their supporters and donors had not gone out yet. It
seemed the publicity gimmick touted by the campaign the last few weeks had worked a little too well,
with news crews and well wishers staking out the homes of those candidates who were on Obama's
vice presidential short list last night. The loose lips from an insider ultimately leaked the information,
just hours before the massive wave of text messages were set to be sent.
Then again, if I'd signed up, I could have already received fake Obama text announcements touting
Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Tim Kaine, and even Michael Phelps - how
could I be sure which announcement was real?
I don't know if there was any irony intended, but the REAL text messages, the ones naming Joseph
Biden as Obama's vice presidential pick, went out to supporters and donors around 3 am, shortly after
the announcement was posted on the website. I imagined thousands of cellphones across the country
buzzing, blinking or vibrating in the middle of the night.
What did this long awaited text message say?
Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nomi-

nee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET
on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!
— Obama campaign text message to supporters.
The Punditocracy Goes To Denver

“We as a nation are television watchers. Not only do we learn about politics
by watching television, but we are television watchers; who we are as hu-
mans is in part defined by the attention that we pay to the television.”
Roderick Hart
I thought the Olympics were over yesterday, until S. said that the closing ceremonies hadn't happened
yet. Now if I’d been watching the endless coverage of the Games being broadcast from China, I would
know this, a fact I am often rudely reminded of by those who ask me “did you see_________ break
that record last night?”
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The Punditocracy Goes To Denver
If I'm not careful, I might find myself on the Terrorist Watch List, because not watching television, it
seems, is un-American.
This week, as the Democratic Convention gets under way in Denver, we will be seeing the most fa-
mous political talkmeisters in rare form, fanning any bit of innuendo, any speck of allusion, any iota of
insinuation into make-believe controversies in a way that only a bona fide member of the punditocracy
can.
Grown men and women will be arguing over the meaning of upward tilt of Barack Obama's head when
he is listening. They will attempt to interpret the nuances in the intonation Hillary Clinton uses when
she gives her speech on Tuesday night. And when there is no news - when nothing of any real con-
sequence is happening - they will dig up one of their favorite images from the campaign trail, like Rev.
Wright, or Hillary Clinton's tears in Iowa.
Media scholar John McManus has found that there are four general rules of broadcasting that serve
as the modus operandi of the chattering class.
Seek images over ideas.
Seek emotion over analysis.
Exaggerate if needed, to add appeal.
Avoid extensive news gathering.
I grew up on the AP style of reporting – the kind where television news reporters strove mightily to
avoid using any adjectives, adverbs, or verbs that projected an opinion. Even the political pundits,
who were few and far between back when there were only three major television networks, seemed
to choose their words with care as they critiqued Congress or the president. So I'll be doing some
"Punditocracy Special Reports" this week to peer a little deeper into the "four rules of broadcasting"
concept.
We've already established that I am a reluctant TV watcher. So when I make time to do it, like I did
earlier this year during the primary season, I am often left shaking my head. It’s hard to believe that
these political pundits can even begin to shape their mouths around some of the ridiculous things that
they say.
I guess I'll be shaking my head a lot this week.
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I Already Know Michelle Obama
If you live with a black woman who is a lawyer, like I do, you already know Michelle Obama.
You know, when you see her turned out in a perfectly fitted business suit, or a tailored dress, that this
woman doesn't really need a stylist - she has been styling herself for years, and has become an expert
on how to project power, exude expertise, and look like she belongs at the executive level.
You know, when you see her children, that they are more familiar with polysyllabic words than most
adult Americans. That they understand how to look a person in the eye when they shake their hand.
That they know the purpose of being courteous, and truly understand the value of an education.
You know, when you look at the things she has accomplished in her career, that she is capable of
doing long range planning and short term problem solving with one arm tied behind her back. That
she has negotiated big business deals, and nurtured small ones. That the people she has worked
with have always trusted her judgment.
You know, when you see her mother, that behind all of the degrees and the polish and the panache
is a woman who has been trained to live by the Golden Rule. Who has always understood the impor-
tance of family. Who has always believed in God.
You know, because she is a consummate professional, that just because you see her smiling, it doesn’t
always mean everything is okay – but it does mean that if something is amiss, she is willing to put
every ounce of her style, her intellect, her experience, and her faith to work to rectify the problem.
When you know these things, like I do, because I see them everyday, I know instinctively what Barack
Obama does - that despite all the conjecture from the punditocracy, Michelle Obama is going to do
just fine tonight when she steps on that stage in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.
Brownskinned People Won't Tarnish Presidency

I was underwhelmed by the speakers leading up to the speech by Michelle Obama earlier tonight, so
I went upstairs to tool around the internet for a minute. After about fifteen minutes of web surfing, I
was about to get up from my chair when I saw the words "Obama assasination plot" on the screen. I
figured it was one of the ones from the spring, but when I pulled up Google to see what was going on,
I froze - the time stamp on the first article said "38 minutes ago".
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Brownskinned People Won't Tarnish Presidency
By the time I had gathered enough information - namely, that Obama had not been in any immediate
danger, and the two three men had been arrested - I went back to the basement, where Michelle
Obama had already launched into her opening night speech. Her delivery was superb, the imagery
crisp, the language simple but powerful, the narrative that we are all at least a little familiar with rewo-
ven into an even more compelling story about her life than the ones I'd already heard. Why the pun-
ditocracy would have expected anything less, I said to myself, as they tepidly praised her effort, was
beyond me.
Maybe it was the fact that I had had one foot anchored in reality by the news update I'd read that kept
me from accepting a lot of the reasons the CNN pundits were giving for the extraordinary length the
Obama family seemed to be going to in order to show America that they were "alright". That they could
be "comfortable" with them. That this highly choreographed forty five minute extravaganza had been
put together for the sole purpose of "reassuring" mainstream America that these brownskinned people
wouldn't tarnish the office of the presidency.
Why, I asked S., didn't one of the brighter pundits like Jeff Toobin look squarely into the camera and
simply tell the American public who were watching that black people who live the type of high profile
lives like the Obamas are experts at explaining who they are to white Americans because they've
been doing it all their lives?
Why couldn't one of them have played devil's advocate and asked the real question - what is wrong
with our nation when people who otherwise have good sense are uneasy at the thought of members
of the "Well Scrubbed Negro Club" holding positions of power and influence in our government?
I was bewildered when Obama appeared on a large TV monitor over the stage when Michelle got
through with her speech - what was he doing in the living room of this nondescript family in St. Louis,
Missouri? Were they the winners of one of the those fundraising contests at barackobama.com ? But
then the Google search I'd done earlier came back to me, and I was kind of glad - actually, I was
thankful that Barack had not been in Denver.
If this post doesn't make a lot of sense, it is because I am still flustered over the idea that high powered
rifles could have been trained on Obama Thursday night by the two three men in custody. And I'm
pretty damn upset about the thought that these people will probably not be the last to try.
But the worst thing about the evening, the thing that gets me hotter than anything else, is the fact that
even though the Obamas are just like any other successful American family, its the color of their skin
that makes all the difference, a darker tint that is the cause of all the anxiety and unrest, as if the color
of a car makes it run faster, or drive differently, or break down more often.
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"Uncertain" - Word Of The Day
“Uncertainty” is one of those things that ranks right up there with breathing as a constant in modern
life. There are so many things you don't know, so many things you can't predict. For me, it is the
pointed use of words like this by the nation's punditocracy to describe the mood of mainstream America
about the candidacy of Barack Obama that exposes the fallacy of the country's moral supremacy.
This is the same word, uncertainty - this not having sure knowledge - that predicates the conditions
upon which wars are waged, especially when little or no effort is made to analyze the facts of a dispute
in a search for the truth.
Foreign terrorists do not pose a fraction of the risks to our society that our own home grown ones do.
And yet we will demonize entire nations of people we are uncertain about, even as we allow our own
citizen terrorists to wreak havoc on an American native son.
These are the enemies America should be routing out with a vengeance; these are the people we
should be unfurling wrath of biblical proportions against; that we should have an unrelenting fervor to
forever eradicate from the face of the earth.
Turbans do not strike fear in my heart - I am most afraid of those among us whose minds are tur-
banned, whose fanatical, traitorous hearts dare to surge with rage against me - because if a man who
calls himself my countryman is willing to plot to kill Barack Obama because of the color of his skin,
then he is willing to kill me.
To willing accept this type of ignorance among us, to turn a blind eye to this scourge, is worse than if
you join hands with these homegrown terrorists, more abominable than if you financed the purchase
of their assualt rifles, more repulsive than if you helped them lay out their plan of attack. It is this
studied silence in the presence of these stateside fanatics that erodes the trust between races here
in America, a silence so loud that I can feel it throbbing in my eardrums as I even as I write these
words.
Of this, I am certain.
The Punditocracy - Keeping You Uninformed

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Benjamin Sparrow, in his book Uncertain Guardians, cites industry research reports when he states
in his book, "the people who create the public images of elected officials, those to be elected, and
high ranking appointees know each other.
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The Punditocracy - Keeping You Uninformed
‘They believe in polls. They believe in television. They believe in talk, they
believe most profoundly in talk television. They believe in irony. They be-
lieve that nothing a politician does in public can be taken at face value,
but that everything he does is a metaphor for something he is hiding.’"
Benjamin Sparrow
One of the things I've noticed, after spending the last two evenings watching Michelle Obama and
Hillary Clinton speak, is a wide disconnect between what I see and what some of the punditocracy
write the next day. Granted, many of them are there in the flesh, but with the magic of the internet
streaming and the army of bloggers in attendance, I am able to see a lot more than the heavily edited
product the news networks put on the screen. And what I see, in many cases, doesn't jibe with what
they are telling me.
The thing that seems to get weighted too heavily in these speeches is their appeal to the press. Mrs.
Obama hit all her notes on cue, like she does everyday as a successful Harvard trained lawyer. Many
of the elements of her speech catered directly to the pundits who would be dissecting the text of her
speech the moment she left the stage. Mrs. Clinton, a wily veteran of the political oratory, showed she
knew her way around a microphone, with an array of quotable sound bites built right into her delivery,
giving extra emphasis to the key phrases to make sure the punditocracy picked on them immediately.
To me, the "no way, no how, no McCain" soundbite ready phrase Clinton started off with was as explicit
as she could get without personally threatening the small but vocal subset of her followers who are
threatening to changing ideological horses in midstream. It was the kind of statement a person says
when they are not interested in having a debate; when they are not interested in hearing your side of
the story.
Hilary Rosen, a CNN correspondent who seemed to be very impressed with Clinton's speech, believed
Hilary was "calling out" the bitterest of her supporters who were still not interested in getting behind
Obama. "Basically," Rosen said, "Hillary was telling these women, 'I am not your therapist. So get
over it, because I'm ready to move on, and we've got work to do.'" Rosen was one of the few pundits
who was unequivocally positive about Clinton's address.
This tendency of the punditocracy to be supercritical of the politicians they examine is best explained
by an anonymous pundit. "You can be wrong as long as you're skeptical. But if you're going to say
something remotely positive, you'd better be 150% right, or you're going to be accused of rolling over."
So if you are listening to the commentators on CNN or Fox or MSNBC this morning, take what they
are saying with a grain of salt - the things they are focusing on, those things that were not said, those
signals that were not given, that body language that didn't telegraph the right message, are a lot like
the things FAA inspectors look at when they inspect a plane crash. But Clinton didn't crash last night.
She glided her campaign in for a three point landing, the way veteran pilots do.
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The O-Man Cometh
This entire week at the Democratic National Convention - the pomp and circumstance, the parties,
the rousing speeches - has all been staged for one purpose: to introduce Barack Obama to the citi-
zens of this country as the party's candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. The
drama has unfolded night after night, bringing the convention to its culminating moment tonight
when Obama will accept his party's nomination. Obama, who has been a daily presence on televi-
sion for months, has been out of sight these last few days, appearing only briefly last night to con-
gratulate Joe Biden on his acceptance speech.
"This is the moment", a common refrain that is a hallmark of Obama's campaign speeches, a
phrase that his faithful followers have heard so many times during the primary season, will resonate
in the hearts and minds of the 75,000 people who will pack the Invesco Field this evening in Den-
ver. Tonight, Barack Obama is expected to emerge with his metaphorical cape on, transformed from
presidential hopeful to the Democratic Party's standard bearer.
I think he's had it on all along - a cape knit from the work and the energy of the hundreds of thou-
sands of people who scour the malls and the intersections and the community centers across the
country every week, searching out and registering new voters even as the delegates and super del-
egates celebrate this week in Denver. From having the ability to attract and develop the kind of
brain trust he has had running his campaign, to having the stamina required to keep up a herculean
appearance schedule, to demonstrating the intestinal fortitude necessary to weather the immense
challenges posed by his opponents, the "O-Man" has shown us how to tap into our own super pow-
ers to help him to get to the White House.
No phone booth required.
The Kids Can Stay Up Tonight

My mother was a school teacher for thirty eight years. Back when I was young, I watched her grade
papers at the kitchen table. Call parents at home after dinner. Fill out lesson plans for the week ahead.
Inevitably, there were stories about her students.
"I've got kids in my class - fourth grade, mind you - these kids are telling their classmates the jokes
they heard on Jay Leno. Can you believe that? What is a fourth grader doing up that late?"
In a small Southern town, where a significant number of the school aged children attended private
schools, the majority of her students were African American. There was nothing that would exasperate
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The Kids Can Stay Up Tonight
my mother more than having a child in her classroom who was hungry to learn who didn't have the
support of at least one parent at home to help them master the basics that would be the foundation
of their education.
"I don't see how the child can learn - whenever I call the house it sounds like a party is going on over
there."
The fourth grade was just about the point where kids started making up their mind about how they
wanted the world to see them. It was the point where the sneakers tapping the floor beneath the desks
got more expensive, where the jeans hugging prepubescent legs and hips began to sport designer
labels.
"This boy sitting up in my classroom has a neck full of gold chains, and he's eating free lunch? What
kind of sense does that make?"
My mother was from the old school. She wore suits and carried a briefcase to work everyday, because
she meant business when she got in the classroom. She watched children who were still wet behind
the ears rush to imitate the antics of the teenagers and young adults and people they saw on TV -
staying up late, hanging out on the corner, talking trash like a sailor - activities which sacrificed a lot
of the time they could have used to reinforce the lessons they'd learned that day, instead of trying to
grow up too fast.
One of the unintended consequences of Barack Obama's campaign has been the gargantuan amount
of attention the press and the networks have given to telling and retelling his story. Even in a world
that lives in the limitless connectivity of the internet age, our central daily narratives are still driven by
big media. But big media doesn't have an unlimited amount of bandwidth - they have to be selective
about what they choose to emphasize in their coverage.
Guess what? The preponderance of news about Obama's historic campaign has crowded out many
of the lesser stories about African Americans that used to fill the airwaves. If Obama is the lead story,
it seems to leave less room for the 9,999th story on the crack dens in the ghetto.
If there ever was a night for kids to emulate what they see on television, this is it. Tonight's talk show
host will be Barack Obama. He won't be as funny as Leno, or as self-deprecating as Letterman. He
won't be as fiery as King was forty five years ago.
But he will be inspirational, that you can count on. So whether your child wears Air Force Ones or
Chuck Taylors, flip flops or Birkenstocks, whether they normally gather around the kitchen table, the
stoop out front, or the video game console, gather them around the TV tonight to watch Barack
Obama's acceptance speech.
Then click your remote until you find a channel that shows convention coverage, and put it away.
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No More Rope-A-Dope For Barack Obama
I sat in the basement Thursday night, the remote control in my lap, fidgeting as I watched the cable
news pundits interrupt the speakers at the Democratic National Convention to tell us the same things
they had been telling us all week. Even though the contests had been over for weeks, it was as if it
was a primary night, with me waiting for Barack Obama’s results to come in.
I’d seen the stock photos of Invesco Field in Denver for the past few weeks. Had heard all the talk,
both for and against the idea of Obama using such a massive setting to give his acceptance speech.
But it wasn’t until I turned on the TV when I got home and saw all the people milling around the field
that I began to get a true sense of the enormity of the space.
I couldn’t sit still. It was nowhere near ten o’clock.
So I pushed the RECORD button. Put on some jeans and my Obama ’08 shirt. Clicked aimlessly on
a few internet sites. Sharpened my hedge clippers. Opened a beer. Finally, I went outside with a Per-
domo maduro, clipped the end of it, and fired up my triple flame torch.
Odd images from the primary season came back to me as I puffed – the mole at the base of Obama’s
left nostril that seemed to grow larger whenever he stared at the camera, the heightened pitch of his
voice whenever he came to the “this is the moment, this is the time” part of his stump speech, the
strained smile he was always able to muster when congratulating his opponent on a victory – these
were some of the many things I had come to know about Barack Obama over the last eight months.
He wouldn’t be pacing right now, I said to myself. He will be practicing the delivery of this speech the
way Tiger Woods works on his putting before the final round of a golf tournament, reeling off the
phrases of his big speech the way Tiger’s practice putts roll, one after another, straight into the cup.
After that thought, the last half of the cigar is enjoyable. I begin to think of my more politically aware
buddies – one in Chattanooga, and one who lives two miles away. My buddy in Chattanooga is the
kind of political junkie who is apt to answer his phone “I’m in the stadium! Did you see me? I’m four
rows behind the Clintons.” But today he is in Tennessee. There is so much to say, we could talk for
hours, but tonight…tonight is for listening. We will catch up later.
My buddy here answered his home phone on the first ring. “Yo, man,” he said, a greeting that was out
of character for him. “R. says it must be you calling.” I’d known him since the first day of college, twenty
five years ago. We had contemplated going to the Million Man March together. Watched the verdict
of the O.J. trial being read together. Become exasperated over the “hanging chads” together. Com-
miserated over the September 11th tragedies together.
“What are you doing? Eisenhower’s daughter is on now.”
“Finishing a cigar.”
“Maybe I’ll come over later and smoke one with you. After the speech.”
When Barack Obama stepped out onto the stage, you could feel the tension in the air release all the
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way from Denver. Maybe it was the makeup, maybe it was the sleep he was finally getting, maybe it
was the knowledge that he was finally in there – whatever it was, it was making him look like new
money. His eyes were different, with a harder edged glint in them, exuding an aggressive confidence
that almost matched the feeling I had in my chest.
The rope-a-dope was over.
There was no woodenness, no air of detachment, no non-threatening penitence – this was the genuine
article, the electric half of the Obama personality he had been keeping under wraps this last eighteen
months.
I felt the same way my father and his friends must have felt when they were watching Muhammad Ali
fight – like they were watching themselves.
I became the most active listener in the history of listening for the next 45 minutes, listening with my
ears, with my eyes, with the tips of my fingers, with the tips of my toes – if there was an Olympic gold
medal for active listening, I would have been a contender.
Transform is not a big enough word for what we all saw last night – “transmogrified” is a more accurate
way to describe the metamorphosis from the vague, idealistic version of Barack Obama into a forceful,
insistent proponent of his message of change.
My buddy showed up after the speech, a fresh batch of cigars in hand. We clasped each other, the
way Obama clasped Biden after the speech, and just looked each other in the eye, the word “unbe-
lievable” written all over our faces.
We sat just outside the basement, watching the Republican response to Barack Obama’s acceptance
speech on the big screen through the French doors. “What do you think the Republicans are gonna
do now?” he said.
“There’s nothing left,” I said. “Rev. Wright, the flag pin, the muslim thing…you know they’re looking,
but what else could there be to find?”
The talk of politics gave way to a moment of personal introspection. “Obama has done all this…he’s
done all this, from state senate to D.C. to the White House in four years,” my buddy said. “When you
think about it, you have to ask yourself – what am I doing?”
My buddy can be considered a success by almost any measure. He has accomplished a lot in his
legal career, with a burgeoning practice and a great family. But now, with the advent of this new height
that has been reached in our society by a man only four years older than him, a man who shares his
same brown skin, it looks like my buddy is about to raise the bar for himself another couple of notches.
I have been silent as my buddy mused, for I am wrestling with transitioning from one industry to an-
other, a process which causes you to have to think more critically about the choices you’ve made, the
mistakes you’ve made, the opportunities you’ve turned away. But I am not despairing, because I have
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made a commitment to raise my own bar a few notches, to look up, not down, and to more fully em-
brace the new direction my life is about to take.
I would imagine that similar scenes played out in backyards and patios and decks and driveways and
stoops around the country, other brown skinned men from all walks of life who saw a little bit of them-
selves in the fiery oratory of Barack Obama.
A rising tide, they say, lifts all boats.
The Talk That Really Matters

S. used to take issue with the tone of my speaking voice. “You always sound so certain, even when
you’re wrong.”
“That’s how I grew up. Why wouldn’t you want to sound sure of yourself?”
Kitchen table debates and Sunday morning showdowns were the routine when I grew up. Our small
town paper was, to put it mildly, a little light in the news sections, so my father subscribed to the state
newspaper as well, turning our kitchen table into a news archive when we weren’t eating at it.
If you supported a particular position, you stated your case. If you disagreed with something someone
else was saying, you refuted them with the best argument you could muster.
Sounding unsure was the quickest way for everyone to lose interest in what you were saying.
Which is why when I listen to the punditocracy on television, I filter out the authoritative tones and the
aggressive postures.
The reality in our country is that our political narratives are largely driven by a few hundred people,
most of whom have never been elected to anything since high school.
The faces we see on TV are a distillation of these elite who inhabit the media and government bu-
reaucracy.
John McCain upset the applecart with his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. He did an end
run around the normal channels through which information flows in the political arena, bypassing many
of the mechanisms by which the shapers of our national political landscape keep tabs on upcoming
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The Talk That Really Matters
developments, allowing them to mute or exaggerate their importance.
This weekend, your TV screen will be filled with the petulant sneers of those who feel betrayed by this
surprise vice-presidential pick, and those who will take this opportunity to forecast doom and gloom
for Obama/Biden, all of them trying to get a new handle on how they think this will affect the presidential
race in the coming weeks.
For the next few days, every time you see one of those familiar faces look firmly into the television
camera, every time you hear one of those familiar voices start to explain in an authoritative manner
why their opinion should be the only one that counts, remember that there will be hundreds of thou-
sands of men and women around the country this Labor Day weekend, many of them in Obama ‘08
t-shirts, looking firmly into the faces of the public, telling them in an authoritative manner very similar
to these television talkmeisters why they should be registered to vote.
This is the talking that will really matter.
Critical Thinking Is The New Black

Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so
few engage in it.
--- Henry Ford
The firestorm that has erupted on the airwaves since John McCain chose Governor Sarah Palin as
his running mate has members of the punditocracy spitting fire. I've never been a big fan of television
commentators, especially political ones, but this latest wave of hysteria that is currently filling practically
every news channel has pushed my distaste to full blown disgust.
Critical thinking seems to be in short supply these days.
Have we become so fragmented in our thinking that we have forgotten that we can only put new in-
formation into the proper context if we are constantly reevaluating the big picture we are trying to fit it
into at the same time?
In spite of all the titillating new information that has hit the internet about Sarah Palin the last few days,
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Critical Thinking Is The New Black
in spite of all the adulation that Barack Obama's acceptance speech garnered, in spite of all the im-
portance put on signals from Hillary Clinton to her die hard supporters , or pronouncements from Bill
Clinton about the nominees "readiness", there is only one thing that will determine who the next pres-
ident of the United States is - voter turnout.
The reactionary style of thinking practiced by today's punditocracy is as outdated as the rayon shirts
we wore back in the 70's, as funny sounding as the shirts were funny looking.
One of the things that some people have had a hard time accepting about Obama is the way he seems
to have risen almost effortlessly from community organizer to presidential nominee. His ability to
achieve a certain clarity - that is, his ability to look through the exteriors, the camouflage, and the
smokescreens allows him to focus on the actionable juncture in a given situation. Combine this with
an affinity for thinking both globally and locally simultaneously, and a lot of the distractions we as
Americans tend to agonize over don't seem to clutter his mind, or the minds of his key staffers.
For all the talk about issues, even from those who are students of the science of politics, there still re-
mains an awful lot of Americans who make their political decisions based on how they feel about the
candidate. And they often gauge their candidate's chances of winning on how many ads they run, or
how photogenic they are. But in the end, it all comes down to the numbers - how many voters turn out
in each state, and how many of these states each candidate garners.
Registering more voters, according to the Obama campaign strategists, enlarges this electorate, in-
creasing Obama's ability to run a competitive race despite the challenges his candidacy presents. So
what was the Obama campaign doing this Labor Day weekend, insted of slamming John McCain's
selection of Sarah Palin, or stoking the fire underneath the Palin family's domestic drama? They were
conducting the biggest voter registration drive in the history of modern politics.
Critical thinking, it seems, will be the new black this fall.
Deal Or No Deal, John McCain

Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Survivor.
The Nanny.
Intervention.
The Flavor Of Love.

