COLIN POWELL AND THE POLITICS OF RACE

This whole hullabaloo over Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama reminds me of a lame magic show where the washed up magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat after the audience watches him stuff the rabbit into the hat.

Let’s get serious here, folks! Powell’s endorsement of Obama is about as surprising as Michelle Obama’s.

When arch-Republican conservative J.C. Watts announced back in June that he was considering voting for the arch-Democratic liberal candidate, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67247, any illusions that this race is about anything but race should have been dispelled.

That WorldNetDaily article quoted Watts as saying, “No one should assume that J.C. Watts should vote one way.” Whenever a public figure begins referring to himself in the third person, the public has to realize that his celebrity has gone to his head.

(Bob Dole should be considered the exception to that rule since he never really had a clue as to who he was.)

Even more telling about the motivations behind Black Republican conservatives possibly supporting Obama is a quotation from Armstrong Williams in the same article. ”I don’t necessarily like his policies; I don’t like much that he advocates,” Williams said, ...

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THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION (II)

(Please see previous article on “The Obama Administration” and a host of related articles at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/)

The last reference in my prior article on this subject was posted without comment or clarification. Admittedly, it cries out for clarification since it may very well represent a sign of the future.

Twelve year old Ashleigh Jones of Volusia County, Florida had the temerity to assert her right to free speech and her political preference in this election by wearing a T-shirt.

It wasn’t a T-shirt bearing any obscene or otherwise offensive statement. It merely indicated that, if she were of voting age, she would cast her ballot for McCain/Palin. Click here for the story and the video: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/myfox/pages/News/Politics/Detail;jsessionid=42DC2F03298955FDD7534DD207C872CB?contentId=7664724&version=11&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.14.1&sflg=1.

A gift from her fellow volunteers for the Republican ticket, the shirt simply read “McCain/Palin 2008″ on the back and “Go, Sarah, go!” on the front.

Innocuous enough, no?

Well, apparently, no, since the neophyte Republican was met by her fellow seventh grade students with charges of racism for wearing the shirt: “Some of the students were calling me racist because I was Caucasian,” she said. “I wanted the Caucasian man to win. And I told them that’s not true. It’s my freedom of speech, it’s my opinion.”

Undaunted, the young radical plans to wear it again.

The only problem I have with Ashleigh’s statement is her needless defensiveness over wanting the “Caucasian man to win.” Last I checked, both McCain and Palin were Caucasians so why deny she supported the White man and his running mate, even if the color of his skin played no part in that support?

Actually, Ashleigh reflects the current climate in America and in this campaign, namely that backing White people for the offices of the presidency and vice presidency over a Black man ipso facto means you are a racist and that you should be ashamed of yourself because of it.

It seems the same mindset was in play when I was warned against wearing a McCain/Palin button in Key West. If said button did not paint me as a racist, it certainly carried with it that implication in southern Florida, an implication that could result in bodily harm in that bastion of “liberal” thought.

As previously noted, Senator John McCain has either given up or has little hope of winning this race. The consequences of that surrender–and surrender has never been a trait of the senator–go far beyond the changing of the guard in Washington. Ashleigh’s experience and my own, unfortunately, are not distinctive or rare.

This race is unlike any I have known in my lifetime. Not even Nixon-McGovern in ‘72 nor Goldwater-Johnson in ‘64 compare. Those battles pitted totally different philosophies against one another and they involved different views of what America could and should be but they were usually civil and devoid of the vile contentiousness Obama and Company have brought to Campaign 2008.

Also, none of the opponents sought to radically alter the fundamental underpinnings of our nation or of its people.

The current campaign by the forces of Barack Obama is a horse of a different color, with no pun intended by that metaphor. Obama has conceded that his plans would mean a redistribution of wealth through onerous taxes on the successful to be “shared” with those 40% who currently pay no federal income taxes.

Either Obama is very naive or Obama is very devious.

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