No More Drama.

The 2008 edition of the talent show known as Presidential Idol (patent pending) has come to the forefront of most people’s consciousness nowadays. Not so many cared about a TV writers strike when you had perfect melodrama going on in east coast Hollywood better known as Washington D.C. It came just in time as the unofficial national pastime, NFL football, came to a suspenseful shocking close with Super Bowl XLII. Immediately after that stress-raising February 3rd contest came the February 5th election scoreboard known popularly as Super Tuesday. The results of this contest thinned the herd making Arizona Senator John McCain the matter-of-fact Republican race-runner in these political Olympics (a shock to the system for presumed champ and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) and creating the seemingly divinely destined two-way Democratic contest between previously assumed nominee New York Senator Hillary Clinton and upstart underdog Illinois Senator Barack Obama Jr.

What happened here over the course of the month of February shattered all preconceived notions about how the 2008 election year would play out. Here it was the first truly viable Black candidate (multiethnic to be precise) winning states like Idaho and North Dakota and Minnesota and Nebraska and Utah and Wisconsin and Vermont and Maine along with states like Georgia and Alabama and Louisiana and Virginia and Maryland and Delaware and Hawaii and Illinois. The diversity of these results could not dumbly dismissed and waved away as voting strength from a united plentiful Black electorate who long to see the first Black president; some of these states hardly have any Black people within them! It was evidence of a new movement where Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and disillusioned potential voters from all backgrounds and classifications came together in support of Obama’s inspiring vision for the future of the United States of America. State by state, big and small, the Obama campaign train rode through crushing cynicism and disbelief voting hopeful by voting hopeful with every state primary and caucus won.

It was such a powerful sight to see that even people in the media began to lose composure (see MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and his up-leg “thrill”). Almost as if he was empowered by the spirits of those recognized in Black History Month itself, Obama’s momentum utterly destroyed the long-held assumptions that Hillary Clinton would just promenade and pirouette right into the Democratic National Convention as the Democrat nominee for the 44th President of the United States. Woefully and totally unprepared for such a rug pulling, Hillary’s campaign scrambled to short-circuit this growing threat to her presidential dreams. It was supposed to be over on Super Tuesday! Barack Obama’s pledge to run a positive transparent issues-only campaign proved to be a sticky point for Hillary Clinton’s (politics in general for that matter) strategy to ruthlessly brutally attack and color opponents regardless of truth. Distractions and distortions grew with each passing day forcing Barack to defend his reputation instead of keeping on topic with the matters voters want to discuss. With a complicit ratings-hungry media, lies about Obama campaign’s words to Canadian officials over the hot-button subject of the NAFTA trade agreement (the supposed remarks from Obama’s campaign to Canada about not taking his NAFTA attacks seriously actually came from the Clinton campaign) and scary blue-tinged 3 A.M. red phone ads with heroic Hillary on the line spammed the broadcasts to sway voters fearful of the skinny caramel-colored senator with the “funny name”.  Politics itself can be a funny thing.

But even if such tactics worked in the short term, there seemed not to be anything to truly slow down this Obamomentum. Hillary’s gains in Texas and Ohio (and Rhode Island) were negated days later by Obama’s triumphs in Wyoming and Mississippi as the month of March marched on. The April 22nd Pennsylvania contest seemed like an eternity away time wise and Clinton was consistently behind in important metrics like the popular vote, earned pledged delegates, electorate diversity, and number of states won (especially those of the swing or majority Republican variety). The only thing she had left was an increasingly narrowing lead in the unique Democrat party mechanism called Super delegates, these big shots in the party who could independently back any candidate they pleased, regardless of how their state voted supposedly for the good of the party’s chances to win the general election. The way Obama was going short of a party imploding swerve it looked as if the Supers would get behind what looked to be the best chance to beat McCain in November, Barack Obama.

Of course this could not stand for the campaign of Hillary Clinton who day by day was beginning to resemble a Democrat version of Mike Huckabee, the Republican Arkansas governor who stayed in the race far beyond mathematical reason to win the nomination. Reversing a previous stance on the matters of jumpstarting states Michigan and Florida who did their primaries ahead of schedule and against DNC rules, Clinton wanted the results of those contests counted as is even though because of how they were run Obama (abiding by the rules) didn’t campaign in those states or even have his name on the ballot in the case of Michigan. It didn’t seem fair and talk of revotes, the fairest but logistically difficult option, popped up on the discussion. But things didn’t look hopeful for this scenario though and Michigan’s and Florida’s results would most likely remain disqualified. Spoken vertigo from Hillary about Barack being her Vice President made no sense coming from the 2nd placed contestant and didn’t stick. Nothing was working; the guy was unstoppable. So a campaign of ever-escalating desperation resorted to a new bottom of Donkey Kong’s boundless barrel: racial talk. 

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept”

So says Geraldine Ferraro, former New York congresswoman and 1984 vice presidential candidate with presidential hopeful Walter Mondale as well as notable Clinton campaign figure in the title of “Honorary New York Leadership Council Chair” of Clinton’s finance committee. These comments told to Torrance, California newspaper The Daily Breeze in larger spiel about unfair sexist treatment from media towards Hillary echo very similar commentary made about Rev. Jesse Jackson back in 1988 when he ran for president: “If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race.” Ironic talk coming from one who herself was a boundary breaker as she was picked for the VP slot back in 1984. When approached and challenged over her remarks Ferraro became even more indignant: “Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this [Obama’s] campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up. Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?”