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Deal Or No Deal, John McCain
Cheaters.
And now, to join them, we have a brand new reality show, The Nominee’s Dilemma, starring that bad
boy of the Republican Party, John McCain, as he struggles with the biggest decision of his political
life – to either dump his running mate for someone who looks better, like he did to his first wife, or
hang in there, like a good soldier, the way he did in Vietnam, to be tortured day and night for the next
sixteen hundred hours, every hour on the hour, by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
This unbelievable, over the top, “couldn’t have written anything this good if you tried” drama behind
the selection of little known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has mesmerized the nation for the last few
days. If McCain were Donald Trump, the know-it-all billionaire real estate guru (unless Trump is filing
for bankruptcy protection again this week) host of The Apprentice, he would have fired Sarah Palin by
now, after having his blunt spoken, blonde haired assistant, Cindy McCain, break down how Palin's
weaknesses and her liabilities are a detriment to the organization.
This urge that compels us to watch the Palin family’s lives unravel before our eyes is the same thing
that motivates us to watch these reality shows, programs with central conflicts that are exaggerated
and manipulated in order to appeal to our baser instincts.
Like it or not, John McCain, The Ultimate Fighter, has found himself in the middle of The Surreal Life,
wishing his newly named running mate had received a visit from Supernanny. We now know one thing
for certain - McCain had no Fear Factor , was not scared by the unknown facts or unvetted scandals
when he chose The Weakest Link to be on the Republican ticket.
Do we enjoy seeing other people being humiliated that much? Do I really have to even answer that
as I turn off my – damn, they were doing WHAT? By this time next week, Sarah Palin may be wishing
she had The Simple Life. I truly believe her husband and her future son-in-law will be ready to tear off
those blue suits they look so uncomfortable in and build themselves an American Chopper.
Deal Or No Deal, John McCain.
Deal Or No Deal.
Elephant In The Room Last Night Not GOP Mascot

Thursday, September 04, 2008
Rudy Giuliani spoke so long I dozed off before he finished his speech. By the time I woke up, Sarah
Palin’s family was on stage. Luckily, I had my trusty “REWIND” button, but since I didn’t record the
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action at Wednesday night’s Republican National Convention, it only went back about two thirds of
the way into Sarah Palin’s address.
The camera had stopped at Bristol Palin, the unmarried pregnant teenage daughter of the woman
speaking on stage. Was that an elephant in the Xcel Center that I heard rustling around? Or was it
the awkward, stilted cone of moral exemption that had descended around the teenaged Palin’s preg-
nancy?
Sarah Palin looked good, with the kind of well defined cheekbones and clear skin that were made for
high definition television. Her delivery wasn’t as energetic as the Sarah Palin I’d seen on clips from
past engagements, but it was more than adequate when contrasted with the rest of the speaking slate
last night. Most of all, she looked more comfortable the longer she talked, her eyes beginning to flash
as she started tearing away at Barack Obama.
The thing that lingered on my mind, though, wasn’t Palin’s voice, but a picture I’d seen earlier on an-
other website. Two teenaged looking girls, one white, one black, , both slender, clear eyed, and sim-
ilarly outfitted, were shown side by side, both of them in despair as their at-home pregnancy tests
displayed positive results.
The adjectives that were superimposed over the white girl’s image – family values, commitment, re-
sponsibility, strength, honor - were some of the same ones used this week to describe Bristol Palin,
the pregnant 17 year old daughter of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
The adjectives superimposed over the black girl’s image - lack of values, lack of responsibility, urban
blight, dysfunctional, immoral – were the kind of litany Bill O’Reilly normally spouted whenever he
went on a tirade about the teen pregnancies of anyone besides the governor of Alaska’s daughter.
I pushed the “LIVE” button and S. and I watched the recap by the old faithful at CNN. I flipped to Leno
on NBC when the roll call vote began – the only real reason we were up this late was to see Larry
King Live.
Leno's observation, repeated several times, that the audience was practically all white, was something
the mainstream news media was studiously trying to avoid mentioning. “The reason why Governor
Palin looked so comfortable on stage was, when she stood behind the podium and looked out where
the audience was supposed to be was because it was all white - she thought she was back in the
snow in Alaska.”
Leno deftly used another comedy bit to illustrate why this image looked so yesteryear when he flashed
the picture of GOP entertainment from the old days. But that didn’t have my attention as much as the
elephant in the room did. I could hear this metaphorical beast rustling around, could feel her ponderous
bulk as she kneeled down.
When Leno’s jokes petered out, I flipped back to CNN, where they were just getting Larry King’s show
on the air. As we sat there, watching the people on the Larry King panel make comments, I turned to
S. "I just put my finger on what Palin’s speech reminded me of. It was the student council conventions
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I used to go too. We knew the text, we sounded enthusiastic, but the speeches themselves sounded
like we were saying someone else's words."
The women on the Larry King panel – all white, all middle-aged, all Democratic Party supporters –
had quite a bit of fire in their eyes. But to a woman, they all stayed well clear of Bristol Palin, circling
their wagons around the stance Sarah Palin took on the issues instead.
Sarah Palin, it appears, doesn’t seem like she's going to be a real problem for Obama. Until McCain
picked Palin, a lot of his party faithful were on the fence about him. So far, she is basically shoring up
his support among the people he was supposed to already have, with limited avenues to appeal to
anyone who does not share her views. For all the hoopla over Palin, both parties are still wrestling
over who will get a bigger percentage of the sliver of undecided voters and those voters who are apt
to change their minds. Registering new voters may be more labor intensive and and sound less ex-
citing than the latest soundbite, but in November, its the number of fingers pushing those buttons that
will count the most
All this time I was thinking this, though, that damn imaginary elephant was still bothering me. Maybe,
I said to myself, this is a trained elephant. Maybe trained elephants know how to take up less room.
Maybe they have mastered the art of being light on their feet. And maybe they have a special place
on their trunk that you rub to make them kneel down behind you before you give your mother’s new
boss a hug.
Maybe that’s what young, black, unmarried teenaged mothers need, I mused to myself – their own
elephant trainers.
They Can't Kill All The Indians This Time

Friday, September 05, 2008
"We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach
but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach."
Bertrand Russell
I watched Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin come on stage Wednesday night like a couple of cowpokes
from the Wild Wild West with their six shooters drawn. After listening to the two of them, it appears
that the easiest way for us to "circle our wagons" to save America from the bad guys would be to evac-
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They Can't Kill All The Indians This Time
uate the nation from top to bottom - then allow only right thinking, completely certifiable Anglo-Saxons
back in.
When "us" versus "them" is your theme song - the righteous versus the damned, the right to lifers ver-
sus the baby killers, the evolutionists versus the creationists, "pure hearted" America against the "evil
doers" - you should not surprised when your supporters boil these images down to their most simplistic
form, the way you've taught them to do in every other situation.
I guess that makes the rest of us as relevant as the Indians used to be when the America decided to
tame the West. We're just a bunch of peace pipe smokers who don't have any guns, taking up space
on valuable land that should be developed, speaking a language that is incomprehensible to those
whose native tongue is Gasolinia - "drill baby drill!"
Take Christianity, for instance. Who was that guy back in Galilee, way back when, who went from
house to house, from corner to corner, ready to help those in need? Jesus Christ himself, it seems,
was one of those lousy"community organizer" types.
A self designated American patriot who only sees the world in red, white and white while driving an
Expedition, a Suburban, an Excursion, a Hummer, or any other big ass SUV slash school bus is as
patriotic as the reverend who spends money from his parishioners at the strip club is religious.
Now if you're reading this, and your politics leans to the left, before you go getting on your high horse
about the minuscule size of your carbon footprint, you need to remember that righteousness, that
good old salve for the prickled consciences on both the left and the right, has never won an election,
even when married to the best of intentions.
For those of you who have been thinking critically, you can see beyond the rhetoric that Palin has
been pushing the last...well, the last thirty six hours...and think about where the locus of power really
resides in political arenas. Is it the person who can write a check to a campaign for $4600? Is it the
person who can write a check for $4600 to a campaign AND $28,500 to the party?
Or is it the person who is a center of influence in his community, whose judgment and advice is trusted
because his or her community sees it in action everyday? Community organizers are one of the cor-
nerstones of the Obama campaign, helping to keep costs down and enthusiasm up as they attempt
to pull off the most massive voter registration drive in the history of this country.
There are not enough big donors out there to fund this kind of gargantuan registration effort if you had
to do it with paid staff, which is why people who believe, the same armies of people in every single
state in the union who are working for the Obama campaign for little or nothing, are so powerful.
With the help of their tireless efforts, the expanded electorate McCain/Palin will face in November
pose an extremely tough challenge to the Republican ticket in states like Missouri, Florida, New Mexico
and Colorado. It could even make it a horse race for our electoral votes here in good ole Georgia, as
well as North Carolina and Virginia.
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At some point this October, the campaign ads will reach a point of saturation. The colorful mailers will
get thrown out before the mail hits the counter. And even though there is nothing so sweet as the
sound of a robo call to bond a voter with his candidate, voters will inexplicably stop listening to them.
The “code of the west” was romantic, but John Wayne is dead, there is no more cavalry, and they
can't kill all the Indians this time.
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FOR ALL THE MARBLES
This was it.
For the next eight weeks, the presidential election campaign would captivate the nation in a way that
we had never seen before.
During the homestretch I became more committed to following the ins and outs of a presidential cam-
paign season than I ever had in my life. I was watching the cable news shows every night for campaign
trail updates, scanning newspapers every morning for new background information, and trolling the
internet for the choice tidbits that had not been fact checked or scrutinized owned almost all of my
time.
My nerves were raw. I didn’t sleep much.
The racial overtones that had always been present in the race became more prominent in the media
as the Democrats and Republicans began to duke it out down this stretch. There were times when
all the TV networks seemed to go overboard, often elevating minor actions by the political fringes of
both parties onto center stage night after night.
The titles of some of posts that I decided not to publish during that time, ones like “Uppity Crackers
Forget Their Place”, reflected my own rising sense of frustration with the way the news media who
shaped how most of us across America looked at each other were still playing the same old game,
their anonymous news directors and on-air personalities alike seemingly retreating before my very
eyes to defend the status quo against this unknown challenger whose skin was black.
The conundrum of modern politics - the black candidate could not pander to black voters, the white
candidate could not pander to white voters, but they could each go overboard when reaching outside
of their own group – seemed to put the Obama campaign in a racial strait jacket. The harder they
pulled to get out of it, the tighter it got.
I myself began demonizing white Americans in retaliation, writing with a bitterness and zeal that many
other black bloggers who wrote about politics shared. It took awhile for me to recognize that I and my
fellow bloggers had become the enemy we claimed we despised.
We were ignoring one of the core realities of the Obama phenomenon – in particular, the reality that
the people who had organized for months to carry Obama to victory in Iowa were almost all white,
that the people who were running his campaign even as we wrote were mostly white, that the massive
amount of cash that powered his candidacy came mostly from white people. Without a large number
of white hands pushing the button for Obama, there was no way he could claim the White House.
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Palindromic Free Verse - "I Love Me, vol.1"
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Since Sarah Palin appears to be allergic to any microphone not affixed to a podium, I guess we will
have to start speaking for her. With the help of Jim Kalb's Palindrome Connection and Thinks.com, I
was able to select some prewritten palindromic phrases and organize a simple stump speech for her
to deliver when she finds herself out in the hinterlands without John McCain at her side.
I Love Me, vol. I

[in palindromic pentameter]
Top spot.
Guns 'n' robes, a base born snug.
We freer few.
Red now on level - no wonder.
Draw, O Caesar, erase a coward.
Stratagem: megatarts.
Tug at a gut.
Kayak salad, Alaska yak.
Elk cackle.
I saw I was I.
Reviver.
Deified.
Aha!
Is sensuousness I?
Beware era web!
Harass sensuousness, Sarah?
No, it is opposition.
Oh, cameras are macho.
Live on, Time; emit no evil.
I did, did I?
Dammit, I'm mad.

May a moody baby doom a yam?
Oh who was it I saw, oh who?
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Name now one man

Star comedy by Democrats.
O tarts! A castrato!
Yo! Bozo boy!
Draw, O coward!
Ten animals I slam in a net.
I saw I was I.
Reviver.
Deified.
A mama.
Live on evasions? No, I save no evil.

Harass selfless Sarah!
Dump mud!
Sex-aware era waxes.
Draw a slot, sir, Bristol's a ward.
Tug at a gut.
Oh, cameras are macho.
I've let a name emanate: Levi.
I saw I was I.
Deified.
Reviver.
Was it felt? I had a hit left, I saw

Dr. Awkward.
Title fit--I felt it!
Resume so pacific a pose, muser.
He lived as a devil, eh?
Puff in, sniff up!
A six is a six is a six is a six is a...
Ergo — ogre!
I saw I was I.
Deified.
Redivider.
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Did I do, O God, did I as I said I'd do? Good, I

did!
Revered now I live on. O did I do no evil, I won-
der ever?
I saw I was I.
Redivider.
Reviver.
Top spot.
Guns 'n' robes, a base born snug.
Kayak salad, Alaska yak.
I did, did I?
I saw I was I.
Reviver.
Deified.
Redivider.
As much fun as this was for this old English major to put together, there is still much work to be done
- MILLIONS of eligible voters in this country are not registered to vote. So the only palindrome that re-
ally counts today when it is all said and done is the one below, which is the goal we need to be working
towards in every state:
"Rise to vote, sir.”
Oprah Stands Her Ground

S. and I were in a movie theatre last December, watching The Great Debaters when I was converted
from a passive Obama supporter into a disciple. It wasn’t the movie itself, but the sound of debate
team member Samantha's voice booming out of the speakers as she uttered the kind of protest
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phrases from the thirties and forties that we seemed to still be piddling around with today:
"I say that's a shame, but my opponent says today is not the day for whites
and coloreds to go to the same college. To share the same campus. To
walk into the same classroom.
Well, would you kindly tell me when that day is gonna come? Is it going to
come tomorrow? Is it going to come next week? In a hundred years?
Never?
No, the time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is
always, is always right now!"
My face grew hot, my whole body was aflame, I was feeling a murderous rage overtake me - was the
day it would be okay for a black man to run for president tomorrow? A hundred years? Never? – so I
walked out to the corridor just outside the door to get some water and calm down. This was the same
old shit I was hearing about Barack Obama – seventy years later – when would it ever end?
Back inside, I found my drink and took deep breaths. S. leaned over to me a little later, during a lull in
the action on screen. "This movie," she whispered, "is Oprah’s propaganda for Obama. She’s trying
to get the country used to seeing smart black people."
"What? How could she have known that he was going to run back then?" I said, before I realized I
was talking too loud. Whispering, I continued, "do you know how far in advance they have to plan to
do a movie? They were probably putting this together two or three years ago."
"That might be true," S. said, her eyes glowing with the idea of possibly discovering a subliminal mes-
sage. "But I still think she’s using this movie to try to get the country ready for him. I really do."
I have discovered, over the years, that S. can exhibit an uncanny ability to recognize the hidden mo-
tivations of other women, like my co-workers, even if she’s never met them in the flesh. So maybe
she was right. Maybe Oprah sensed what could be possible for Barack Obama before he did.
In some ways, Oprah and Obama are kindred spirits, with parents who abandoned them, relatives
who raised them, a yearning for an answer to the age old question of identity that saw them veer into
drinking and drugs, he with the funny name, she with unconventional TV looks, both of them success
against improbable odds. Hundreds of millions of dollars later, Winfrey has become larger than life,
her personality and her image suffusing every inch of her tightly controlled empire.
I was impressed back when Oprah went public with her support for Obama's candidacy, knowing full
well what kind of demographics her television empire depends on.
Then the fall campaigning began in earnest, and the McCain strategists came roaring out of the gate
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with a quick left-right-left combination that managed to raise the specter of race, spotlight the scourge
of favoritism, and threaten Winfrey's cash flow at the same time.
I was doubly impressed last week with Oprah's unequivocal "no" to hosting a show introducing Sarah
Palin to her viewers. Winfrey's decision about this alleged request from the McCain/Palin camp has
riled some of thel members of her audience who frequent her online forums. I am sure there are more
than a few McCain/Palin operatives who have registered since Thursday. Whether or not this dissen-
sion extends into the ranks of Oprah’s staffers, as it has been insinuated, cannot be determined.
None of these things really matter.
Winfrey has her own "earmark" program. She doesn’t need a lobbyist to go to Washington to see if
he can “bring home the bacon”. She simply turns to her own bacon factory and hands out a few slabs.
How much bacon? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million dollars worth a year.
Oprah's money has been doled out generously here in Atlanta, with millions donated to Morehouse
College alone. Her sense of decency compelled her years ago to buy a couple of adjoining high rise
condos in Buckhead, Atlanta’s high rent district, combine them into one unit, and make it available to
Coretta Scott King, where King lived until she died.
Most of the women who will rage on the internet for the next few days about how unfair Oprah is,
about how betrayed they feel, will take her back, because there is no where else to go to get the kind
of upscale, no nonsense empathy that her show provides for this particular kind of middle aged
woman. There will be some in the media, who have never really contemplated before the kind of power
a billion dollar net worth can give a black woman, who will be become obsessed with the notion that
Oprah has gotten "too big for her britches". Or as they like to say down here, "uppity".
These are the same people who will automatically smile for the cameras when you say the word "di-
versity". The same people who will tell you that "color doesn't matter". That we are on the brink of a
"post-racial" society.
Until we do something they don't want us to do.
"Diversity", it seems, stops just short of allowing access to the locus of power. The kind of diversity
we rave about today is a purely social act - the large sums of money in this country are still guarded
fiercely, the levers of power still wielded by hands that are almost exclusively white.
The act of asking Oprah Winfrey to put Sarah Palin on her show meant there were at least two possible
outcomes to the the request. If the response McCain's strategists allegedly wanted was one they were
unwilling to accept - i.e., the "wrong answer" - then they weren't really asking a question to begin with.
They were telling her what to do.
The time for real diversity, for real equality, the kind that can accept the decisions that are made when
brown-skinned hands hold the levers of power, is right now.
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"Reckless Reporting" Is The Rage These Days
Could the lips of a metaphorical pig be that important to educational reform? A prerequisite to a bal-
anced budget? Essential to national security? And yet, if I were to turn on my TV, or scroll through
any major newspaper's website, I could get the latest update on whose campaign ad was the smarmi-
est, or whose robocall repeated the biggest lie, or which candidate's attire was the most stylish.
"Reckless reporting" is the rage these days. The headlines of the country's major newspapers are
filled with copy that seems lifted straight from the tabloids you see in the supermarket checkout line.
Sensationalism is the order of the day - no insult is too petty, no passing remark too trite for these
wordsmiths to put down for posterity.
Isn't that what Entertainment Tonight is for? Or The View? Or Good Morning America? Hard news in
this country isn't just hard to come by any more - it's practically non-existent. Am I asking the networks
to "stick to the issues", the way my more pure-hearted brethren insist? Not at all.
What I would like to see is a little more intelligence exhibited when journalists are reporting the news,
instead of feigning naivete, when we all know damn well what levels of depravity and greed flourish
within our government and within our political process. Anything less is unconscionable and juvenile.
But our media barons have built their fortunes on the need for people to believe in a mythical rendition
of good versus evil, desire that can be commodified, personified into White Witches and Black Goblins,
entities we can clearly and easily segregate into their separate camps.
"When actual facts are used in the construction of news fictions, your story
can be accurate, well-edited, within genre conventions, and, at the same
time, deeply un-informational, not to mention wrong. In fact, accurate news
about the race that subtracts from our understanding of it is one of the
quirky features of chronic mindlessness in campaign media."
Jay Rosen - The Beast Without A Brain
From the slivers of information, much of it hastily gathered, that comprise the set of statistics known
as polling data, the punditocracy manages to come up with a hodgepodge of predictions, some ex-
trapolated from patterns, some arrived at by dubious methodologies lacking in basic logic, some con-
jured out of whole cloth, all done in the name of telling the great unwashed what will happen next.
"Voters are bombarded with information about which contender has 'what
it takes' to be the best candidate. Who can deliver the most stirring rheto-
ric? Who can build the most attractive facade? Who can mount the wiliest
counterattack? Whose life makes for the neatest story? Our political and
media culture reflects and drives an obsession with who is going to win,
rather than who should win."
Mark Halperin
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"Reckless Reporting" Is The Rage These Days
The fundamentals in this political race have been wholly ignored by the punditocracy. It doesn't really
matter how many times Sarah Palin tells us "I put the plane on eBay", or how many times Barack
Obama tells us "they think you're stupid." The most important thing that will take place in the next two
months are new voter registrations. This is the only thing will determine the universe of voters the
Obama and McCain camps will be working with as they both battle to attract those voters who are still
undecided or can be easily swayed.
This article in today's Time magazine online edition, “Obama Banks on the Ground Game”, which
came out as I was writing this, explores the fundamentals of an election, something you will rarely
see these days amidst all the drama and angst driven stories about the personalities of the candi-
dates.
EXCERPTS FROM "Obama Banks on the Ground Game":
*****For the next month, the Obama campaign's ground focus is on finish-
ing up the stunning gains in voter registration that it and the Democratic
Party have made. Since January alone more than 3.5 million new voters
have been registered in 17 of the 23 states tracked closely by the Obama
campaign where information is available. Three states — Florida, Michigan
and North Carolina — have seen increases of more than 400,000 new vot-
ers, and 10 more states have recorded new registrations of more than
100,000. Though these numbers include registrants to all parties, in 14 of
the states at least half of the new voters are under 35, a key demographic
for Obama.*****
*****There are an estimated 8 million Obama campaign volunteers who

will be knocking on doors in their neighborhoods in the coming weeks.*****
*****The Obama campaign "has enthusiasm, they have a lot of people,

they have money to finance in a serious way ground operations, and they
have the resources in terms of good lists at their disposal," says Harold
Ickes, a Democratic strategist and former top adviser to Hillary Clinton. "If
the McCain people think that that's not serious, they're in for a big surprise.
They should not pooh-pooh the ground game that Obama is mounting; it's
a formidable one. I don't think in my experience in Democratic politics
there's ever been anything like it."*****
I would imagine the McCain campaign certainly understands how serious this is, which is
why you will continue to hear McCain and Palin take jabs at the idea of "community organiz
ers", who are their biggest foes in this contest.
The Obama campaign has placed an emphasis on expanding the electoral map. Over Labor
Day weekend, while waiting for Obama to finish an event, David Axelrod, the nominee's top
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“Reckless Reporting” Is The Rage These Days
strategist, noted that their strategy is broader than McCain's and therefore requires a lot
more leg work, but that it has more of a potential payoff. "We're going into Nov. 4 with many
different scenarios to get to 270 electoral votes," Axlerod says, squinting at airplanes buzzing
overhead, part of Cleveland's annual air show.
This article in today's Real Clear Politics online edition, Palin Doesn't Matter, Numbers Do, also breaks
down some fundamentals of the election according to U.S. Census figures, something else you will
rarely see these days from a journalist:
EXCERPTS FROM "Palin Doesn't Matter, Numbers Do":
According to the US Census Bureau:
• In Ohio (Which John Kerry lost by only 120,000 votes in 2004), 750,000
eligible voters between 18 and 22 who could not vote in 2004 can vote in
2008.
• In Colorado (Kerry lost by 99,000) 293,000 between 18 and 22 have be-

come eligible to vote in 2008.
• In New Mexico (Kerry lost by 6000 votes) 145,000 kids have reached
voting age.
• In Michigan 690,000 have become eligible.
• In Virginia 465,000 (Kerry lost by 260,000).
• In Florida alone over 1 million young people have reached voting age
since 2004.
Then there are black voters. According to the Census Bureau there are
24 million eligible black voters in America of which 16 million (64%) are
registered. In 2004 blacks cast 14 million votes or only 56% of the eligible
black population. Blacks are registering to vote at historic rates in 2008
and turnout will soar above 2004 levels. Some examples:
• In Colorado there are 110000 eligible black voters. Only 50,000 voted in
2004.
• In Ohio there are 860,000 eligible black voters. Only 380,000 voted in
2004. (Remember Kerry lost by only 120,000 votes).
• In Virginia, 945,000 eligible black voters, 465,000 voted in 2004.
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“Reckless Reporting” Is The Rage These Days
• Florida; 1,750,000 eligible blacks, 770,000 voted in 2004.
The "reckless reporting" that will continue the next few days will make scant mention of this, and when
they do, it will be looked at with a great deal of skepticism.
Yada Yada Yada Won't Get VP Job

S. and I watched Charles Gibson interview Sarah Palin last night. I was standing behind the high
backed recliner S. was sitting in, watching Gibson look down his nose at Palin while he spoke, when
he asked her a question about the right to make cross border attacks from Afghanistan from Pakistan.
As Palin rambled on, searching for an answer underneath – well, maybe it was underneath the next
participle – or behind the next prepositional phrase – nope, not there, lets try to verbally circle back
around the question and just see if we can figure out what he did ask – I felt as if I was watching a job
interview.
S. reached her arm up, hand bent back, palm open – I slapped her five. "Lost in a blizzard of words?"
S. said, repeating what Charles Gibson had said seconds ago. "She was just rambling all over the
place."
As I watched Palin dig in her heels, go on the attack, back off, circle around questions, and proffer
standard political jargon instead of direct answers, I thought of my own recent job interviews. Making
a transition at middle age from industry to industry meant that, unlike Palin, I didn’t get to start at the
top. My interviews have been similar, though, as I have attempted to convince one interviewer after
another that there are skills I’ve picked up in the mortgage business that are transferable to their field,
and that I am ready to take on the job.
The thing I noticed Palin exhibiting, though, was a sense of combativeness she was trying to hold in
check – waiting, like a hitter in baseball waits on the right pitch, for the right opening from Charles
Gibson so she could let him have it, could let her indignation and sanctimony come to the rescue, a
natural move for a woman who is a learned practitioner in the arts of obfuscation.
She reminded me of one of my old co-workers, a jittery little woman of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction
we used to call Yada Yada Yada, who was ready to square off at a moment’s provocation. If she didn’t
know something, she would talk faster. She would talk louder. She would ridicule the question. She
would try to change the subject.
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Yada Yada Yada had already made a transition of sorts several months earlier when she had to go
back to being a loan officer. She had been a wholesale account executive for a mortgage company
for years, and was well versed in the mechanics of getting a loan closed. But listening to her talk on
the phone to some of our high end borrowers, who were usually pretty well-informed people, was a
comedy show in itself, with my co-worker often working the hold button like a video gamer as she
yelled out for help. "So what index is that margin calculated off of again?"
It didn’t matter if she got someone to answer her, or shoot her a quick email – after about ten seconds
of trying to lay out the details to her customer, she would launch into a new language – "well, with
these ARM’s, you see, they take the LIBOR, they take the LIBOR, you see, and, and, then its just
yada yada yada, ba ding bang boom, ya know, something like that. That’s how it works."
The thing about making a transition, especially when it affects a whole office, is the amount of self
evaluation that has to go on in order to point yourself in the right direction. Yada Yada Yada came to
my desk one day and slapped a sheet of paper down on my desk like she had the winning hand in a
game of spades. “You’re good with words. Look at that for me. Tell me, you think a hundred dollars
was too much for this?”
It was her resume, a chronological listing of her life’s work, a format that seemed to reduce all the
years, all the struggles and triumphs of our lives down to a simple line item, to be scribbled on or
circled by human resources staffers and hiring managers, collated by file clerks, uploaded onto hard
drives, your entire life boiled down to a couple of pieces of paper.
According to her resume, Yada Yada Yada had graduated high school thirty years ago, which was the
sum total of her educational experience. The words on her resume disappeared as my eyes lost focus,
the rudimentary introductions to sociology and psychology coming back to me as I looked at the
woman standing beside me with both admiration and disgust. I admired her for her ability to work
around her shortcomings, for her ability to refuse to let the lack of an education stop her from finding
a career, buying a home, and saving for retirement.
But I was disgusted because of the women I knew like her, verbally agile high school graduates with
enough moxie to bullshit their way around the things they didn’t know, brown skinned women with the
same work ethic who would never get the chance to "yada yada yada" their way into a job.
Standing behind S., I watched as Sarah Palin, a woman with a resume not much heftier than the one
Yada Yada Yada slapped on my desk, dance around questions to which she didn’t know the answers,
her jaw cocked, her body arched forward, her eyes fierce.
I thought of Palin, and Yada Yada Yada, and all the women like them, women who had learned to ex-
ploit the maxim “a man should never hit a woman” to the fullest, taking advantage of the fact that we
weren’t going to hit back with a vengeance.
I thought of S., sitting in the chair before me, a woman with three times as many college degrees as
Yada Yada Yada and Sarah Palin combined, who had to suffer the indignity of working with women
just like these two - overpaid and undertrained, over opinionated and under informed, the kind of
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women who could be found in middle management in any enterprise in the country, passing the buck,
avoiding decisions, and letting the shit roll down hill.
I wish making a transition was as easy for me as looking an interviewer in the eye and saying, "yes, I
am ready," without blinking.
Something tells me, though, that those 8 million volunteers out there working on behalf of the Obama
campaign are not going to let "yada yada yada" buy Sarah Palin a free pass this time.
"Sarah P. - BOO-yah!"
To the guys who think Sports Center is all the news they need, which is a whole lot of guys of every
political stripe, race, creed and religion, Barack Obama is the second most recognizable black voice
in the country.
Stuart Scott, ESPN's hip, fast talking sports anchor, is the first.
"BOO-yah!" is his trademark, a verbal exclamation point, the equivalent of the cable news pundit
"Gotcha!". Scott's fast paced, "let's get jiggy with it" style of delivery is the last thing that hundreds of
thousands of men across the country hear before going to sleep.
After watching the stock market drop over 500 points yesterday, I wanted to see somebody putting
some points on the board. So I turned to Monday Night Football. The Cowboys/Eagles game delivered
just what I needed - four full quarters of offensive fireworks, with the Cowboys hanging on to a four
point lead in the end to win it.
During the game, I was flipping channels back and forth during the commercials, alternating between
CNN, CNBC, and the game. Larry King had his usual suspects on CNN, squaring off on the latest
controversies between the Obama and McCain campaigns with the same old tired platitudes they’ve
been pedaling for weeks. Larry Kudlow had his usual suspects on CNBC, each of them staring
squarely into the camera to proclaim that they had known all along what was really wrong with the
economy and how we could fix it in three easy steps.
Maybe, I said to myself as hit the remote to flip back to T.O. flashing his crocodile smile to the cameras
after his first half touchdown, maybe we should take the experts on CNN and the experts on CNBC
and swap them, the way they do on those reality shows like Wife Swap. As Stuart Scott and Emmitt
Smith joked last night after the game, I wondered - just the thought of something like that happening
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in real life would be “sick nasty” – probably one of the only times in politics that a double negative
could turn out to be an "unbelievably awesome" development.
I was thinking this only half in jest, though, because for the life of me, I can’t understand why McCain
would put that tongue-tied benchwarmer Tucker Bounds out there in front of a camera trying to run in-
terference for him when Tucker can barely remember which lie he’s telling tonight.
Why doesn’t McCain’s campaign have one of those square jawed, sharp eyed guys with the slicked
down hairdos, the kind of guy who takes the art of telling a good lie seriously, the way they do on
CNBC, instead of this rube? Why don’t they have a guy who looks like a real live Republican is sup-
posed to look. Oh, I forgot, they’re all in high demand back at their day jobs on Wall Street, announcing
that they will be “restating” the earnings they knew damn well their companies didn’t have in the first
place. I hope they aren't on tomorrow night telling us how easy it is to "fix" the economy.
The fundamental changes that would have to take place in our modern American society are sacrifices
most of us aren't willing to bear anyway.
I’ve been saying for awhile that when you start to hear those metaphorical dogs barking, when you
start to feel those figurative water hoses stinging, you will know we are close. This thing we have all
signed on for, to try to elect a black American to the presidency of the United States, is actually going
pretty good. So good, in fact, that the people who want the opposition to win aren’t very happy right
now. And a lot of them are on TV, masquerading as "fair and balanced" journalists.
Oh, they smile for the cameras.
They sit on the little TV news shows and puff out their chests and jut out their jaws and pontificate
until it is time to go home. But if you could see them off camera, after they’ve walked down the hall,
after they’ve exited the lobby and are looking for their car, you will likely see that the smile has fallen,
that the proud jut has taken on a dour droop.
In fact, they probably look a lot like most of us do when we leave work after a shitty day, exchanging
our professional face for our off-the-clock one by the time we slide our seatbelts on. Kinda like the
Eagles players did when they hit the locker room last night.
At the rate the McCain campaign is going, any day now I expect them to inform us that the earth has
always been flat, and anyone who tells you any different is a part of an effort by the Obama campaign
to “disrespect” their beliefs.
When I heard Ralph Reed’s high pitched voice earlier tonight on Larry King, asserting with righteous
sanctimony that Sarah Palin was no longer going to testify in the Troopergate investigation because
the investigation was tainted, my eyebrows went up. When he continued, adding that the investigation
was being orchestrated by the Obama campaign, I understood right then why people throw things at
their TV sets.
Are we back in the thirties? A white woman gets in hot water, doing something she’s not supposed to
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be doing, and what does she do? She hauls a black bogeyman out of nowhere.
Now that’s sick AND nasty.
I imagine, if I can only haul one more Sarah Palin analogy out of last night's game before your eyes
start to glaze over, that it would have to be this one. In the second quarter, while the Eagles rookie
wideout DeSean Jackson was taking it to the house on a 61-yard pass play, Jackson flipped the ball
behind him in celebration a half a step BEFORE he got to the end zone.
What would Stuart Scott say during the Sarah Palin highlights after her last two weeks of running for
the vice presidency?
"Sarah, baby, next time, wait until you actually BREAK THE PLANE before you start getting your
groove on. BOO-yah!"
Resisting The Evil That Dwells Within

There are things we believe we are as Americans, and then there are the things that we really are,
the things we really do, the things we really believe in that shape our daily lives. Which pretty much
brings me to the point of this piece – it is those things we really believe that can allow us to act on our
most basic, most primal urges.
I’ve been saying for weeks that we will know Obama is close to winning this election when we can
hear the dogs barking and feel the sting of the firehoses.
I had no idea they would be electronic.
The rabid intensity of the peanut gallery that surrounds this year's presidential election has revealed
a level of hatred and fear bigger than anything I’ve ever encountered in my whole life. Even on the
talk shows, where there is usually an informal pecking order and some sense of decorum displayed
by the panelists and guests, over the last week the discourse has gone beyond spirited debate, often
becoming a frenzied free-for-all, with people speaking over each other or displaying intense and un-
controllable emotional outbursts.
The things we are stooping to saying to each other are bad enough. The things we are stooping to
doing, like hacking into someone’s email account, are even worse.
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I’m no fan of Palin. But her being an ex-cracker doesn’t scare me. I’m not going to riot if MCain and
Palin win the election. I’m not going to leave the country if McCain wins and dies in office, leaving
Palin as our president.
As stupid and as irresponsible as Palin was to conduct confidential business on a personal email ac-
count, something that anybody who has ever worked in corporate America knows is a security violation
of the highest order, she does not deserve this. And if it turns out that this is really a political maneuver,
a strategic tactic meant to confuse and diffuse the underlying issues, we do not deserve this.
Wlliam Golding’s book Lord of the Flies was mesmerizing the first time I read it as a teenager, not for
the depictions of unchecked violence that a band of boys stranded on an island perpetrated against
each other, but because the author had tapped into the depraved part of my subconscious in a way
that made me realize how close to a savage barbarian I could have been if it weren’t for the boundaries
of behavior my civilized community rigorously enforced among its members.
Too many of us lately seem to have lost the struggle to remain the ruler of the kingdoms that are our
own minds, becoming mere servants instead, servants of those baser desires that lurk in its shadows.
This latent fear of man’s primal urges, if left unchecked, is what is at the bottom of the psyches of the
twenty percent of white Americans who claim they are afraid of us because we are black. It isn’t the
part of us they know and see everyday that is so scary, but the part they can’t see that they know
must be in us, because it is in them, that makes us so frightening.
This feeling I have right now is the same.
It is probably more than merely coincidental that the metaphor of the pig is central to the Lord of the
Flies narrative, much as it has been central to the nonsensical venom that has been spewed the
across the airwaves and on TV for the last week.
Moral suasion was the central tenet of the civil rights movement – the notion that what our forebears
were doing had the persuasive authority of righteousness on our side, in spite of the rhetoric to the
contrary that typified the movement as a subversive element that needed to be eradicated.
It is the remnants of this same sense of moral rectitude, at least in part, that is the impetus behind a
lot of the momentum the Obama campaign has gathered this year. We’ve all heard it, or said it, from
those who have exclaimed that they want to be “on the right side of history” to those who have extolled
“it’s about time”. I’ve said these things and more myself, and can understand exactly why there is so
much positive energy people are bringing to this campaign. In the battle of good versus evil, of might
versus right, the choice I’ve made to support Barack Obama not only seems logical, it feels right.
But this feeling I have tonight, the one these anonymous criminals have unearthed, is wrong, not just
because its against the law, but because it feels wrong, the kind of wrong that makes my head tingle,
that makes my stomach churn.
This thing we are doing is hard, harder than hard. We will have remember, in the heat of the moments
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to come, to be true to the ideals that got us here.
Because on November 5th, I want to feel more than triumphant. I want to feel right.
Keeping Our Heads On Straight

I am more than a little disturbed by the comment an anonymous poster left on yesterday’s post.
"I'm having a problem with your premise ...
You are suggesting that when a politician (and their party) declare them-
selves above the law in every definable way no one has a right to make
public that politician (and party's) hypocrisy and malfeasance?
It is precisely that "delicate sensibility" which leaves us now facing the pos-
sibility of ANOTHER FOUR YEARS JUST LIKE THE LAST EIGHT despite
the carnage that has been wrought by the domination of republican policies
for the past 40 years.
Sarah Palin used that email account for official business precisely because
she believed she could get around the public records laws.
Neither she nor her actions merit respect from anyone.
When I was on the grand jury panel here in Fulton County earlier this year, we had a person in our
group who was very, very big on due process and very critical of police procedure. I’ll call him “Roger”.
I was the foreman, so I had to pay attention to every burglary, every robbery, every theft by taking,
every minor traffic stop that was escalated to a felony by the possession of crack cocaine, all the mun-
dane shit that doesn't even rate making the paper but is prosecuted none the less.
The jurors were more liberal than conservative, but after awhile, “Roger” started to get on everybody's
nerves. Most of our cases were basic property crimes, with a little domestic violence thrown in for va-
riety, a few shoot 'em ups, and the obligatory murder case of the day.
141
Keeping Our Heads On Straight
There was a particularly bad day, when “Roger” was a little testy, that he seemed to want to cross-ex-
amine the cop in every case, even when the perp was caught red handed and admitted to the crime.
I got some coffee during a lull and was joined immediately by five or six jurors. "You've got to do some-
thing about ‘Roger’" they all pleaded. One guy, a pretty cut and dried fellow, said bluntly, "That guy is
an idiot."
I thought “Roger” was a bit much myself - the only indictments we ever no billed were the ones where
over zealous officers tried to make judgment calls that was not substantiated by any physical evidence
or credible eyewitness testimony. These were the kinds of things you could see a mile away - even
the people who were dozing off in the back row would wake up when we heard a case like this. Wor-
rying about the intricacies of police procedure for a guy who was arrested on top of a building with a
blowtorch, bolt cutters, and a bag with fifty pounds of copper fittings in front of a row of disassembled
air conditioning units WAS a waste of our time - he and his lawyer could sort that out in front of a
judge.
But I stopped everything, before we heard our next case, and gave a two or three minute speech to
everyone about why we were there, why “Roger's” questions were within his rights as a citizen, and
how his keen attention to detail helped me pay better attention to the presentations. As tired as I was
of "Roger's" antics, as tired as I was of signing indictment after indictment listing young black males
as the defendants, I HAD to make that statement. This was not just our job, but our duty as jurors, our
duty as citizens.
Just like it is with Sarah Palin's legal woes.
This anonymous comment took me back to that jury room. This is kind of thinking that happens when
government becomes a large, distant, omnipotent entity that is disconnected from the individual citizen,
even as it develops into an overriding force in our lives. As true as this may be, mob rule is the last
thing this Brown Man wants to return.
Critical thinking, not testosterone laced posturing, is what we will need by the truckload these next
few weeks.
Critical thinking and voter registration.
UPDATE - SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 21st
Now Bill O'Reilly's website has been hacked in retaliation for O'Reilly's stance against the hack of
Palin's email account. This is what I'm talking about.
We CANNOT stand for this Wild Wild West shit.
And I will say this even though I think that Bill O'Reilly acts like a complete and utter moron - "acts"
because I know he knows better, but is just doing it to keep his show on the air.
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SEC Fails To Regulate "Me, Me, Me" Brokerages
I was talking to S. Wednesday night during a commercial break, while we were waiting for Screaming
Sean Hannity, who was oddly subdued, to resume interviewing Sarah Palin. I'd just come in from
smoking a cigar and reading the New York Times - well, I'd smoked the cigar, but I hadn't gotten very
far in the paper, not after I'd read in more detail what had happened at AIG. The first commercial was
for Pacific Life, the insurance company with the trademark scene they show of the whale diving into
the ocean, its massive tail flipping over as it disappeared beneath the surface. I was instantly hot, not
at Palin, but at the snow job I was smelling from the press about the AIG situation.
"You know, I'm no economist, no insurance company analyst, but when was the last time you heard
of a major insurance company going under?"
S. had been on conference calls all day. She didn't answer at first, patting the dog beside her, with a
look on her face that said "negro, I am through thinking for the day". When I opened my mouth to con-
tinue, I guess she figured I wasn't going to shut up about it unless she gave some kind of response.
"Can't think of any."
"EXACTLY!", I said. "'Cause insurance companies have to have a certain amount of reserves to cover
the losses their policyholders could have."
"But they do more than just insurance. They're all over the world doing all kinds of stuff."
"So what? Those are subsidiaries. Separate books."
"But don't they invest the reserves?"
"Yeah, but they can't put them into just anything. Insurance companies are some of the most boring
investors out there. Even Warren Buffet doesn't screw around with that shit."
I may not have had a degree in economics, but I'd taken the Series 7 test enough times to know that
the insurance industry's obligation to its clients required it to keep enough capital in reserve to cover
claims - what the ratio was I had no idea, but I knew that for a company that size it should have been
substantial.
Karl Rove's fat face popped up on the screen after the interview, looking like the cat who ate the
canary that was George Bush's presidency. He proceeded to carry water for McCain, smirking as he
lambasted Obama for taking contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two institutions now
high on each candidates reform list. When he sat his fat ass up there and blamed the ENTIRE financial
crisis on the alleged shortcomings of the underwriting process, I had to get up and walk away.
You couldn't even get Desktop Underwriter, the proprietary underwriting system we use to determine
whether or not a loan could even qualify to be sold to Fannie or Freddie, to take a sub-prime borrower.
Alt-A products were as exotic as they got outside of FHA, and nobody was even doing any volume in
FHA until last year, when there was no where else to take credit challenged (broke with low credit
score) borrowers.
143
Blaming the government sponsored entities (GSE's) for the mortgage crisis was like blaming the U.S.
Mint for your gambling losses in Vegas because they printed up the money. Subprime lenders went
under because the default rate on the paper they were holding was ten times higher than the GSE's.
I fumed over this all that night and into yesterday, until I saw THIS headline at one of the sites I fre-
quent:
Ex-SEC Official Blames Agency for Blow-Up of Broker-Dealers
By the time I'd gotten through the second paragraph:
"The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman
Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were
allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had
been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them
from defaults."
I started to get my equilibrium back. I knew damn well you couldn't have a
collapse of this magnitude just because a few more loans than usual were
late (default in mortgage biz lingo isn't the same as an actual foreclosure
- it can also mean the loan is in technical default because the mortgagor
is way behind). Over 95% of all mortgages purchased by the GSE's were
still being paid on time.
I read a little further. A smile crept across my face:
"The so-called net capital rule was created in 1975 to allow the SEC to
oversee broker-dealers, or companies that trade securities for customers
as well as their own accounts. The net capital rule requires that broker
dealers limit their debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1, although they
must issue an early warning if they begin approaching this limit, and are
forced to stop trading if they exceed it, so broker dealers often keep their
debt-to-net capital ratios much lower."
A couple more paragraphs down, I hollered "I knew there was some kind of bullshit going on!"
"Using computerized models, the SEC, under its new Consolidated Su-
pervised Entities program, allowed broker dealers to increase their
debt-to-net-capital ratios, sometimes, as in the case of Merrill Lynch,
to as high as 40-to-1. It also removed the method for applying haircuts,
relying instead on another math-based model for calculating risk that led
to a much smaller discount."
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Only five companies were eligible for this program when it was rolled out in 2004. Guess which ones?
Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was a quote I'd created as a part of a series of
quotes that were sprinkled throughout a fictional story I'd published a couple of years back called The
Black Folks Guide To Survival:
"White folks, and white men in particular, have always found ways to alter,
bend, or just totally ignore the rules they've made up when something
doesn't suit them."
Real life wasn't imitating art here - I'd simply expressed as directly as possible facts that we all already
knew to be in existence. And here was the SEC chairman, proving my assertion once again.
While you were on the internet at work, scrolling past ads extolling the wisdom, foresight and prudence
of the companies managing your retirement money, your SEC chairman was waving his magic money
wand over the capital accounts of these companies, effectively doubling or tripling their buying power
without the addition of one red cent of actual money to their coffers.
He turned the cash they had into supercurrency.
If you've been in the financial services game long enough, even on the retail side, like I have, you had
to learn the "Four C's" of a lending transaction - character, capacity, credit, and collateral. Ignoring
any one of these items means you can't properly qualify the risk in front of you. In this case, the argu-
ment was and will continue to be that the track record and the reputation these companies possessed
was the deciding factor in making a decision like this. THIS was the same criteria we used to make
stated income loans.
Which made reading this morning's latest SEC announcement on The New York Times website tem-
porarily banning short selling of financial stocks all the more ironic. The quotes from the chairman got
me so jacked up I didn't even need any coffee this morning:
"The commission is committed to using every weapon in its arsenal to

combat market manipulation that threatens investors and capital markets"
Market manipulation is now the enemy, after you manipulated the make-sense rules that were already
in place? Are these motherfuckers smoking crack?
The phrase "alter, bend, or just totally ignore the rules they've made up" will be reverberating through
my head for the next few days as I watch these politicians and industry regulators who know better
continue to point fingers at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the subprime mortgage lenders who have
closed down.
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Homeownership Philosophy Americans Believe In Deeply Flawed
"NON-reviewable"
"Non-REviewable"
"Non-reVIEWable"
"Non-reviewABLE"
This is what you would see today if you could look inside my brain. This is the most ridiculous, most
incredible part of the Treasury Secretary's proposed bailout plan that has seared itself deep into my
synaptic nerves.
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-
reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed
by any court of law or any administrative agency."
It wasn't until I clicked my mouse on one of my archived folders last night that I realized demonizing
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's desire to operate a bailout fund was obscuring another part of
the problem -that some of the fundamental philosophies American citizens believe in were also a huge
contributor to this problem.
Every other group in the animal kingdom accepts the fact that some of its members will occupy the
low end of the totem pole, or remain at the bottom of the pecking order.
Blaming congress for our personal shortcomings isn't even a shot in the right direction. All of these
ways to bleed a borrower dry depend on the borrower feeling the NEED for things they WANT. Nobody
NEEDS a $1200 a month car payment, but you would think they gave BMW 745i's away around here
in Atlanta the way they pop up at every stop light.
I can't think of one portable electronic device that is a necessity - including cell phones - yet most of
us think we can't live without them, that our kids won't be safe if we can't have a way to instantly
contact them at all times. Unless you work in the field, which most of us don't, you don't need them. I
have a phone on my desk and two at home. When I forget my cell, I don't even miss it.
The most expensive meal I ever ate growing up cost less than ten dollars at the local Western Sizzlin'.
My father could take all of us out for steak dinners on Friday nights for less than forty dollars. The last
time we all ate together the bill was almost a hundred and fifty bucks at a casual dining restaurant -
the kind of place we would have dressed up for thirty years ago.
$5 coffee concoctions, $100 athletic shoes, 80 inch TV screens - all of this good living everyday will
kill us dead if it doesn't bankrupt us or smother us in our own fat first.
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Homeownership Philosophy Americans Believe In Deeply Flawed
In the meantime, I will be watching Mr. Non-reviewable himself, Henry Paulson, author of "The Au-
dacity Of Debt" proposal, like a hawk. Fixing a ridiculous situation with an even more ridiculous pro-
posal is about as stupid as it gets. I mean, if all of these investment bank problems are such surprises
to the people who who run the banks, how do you even know if $700 billion is enough?
Because as bad as some of the loans were that I and my fellow loan officers made, every step of the
mortgage process is, was, and always will be REVIEWABLE.
Sticking It To "The Man"

There was a Sprint commercial a while back that portrayed a CEO, grey haired, square jawed and in
a pinstripe suit, sitting at his desk in his high rise office, playing with a new phone while one of his
lackeys stood to the side.
"Is that a new Sprint phone?" the lackey asked his boss.
"Uh huh. With Sprint's new Fair and Flexible plan, no one can tell me what to do. I can talk when and
How I want." The CEO turned to his lackey and sanguinely intoned, "it's my little way of sticking it to
"The Man".
His lackey, looking bewildered, blurted out, "but you ARE "The Man".
The CEO stared straight ahead. "I know."
There was something in the absurdity of that exchange that has had me thinking of John McCain more
and more these days. The latest debacle in his logic-defying campaign has swirled around the refusal
to allow any reporters to get within recording distance of Sarah Palin, his vice-presidential candidate,
as she posed for photos with world leaders in New York today and tomorrow for a United Nations
meeting.
CNN pulled the plug on its TV crew after its reporters were barred from attending, leaving the media
and the McCain campaign to play a high-level game of cat-and-mouse that has ended with McCain
capitulating, agreeing to give a fifteen minute press conference today at 4:00 pm, presumably with
Sarah Palin in tow. This will be the first press conference McCain has given since August 13th.
In a lot of ways, McCain's actions over the last thirty days make me wonder when he will have to
finally admit, like the CEO did in the commercial, that he is "The Man".
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Debate Delay Dicey Decision
Here I was, planning on giving up going to the first night of my college class reunion, S. beginning to
get ideas about a debate party of sorts, when my boy John McCain's picture popped up as I surfed
through the New York Times website to come across this headline:
"McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate Amid Financial Crisis"
I had just finished listening to our resident teenager explain to her mother, with the slick smoothness
of a TV defense attorney, why it was perfectly okay for her to go shopping in the middle of the afternoon
ON A WEEKDAY when she is flagging her economics class (is this some irony or what?). Although,
according to her, her grade is low only because there are some "slight discrepancies" between what
she "knows" and the right answers to the latest test questions.
So when I saw that headline, I felt like I was reading about the teen-aged version of John McCain.
Being unpredictable has worked for McCain lately, keeping the Obama campaign off its stride. But
once McCain goes over the limit with these kind of decisions, he'll turn from maverick to menace in a
heartbeat.
Does it really matter if he and Obama go to Washington? They've been briefed personally by the two
architects of the bailout plan on a daily basis. They've focused almost exclusively on national issues
the last few months, as opposed to issues that are germane to their constituents in Arizona or Illinois.
McCain is in a tighter spot than Obama. Oppose the bailout to distance himself from Bush, and the
public outcry will be deafening. Vote for the bailout, even a new version, and the shadow of the Bush
presidency he's been avoiding all summer will come back to haunt him.
If you live with a teenager, you understand the power of pretext better than just about anybody. The
pretext of postponing Friday's debate...
...opens the door to postponing the vice-presidential debate with Sarah Palin, who has never debated
anything ever on a national stage.
You do the math.
Something tells me that yesterday's fracas over access to the network feeds touched a nerve in some-
one behind-the-scenes.
Whether I'm right or wrong about this surely won't matter for long, though, as McCain and Palin are
apt to change their minds back at any moment - just like our resident teenage diva.
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"Negro, Do You Know Who I Am?"
As I watched the predictable news pundit responses tonight about McCain’s Mississippi Maneuver, I
was snatched back to the first of the year, when something between Obama and an agitated press
corp made me compare Barack Obama’s reactions when provoked to the classic performances by
Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and In The Heat Of The Night. Poitier’s characters
acted as the moral authority in these pictures, rebuking prejudice through the only stance a black man
could take in a movie in those days – coolly restrained rage crossed with a furious sense of righteous-
ness.
There is a heightened level of agitation I am seeing, not just in John McCain, but in a large section of
the American population, a visible anxiety about Barack Obama’s ever growing support that is now
threatening to ratchet itself up to the next level – an outright racially based fear that these particular
white Americans who say they support John McCain and Sarah Palin can’t seem to escape.
At the press conference he held yesterday to announce he was suspending his campaign to help his
fellow senators wrestle with the Wall Street bailout plan, McCain’s eyes and his facial expressions
told me what you already know - that his defiant stance was being backed by millions of his supporters,
who had long been waiting for McCain to "show that uppity Negro" who was really in charge here.
The way he looked at the camera when he said “I informed Obama of what I planned to do,” I could
see his brain ticking – "negro, don’t you know who I am?"
I don’t have to waste time conducting any damn polls to tell you what kind of nervous jubilation is
erupting in this segment of America tonight. For these people, McCain is their Great White Hope, the
last obstacle between that black man and the Oval Office. So long as he doesn’t pop up as a suspect
in the Jon Benet Ramsey case, he can do no wrong.
For Barack Obama supporters like me, watching their white hero in action, I get the same sense of
preposterousness I have when I watch an obviously aged Clint Eastwood punch out men decades
younger than him in his movies. But this preposterousness is laced with disgust, because I know the
same thing you all know – white America has mastered the art of believing its own bullshit.
There is a scene in the movie In the Heat Of The Night, set in Sparta Mississippi, where a young, vig-
orous Sidney Poitier, who plays a Philadelphia detective, confronts the old Southern aristocratic
banker who is responsible for the death of a wealthy progressive industrialist. Poitier got slapped hard
across the face by the banker when he asserted his authority as an officer of the law, something the
banker had undoubtedly done many times before to rebuke impudent, uppity blacks who threatened
his way of doing business. It was Poitier’s arm slinging back automatically, as if by natural reflex, his
brown hand cracking the aristocrat square across the face, that brings me back to this picture year
after year.
I have watched this scene many times from the relative comfort of the new millennium, but isn’t until
now that I really understand what that slap meant, and why John McCain is really doing everything in
his power to avoid facing the movement that is Barack Obama. Suddenly withdrawing from the pres-
idential debate to be held Friday in Mississippi has virtually nothing to do with the Wall Street crisis.
It was the white community's sense of shame that the civil rights movement exploited, because it was
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"Negro, Do You Know Who I Am?"
the only weapon they had. This white shame that the movement's organizers marshaled into a palpa-
ble moral authority literally disciplined America. This metaphorical visit to the woodshed is something
these particular white people remember all too well, and are not interested in going through again.
To have to see that brown skinned face standing behind a White House podium for at least four years
means that they are wrong, that their belief systems are wrong, that the bedrock of the principles by
which they live their lives, which most certainly does not include any notion of true equality by black
or brown people, are just plain wrong. These are the things nobody wants to talk about, because the
kind of kindergarten equality we have today is only tangentially related to an actual universal equality.
Universal equality means anybody could potentially wield the power to retaliate, the power to dictate
the agenda, and the power to rearrange the fabric of the lives we have come to believe are authenti-
cally American.
What black Americans want to see from Barack Obama, the thing that will let us finally look upon him
as a fully formed man, are crackling, spontaneous reactions to this kind of bullshit, a reaction whose
aggressiveness exploits the power behind him. A reaction that says in no uncertain terms that he
means business. His campaign managers know better than this, though. They know intimately the
levels of depravity to which a lot of white Americans, including some of those who have decided to
support Obama, can sink to in a hurry. So we won’t get to see Obama metaphorically cock his arm
back when he is confronted with the rest of the bullshit that you know is about to come.
But what we will see is an increased level of agitation in McCain and his supporters as the eight million
volunteers and the $400 million plus dollars that under gird the Obama campaign conspire to do what
our standard bearer cannot – retaliate against the odious stench of race baiting, fight to dictate the
American agenda, and work to rearrange the very structure of the lives we actually live until we finally
begin to really become the Americans we think we are in our minds.
Are You Suffering From Electile Dysfunction?

• Do you find yourself getting frustrated with your political opponent?
• Is it hard to maintain your concentration on current events ?
• Are you haunted by your choice of running mate?
• Is the leadership of your own party confused about your actions?
• Are you finding yourself unable to hang on to your core constituency?

150
Are You Suffering From Electile Dysfunction?
You may be suffering from “electile dysfunction”. But you don’t have to suffer in silence.
Ask your doctor about LogiCalTM , a low dose anti-bullshit inhibitor safe enough for daily use. With
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It’s not too late.
Talk to your doctor about LogiCalTM
**side effects may include hypersensitivity to bullshit, negative advertising, and bald faced lies. During campaign activity, if you become dizzy, nause-
ated, disoriented, or find yourself believing you have already won the election, call your doctor right away. Contact your doctor or seek emergency
medical attention if you find yourself having an attack of conscience for more than four hours. Do not take LogiCalTM if you are also using maximum
strength HeronexTM – this may cause a serious increase in erratic thinking.
White Americans And The Politics Of Race: A 4 Part Series

Sunday, September 28, 2008
WHITE RACIAL THINKING IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
I am approximately six feet tall – a little taller than the average American male, but not tall enough to
really tower over a gathering of other adults. Every once in awhile, though, I find myself in a social sit-
uation where I am standing on a riser or a step or an incline that lifts me just two or three inches higher
than my normal height. From the vantage point that someone six-two or six-three would have, the
world looks entirely different. The people look different, as if I am getting to see another angle of who
they are. Just that slight shift in my perspective lets me see, at least for a little while, what tall guys
see when they look at the rest of us.
This is what is missing from the debate on race and the affect it is having on the presidential election
- a comprehensive look at the perspectives of white people, including those who, despite similar po-
litical beliefs or party affiliation, are having a problem voting for Barack Obama. The punditocracy
gives the topic lip service, jumping from the question of why this is a problem straight to their favorite
labels – Soccer Mom, Walmart Mom, NASCAR Dad, Joe Six Pack, Ma and Pa Kettle, Evangelical
voters, Values voters, Rural voters, Bubba voters – before spouting off a pat answer that assumes
these voters are either in love with the idea of a black president, or ready to kill the first black president.
But if black people, as we have been asserting for some time, aren’t monolithic, why should we believe
anything different about white Americans?
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White Americans And The Politics Of Race
So I started doing some research, even before the polls started to record the phenomena of white
Democrats who could not fathom voting for a black man last week, just to see what COULD be going
on with my white brethren. I ran into a very good sources, including one whose findings anchor this
series, The Black Rage In The White Mind, by Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki. Their study cat-
egorized white racial thinking in four ways:
Racial comity and understanding
Multi-dimensional conceptual thinking – can hold positive and negative

views and acknowledge that having varied interests do not make black
and white interests mutually exclusive.
Racial ambivalence
A complicated combination of assumptions, misinformation, emotional

needs, experiences and personality traits that all bear on a white person’s
thinking about race. Can sometimes allow denial of the existence of
racism.
Racial animosity
Persistent pathological biases that include stereotyping, denial, political

rejection, demonization and fearful, angry emotions. Can include the extent
to which white people see themselves as having group interests that con-
flict with those of blacks.
Racist
Believe blacks share such homogeneously negative characteristics that

they must be an inferior rank of human against whom discrimination is in-
evitable and justifiable.
To really have a chance at understanding the origin and motivations of these four different points of
view, we’ve got to back up a bit and look at how we process the information we receive. One thing
that all of these states of mind have in common are the basic cognitive functions of perception - at-
tention and emotion - which are functions essential to an individual's knowledge of the world and them-
selves.
Hopefully, this exploration of racial thinking can utilize the traditional building blocks of perception to
provide a clearer picture of how white Americans tend to think when they think about race. Why is this
important? Because in these final days of this presidential campaign season, when the "Racial Polar-
ization" game begins in earnest, you will need to remember who the good guys are if you support
Barack Obama. Because I've found myself beginning to do what a lot of you might be thinking - railing
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White Americans And The Politics Of Race
against white Americans as a group instead of railing against the individuals, black or white, or the or-
ganizations who threaten my candidate's chances.
Because in the end, even though black voters will be very important, without the scores of white voters,
white volunteers, and white donors, Barack Obama would not have gotten this far.
Can We All Just Get Along Already?

Monday, September 29, 2008
Racial comity
If you take a look at photographs from a year ago of just about any gathering of staunch Obama or-
ganizers or supporters around the country, before getting on the Obama bandwagon became fash-
ionable, you will immediately notice, even in the urban areas, the significant number of middle aged
white men and women who were smiling in the pictures, not because they were supposed to, but be-
cause they seemed to have finally been able to put into practice the philosophies they try to live by.
White people in America who have achieved a level of comity about race are a small but growing mi-
nority. They are the Peace Corp volunteers who go on a two year tour of duty and end up staying for
ten years. They are people who care for the sick. They are the priests who serve in urban parishes.
They are corporate executives who have avoided being indoctrinated into "meism". They are the sci-
entists whose theoretical minds have reduced race to the trait that it is.
My own student council adviser back in high school was one of these people. She approached her
council advisory duties with the intensity and zeal of a high school football coach. In a small town
Southern high school where 90% of the student body was black, she tirelessly spent her time and
effort to mentor and train my school's council members, inspiring us to participate in regional and na-
tional association meetings and leadership workshops.
We got to know each other pretty well by my senior year. One day she was upset about something
another teacher had said to her about wasting her time with us, and needed to vent. I didn't realize
until then that she had had to sacrifice a part of group identity in order to treat us the way she did.
"There are some people in this town," she said that day, her mouth pursing in anticipation as she fum-
bled for her cigarettes, her eyes glittering, "who think I am wasting my time trying to work with you
guys. It's because so many of you are black. They wonder, 'why does she do it?'"
"Why do you do it?" I asked her.
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"Because somebody's got to do it," she said, her neck rearing back, her eyes still hot. "And I'm that
somebody."
There are various studies that will tell you, with stupefying certainty, what percentage of the population
falls into this group.
I don't believe them.
What I do know from my own life experience is these are the people who accepted racial reconciliation
long ago, back when it wasn't fashionable, and in spite of the resistance of their relatives, their cowork-
ers, their neighbors. It is as natural as breathing for them to be able to reach out their hands and their
hearts to us.
They are avid practitioners of multi-dimensional conceptual thinking. They can hold positive and neg-
ative views of blacks simultaneously, and are able to acknowledge that having varied interests do not
make black and white interests mutually exclusive.
But even progressive white people, as well meaning, as clear thinking and as open hearted as they
are, often unwittingly replicate the structures and hierarchies of the status quo. An inability to conceive
of or reproduce minority experiences first hand does not stop them from creating their own ideas of
minorities from their own data or their own information gathering.
Because he doesn't acknowledge that he has much, if any, discernible capacity to discriminate by
race, the white progressive feels that he no longer poses a threat to minorities, and in fact, may feel
let down by those who contrive to accuse him of having any kind of racial bias.
If you are black, you have a good chance of knowing someone like this, no matter how you look, how
much money you have, how much education you’ve got. They don’t pull any punches, and they don’t
expect you to either. They often focus so intently on the human condition that in their presence the
factor of race often recedes so much you forget, even if you are looking right at them, that they look
different than you do.
The trait that distinguishes this small group from almost all other white people, in my opinion, is not
their capacity for empathy, or their willingness to give you everything including the shirt on their back,
but their belief in a universal subjectivity. My point of view is as valid as theirs is ALL the time, not
when they feel like it, or because I am a recognized expert, or because I share the same social station,
but because I am a human being.
The media has focused on the high percentage of black people who have voted for Obama, but these
white people, even though they are only a small percentage of the population, still number in the mil-
lions. They are a large part of his real ideological base, and will have a huge impact over these next
few weeks, above and beyond the number of raw votes they represent, on Obama's chances for vic-
tory.
Why are these people so important? Because without them, Barack Obama would have been back in
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the Senate months ago. It was people like these who gave Obama's campaign the time to attract
enough skeptical blacks (like me) and ambivalent whites to give him the momentum he needed before
the primaries. It is their experience as cultural translators that has enabled the diverse makeup of vol-
unteers in this campaign to keep from being bogged down in petty misunderstandings.
Why am I saying this today?
Because somebody out here in this neck of the internet that attracts black bloggers and black blog
readers needs to say it, and today, I'm that somebody.
The Tipping Point and Racial Ambivalence

The presidential campaign of Barack Obama, at its heart, has always been a calculated bet, a $500
million dollar gamble that enough racially ambivalent white Americans could see beyond tradition and
precedent and measure Obama's candidacy in terms of the value it brings to the table instead of the
history it makes.
Could they be wrong?
It didn't strike me how much of my life was spent around white people until I listened earlier this year
as a black coworker chastised a white coworker for offering him some sliced watermelon she was
sharing with the rest of the office.
"What do you look like, offering a black man watermelon? Don't you know that it's RACIST to assume
I like watermelon?" He looked at me with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
The woman, a pretty feisty New Yorker, looked bewildered while she backed away from him, her nor-
mal aggressiveness reduced to a few half hearted "ums" and "ahs" as the corners of her eyes crinkled
in.
When she was gone, I looked at him. "You know, in the few seconds since you said "racist", I tried to
remember the last time I've used that word. And you know, I couldn't remember when it might have
been."
If you have a lot of white friends and acquaintances, especially those from Middle America, you are
very, very rarely going to use the "R" word. Among the racially ambivalent, it throws up an instant bar-
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rier. So long as we dress alike, drive the same cars, have similar educational backgrounds and share
similar dreams, racially ambivalent white people are okay with you. You will get a pass on your politics,
even if they are Republicans, so long as you are a moderate. In fact, you are accepted into the fold
as a neighbor, as a golf buddy, as a fellow cigar smoker or poker player precisely because of the mod-
eration in which you seem to take all things in life.
But behind the casual intimacy of these types of relationships lies a surprisingly complicated combi-
nation of assumptions, misinformation, emotional needs, experiences and personality traits that all
bear on an ambivalent white person’s thinking about race.
Psychologists Irwin Katz and Glenn Haas demonstrated in their research that anti-black attitudes cor-
related with white perceptions that blacks violate values related to the Protestant work ethic and that
pro-black attitudes correlated with humanitarian and egalitarian values. They concluded that racially
ambivalent whites can simultaneously possess both sets of attitudes. Their investigations showed that
in this group, reactions toward a single black individual could be affected by a small push in either a
positive or negative direction (e.g., slightly superior or slightly inferior credentials for a job applicant).
From my own experience in living rooms of friends here in Atlanta's northern suburbs, I have listened
with my own ears as people we've known for years have begun to talk out loud about why they are
either for Obama or considering Obama as their presidential choice. For the few Democratic diehards
around here, there has been little visible resistance to the idea of Barack Obama as president. In
some of the more moderate Republican households, which is the group who people the suburbs
around me, there seem to those who are at least open to giving the idea serious consideration.
The neighborhood I lived in for ten years is only about ten minutes away from where I live now. The
last time we were over there, during Labor Day weekend, we ended up in the great room of our old
neighbors from across the cul-de-sac, talking about politics, something that had never happened in
all the years we’d known them. It was interesting to hear the husband, who is some kind of research
engineer, describe out loud to us why he was dissatisfied with what the Republicans had to offer, and
how he was seriously considering voting for a Democrat for the first time in his life. He sounded more
disturbed by the fact that the Republican candidates didn’t seem to measure up than he was about
voting for a black man.
Is he going to campaign for Obama? Probably not. Is he going to wear an Obama t-shirt or button? I
seriously doubt it. But in those conversations about politics, when no one black is around, I would like
to believe that he would build a case for his candidate the same way he did on Labor Day weekend.
Why is this important? Because Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, in pointing out some
of the characteristics of the way we exchange information, laid out a fairly plausible theory that at-
tempted to explain "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." This middle
of the middle class, who tend to be the least dogmatic of any group, have powered a large number of
the trends Gladwell explores in his book.
The biggest thing those who are racially ambiguous seem to have in common is that they have never
found the need to hate black people or never were indoctrinated into a culture that promoted this kind
of hatred. Extrapolating broad generalizations from specific incidents is a waste of time for people like
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this. If they pass one of the many black homeless people who stand at the end of in-town off ramps
or in the parking lots of downtown gas stations, I am not automatically linked to that image.
But a realignment of the “natural order” of things in America can still be unsettling to people who, by
and large in their day to day lives, don't have any real need to think about race. Which is why you will
often hear the statement "I wasn't there when all that happened" when a conversation on race gets
beyond the surface topics we've made it palatable to talk about, the ones that don't really ask any in-
trospection from either blacks or whites, just an empathetic recitation of the Top Ten "Important Things
Black People Have Done" list, or the obligatory adulation of the Top Three "Dead Black Civil Rights
Leaders".
And if a discussion develops, like the one about Barack Obama in my old neighbor’s den, it will only
go so far, because it can be hamstrung by the boundaries of the compartment their racial thoughts re-
side in. In that particular discussion about the election with our old neighbors, we went around the
room a few times, each of us adding our own thoughts about Obama or McCain in a casual yet slightly
measured way, as if we were around an imaginary conference table, weighing in on a corporate proj-
ect. We hadn’t made it to the ten minute mark when the women started talking about the obstacle
Obama’s race posed to certain voters. After a couple of minutes, the husband got a look on his face,
a slight scowl about the temple that signaled he was getting tired of this. The next thing you know, we
were talking about the trip to the beach we are going to take together next month.
Black People/Black Issue Fatigue Syndrome, which can either mean "we've spent enough time on
this and need to get back to a neutral topic" or "I am uncomfortable with the direction this is headed",
is one of those things when acted upon that gives the person expressing themselves this way a sense
of getting back to some sort of middle of the road equilibrium. In times like these, in a town like Atlanta,
black people, including myself, can get pretty aggressive when the topic of race is on the table. Should
I have pressed my old neighbor that day to keep on talking until he could understand my outsized
commitment to the Obama campaign effort? Was I a "sellout" for allowing him to change the topic so
quickly?
In the coming weeks, this is where Obama will draw his greatest number of “undecided” or “on the
fence” voters like my old neighbor. If Obama’s campaign strategists are right, the things that make
Barack Obama an appealing candidate, those traits that have been on stage front and center during
the Wall Street crisis and the recent debate, will do more than anything I could say towards helping
those voters “get over the hump”.
So if my old neighbor, or your neighbors or your co-workers who are white are willing to talk to you for
five minutes about the issues they’ve been wrestling with or the idea of possibly supporting an Obama
candidacy, collect those five minutes just like they were campaign donations. Say "thank you" mentally
when they look at their watch. Better yet, think of these people’s time and their growing interest as
casino winnings.
Because these are the things that happen when a $500 million bet begins to pay off.
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Afraid Of The Dark : Racial Animosity
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The places I have run into the most resistance to my presence because of the color of my skin are
mostly bars. Maybe it is the combination of alcohol and the concept of safety in numbers. Maybe it is
the idea of a bar as a sort of sanctuary. Having a drink with people you know in a place that feels like
home, even in today’s modern culture, isn’t much different than it was in the rum houses and the pubs
that thrived back when the United States was founded.
I was in my own neighborhood bar a couple of years ago, a bar I had frequented enough to have a
few friends and a rapport with the bartenders that found my favorite beer waiting on me by the time I
sat down, when I ran into a guy on a mission. There was only one seat open, so I sat next to him. Be-
cause the bar was busy, I had to wait for my beer to be served. The next thing I knew, the guy sitting
next to me turned in his seat, looked directly into my eyes, and said, "You know buddy, I think you’re
looking for another bar."
He looked like all the other guys in for a few cold ones, guys whose company I’d grown to enjoy. So I
said "what’s wrong with this one?"
He leaned in, as if I was a mouse in a cage in a science lab, his eyes piercing, a snide laugh escaping
his lips. "I just figured – you know – a fellow like you might like this bar over in Roswell a little better."
I was kind of annoyed because my beer was taking so long, so I answered him before I realized what
he was trying to say. "Dude, this is the closest bar to my house. Roswell is too far."
He snorted, his nostrils flaring, and took another tack. "I think you’ll enjoy the music they play over
there better than the stuff they play here. You know, the music your kind of people like."
In half a second, he had taken all the prospective fun out of my Friday night. I was alternately livid
and outraged, as well as angry at myself for getting too comfortable in a place where I stood out like
a sore thumb. In another half a second, I’d made up my mind. "This sum-bitch is not running me out
of this bar tonight" I said to myself as I glared back at him. Then a smile came over my face. I leaned
in towards him. "Actually, I like the music in this place. Jeff is a pretty damn good musician. When he
does Sinatra, he’s on the money."
Just then my beer showed up. The bartender was a woman who often waited on me. “Here you go,
hun,” she said as she cleared away the bar area in front of the two of us.
The guy tried to bait me with a couple more heavy handed attempts to tell me I didn’t belong there.
But I had my beer now, and since I planned on paying for it, and at least one more, I had as much of
a right to my seat as he did to his.
Somewhere along the way he realized that I was a regular patron. His shtick calmed down consider-
ably. By then, I had started grilling him about where he lived, and what he did for a living. By the end
of the night, I’d found out that his ancestors had settled the area, building the first mill in these parts
in the 1700 or 1800’s. In ninety minutes, we’d gone from adversaries to two men who at least had
achieved a semblance of understanding the others position.
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Do I do this all the time, as if I am Sidney Poitier, when someone is "afraid of the dark"? No. If I'm not
in the mood to be bothered, I head out the door. But once I've made an investment, of time or money,
I'm usually inclined to stick it out. As infrequently as it happens, this kind of confrontation is going to
happen again. We all know that this is a part of the deal you make when you move into largely white
areas. Incendiary comments and racially insensitive innuendo are often directed at us in order to get
us to engage in a tit for tat, a mano a mano shouting match that reinforces the self image of the ag-
gressor. I guess I could prepare for something like this, could memorize a selection of vile retorts and
phrases to couple with "motherfucker", forming my own cache of verbal grenades, but what really
happens when you do that? And I’m too old to get locked up for knocking a man off a bar stool.
One of the things I’ve found in talking with people who are angry at black people is an almost religious
conviction to reveal literally how they feel about us, as if it is their duty to present me with a laundry
list of every bad thing every black person has ever been known to do. According to Entman and Ro-
jecki, racial animus is consistent with "persistent pathological biases that include stereotyping, denial,
political rejection, demonization and fearful, angry emotions" and "can include the extent to which
white people see themselves as having group interests that conflict with those of blacks."
How does this happen, though? How does an otherwise sane person who lives in modern times get
this way? One of my cigar buddies who grew up in Philadelphia opened up to me after awhile. One
day, when we were watching a lackluster football game at his house, he wanted to talk. "I hated black
people growing up. I just hated ‘em. My father worked for the transit authority. He had started as a
bus driver and worked his way up to a supervisor. But he got stuck there. Every time he would come
up for a promotion, he would come home mad, because somebody black had to be promoted first.
He had that same job for a long time,” my friend said to me. “And we lived in the Italian section. My
parents grew up there, my grandfather made shoes there, I went to school there, I went to church
there – I didn’t know anybody black until after I graduated high school. What I did know was black
people had kept my family from having a better life."
You will hear the words “affirmative” action come up a lot when you talk to someone like this. You may
hear them assert that black Americans have been "given" their rights and fair share of opportunities,
a semantic shuffle that sidesteps any acknowledgement that those same rights were in fact "denied"
before being restored. In this world, black people are seen as being subjective, emotional, illogical,
uneducated, and untruthful, while these white people see themselves as objective, reasonable, logical,
educated, and truthful.
This group, though, closely mirrors a large contingent of black people who are prone to do some of
the same demonizing, the same stereotyping, the same denial and angry emotions. Even though
these are largely defense mechanisms for us, we have to ask ourselves - how long we are going to
continue to contribute to this impasse?
This same friend of mine from Philadelphia, who is a vice president at a multinational technology com-
pany based here in Atlanta, told me that day that even though he eventually came to terms with the
idea of diversity, he still struggles from time to time with those old urges to stereotype people. He ad-
mitted that he was still prone to forming opinions based on information he’d gotten from listening to
talk radio, even though he knew what the shock jocks were doing. I told him that I had some of the
159
same struggles with old urges. We talked that day for a couple of hours, a sort of free-for-all where he
asked dozens of probing questions about stereotypes he’d believed all his life, until we’d burned
through a couple of cigars apiece debunking his misconceptions. Do I do this kind of thing every week?
Hell no. But there is one less white guy in the world who gets his information about black people ex-
clusively from the media.
Talking about race in America is uncomfortable. It calls into question a person's own sense of morality.
It forces people to examine closely all those inequities we have learned to rationalize instead of chal-
lenge. The Obama campaign strategists seemed to anticipate this right up front, devising as the back-
bone of their game plan what they call a "grass roots" organizing strategy. But what I see is really
more of a hybrid of community organizing tenets and multi-level marketing techniques that has traded,
from the beginning, on the power of personal relationships between individuals to build what is prob-
ably the largest peer-to-peer network we ever seen dedicated to a political pursuit.
The "Each One Teach One" feel the Obama campaign has is deliberate – it allows a message to pen-
etrate into hard to reach, insular groups of people who are experts at holding their ground against
new ideas, people like the guy at the bar or my cigar buddy. Because when you get right down to it,
we all have enough things in common, even if they aren’t obvious at first glance, that can allow us to
see the person in front of us for who they are, rather than who we think they are. Why is this neces-
sary? Why should I even waste my time writing about people like this, who are so outspoken about
their bias against Barack Obama?
Because in many, many areas of the country, not just Wyoming and the Dakotas and Utah and Idaho,
but states like Missouri and Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania, there
will be many white people, according to the latest polls, who will be thinking about voting for a black
candidate for the first time ever.
But these voters don’t live in a bubble, or in gated subdivisions that only admit “ambivalent voters
leaning heavily towards Obama”. They live, work, eat and socialize with the people who are biased
against blacks. Sometimes they are related to them. In any case, there will be constant jibes from this
contingent between now and November, a constant flow of “he’s a muslim”, “he used to sell dope”,
they think he’s the antichrist”, “he’s going to let black people take over everything” that will act like a
river against the rocks in its bed, wearing away at those who have “lost their way”, hoping these new
found Obama voters will come back from the dark side.
"Negroes Smell Like Copper": White Racists

Thursday, October 02, 2008
Journalist Richard Leiby used this personal anecdote years ago, presumably to add authenticity to a
"fish out of water" account of a white journalist at a black journalist's convention.
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"Back in the seventh grade, at the all-white school I attended, an English

teacher announced to our class one day, for no reason I can recall, 'Ne-
groes smell like copper. If you ever get close to one, you will know it.' I
tried. I licked and sniffed a penny. Was that it?
"I never got close to a black person until my first year in college, when a
black professor hired me as his work-study student and patiently mentored
me in journalism. He smelled of rich cologne. But I could never get that in-
sidious notion out of my mind."
"RACIST!"
Say this to a group of black people, and everybody nods their heads after reading a passage like the
one above, all of them feeling in their own way a phantom sense of hurt not unlike that of an amputee
who thinks he can feel his missing limb.
Say this to a group of white people, and it becomes a verbal assault weapon, the linguistic equivalent
of a drive-by shooting, peppering its victims with a sense of out-sized guilt for not seeing right off the
bat the proper amount of vile and malicious intentions the author has woven into this tale.
"RACIST!"
"If someone white accidentally sneezes on me, THEY ARE A RACIST!"
"If my paycheck is short due to a clerical error, but no one else’s is, THE COMPANY IS RACIST!"
"If the white principal sends my kid home for setting the teachers desk on fire, HE IS A RACIST!"
Calling someone "racist" is a reflex action these days for some of us African Americans. But if someone
who is white points out something that is true in a tactless manner, that doesn't make him a racist, it
makes him a boor. A lot of the incidents we cite to indict someone as a bona fide racist are in fact
racially insensitive acts.
In America in Black and White, a book by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, their research showed
that in almost every European country, about four out of ten people say that they dislike a prominent
minority group: Bulgarians and Germans dislike Turks, the French dislike North Africans, Poles dislike
Ukrainians, Russians dislike Azerbaijanis, and so on. In the United States, by contrast, only one out
of every eight white Americans dislikes blacks.
To someone white who is a racist in modern day America, I am not just black, I am the enemy. Decades
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ago, when racial bigotry was commonplace, I would assume that a large contingent of white people
were passively racist, just as a large contingent is racially ambivalent today, mostly because it was
easier to "go along with the crowd". What we are seeing when encounter dyed-in-the-wool racists
these days are the last of a fast disappearing breed, people who have become isolated from the very
part of society they want to protect.
According to Entman and Rojecki, white racists are people who "believe blacks share such homoge-
neously negative characteristics that they must be an inferior rank of human against whom discrimi-
nation is inevitable and justifiable." "Knowing" the truth, they tend to search for confirmation of these
beliefs, able to dismiss even the strongest evidence to the contrary. Often, research by psychologists
has shown, they cannot face the underlying shame of their own insignificance in the world.
With all of the the things going on around them - black people who are not only integrating but also
assimilating into the larger society more and more everyday - to be hell bent on despising black Amer-
icans, they have to really work at maintaining the fictions that such a system of beliefs requires. Since
one of our biggest fears as human beings is psychological disintegration - what we colloquially refer
to as "losing our minds" or "going crazy" - this kind of person must claw at the merest shred of inad-
equacy we display to maintain a hold on their own sanity.
"Our brain has developed a capacity to create for us a world of our own imagination and making,"
wrote William Gaylin in The Rage Within. "Very few of us live in the real world. We live in the world of
our perceptions, and these perceptions differ dramatically according to our personal experiences. We
may perceive danger where there is none. If the distortion is ever enough, we may think we are living
among enemies even when we are living among friends."
Think locally, act globally is someone’s corporate tag line, but I have adopted it as my own short hand
for how to handle personal conflicts and one-on-one confrontations. So I’ve been trying since the be-
ginning of last week, when I started outlining this series, to think outside of the box about those people
who are bona fide racists. But it hasn't worked. There is no known kryptonite that weakens the resolve
of these kinds of people.
Depravity will spew from the minds of these folks for the next few weeks, the kind of degeneracy that
seeks to publicly humiliate Barack Obama and derail his candidacy, as if their very lives depend on it.
You will hear "Obama Loves America Like O.J. Loves Nicole". "Barack Obama - Half Honkey, All Don-
key". "If he is elected president, he will let the black people make us all slaves". You may even get a
glimpse of the latest email making the rounds that shows Barack Obama shining Sarah Palin's shoes.
In the end, what will all of these machinations really mean to us?
MY shiny, unlicked two cents says, "not a damn thing".
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No Vice Presidential Candidate Left Behind
Friday, October 3, 2008
Joe Biden is running for the vice-presidency of the United States of America. He looks like it, sounds
like it, smells like it, smiles like it.
Sarah Palin better be glad the "No Child Left Behind" program didn’t apply retroactively, because her
ass would be sitting in study hall right now, boning up on all the physical science, social studies, and
economics concepts she obviously missed. She needs to be running for the nearest library, not the
vice presidency of the United States – of MY United States.
To stand behind this kind of incompetence in the name of supporting your party is WRONG. To dis-
semble, hedge, and beat around the bush about this woman’s performances on TV is WRONG.
The second worst thing about all this is, Sarah Palin is not a stupid woman. Which means, if she sat
through classes on physical science and social studies and history and economics in high school AND
college, she had to really work hard at not absorbing ANY of the knowledge floating around. She must
have avoided the library like the plague.
Maybe she was practicing winking those big brown eyes - WINK WINK WINK - when she was sup-
posed to be studying.
The worst worst thing about all of this is the insistence by the people who support her that someone
is finally on the ticket that can relate to the common man. Would you want the people in charge of
your company to go “eeeny meeny miny mo” when making corporate decisions? Would you take your
child to a doctor who couldn’t pass the medical boards? Would you have a contractor who wasn’t very
good at reading blueprints to build your house? Would you want to be on a plane flown by an airline
pilot who thinks the answer to a problem is "all of the above"?
Hell no!
I think it is this insistence, at every level, from the idiot “man on the street” interviews that show clueless
voters parroting the bullshit they hear on TV - “well, Soledad, I really they finally SPOKE to me as a
person” – to the punditocracy themselves, who seem hell bent on believing that if they simply REPEAT
THE SAME BULLSHIT over and over, it will become a part of the narrative, looping back to Main
Street in a day or so to give the clueless some direction.
The name of this blog is “Brown Man Thinking Hard” for a reason – because I am committed to pro-
moting deep thinking as a normal, everyday American activity. Clinging to ignorance is as unpatriotic
as it gets; willful stupidity in my mind is the most treasonous act you can perpetrate upon your country
if you have ASKED FOR PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY.
If Barack Obama and Joe Biden lose this election because the undecided voters say “I’m with stupid”,
then I guess I'll have to live with it, but America will deserve what it gets from these substandard sec-
ond-rate CARTOON CHARACTERS.
I can’t think of a bigger, more heartfelt way for a citizen to say “God Damn America” than to cast a
vote for Dumber and Dumber-est.
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Barack Is Back
Monday, October 06, 2008
Barack is back.
The full-court press by Barack Obama is on. His surrogates started going to one-on-one microphone
matchups yesterday, unfurling the history of the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal as if it just
happened last week. It is the timing, more than the coordinated effort itself, that seems inspired, com-
ing after a two week effort by the McCain campaign to stop the bleeding on several fronts. With only
60 odd hours before Tuesday night’s debate, the domination of the news cycles by this new twist on
the campaign trail narrative will certainly ruffle the feathers of an already irritated John McCain.
I would imagine the campaign has planned for the inevitable push by Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh
or Michael Savage to somehow connect last weeks O.J. verdict with Barack Obama. This is going to
take a bit of imagination, but these guys can’t pass this up. Six Degrees of Separation will become
Three Degrees of Taint by Association. Somehow, O.J.’s erratic, attention craving antics will be shoe-
horned into a box with all the misinformation about Obama, even though O.J.’s temperament and de-
cision-making abilities are in the same league with McCain. If you thought you heard some convoluted
logic during last week’s vice presidential debate, you better watch out, because the real bullshit is
about to start flying.
But Barack is back, his troops manning up, a body on a body, refuting all Republican talking points al-
most as fast as they are conceived. Now they are playing a little offense, with a email blast/drumroll
to announce in tantalizing fashion the unveiling of a 13-minute documentary called "Keating Econom-
ics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis", available at KeatingEconomics.com today at
noon, along with background information that every voter should know.
Did the "mavericks" think they were shooting at a sitting duck?
Once again, Barack Obama has changed the game, bringing out the big stick on the back nine, just
like Tiger Woods does when he knows its time to put some distance between him and the rest of the
field. The size and strength of his organization, with almost 40 million dollars and three hundred and
fifty paid staffers in Florida alone, have begun to trump the McCain organization at almost every turn
out in the field, rendering even the voter suppression tactics the GOP is famous for all but moot in the
face of the largest voter registration drive in America’s history.
George Will made a very cogent point on the George Stephanopoulos show yesterday. He said
"Barack Obama will be the beneficiary of the biggest mailout in political history in the next couple of
weeks – the 401(k) statements that will be hitting mailboxes all across America." Will feels that for
many who are uncertain or undecided, seeing the dramatic drop in the account balances of their
401(k)'s will be the final push many people need to start believing that ii really is time for a change,
putting one of the last nails in the coffin of the McCain campaign.
Barack is back.
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New Voters "Money In The Bank" For Obama
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I am slowly beginning to understand Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly old guy who used to do a five
minute segment at the end of the news show 60 Minutes about things he didn’t like. In the last couple
of weeks there are a few words and phrases I’ve gotten tired of hearing:
“gaffe”
“Joe Six Pack”
“energy independence”
"also"
“maverick”
The one that is probably the most bothersome is the one I am sure will be used to death over the next
twenty four hours as the punditocracy chatter among themselves on their pre-debate and post debate
panels – “gamechanger”.
I was reminded of this as I watched the Minnesota Vikings take on the New Orleans Saints in the Su-
perdome last night. New Orleans amassed four times the yardage of Minnesota in the first half, but
just couldn’t get the ball in the end zone enough. There had been too many errors in the execution of
their gameplan, and too many fumbles by their star running back Reggie Bush. Minnesota was leading
at one point by 10 points. And then, just like that, in the space of a few seconds, Reggie Bush electrified
the crowd as he returned a punt from deep in his own territory for a touchdown. A few minutes later,
he did it again, to put New Orleans in the lead. What was the first sentence out of Tony Kornheiser’s
mouth? “This guy is a gamechanger.”
Finally, I said to myself, someone uses the phrase “gamechanger” phrase appropriately. And as I sat
there, watching Reggie Bush’s teammates pat him on the back, I thought about what it was that got
me so agitated whenever I heard a political pundit say “will this be a gamechanger” when they at-
tempted to predict the impact each candidate's performance could have on the TV audience. As I sat
back, watching the two football teams fight it out on the screen, I could see exactly what it was.
In a football game, you saw it all right there inside the stadium, the players on the field, the players on
the bench, the coaches, the back ups, the special teams, the team owners in the skyboxes – every-
thing that could affect the game except the training room was right there on display.
In this election, we are seeing only a fraction of the manpower of the opposing campaigns. The podi-
ums and the cadre of aides each of the Democratic and Republican candidates are usually seen with
in news clips tend to be equalizing images. The thing that is so maddening to me is that if you could
visualize, as I do all the time, the difference between the manpower and the financial resources of the
Obama and McCain camps, you would quickly realize that there is no way John McCain or Sarah
Palin could have the kind of effect on this election that Reggie Bush had on the game last night.
There is no running room in virtually any state. No way a Hail Mary pass will make it to the Electoral
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New Voters "Money In The Bank" For Obama
College goal line. And even if McCain/Palin recover a fumble, Obama/Biden have too many players
on the field for them to get very far. One of the bulwarks of Obama’s basic strategy – significantly ex-
panding the electorate – was derided by the conventional wisdom as being a costly, time consuming
endeavor. Now these newly registered voters are like money in the bank for Obama - although these
days, "money in the bank" might be an oxymoron.
The “gamechanging” has been taking place for the last eighteen months, one door and one voter at
a time. The army of Obama volunteers will finally get a break after mounting the biggest voter regis-
tration drive by a political party in modern times. No 30 second TV ads will change this. No debate
zinger will matter.
Reggie Bush's heroics didn't change the football game enough either last night.
New Orleans lost by 3.
McCain Succumbs To Obama Mojo During Debate

For all the policies and programs and progressiveness Obama might address in his debate appear-
ances, it is the images, more than the rhetoric, that will ultimately decide his fate. Last night, in a
debate setting that looked more like the studio of PeeWee's Playhouse than an actual townhall meet-
ing, Obama was able to use his physicality in a way that we haven't really seen before, subliminally
reinforcing the theme of youthful vigor with the relaxed and confident ease he displayed while waiting
for his turn to answer a question from the audience. Obama's rhetoric is decades old - the logic, cen-
turies old. But it was his image on the screen that stirred the blood of the debate watch group I was
with last night.
I watched the last two debates at home. Mindful of the tendency for crowds to be noisy and distracting,
that was the best place for me, because I am not above telling someone to be quiet if I can't hear
what's being said. But somewhere between looking at Bloomberg's chart of the 500 point drop in the
Dow and checking my half dozen email accounts, I came across a reminder yesterday for a watch
party that was being held right down the street from us here in John's Creek, Georgia, at a local sports
bar called Barnacles. The stars aligned themselves perfectly - an absent teenager and a need to eat
dinner - and we found ourselves walking into the sports bar right about 7:30 pm.
I didn't really think about us being in Republican central until we walked into the place. The most in-
teresting thing was the family we passed on the way to the banquet room in the back. The oldest child,
166
a blonde-haired, animated girl who looked like she was in the third or fourth grade was standing by
her mother's shoulder, talking into her ear as she pointed at the t-shirts the line of people dribbling
into the room were wearing, explaining to her mother that the symbol on them matched the symbol
on the posters tacked to the wall. Her mother was nodding her head, listening and eating at the same
time. The most interesting thing about the whole scene was the fact that they were the only family sit-
ting in this area - this restaurant was normally pretty busy, especially around family dinner time, every
day of the week.
We originally sat in a booth, but ended up switching to a table closer to the middle of the room. There
were two huge projection screens at either end of the room, showing four fifteen foot tall shots of Lou
Dobbs' head as he railed against something while Republican ex-contender Romney smiled. Sixty
TV's lined the connecting walls, 30 on each side, all of them perched on a narrow ledge just above
the booths, all of them showing Lou Dobbs. For some reason, Max Headroom came to mind.
Many of the people there were regulars, folks who had come to know each other from the previous
parties that had been held at the same location. Even though we were in a bar, there was a forthright
earnestness in many of the people that reminded me of church. Sitting at a table for six out in the
open seemed to function as a unofficial signal that we were open for company. We met a lot of people,
including a couple that we already knew, between eight and nine. A lot of them seemed to repeat the
same story - the turnout was lighter than usual, probably because there had just been a debate a few
days ago.
A young guy told us about his next Youtube video he was planning. A woman joined us - her husband,
she said, had just been here last week, and was playing tennis tonight. Several women came over to
say hello to her, relating the same tale - "my husband said he was just here last week". But between
the looking for work woes, the high school exit exam horror stories, and the recent gas shortage tales,
political trivia and rumor weaved in and out of the ever-changing conversation at every turn.
I looked at S. and our new friends. "This place is like an opium den for political junkies." As I said that,
I pictured the internet in my mind as a ghost town, the pathways to The Drudge Report, Huffington
Post, Jack and Jill Politics, Daily Kos, Salon, Slate and Black Planet all gone slack with excess capacity
as we all trained our eyes on the candidates walking across the stage.
The room went silent as Brokaw spoke. I was impressed. The only real difference between watching
the debate there instead of at home, at least at first, was the audience applause whenever Obama
made an especially crisp point, and their sighs whenever McCain said "I can fix it". A Syrian couple I'd
run into earlier on the way to the bathroom sat down at our table about fifteen minutes after it started.
These two were too wound up. The husband could not be quiet, fidgeting, gesticulating, distorting his
handsome face in disgust - it was like watching an interpreter for the hearing-impaired.
The crowd quickly tired of McCain's stump speech standards, hissing whenever he said "my friends",
or asserted "I can fix it". The longer the debate went on the more I thought of the famous
Nixon/Kennedy debate in 1960 that many felt was one of the keys to Kennedy's victory that year be-
cause the TV cameras seemed to work against Nixon. McCain didn't just sound recycled - he looked
old.
167
In the last half an hour, before he seemed to gather himself for a final push, he sounded like a dod-
dering old man, grasping at the tail end of sentences, looking a little unsure of himself as he pointed
that finger again and again, still insisting, as if we hadn't been listening, that "I can fix it". His jokes
were absolutely horrible, with a wooden delivery that seemed more like they were launched at pre-
determined times rather than the spontaneous zingers we all have seen him spout. And when he
pointed at Obama, referring to him as "that one", you had to wonder whether it was past McCain's
bedtime.
Obama looked like he had had a very good night's sleep, and moved quickly, surely, and confidently
around the stage. His biggest bugabear, the professorial stammer, was mostly kept in check, only
rearing its head a lot near the end of the debate. After a tough two weeks and a Dow that closed down
another 500 points yesterday, it was hard for him to get his inspirational mojo going, but you could
feel it, right there under the surface, sitting right next to the sense of self satisfaction that his campaign
plan was coming together. There is no doubt that McCain could feel it, could sense it, but couldn't
combat it.
EVERYBODY in the room seemed to know the early voting statistics for Georgia, and one guy just
flat out declared that Obama was "winning Georgia right now". As I watched the big screen antics
being multiplied along the rows of TV's along the walls, I was simply amazed at how big a part elec-
trons had played in this election, from the Obama website to radio to phone banking to internet dona-
tions. I was glad it was coming to an end - the background color had gone from jarring to irritating.
Back at home, we watched the recap by the CNN gang. Jeffrey Toobin could not let go of the idea
that "that one" would be hung around McCain's neck for the rest of the campaign, much as the dead
albatross hung around the neck of the Ancient Mariner. Nobody, from Castellanos on down, seemed
to be particularly impressed with McCain, but none of them were blown away by Obama either.
Something tells me, though, that in the bizarro world that this campaign season has become, Sarah
Palin will be snarling "that one" at her campaign rallies before the sun sets tonight, even as we watch
the Dow Jones Industrial Average falter lower during today's trading, as if name calling will obscure
the financial crisis America is facing
Obama's Kryptonite Crippling McCain Campaign

I heard from three friends of mine in the same hour this afternoon.
"What's going on with this ACORN?"
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Obama’s Kryptonite Crippling Mccain’s Campaign
"Do you think Obama's got it in the bag now?"
"Do you think it looks like Obama's going to win?"
After the third call, it started sounding like the "30 Dirty Tricks In 30 Days" segment of the McCain
campaign's fall strategy had gotten up to a full head of steam. Throw enough mud long enough, and
even the most faithful will begin to waver a little. So I decided to see if I could find anything to ease
their minds as the negative campaigning season begins in earnest.
After looking around, I could see why my friends were calling - it looks like Old Spice and Scary Spice
were at it full speed ahead today, manufacturing new slurs by the hour to try to combat the rising tide
of bad news that threatens to drown their struggling campaign. But there's no need to dwell on that
stuff - there will plenty more of it for the next few weeks from Old Spice and Scary Spice as desperation
sets in.
Just remember, stories like the ones I am listing below are like kryptonite to the McCain campaign.
The more of them there are, the weaker they get, no matter how negative their attacks are.
Alaska Supreme Court Refuses To Block Troopergate Inquiry
Obama Buys Half-hour Of Network Primetime
Obama Polling +8 In Virginia
Hopefully, for those of you who have begun to get a little nervous like my friends, these items will give
you a little more confidence, or assuage any doubts that may have popped up this week.
Old Spice and Scary Spice can yell "terrorist" and "William Ayers" and "he's not one of us" as loud as
they want - it is being drowned out by the roar of the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashing down
through the 9000 point mark. Losing another six hundred points will put the Dow Jones under 8000,
a very real possibility in the next few days.
The only gamechanger this year will be the economy.
Although I'm sure there are some people in a small, airless room somewhere near McCain campaign
headquarters who are trying to figure out a way to pin this on Barack Obama.
I'm still waiting for them to connect Obama with O.J.
At the rate these two are going, you know its just a matter of time.
169
Making The News
My mother went to Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina back in the late fifties, when black
Americans were protesting segregation and joining together in protest marches all across the country.
So when the documentaries begin to air in January and February, she often shares a favorite story:
"We used to get dressed up and do our hair, then go to downtown to one
of the places that had a lunch counter. We'd stroll right up to the counter
and take a seat. We'd sit there until the word got out and the newspaper
reporters and the TV cameras showed up. Then we would race back to
the dorm to see if we could see ourselves on TV." She would laugh as she
recalled the scene. "Man, if you went at the right time, you could make the
news everyday."
A lot of the things I saw on TV last night were about people who were "making the news". About people
who were mugging for the cameras like my mother and her college buddies used to do.
Fidel Castro's recent pronouncements about race and America, Mitt Romney's criticism of the McCain
campaign strategies, and of course, Mr. James Harris, the black guy calling himself a conservative
whose infamous performance at a recent John McCain rally has become a youtube.com classic, all
had something in common - a desire to make the news.
So who did I see on CNN last night but THE James Harris, who turned out to be - guess what? A
radio talk show host - with a big cheesy grin on his face as he fielded questions from commentators.
The thing that made it even more surreal to see Harris basking in his 15 minutes of fame was the fact
that I had just watched the movie Head Of State with Chris Rock. Some of the things Rock had played
for laughs were actually taking place in the real live presidential campaign of John McCain and Sarah
Palin.
With the final presidential debate coming up in two days, even as voters have been casting their ballots
in many states for over a week, in some ways this election is beginning to feel like the Georgia Dome
during the fourth quarter of an Atlanta Falcons football game - vendors cleaning up, people streaming
out of their seats, security directing traffic, all while the game is still in progress.
The professional commentators on the cable news channels look like they are getting tired. The liberal
squawkers seem triumphant but fearful. The conservative talkmeisters appear to be combative and
embarrassed.
In the next 48 hours, the Obama campaign will announce its September fundraising totals. With the
planned ad buys that have already been announced, the expectations are that the total will surpass
100 million dollars.
I am glad to be back. Unlike a lot of my Atlanta Falcon fans, when I go to the Georgia Dome, I stay in
my seat until the clock expires, even if one team is running up the score.
170
You Know You Flipped That Switch, John McCain
When YOU flipped the switch to start the negative campaigning in earnest, John McCain - YOU know
what switch I'm talking about - YOU signaled to your troops how low YOU were willing to go.
I’m here to tell you that you wasted your breath dismissing the comments by Congressman John Lewis
that compared recent actions surrounding your campaign to those promulgated by arch segregationist
George Wallace. This is EXACTLY how you motivate people to believe your message, John McCain,
when logic and common sense have to be abandoned. It's the same way you do it in wartime when
you have to learn how to hate an enemy you don't know.
The Gordian Knot of race didn't tie itself. And in all those years since the first guy - who I am certain
was not one of us pesky minorities, who have caused all the rest of the nation's ills, including the latest
financial crisis - since that same first non-minority guy thought up the concept of discrimination based
on skin tone and ethnicity, there were a whole lot of non-minority people through the ages who went
along with the idea.
Why? Because it gave them an advantage. But now that the shoe is on the other foot, having an ad-
vantage because of the color of your skin seems to be bad all of a sudden.
It isn't a coincidence that the party who has adopted Christianity as one of its main sponsors is paying
the price for this. Over zealous religious believers have been some of our nations most dedicated and
fervent oppressors, with centuries of practice under their belts, and even now, they have retained the
unique ability to spit intolerance out of the same lips that they use to ask God for personal salvation.
Barack Obama is as much of a politician as the next guy, which is why I will applaud his use of any
means necessary to corner, cower, antagonize, browbeat, and generally keep his opponent off bal-
ance.
You know who Obama is, John McCain. He's the one wearing the white trunks, not the right trunks.
He's the one who you've said is "all show and no go", although he asserts that he is the second coming
of "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee". He's the one that's taller than you. He's the one you've been
chasing around the country these last few weeks, trying to keep up with Obama campaign rally rope-
a-dope. Now you're about to find out what Joe Frazier knows - the "sting like a bee" part can hurt you
real bad.
But its not the "race card" that's doing all this, John McCain, its the collective strength of all those
community organizers - remember them? - who are really taking a toll on you, who are showing in
these final days that having a longer reach is as invaluable in politics as it is in boxing.
If I were you, John McCain, I would immediately demand an apology from George Wallace, Strom
Thurmond, Joe McCarthy, Jessie Helms, Lee Atwater, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, and all the rest of
those whose vile and despicable acts of the past have forced you to have to try to be a decent and
honorable candidate, especially when the cameras are rolling.
Because it's too late to flip that switch back - it's stuck in the "ON" position
171
This Is Not A Horse Race - Again
One of the fallacies that has been propped up by our main stream media journalists for the last three
weeks is that this election is still a horse race. What almost all of them conveniently ignore is the
tremendous amount of energy, time, money, and an improbable shift in the actual demographics of
the remaining battleground states that would be needed for the Clinton McCain campaign to garner
more than a 50% total of the outstanding pledged delegates votes in each of these states she is pro-
jected to get based on current state by state estimates.
I wrote the original paragraph above back in May, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign was flailing against
Barack Obama’s organization. The title came back to me as I thought about the political pundits on
TV last night. There was no real tension in their voices as they speculated about tonight’s final presi-
dential debate and the things each candidate needed to accomplish, because they know what you
know – John McCain and Sarah Palin have very little chance of winning this election.
The thing that is maddening to me this time around is that every journalist in the country who is on the
political beat or is a political columnist, people whose job is to understand the actual mechanics behind
getting out the vote, don’t do a better job of focusing on why the feeling of an inevitable loss by Mc-
Cain/Palin is so similar to the feeling you got back in May when Hillary Clinton’s team was on the
ropes.
Barack Obama and his top strategists have taken the business of politics as seriously as the Mafia
took the business of crime. Their decision to make the internet and the small donor the backbone of
their fundraising efforts was as revolutionary to American politics as Henry Ford’s assembly line was
to the manufacture of automobiles. The methods they used to mobilize and deploy their campaign re-
sources - money, manpower and volunteers – are as pioneering to political organizational planning
as John D. Rockefeller was to the distribution of oil.
Do you think you will hear any of this tonight after the debate from your favorite political pundits?
This level of execution has changed the dynamics of our electoral process so much that our traditional
political bellwethers have become anachronistic. Tonight’s debate is almost a formality. Too many peo-
ple are planning to vote this year, people who don’t seem to understand that they are supposed to
have landlines, like good Americans, and that they are supposed to wait by their phone to be polled.
Too many dollars have been raised from individuals who don’t seem to understand how much quid
pro quo is supposed to be gotten in exchange. And waaay, waaay too many people are on the internet,
talking to each other when the latest "information" being disseminated doesn’t seem to add up.
But the people who get paid the big bucks to analyze this election will be telling you the same old stuff
they said last week. The campaign commercials will recycle things you already know, but with a more
insistent tone in the narrator's voice. The campaign surrogates on both sides will continue to parrot
their talking points, with the Republican ones trying their best to look particularly earnest.
And John King, the guy on CNN who plays with the snazzy electoral vote map, will be working overtime
tonight to explain to you just how John McCain and Sarah Palin might still be able to pull this out.
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For Those Who Have A Hard Time Believing In Obama’s Chances When The Polls Are Not Enuf
At a blog like mine, where there are no R Kelly updates, no photos of Malcolm X, or no list of a jour-
nalistic pedigree, what it pretty much boils down to is a certain level of trust that develops between
me, the writer, and you, the readers. I'm pretty strident in the positions I take because...well, because
that's the way I am, especially after getting my arms around enough facts to let my brain cells go to
work. And I stand behind everything I write here, which is why I have no problem putting my real name
on my Creative Commons license.
But one thing I've had to learn working in the mortgage business, where I can ask total strangers to
turn over their social security numbers, birth date, tax returns and bank statements in less than five
minutes over the phone, is that sometimes you have to look at things from the perspective of the cus-
tomer, who is pretty much gauging whether or not to fax some of their most closely held personal and
financial information on the sound of a voice and the inflections of a few key words.
When I sense this, I step back for a second from talking about the four things I need to know to give
them an accurate rate quote and slide into a quick session on how to evaluate a loan to make sure it
meets their needs. By the time we get back to finishing up the actual loan application, they've often
gotten to see how I think and what I know long enough to finally get comfortable about sending me
their documents.
So this post is for Melinda, who needs to see a little more today than my opinion.
I am not a big fan using of Huffington Post as a source, but this account, unlike most of the essays
they post, is a pretty detailed account of what really is going on in the Obama campaign. I will also
have some links below the excerpts from "The New Organizers" by Zack Exley that I posted a few
months ago, when I wanted to know what was under the hood of the "O-Train".
Melinda, I don't know if you know anything about cars, but back when I was a teenage boy, I used to
study magazines like Sports Car Graphic and Car and Driver as if my life depended on it. At that time,
back in the early 80's, the Porsche 930 Turbo was one of the fastest cars in the world. Porsche's en-
gineers were considered to be among the world's best at building performance cars. Not a single car
rolled out of the factory whose engine hadn't been fully tested and test driven.
But for the richest Porsche aficionados, that wasn't good enough.
They'd buy the car and get it shipped directly to an independent performance engine builder here in
the States. These guys, for a fee hefty enough to buy you a small car even today, would take the
entire brand new Porsche motor apart and then put it back together again to tolerances closer than
the minimums specified by the factory blueprints. This process was called "blueprinting" an engine.
Barack Obama and his guys have not only come up with a brand new way to look at organizing a
presidential campaign. They were also willing to "blueprint" their own ideas, taking them apart and
letting their volunteers and lower level staffers help put them back together again - while the campaign
was going on.
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For Those Who Have A Hard Time Believing In Obama's Chances When The Polls Are Not Enuf
The New Organizers, Part 1: What's Really Behind Obama's Ground Game
EXCERPTS:
The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-

oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other re-
cent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or
poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm;
or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bot-
tom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability
and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign,
on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and dis-
cipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and
self-organization.
In 2004, it was unusual for volunteers to have persistent roles and respon-
sibilities—both at the Kerry campaign and the independent field operation
Americans Coming Together. That is the norm for electoral organizing cam-
paigns, and perhaps organizing in general these days. In contrast, the
Obama neighborhood team members are organizers themselves, some-
times working more or less as staff alongside the young Field Organizers.
The link above is to a long article. If you don't do anything else today, read the whole thing. And then
send it to your friends, and ask them to read the whole thing. Because even though you're not out
there on the street, just your believing and your positive energy will help the cause.
My own post from the past is yet another collection of links that describe the beginning of all this:
Under The Hood Of The O-Train
EXCERPT:
I wanted to know what the real deal was behind the “O-Train”. Is it the
smile? The near Sidney Poitier level of courtliness? The much vaunted
“charisma” that seems to work its way into the opening lines of nay article
about Barack Obama? Or could it be simply - superiority. Because he
seems to have a superior level of fund raising, superior advisors, superbly
crafted speeches – from the outside looking in, it appears that he has met
and exceeded his challengers at practically every organizational detail…
…that’s what I really want to know – what do the nuts and bolts of their
operation look like? A little research turned up the playbook and the be-
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For Those Who Have A Hard Time Believing In Obama's Chances When The Polls Are Not Enuf
ginnings of its execution. Again, hats off to this wonderful internet (which
I’m sure will be more closely regulated in the future) for providing access
to ACTUAL INFORMATION when a brother wants to know how things
work.
So if anybody tells you they are not sure Barack Obama can be trusted to run this country, you tell
them that he has so much faith in this country that he has trusted average, everyday Americans to or-
ganize, staff and manage the backbone of his campaign.
No Intellectual Peacocks In This Debate

Luckily, I dozed off during the closing statements of the debate, so I avoided what must have been a
painful night for the political pundits who were waiting with baited breath to dissect this last presidential
debate. Because there was really nothing John McCain could do, short of beating Barack Obama in
the head with a baseball bat, that would change the course of this election.
Actually, the main thing that was running through my mind just before I went to sleep was a burning
question - who the hell runs CNN? And what do they have all those god dammed dials and charts
and lines on the screen for?
That stuff was beyond distracting – do they think the kind of people who watch debates are video
game junkies? If I was one of those live bloggers who posted comments to the web about the debate
every two or three minutes, I would have sent fifty nasty emails to the network last night.
The thing that the pundits probably spent a lot of time telling you about is what those seismograph
looking lines meant as the debate went on, as if every reaction you have as a human being is directly
related to a substantive input. I will watch Sunday Night Football even if Detroit is playing the next
worst team in the league because my old buddies John Madden and Al Micheals are calling the game.
Why? Because its the sound of their voices that I want to hear, a pleasing and familiar combination
that lulls me to sleep on the very same couch I fell asleep on last night.
When I woke up, the actual debate was being played again. As I lay on the couch, gathering myself
so I could sleep in an actual bed, I thought about the voices of Barack Obama and John McCain that
were piercing my semi-consciousness, and something my best buddy had said after the last debate.
175
No Intellectual Peacocks In This Debate
"Bill Clinton is probably the best debater ever-"
"Bill Clinton," I said to him that day, "has been arguing his whole life. It was a survival mechanism."
While I listened to the voices of Obama and McCain with my eyes shut, repeating words and phrases
I'd originally heard a couple of hours before, I recreated their personalities in my mind's eye to match
the images their inflections and intonations suggested. And then I compared them to Clinton, looking
for a way to delineate the differences between the three of them in terms of their personal styles.
Obama sounded like some of the guys I grew up with, the kind of guy who had always drawn attention
because of his "otherness" instead of any preternatural ability to speak to people. McCain reminded
me of all the short guys I'd ever known, who had always had to do unnatural things to stand out in a
crowd.
Clinton's draw has not been his looks, or his height, or his charm, but his intelligence. Maybe I know
this because I am a small town native myself, but in the kind of place Clinton was from, where he
didn't grow up in the biggest house, or have a black father, or six fingers, he was known as the kid
who knows everything.
Obama, as we have seen time and time again, reluctantly displays his smarts. McCain doesn't seem
to care whether you think he is a smart guy or not. But for a guy like Bill Clinton, it was being an intel-
lectual peacock that made him stand out in a crowd, that got him in front of opportunities his mother
never could have shown him, that garnered the awards, the fanfare, the presidency, and the women,
starting with his wife.
As Obama's stammer and McCain's bluster invaded my thoughts, repeating many of the same talking
points we've come to memorize over the last couple of months, hectoring each other over "Joe the
Plumber", I wondered if there had really been anything of value in this last debate, other than the fact
that John McCain had obviously practiced looking Obama directly in the eye.
"If I'm starting to think about Bill Clinton," I said to myself as I clicked the TV off, "probably not."
Cut That Zero, Get With This Hero

Is Barack "The Professor" Obama starting to get jiggy with it?
Could he possibly have Doug E. Fresh's Greatest Hits on his IPod?

176
Cut That Zero, Get With This Hero
In a recent picture, Obama is flashing what looks like the commonly accepted sign for “O.K.”, his
thumb and forefinger curving to form an “O” as he offers a wry, close lipped smile to the camera.
This could be signaling a lot of completely innocent things. But if you have a multi-track mind like I do,
one that can go off in ten directions at the drop of an absentee ballot, you might get the crazy idea
that he's trying to show us:
•The number of percentage points McCain and Palin increased in the polls today.
•The number of children Obama expects his daughters to have before they are 21.
•The amount Joe The Plumber's taxes will go up on the income he ACTUALLY earns.
•The sum total of all the game changing ideas the McCain campaign has left.
•The total quantity of mooseburgers Obama will ever eat in his life.
•The number of text messages Obama has sent Rev. Jeremiah Wright this year.
•The amount of times Obama has considered "suspending" his campaign.
•The number of times Obama wished he'd chosen Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
•The total quantity of bombs Obama helped William Ayers build and detonate.
•The number of terrorist cells Obama heads up.
•The number of aides Obama needs to help him navigate the internet.
•The amount of chittlins Obama intends to keep stocked in the White House kitchen.
Now I'm sure his gesture was in response to something more serious, like the amount he plans to
raise taxes on the middle class, or the number of times he voted for the war in Iraq, but with all this
repetition of these talking points about the ISSUES, my mind has become the devil's workshop.
November 5th can't get here soon enough.
177
Doing The Colin Powell Bounce
Sunday, October 19, 2008
In the last twelve hours, I've heard Chris Rock advise white people on when it is appropriate to use
the word "nigger" in public, come across a very recent photo of Colin Powell doing the "Colin Powell
Bounce" on stage in London, watched the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin replace
her own alter-ego in a cameo appearance on a comedy show AND sing along to a rap song that
makes fun of her own candidacy, all capped off by the announcement that Barack Obama's campaign
raised $150 million dollars in September.
Whew!
Then "The Last Boy Scout", Colin Powell, decides to finally announce his presidential election en-
dorsement, after shaking up his image this week with an impromptu performance on stage with a hip-
hop group. Powell commented at the Africa Rising Festival on Tuesday in London, ""I stand before
you tonight as an African-American. Many people have said to me you became secretary of state of
the USA, is it still necessary to say that you are an African-American or that you are black, and I say,
yes, so that we can remind our children.
"It took a lot of people struggling to bring me to this point in history. I didn't just drop out of the sky,
people came from my continent in chains."
Colin Powell was back to his stone-faced self this morning, though, as he praised Barack Obama,
criticized John McCain, and then looked into the Meet The Press camera and said "I'm voting for
Barack Obama." His announcement got the cable news pundits atwitter, with some of them, especially
the ones on CNN, reading so much into the phrases he used that you thought they were fortune tellers
instead of journalists.
Watching Newt Gingrich on the George Stephanopoulos show, I had to force myself to remember that
he had been a college professor before entering politics, because the stuff coming out of his mouth
this morning was more ridiculous than usual as he recited a laundry list of "leftist" and "liberal" policies
that were about to be unleashed by Obama and Congress on the American public.
To hear Gingrich say that Democrats wanted to "redistribute" the hard earned money of ordinary Amer-
icans almost made me fall out of my chair. We just gave the biggest wealth transfer in the history of
the country to the smallest, most personally financially secure sliver of citizens EVER, a "redistribution"
that will dwarf anything coming down the pike for years, and people who can add "2 + 2" are supposed
to react to smug faced sound bite?
The thing all the Democratic pundits missed was an opportunity to hammer home Powell's endorse-
ment. The reality of Powell's decision is that he threw his support behind the most conservative can-
didate in the race. If you can see beyond the rhetoric of the hot button issues, what you've got is what
you always get when a black guy rises to a high level in America - someone who does their homework
and is prone to act out of an abundance of caution.
I need to go practice my dance steps - looks like Powell might have a few moves on me.
178
H.N.I.C. Rebukes G.O.P.
For years, Colin Powell has been the Republican Party's favorite black man, their beloved "Head
Negro In Charge" who didn't threaten any of the Party's leading presidential contenders because he
was not going to run for president. He was their light skinned Morgan Freeman - wise, solemn, with a
dignity and a bearing that made him the conservative movement's bulwark against the Jessie Jack-
son's and the Al Sharpton's, an accomplished, polished, no nonsense kind of black guy whose dynamic
personality appealed to the GOP's free enterprise capitalism ideologists.
You couldn't have ordered a black actor from central casting, if Morgan Freeman was busy, who could
better play the role of the Republican Party H.N.I.C. than Colin Powell. Which is why Sunday's an-
nouncement of him coming out in support of Barack Obama was all the more heartbreaking for John
McCain and his allies.
In an excerpt from a piece of short fiction I wrote a couple of years ago, titled The Black Folks Guide
To Survival, I expounded on the Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice's images within the power struc-
ture, and how they were relevant to any young black professional who had his eyes on the executive
suite:
There are ex-Crackers out there, especially the ones you work with, who
wonder why we all can’t be like Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell – smart
but not uppity, aggressive but not angry, ambitious but not power hungry.
As unpopular as some of the decisions are that Rice and Powell have
made in our community, they are still two black folks in blue suits using
complex language on television to articulate their thoughts.
DO NOT FALL FOR THE OKIE DOKE! Condi and Colin don’t want to get
to the top spot in their organization. You do. If your goal is to be “The Man”
in your organization, you are going to have to take the gloves off and duke
it out sometimes.
As I watched Powell calmly and methodically lay out his reasons for supporting Barack Obama, his
mannerisms seemed reminiscent of those of a high school principal who has gotten tired of his stu-
dents who are perpetual troublemakers. His blunt assessment of his own party's failings was probably
the most candid seven minutes of presidential election commentary that has been shown this year.
The talk radio court jesters didn't miss a beat, mercilessly pounding on the validity of Powell's actions
since then, but what they don't seem to realize is they are not talking about O.J. Simpson.
Colin Powell has stood in foxholes.
Colin Powell has commanded battalions.
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H.N.I.C. Rebukes G.O.P.
Colin Powell had four stars to go along with the rank of general.
Colin Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Colin Powell was Secretary of State of the United States of America.
Beside Powell's thoughtful, measured comments, these radio shills sound like all the other pretend
Republicans and fake conservatives who feel the need to cling to a rigid ideology instead of allowing
their thinking to be guided by core principles. The "Straight Talk Express" can't haul much more of
this hypocrisy - the wheels were already starting to fall off of the McCain campaign.
Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts are trying to turn the clock back to 1945, when black soldiers who
fought to keep America free were supposed to get back in their "place" when their ships hit our shores.
When the black man's opinion, whatever his station in life, only mattered when the rest of the country
wanted it to matter.
The drumbeat on the airwaves, the kind of revealing dialogue being shown between these scared
white men and their audiences about what THEY'RE feeling - by last night, when the evening news
shows came on, I had become more than a little ticked off, partly at myself for lumping this rhetoric
into the same old "this is the kind of shit black people have to put up with" and partly at the way the
media pundits had taken out their toolkits to subtly reshape the boundaries of discussion, imperceptibly
pointing their commentator colleagues into directions they were more familiar with.
If our faith-based friends would only exhibit a little more "faith" in the process, instead of worrying
about what they see in front of them, I think they will be able to get through this.
Because Colin Powell and Barack Obama are going to be black for a long time.
GOP "Legion of Doom" Shrink Black Vote

The polls are open now for early voting in many states. Black people are voting in droves - campaign
volunteers who stripped off their "Obama ‘08" t-shirts in the parking lot, policy wonks reading emails
and surfing the web on their Blackberries, along with a whole lot of us who only turn on the news at
6:59 pm to see what the day’s winning lottery numbers are.
And yet, you already know which voting precincts are going to make the evening news in your town
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GOP "Legion of Doom" Shrink Black Vote
on Election Night. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones that will still have long lines of angry
black people waiting to vote - while the TV reporter describes the scene behind him in the same de-
tached monotone he uses to report on a car wreck.
This is what minority voter suppression looks like. You saw it during the primaries in Gary, Indiana,
and Houston, Texas and Cincinnati, Ohio, and you will see it again in over the next two weeks Florida,
North Carolina, and Virginia. Count on it.
According to the Associated Press, "there are 9 million newly registered voters who are overwhelmingly
Democratic." And the Obama campaign has millions of campaign volunteers who are knocking on
doors, making phone calls and coordinating rides to the polls across the country, an operation whose
sheer size dwarfs anything the McCain campaign or the Republican National Party has organized to
get out the vote.
But when you have the Legion of Doom with their super powers to call on, like the Republicans do,
you can level the playing field a bit. I can just about reel off the names of the Secretary of State in
places like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida from memory, because there isn’t
a day that goes by that you don’t see one of them on the news, talking about "voter integrity"
.
The thing is, only 24 people IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY were convicted of illegal voting in federal
elections between 2002 and 2005, according to ProgressiveStates.org.
Back in the sixties, it was pretty easy to figure out, with all those dogs barking and the water hoses
from those fire hydrants going full blast, that if you had brown skin, you weren’t going to be greeted
at the voting booth with open arms. It was the beginning of the real "Southern Strategy", when Har-
lington Wood, the GOP Deputy Director of Ballot Security, authored a "Ballot Security" handbook in
1964 to guide their field troops in an effort called "Operation Eagle Eye". The Wood manual originated
the tactics we have come to associate with Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.
Voter intimidation, voter misinformation, voter credential challenges, and poll watchers taking pictures
of voters – it's all there, a fully formed strategy that the GOP nurtured and spun off into the Republican
National Lawyers Association (RNLA) and various "voter security" organizations. Add voter caging,
voter ID, lack of polling site resources and polling site placement, and you are looking at the Repub-
lican Party’s last chance to upset Barack Obama's quest to win the White House.
So check your registration online. Show people you know how to check theirs, or do it for them if they
don’t have access to the internet. Make sure you have your photo ID when you go to the polls. Leave
your Obama t-shirt at home. And if you see any poll watchers out there, taking pictures...
...give them a big "Yes We Can" smile for their cameras.
181
Will Democrats Nationalize Your 401(k)?
Just when you thought this presidential election was almost over...
...just when you figured the worst thing over the next two weeks would be the juvenile name calling
that was bound to erupt from McCain/Palin supporters, instead of bringing your mama into it, they
brought your 401(k) into it.
If there’s anything that will get my attention, my mother and my money are at the top of the list. The
latest gossip going around - a rumor that will no doubt be bandied about the talk radio circuit like it’s
the secret antidote for the McCain campaign - is the suggestion that Democrats want to nationalize
the country’s existing 401(k) plans.
The way it's being presented on websites will look something like this:
Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s

$3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion
in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Cali-

fornia, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House
Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and
Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new sys-
tem of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be
obliged to contribute.
Being the natural born skeptic that I am, I noticed immediately that this hearing was held TWO
weeks ago.
On the eve of an election, this seems to play right into the fears of voters who are on the fence
about supporting Barack Obama and Joe Biden for president. Combine this news with the drumbeat
of “he’s a socialist”, and it has the potential to breathe life back into all of the innuendo about
Obama’s "radical" associations just when they seemed to be fading away.
The bad thing about an excerpt from an article like this one that gets spread all around the web is
the verbiage is always the same, which leads me to believe that there is very little research or fact
checking going on. This year of political soundbites should have shown you by now that the testi-
mony of professor Teresa Ghilarducci of The New School for Social Research was one of several of
proposals put before the committee at that one hearing alone, but its dramatic nature made it the
one you get to hear about.
What are the facts? No legislative proposals have been introduced on this issue. Congress is out of
session until next year. Of the five people who testified before the committee on October 7th, only
Professor Ghilarducci proposed a detailed solution instead of general policy advice. And even if the
Democrats gain a majority in the Senate and the House, you just saw with the Fed Bailout proposal
182
Will Democrats Nationalize Your 401(k)?
how hard it is to get anything through Congress without close scrutiny.
The bottom line is, Barack Obama is not a big bad socialist Democrat who is going to huff and puff
and blow your 401(k) down.
I wouldn’t worry about the alarmist rhetoric surrounding this issue – with the stock market already
down several hundred points today, bringing up this issue takes voters right back to how bad the
economy is doing these days. But if I were you, I would be concerned about my money.
If you have the means, and are concerned about protecting your assets, find a reputable fee-based
financial planner if you don’t already have one – it will be the best $300 you spend this year. If
you’re just starting out, pick up a copy of Money magazine when you are at the grocery store. For
$3 a month, it has the most practical financial information available, including things you can do
today.
Since they only brought my money into it, I’ll stop right there. Now, if they start talking about my
mother...
Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency

Sunday, October 26, 2008
Some evangelical Republican, an anonymous writer calling himself "Christian 2012", obviously had
a lot of time on his hands earlier this week. Instead of getting out in the streets to knock on doors or
hitting the campaign office to do some phone banking for John McCain and Sarah Palin, they sat
down and put their creative energies to work to come up with a fifteen page missive titled "Letter
From 2012 in Obama’s America".
But the group who is circulating the letter, Focus on the Family Action, is not anonymous. Its leader,
Dr. James Dobson, is one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the country, and was pur-
ported to be instrumental in the behind-the-scenes decision making that lead to the selection of
Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. You might imagine, then, that Dobson's political influ-
ence and huge email list makes this more than your ordinary chain letter.
If you’re a fan of science fiction, you’re pretty familiar with the format the writer chose, where they
take you forward in time and describe the changes that have taken place between now and then. If
you decide to click on the link above and read the whole thing, you will quickly figure out that the
writer is no optimist.
183
Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency (continued)
The letter itself is preceded by an introduction which rambles all over the place in an effort to state
that the letter is not a “prediction”, but "a ‘what if?’ exercise", using the past performance of Barack
Obama , liberal judges, and the liberal leadership of congressional Democrats as a basis for the
doomsday scenarios the writer presented.
The next fifteen pages (can you believe that? I can rant with the best of them, but FIFTEEN PAGES?)
read like something out of a political Mad Max and the Thunderdome. Many of our freedoms have
been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the
Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.
The anonymous writer predicted a 6 to 3 Supreme Court, with a liberal majority that decimates laws
on marriage, religious speech in the public square, abortion, pornography and gun ownership, using
extreme examples and the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments to illustrate what could happen in
each instance. For example, this segment:
Homosexual weddings:
“The land of the free”? Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation”
by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings
to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose
their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidis-
crimination lawsuits.
was one of many that leaned on homosexuality, while this segment on the Freedom of Choice Act:
Congress lost no time in solidifying abortion rights under President Obama. In fact,
Obama promised, “The first thing I’ll do as president is sign the “Freedom of Choice Act”
(July 17, 2007, speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund).
This federal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the
slightest barrier to abortion. 22 States can no longer require parental involvement for
minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions
on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde
Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a re-
sult, the number of abortions has increased dramatically. The Freedom of Choice Act
also reversed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, so infants can be killed outright
just seconds before they would be born. States whose laws were overturned challenged
the law in court but it was upheld by the Obama Supreme Court. “The land of the free”?
There is no freedom for these infants who are killed by the millions.
pulled no punches, throwing out the image of dead babies as an instant heart tugger.
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Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency
I’ll have to give it to mister anonymous writer, he didn’t miss a beat, ticking off everything on the list,
from religious freedom to home schooling to gun ownership to healthcare. He had a special empha-
sis on the future of terror, with this to say about Iraq:
“The home of the brave”? President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise and began
regular withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, completing it in the promised 16 months, by
April 2010.31 All was peaceful during those months, but then in May 2010, Al-Qaida
operatives from Syria and Iran poured into Iraq and completely overwhelmed the Iraqi
security forces. A Taliban-like oppression has taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thou-
sands of “American sympathizers” have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured,
and killed. The number put to death may soon reach the millions. Al-Qaida leaders have
been emboldened by what they are calling the American “defeat”and their ranks are
swelling in dozens of countries.
His mention of talk radio and the prosecution of the Bush administration officials was predictable, but
it was this diatribe about the future of Christian literature that had my jaw dropping:
After the Supreme Court legalized same “sex marriage,” homosexual-activist groups tar-
geted three large Christian book publishers that had publications arguing that homosex-
ual conduct was wrong based on the teachings of the Bible. The activists staged
marches and protests at Barnes & Noble stores around the country, demanding the
stores remove all books published by these “hate-mongering” publishers. Barnes &
Noble resisted for a time, but the protests continued, there was vandalism and secret
defacing of books, and eventually the cost was too great and Barnes & Noble gave in.
The same thing happened at Borders and other chains. Then they staged a massive
nationwide computer attack on Amazon.com, with the same demands, and the same
result. As a result, those evangelical publishers could no longer distribute any of their
books through any of these bookstore chains. Any Christian publisher that dares to print
works critical of homosexual behavior faces the same fate. As a result, several Christian
publishers have gone out of business.
If you haven’t gotten it by now, homosexuality seems to be at the bottom of just about every problem
these Christians followers face. Near the end, the writer revisits his opening theme with a leap in logic
that defies the laws of…well, of logic:
Many brave Christian men and women tried to resist these laws, and some Christian
legal agencies tried to defend them, but they couldn’t resist the power of a 6-3 liberal
majority on the Supreme Court. It seems many of the bravest ones went to jail or were
driven to bankruptcy. And many of their reputations have been destroyed by a relentless
press and the endless repetition of false accusations.
185
Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency (continued)
Forty eight months is obviously longer than I thought. You can barely pay your car off in four years
these days. Half the people who go to a four year college take at least five years to graduate. Although,
if you need psychiatric help, like this guy does, four years might be long enough for an intensive treat-
ment regimen to begin to help him regain his mental equilibrium.
Is this guy serious?
Who does this pseudo Christian think he is? Does he realize that his religion is not built on the idea
of fear, but the very same “hope” that Barack Obama espouses? Are we seeing the beginnings of a
“Christian Jihad” in the making?
I might have to start my own organization – “Focus on Fake Christians” – to help Mr. Anonymous
“Christian From 2012” understand that the purpose of religion is individual salvation, not political or-
ganization.
Obama Controversy # 137

When I click around the internet, checking the latest the latest political tidbits, I know I can count on
two things – a condescending potshot at Sarah Palin on Huffington Post and a blaring anti-Obama
headline at The Drudge Report. The latest treat from Matt Drudge is this Monday morning mouthful:
2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF

WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT
I guess the next big revelation will be “Obama Point Shaving Scandal During High School Chess Tour-
nament”.
You will be hearing excerpts from this four minute youtube video for the next few days. Phrases that
look to become Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh favorites will likely include the text in the video that
is being shown while the audio portion plays, things like "Obama wants to redistribute your wealth to
African Americans".
186
Obama Controversy # 137
Now for some facts.
Barack Obama made appearances as a guest on Odyssey, a talk show produced by Chicago Public
Radio. Obama, then a State Senator and Senior Lecturer at the Law School, was on the program 3
times between 1998 and 2002. According to Josh Andrews, who produced the shows, "when he joined
us, he was more than willing to set aside his political persona and put on his academic hat.
Obama participated in discussions on the evolution of the right to vote, the politics of electoral redis-
tricting, and the uneasy relationship between slavery and the constitution in early America." The ex-
cerpts in the youtube video were taken from this hour long audio recording made January 18, 2001
from a program entitled "The Court and Civil Rights" hosted by Gretchen Helfrich.
What did Obama really say on the air? See for yourself:
OBAMA: "You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement
and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal
rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I
would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order - as long as I could pay for it I’d
be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth
and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.
And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it
wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed
by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted, and
the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a char-
ter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal gov-
ernment can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state
government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement
was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was
a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the
ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you
bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that."
HOST: "Let’s talk with Karen – good morning, Karen, you're on Chicago Public Radio."
CALLER: "The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical
– my question is – with economic changes – my question is, is it too late for that kind of
reparative work economically and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic
work to take place?"
HOST: "You mean the court?"
187
Obama Controversy # 137 (continued)
CALLER: "The court, or would it be legislation at this point?"
OBAMA: "You know, maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law
professor. But I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through
the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.
You know, you just look at very rare examples where, in during the desegregation era
the court was willing to, for example, order, you know, changes that cost money to a
local school district – and, the court was very uncomfortable with it, it was very hard to
manage, it was hard to figure out, you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers
issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essen-
tially is administrative and takes a lot of time."
OBAMA: "You know, the court’s just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just its very
hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I mean I think that, although
you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting
here could, could come up with a rationale for bringing economic change through the
courts."
What seemed to be the more interesting excerpt, at least to me, in this program was a comment by
Obama about the seemingly contradictory relationship between liberal political ideology and the tra-
ditional African American approach to religion and politics.
HOST: "Let’s talk with Joe (I guess this must be "Joe the Liberal") – good morning, Joe,
you're on Chicago Public Radio."
CALLER: "Good morning. What I'd like to know is, considering that the civil rights move-
ment was fought very much on moral grounds as much as legal grounds, and therefore
religious grounds - I mean, Martin Luther King was a reverend, after all - what impact is
that having now on the Supreme Court, and perhaps, with Ashcroft being nominated, in
the future."
OBAMA: "Well, you know, I think it’s an interesting question, you may be pointing out,
sir, what has been a longstanding contradiction, not just in the Warren Court or liberal
lawyers, but, sir, the liberal community generally, and that is the contradiction between
on the one hand basing many of its claims for justice on moral and ethical grounds, and
at the same time being suspicious of church encroachment into the political sphere.
That's been less of a contradiction traditionally in the African American community, and
for whatever reason psychologically, the country has always been more comfortable
with the African American community's marriage of spiritual and, and political institutions.
But I think that is a genuine contradiction that exists, you know, I think in the ideological
makeup of the left in this country that hasn't been entirely resolved."
188
Obama Controversy # 137 (continued)
My father has always maintained that integration was doomed to have limited success because "they
didn't integrate the money". Neither he nor Obama were calling for any kind of reparations. They were
simply acknowledging out loud what a lot of black Americans knew all along - that without adequate
access to capital for investment, our community was guaranteed to struggle along. Its not like we were
asking for 700 billion dollars - just some real access to capital to go along with all that freedom we
had.
But even more ironic than that is the frenzied hate over this latest "finding" that will be harbored by
people who have nothing to redistribute but negligible equity in their homes credit card debt and vir-
tually empty 401(k) accounts. This has to be the greatest Jedi Mind Trick of all time - rich elites have
the broke "Joe SixPacks" who comprise their base of supporters championing their cause.
For people who love to call the Democrats socialists, it is the most collective ownership ideology out
there. "If you tack a picture of my big house and nice cars on the wall of the house you can barely pay
for, you can call yourself a capitalist. Just don't be late to work, cause I need you to make me some
more money, Joe."
Racial equality without economic equality is like having a car with no gas - at that point, it just becomes
something to look at and polish once in awhile so you can remember what it used to look like when
back when you first got it. The even funnier thing about all of this is, "Joe the Plumber" has more in
common with "Jamal the Plumber" than he realizes. But you can't tell Joe that.
All I know is, if I run into some Joe SixPack or Joe the Plumber who starts sputtering about how Obama
is going to "redistribute" wealth he probably will never have to "African Americans", I am liable to tell
him the same thing Cuba Gooding said to Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire when he told Cruise his future
depended on Cuba staying with him - "all he's got to do is 'show me the money, baby!'"
Replacing The Hate I Feel With Hope

There are certain words that are almost guaranteed to be included on the front page of any major
metropolitan newspaper:
Rape, murder, death, killings, merger, law, charge, arrest, body, suspect,
gunshot, busted, trial, case, drugs, assault, order, owe, guilt, allegation,
alleged, cost, budget, weapon, factor, fatal, record, statement, meeting,
won, lost, launch, success, failure.
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Replacing The Hate I Feel With Hope
"Assassinate" will get you a spot above the fold, with your very own headline, every single time.
According to the New York Times, "two young men who are believers in “white power” have been ar-
rested and charged in Tennessee in what federal officials described as a plan to assassinate Senator
Barack Obama and kill black children at a school."
It is amazing how energetically someone like Daniel Cowart, the young man in the picture above, will
cling to a tradition of hatred that is so barren, so desolate - until you remember that there are people
who grew up in the desert who think cacti are beautiful.
The article also stated, "federal officials said that both of the men who were arrested — Paul Schles-
selman, 18, of West Helena, Arkansas, and Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tennessee. — told interroga-
tors that they had talked of assassinating Mr. Obama."
To assimilate into America's mainstream, when the rest of the life you know and have known is a relic
of days gone by means to many that they must disavow their own self-image; in more cases than you
can imagine, this is an impossible emotional hurdle for them to overcome.
We live in a world where we want measurable, quantifiable, scalable action plans that will tell us, if we
devote a certain amount of hours, and a certain amount of money, that the kind of racially oriented
problems people like Daniel Cowart and his accomplice, Paul Schlesselman, represent will disappear.
I wish it were that easy - actually, I pray that some one comes up with the formula to turn the lives of
people like this around.
Because it is going to be hard to replace the hate I'm feeling right now with hope.
Hope that when the fever over this election dies down, people like this will finally begin to see how
brown skin can be just brown skin, even when it belongs to the president of the United States. Hope
that those who harbor racial animosity, who may be only a few degrees to the left of these skinheads,
will finally see more of our similarities than our differences. Hope that those who are racially ambivalent
will generously accept the added emphasis that will be placed on racial diversity.
But I've got to do it, otherwise, I'll be held hostage by these two even while they sit locked in their jail
cells. My hatred of them would be the same as their hatred of me. I will not let them intrude into my
life long enough to truly, deeply loathe them the way I know it should be done - I cannot afford to waste
the time it takes to be thoroughly disgusted, nor the energy it would require to completely revile their
very existence.
Because if I don't replace this anger in me with some kind of hope that this time is one step closer to
the last time this happens in America, I am almost certain to make the paper's front page myself -
"Murder Suspect Arrested In Fatal Killings"
190
Getting The Early Vote Lead: Vote TODAY!
One of my younger cousins sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, asking me to write a piece about
the safety of early voting. I was a little surprised, because she is a lawyer, with a lawyer for a husband
– definitely not your low information voters. But her email was really striking for another reason – in it,
she said "a lot of people are waiting until the day of the election because of fear. These are very po-
litical-minded people who are still scarred by the 2004 election." Which means that some of the most
highly educated African Americans under thirty don't have a lot of confidence in our electoral system.
I didn’t really have an answer for her at the time, because I had no idea myself what really happened
to the votes that are cast before November 4th. And we are in Georgia, the heart of the South, which
has given even people this young many, many reasons to think some kind of trickery might go on after
they push the button on a voting machine, so I can feel where these voters are coming from.
What does happen to your vote once you cast it?
Most of the literature I surveyed about states who used electronic voting machines have fairly similar
procedures. Here in Georgia, according to the Secretary of State's website, these are the mechanics
of their ballot security procedure:
After you cast your ballot, your votes are immediately stored in the voting
unit in two separate places. One location is part of the unit itself. The sec-
ond location is a memory card that is locked into the voting unit during the
election. At the close of the election, the memory card is removed and
used to count the votes. The two internal sources plus the memory card
comprise a two-part audit trail, ensuring that every vote is recorded and
counted the way the voter cast them.
A back-up power supply ensures that once the system has been activated
for an election, the contents of the audit record will be preserved during
any power interruption to the system until processing and data reporting
have been completed. If there is a power failure, your vote remains intact.
Does that mean these things are totally safe? No. And as average, ordinary citizens, some things,
like whether or not the ballots are secured by sheriff's deputies or private security firms, or whether or
not there are paper trails to audit voting machine performance, are not things we can do anything
about as individuals at this late date.
But these fears are far outweighed by the psychological momentum early voting tends to give to the
party who can "turn out" the most voters the fastest. When the margin of Democratic voters who vote
early outweigh the Republican early voters, the numerical totals that are reported nightly can act as a
incentive for other Democrats to "join the crowd", while having the opposite effect on the Republican
voters, who might be less inclined to vote at all if they feel it is a lost cause.
So we need to vote early. We need to vote and remain vigilant about this end of the process, the one
191
Getting The Early Vote Lead: Vote TODAY!
we can have an impact on, by doing things like reporting malfunctioning voting machines, and triple
checking our ballots before we push the "FINISH" button.
So cuz, if you're reading this, you need to encourage those friends of yours to get to the polls Thursday
and Friday. You need to go yourself. Because the old folks were right - the early bird DOES get the
worm, and the early votes WILL help elect Barack Obama as your next president.
GOP "Hack-A-Shaq" Can't Stop Obama

My buddy called me yesterday to catch up on the latest political developments in the presidential elec-
tion. “Man, I don’t know,” he said, “do you think Obama is going to be able to pull this off?”
I was on the web at the moment, half listening, half reading the teasers on my blogroll, when I heard
the question. My head jerked. “Dude, what are you talking about? Obama is in the lead. Obama is
spanking that ass. Obama is –“
“Alright, alright, I got it. So you think he’s going to win, eh?”
“Dude, his plan is working.”
There was dead air for a few seconds, then he said, “so how many electoral votes you think he’s going
to get?”
“Three fifty” leaped out of my mouth – but wasn’t that the number I kept seeing everyday at FiveThir-
tyEight.com? Wasn’t that a conservative estimate, given what I figured would probably happen once
people supporting McCain realized he wasn’t going to win.
“Are you sure?” Finally, my buddy had something to be skeptical about. “That’s mighty optimistic, don’t
you think? Three hundred and fifty electoral votes?”
“I really think he’ll be bumping up against four hundred.”
“Four hundred! Four hundred electoral votes? Come on!”
“Dude, do you understand what’s happening here?”
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GOP "Hack-A-Shaq" Can't Stop Obama
“But what about Florida? What about Ohio? Or Indiana?”
“Don’t matter. There are other ways to get to two seventy, buddy. These guys are showing you a new
way to play this ballgame.”
We went back and forth for a few minutes, until his faith in the almighty Republican vote stealing
prowess started to get on my nerves. “Dude, you’re looking at this wrong. I mean, I know where you’re
coming from. And in a close race, where it all came down to these same old states, you would have
a point.
But Obama has changed the game. He basically has done what some middle school kids did on the
basketball court when I was growing up. These kids weren’t tall, but they were quick, and more im-
portantly, they could shoot from what we now call three point range with ease.
So they didn’t have to go in the paint to score points.
Ohio and Florida are "in the paint" states - states conventional wisdom dictates that you MUST win to
get to the White House. But the Obama campaign's sharpshooters won’t let the GOP candidate just
hang out there like they are Shaquille O'Neal.
So the McCain campaign has had to leave "the paint" of Ohio and Florida, because they have to go
to man-to-man against Obama's people in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Missouri, and even ARI-
ZONA, of all places, to even have half a chance of getting McCain into the White House.
You've watched basketball games with runaway scores before. What does the team that's down by a
few points do near the end? They start committing intentional fouls. They hack the big men, they hack
the ball carriers - they would hack the referees if they thought they could get away with it.
The only way something like this works in politics, like in basketball, is if the score is close. In the case
of politics, if the media is providing the ready made “horserace” narrative and voter turnout is low, the
Republicans can go to their "hack-a-Shaq" offense, one that usually allows them to manipulate enough
votes within the system to make a difference.
But this time, there will be no need for the GOP to manufacture the right kind of votes by the thousands.
No need to lose the wrong kind of votes by the thousands. No need to risk the careers and the personal
freedom of their operatives on any voter intimidation tactics, or phone bank jamming, or software tam-
pering that are the hallmarks of Florida and Ohio elections.
Because when the buzzer goes off next Tuesday night, Florida and Ohio will turn out to be icing on
the cake for a job well done by the Obama campaign.
193
Things I Have Learned This Election Season
I feel like I've gotten a PhD in political doublespeak this year.
When John McCain's campaign was BEHIND almost ten points in the polls, what did he announce?
"We've got them right where we want them".
At this point in the race, with four days left, I wouldn't be surprised at anything. Some of the other
things I've learned this year:
Huffington Post has headlines that are more misleading than the ones on the Drudge
Report.
John McCain wears $400 Ferragamo shoes - but HE can afford them.
Sarah Palin has upgraded to a Neiman-Marcus wardrobe - but she has to give the
clothes back at midnight on November 4th.
Barack Obama owned a Chrysler 300 before he ran for president - now he has a Ford
Escape hybrid - I don't know HOW he and Michelle fold those long-ass legs in THAT
tiny pretend SUV.
A "capitalist" is someone who takes money from the government when his business
goes bad.
A "supporter of free markets" is someone who takes government campaign funds instead
of raising money from private citizens.
A "socialist" is someone who pays for their own health insurance so their employer can
pay out dividends to its stockholders.
A "supporter of socialism" is someone who raises campaign funds from private citizens
and manages to stay with their budget.
Alaska is an "energy rich" state.
Lump sum taxpayer financed bailouts are "rescue packages".
Individual tax rebates to tax payers are 'welfare".
"Mavericks" can stab each other in the back and still say they are on the same page.
One half-digested fact from the campaign trail can hold the interest of the entire cable
and network news universe for 24 hours.
Cable news anchormen you see on your TV screen are smaller than they appear.
194
Things I Have Learned This Election Season
The amount of a candidate's zeal for explaining his tax plan is inversely proportional to
the likelihood that it will be implemented if the same candidate gets elected president.
Casting your vote early only heightens your anxiety until Election Night.
Black people can suspend "C. P. time" when they feel like it.
415,631 Black Men In Georgia HAVE NOT Voted - Do YOU Know Any Of Them?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
This post is personal.
This is for all the black men who:
can figure out how to pay their child support on time, even when they are between
jobs, without selling drugs or robbing anybody.
have survived Iraq, Afghanistan, Desert Storm, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II.
are preaching their hearts out this Sunday because they know in these final hours
how much we need it.
take care of their elderly parents.
teach other peoples children how to read and write.
introduce music appreciation into your life.
clean your teeth, listen to your heart, and keep your eyes healthy.
ride on the back of garbage trucks to make sure our streets are clean.
deliver packages, or groceries, or gas, or lumber, or concrete, or office supplies.
pledge their very lives to protect and serve.
195
415,631 Black Men In Georgia HAVE NOT Voted - Do YOU Know Any Of Them?
260,432 of the 676,063 black men registered to vote in Georgia have already cast a ballot in this pres-
idential election. Which isn't bad...
...until you see that twice as many black women - 439,434 - voted last week.
If you will lose your job because you stood in line for eight hours to vote, I can understand why you
haven't gotten to the polls yet. But the guys like the ones I listed above, who are as busy as you are,
are no doubt a majority of the black men who made a way to vote early last week.
Which means, guys, that here in Georgia, the ball is in your hands on Tuesday. I say "yours" because
I already pushed the button. And I'm a "three days before Christmas" type of shopper, so I know how
it is when you are prone to wait until the last minute to get something done.
The reality is, if you haven't voted yet, you probably aren't reading this blog. But the people who do
read this blog know exactly who you are. They are your brothers and sisters. They are your parents.
They are your children. Your poker buddies. People who go to your church. Your neighbors. Your video
gamer friends. Your MySpace and Facebook friends.
So if you know someone who you think has not voted yet, just ask them. I was out of town for a couple
of days last week, and I asked almost every black man I saw whether he had voted yet or not - harder
than it looks when you try to work a question like that into casual conversation.
LeBron James gave Obama more than $20,000. Jay -Z asks us to vote every time he steps in front
of a mike. Emmitt Smith not only wrote checks, he's on the streets, getting people organized. EVERY-
BODY is getting in the game this time, fellas.
I just don't think, when the dust clears on Wednesday or Thursday, and the numbers start being totaled,
that we could live with ourselves as men if we didn't turn out to push that button on Tuesday.
Is Obama going to fix our problems over night if he wins? Nope. He may even have to leave a whole
lot of them untouched, depending on where our economy goes. But that doesn't mean that getting
him elected isn't important.
We can't put everything on the "government" without acknowledging that at some level, the govern-
ment is us. It isn't a mirror of who we are on a literal level, but rather a reflection of the things we are
passionate about as well as the things we choose to remain ignorant about as a collective.
So between now and Tuesday, especially my blog readers hear in Georgia, but readers everywhere
- tell the guys you know who are prone to let voting slide:
They can "get on their grind" AFTER they stand in line.
They can "stack that paper" AFTER they help complete this election caper."
They can "handle their business" AFTER they they do this.
196
Brown Man Thinking Hard Featured On TV One Election Coverage
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tonight, Brown Man Thinking Hard will be one of the featured political blogs on the TV ONE Election
Night special. I'll be providing regular updates on last minute voter suppression efforts and voter re-
actions here in Georgia.
Silver Spring, MD -- TV One will offer comprehensive coverage of the Presidential elec-
tion returns November 4, beginning at 7 PM ET, with Election Night 08: A Vote for
Change, anchored by team members from its highly successful Democratic convention
coverage in August.
With seven different remote locations around the country, including live cameras at the
McCain and Obama headquarters and coverage from the Associated Press' national
vote tally center, TV One is ready to document this historic night from all angles. Arthur
Fennel and Joe Madison , of TV One DNC Coverage, return as host along with Jacque
Reid anchoring from the TV One Election Newsroom. The anchor team will be joined by
Tom Joyner, Michael Eric Dyson and more who will provide commentary all night long.
Shawta Walcott, one of the top pollsters in the country, will be on board analyzing the
votes and exit polling.
As the first polls close in the East at 7 pm (ET), TV One will be anchored in Sen. Obama's
election night headquarters in Chicago, ground-zero for this historic event. In addition,
Roland Martin, who TV One shares with CNN, will be reporting live from CNN Election
Headquarters in New York.
This election is expected to have unprecedented turnout among young people and
African-Americans, and TV One has responded with remote broadcasts from two col-
leges in battleground states: Florida A&M and North Carolina A&T . Here, we will hear
and see first hand how these groups are responding to the election in real time.
Finally, TV One Online offers late breaking developments in the campaigns and around
the world. A special correspondent in the Election Newsroom will be reporting what's
going on online with the election in real time.
With news, analysis, insight and historical perspective, TV One will chronicle what could
turn out to be the most important event in the African-American community in this cen-
tury. TV One's election night promises to be one exiting and compelling ride.
Witness history take place only on TV One, November 4 at 7 pm (ET).
I've had a whole lot of fun with this blog since I started it.
I hope all of you who read this blog regularly have enjoyed it half as much as I have. I can't think of a
better way to have my efforts recognized than to be asked to participate in the national media coverage
of the most important moment in black history in my lifetime.
197
Barack Obama - PRESIDENT!!!!!
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
My duties are done for TV ONE.
You already know this, but I will say it again - Barack Obama will be the next president of the whole
damn United States of America!
Phones ringing off the hook. My favorite foods, uneaten. Beer, (mostly) untouched. Cigars un-
smoked. And even though I am here in Georgia, where my vote didn't end up doing anything, it still
feels REAL GOOD - I mean REAL GOOD - to know that I pushed the button for Barack Obama.
The night will be long.
And I will enjoy every minute of it.
Yes We Did!!
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
I am writing this quickly, as John McCain's voice praises Barack Obama's candidacy, and concedes
the presidential race to Obama, because I don't want to miss A SECOND of the speech we are all
waiting to hear. The phone has been ringing off the hook, the dog is barking, a teenager is howling,
every brownskinned being in our household tingling because Barack Obama has just been elected
the president of these United States.
It is as if all of black america has taken this journey together along with Senator Obama from
Springfield, Illinois to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Transformed from a skeptic last fall, I became a
fervent believer in the abilities of Barack Obama and the team he had assembled before the primar-
ies began. I have spent the last ten months writing about the man and the campaign almost every
day.
My mother exhaled when she heard my voice on the phone, as if it had been she and I on the cam-
paign trail instead of Obama and Biden. My brother howled as if his favorite football team was guar-
anteed to win the Super Bowl for the next ten years. My voicemail has several messages that I
haven't retrieved yet. I will probably be silent once the phone stops ringing, silent and pensive, as
the word "African American" begins to resonate louder and louder every time an announcer says it
on TV. I will only be thinking one thing when I finally go to sleep tonight.
Yes We Did!
198
The Best Email I Got Yesterday
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
I haven't really slept at all for the last couple of days - an hour here, a couple of hours there - and it is
finally starting to catch up with me. Consequently this Brown Man's thinking is starting to go a little
soft, even as I feel a wellspring of new ideas coursing through my head, words and phrases that are
begging to be captured by my keyboard.
Tonight, I will actually turn the TV off and sleep in a bed.
But before I do that, I have to share something I got from one of my frequent visitors. Her original
email just came out of the blue, a very nice "attaboy" that added fuel to last nights fervor.
dear brownmanthinking:
i want to thank you for your thoughtful writing as we approached this his-
toric day. you are partly responsible for my getting off my butt and putting
my money and time where my heart's desire is.
this country will, i hope, be on a new road when the sun rises on wednes-
day, november 5, 2008.
cheers,
karen
So I asked her to elaborate, so I could include her story in the posts I was sending to TV ONE. They
didn't use it, but I liked it so much, I feel I have to share it. The story Karen tells is why I struggle
mightily with my imperfect original drafts to make sure that the pieces I post here speak directly and
clearly and passionately to all of you.
dear kris:
i am a 51-year-old "white" female and i live in fall river, massachusetts (if

i tip out of my chair, i'm in rhode island, and i'm originally from white plains,
new york, via connecticut, nigeria, saudi arabia and boston). although i
have worked as a poll worker in three elections over the past 20 years, i
have never donated to a political campaign before and never volunteered
to work in any capacity for a campaign.
this election things are different. i have contributed money and time to sen-
ator obama's campaign.
i seek out blogs with good content, not based on racial, sexual or religious
orientation. i don't remember exactly when it was that i first found your blog
199
The Best Email I Got Yesterday
through a link from somewhere else but it was after the democratic primary
had narrowed to clinton and obama. what has kept me coming back is that
you made me feel that we are part of the same community. you shared
the joys and difficulties and concerns of this important election. you ex-
pressed skepticism and frustration without bitterness and with humor. you
are realistic in your expectations of other people. i see those same attrib-
utes in senator obama.
race is such a tricky issue. am i really as colorblind as i think i am? i like to

think so. despite the name of your blog, i don't think of you as a black man,
i think of you as someone with something relevant to say. the historic na-
ture of senator obama's candidacy given his skin color is something to be
celebrated, but i am not voting for him because of his race, i am voting for
him because of the content of his mind and his character. at the same time
that i am voting for senator obama, i am voting for you and me and the
dozens of people i have met on the internet and in "real life" throughout
the last six months -- people who i believe hold the same things dear and
are willing to make that effort to build a better community, a better america,
a better world.
i don't think i have really said well what is in my heart because it is so full
at this point and i cannot stop worrying until the next president has been
announced, but i hope i have in some small way communicated what i'm
thinking.
please dear god, if you exist, make my dearest hope a reality.
karen
fall river, massachusetts
Thank you, Karen.
And thank you to everyone else who comes here regularly to see what this Brown Man has to say.
200
POSTSCRIPT
The emotional release on Election Night 2008 was cathartic.
For several days, I watched the evening news on television, something I rarely do. But I wasn’t really
watching a newscast. I was restlessly flipping between the channels, pausing just long enough to
hear an announcer say, “…in other news, President-Elect Barack Obama…”before switching to an-
other station to hear this phrase intoned again and again. At the rate I was going, I really didn’t think
I was going to make it until January 20th, when word “elect” would be dropped from Obama’s new
title.
This had been no ordinary campaign for many of us, brown and white and red and yellow alike, who
had been on edge the last few weeks, wondering if a skinny black man from Illinois by way of Hawaii
with an awkward name could actually ascend to the highest office in the most powerful country in the
world.
The Reverend Joseph Lowery of Atlanta, who would give the benediction at the presidential inaugu-
ration for Barack Hussein Obama Jr. two and a half months from now on a cold January day, summed
up all of the fears and frustrations of many of those who stood before him to see this African American
man be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. Lowery repeated into the mi-
crophone before him a new version of the household ditty many of us had grown up hearing:
“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors
rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help
us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back,
when brown can stick around - when yellow will be mellow -
when the red man can get ahead, man - and when white will
embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.”
Amen.
201
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kris Broughton is a writer and blogger in Atlanta Georgia, where he

maintains the blog Brown Man Thinking Hard.
His work has been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, Reuters

The Post Tribune, Beacon News, and TV One Online.
He is also a regular blog contributor at Big Think.

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THINKING OUT LOUD

A Brown Man Thinking Hard Retrospective

Cover art is courtesy of Joel Dietle of France.

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Under the following conditions:

I started off so casually as a blogger, I almost didn’t become one.

Blog posts, by contrast, were meant for quick consumption.

The Primary Season

Were many of these blogs biased?

When I Reached The Tipping Point

I watched an interesting interview earlier today on TV One. Cathy Hughes,

"The Republican Party has traditionally been seen by the

The Democrats, on the other hand, court us assiduously dur-

Are you concerned about the absence of blacks in real po-

Which America is this?

But against Hillary and Edwards?

So I've thrown in with Obama, stuttering, cocaine sniffing and all.

A Republican was in office when abortion became legal.

A Democrat dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.

The country wasn't ready for slavery to end.

The country wasn't ready for segregation to end.

This mythical "readiness" does not exist.

Race & Class - Here We Go Again

Tone Deaf Campaigning

Ready To Join The Club

My phone rang off the hook last night.

What The Raw Numbers Suggest

It’s going to be a dogfight to the end.

Clinton, Obama in close 'Super Tuesday' races.

Or could it be simply - superiority.

'Camp Obama' Trains Campaign Volunteers

Stories and Numbers - a Closer Look at Camp Obama

The Obama Camp Has Its Own Memo...

For The First Time In My Adult Lifetime...

Two things have bucked me up.

I just needed to get that out.

Simplifying The Positive

“Seems to be” is the operative word here.

From the ‘burbs of the ATL

The plain-spoken affirmations Obama made:

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"

Math Any Ten Year Old Can Do

On Obama Not Going To Memphis

Attending An Obama Fundraiser

Leaving all that power and adulation has to be hard.

"Dude," I said, "there is NO way he can say that."

Obama needs just 295 delegates of any stripe to close it out.

110 and counting.

Right Back Where We Started From

I know the feeling myself.

In a student body of two thousand students, I lost by twelve votes.

She will survive.

No red, white and blue trimmed Styrofoam boaters required.

"Why hasn't she dropped out yet?"

"What more do they want from him?"

"Why isn't this thing over yet?"

"What trick is the Clinton Camp going to pull next?"

“I guess it’s over,” a friend of mine said yesterday.

Assassinate - Rhymes with "playahate"

My flabber has been gasted.

I am fresh out of rage.

If Clinton's campaign coffers had more money in them or IF THE DELEGATE COUNT WAS CLOSER

"Don't playahate, congratulate."