Hillary offered a disagreement with said remarks which imply a commonly held belief of inborn inherent incapability when it comes to Black people, while Obama campaigner Samantha Power resigned after calling Hillary “a monster” in an off-the-record interview. Ferraro in context of the original controversy-causing remarks referred to her own 1984 place in history as coming about only because she was “Geraldine” instead of “Gerald” and that it was not based in her qualification. By saying this she insults Obama again with the implication that he too is not qualified all the while escaping the obvious parallel one can make about the supposedly “experienced” Hillary Clinton. And of course no mention from Ferraro that she could just the same make the same commentary about Hillary only being lucky of who she is because she is a woman which would be similarly wrong. To be caught up in such a concept must have eluded the sensibilities of Mondale’s Number 2. Ferraro resigned from Hillary’s campaign on March 12th, the day after her defiant rebuttal to querying media over those original March 7th remarks. She did so in her words in order to speak for herself and to allow Clinton to do the same while saying, “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen.”

The Ferraro fires put back into focus the previous shadowy talk coming from the Clinton campaign before the January 26th South Carolina primaries. For instance, Hillary’s husband Bill, the former President, insinuated that Barack’s campaign would be like Rev. Jesse Jackson’s two groundbreaking presidential bids in that he could not survive far beyond regions with large Black constituencies (South Carolina and Washington D.C. come to mind). In response to a reporter who asked him about Obama’s strength in the region since it takes both of the Clintons to challenge him: “Hahahaha…that’s just debate too. Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice in ‘84 and in ‘88. And he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama’s run a good campaign here. He’s run a good campaign everywhere. He’s got a…He’s a good candidate with good organization.” Hillary herself allowed room for similar subtext to be derived when attempting to counter Barack’s oratory about hope, the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Responding to a reporter asking for a reaction: “I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that, uh, President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said, ‘We are going to do it,’ and actually got it accomplished.”

These comments smelled of notions that Barack Obama was THE Black candidate and that this fact precluded any belief in that kind of candidate’s inherent abilities—the stereotypical ‘incapable Negro’ if you will—and by placing him in that box the Clinton campaign attempted to persuade voters to go for her as if she would not be the well-intentioned ‘lost cause’ that would ultimately disappoint. It reminds you of once L.A. Dodgers’ vice president Al Campanis unwittingly remarking this familiar historical meme about blacks not having the necessities to perform high-level positions in Major League Baseball on ABC’s Nightline in 1987. Along with former President Bill Clinton’s ill-timed snooze and watch-checking behind speaker Martin Luther King III in church on MLK day, these performances turned much of the electorate (Black, White, etc.) strongly towards Obama and away from the wife of the supposed “first Black president” shifting the momentum of the race in the process. Back then in January, it was only subtle subtext to infer from at best. By the ides of March, it was now open, naked, and exposed for the world to see as it became clear that the vitality of the Obama campaign threatened the life of the Clinton campaign. But the worse to come waited in lurk.

“Hillary ain't never been CALLED a ‘nigger’!”

 “America’s chickens…are coming home…to roost!”

“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”

“No, no, no! Not God Bless America! God DAMN America! That's in the Bible…”

 
Emotion-stirring snippets hitting the airwaves that threatened to finally lockbox (forgive me if I sound like Gore right about now) Obama into a far more fear-inducing picture of “the Black candidate”. The words were given by Obama’s recently retired pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ who served on Obama’s campaign as part of his African-American Religious Leadership Committee until the controversy erupted. These statements blasted on loop over the monitors both computer and TV-styled alarmed and incensed many onlookers who began to suspect Barack’s long connection to him being that the pastor of the Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian worship-house was a mentor to Barack since his early days in Chicago in the 1980’s, that he was the one the senator credited for the title of his famous book The Audacity of Hope, that he married the presidential aspirer to his wife Michelle not to mention that he baptized their two children. Guilt by association: does Barack hold these views himself and if so, is he really a black militant subversive in secret rather the cross-community uniter he has proclaimed himself to be? What DOES his wife mean when she says she’s really proud of this country for the first time?

The media pressed the buttons in its own self-serving mission to get ratings via drama junkie viewership. Though the hard math says otherwise, the big media outlets want to keep up the illusion of a tight race between once-invincible Hillary Clinton and shooting star Barack Obama. Out of context quotes designed to stoke the fears of portions of the public who don’t quite trust the multiethnic senator for various reasons and/or to convince current supporters to rethink their support. The image of a ranting raving forceful fiery voiced black man in religious robes played in the background with no sound as the show hosts and pundits oiled the canvas impressionistically. Show the snippets one more time to get the viewers riled up and then let’s ponder the doom and gloom of it all to set up the next dramatic story to tell. The 3 magic clips were specifically woven together to paint a picture, to frame the narrative to hang on the public’s conscious walls. No one will understand the context of the bites of sound or the 3 different time periods this montage was assembled from. All they will hear is simply the words “God Damn America” and the emotional response takes over the rational one: He’s an Un-American traitor!! How DARE he!! Somehow the fact that Wright was a U.S. Marine who received a commending letter in 1966 from a hospitalized President Lyndon B. Johnson after tending to him in his role as a cardiopulmonary technician escapes the discussion.

The comments were derived from 3 different sermons given on September 16, 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11th tragedy, April 13, 2003 shortly after the start of the Iraq War, and on Christmas Day 2007 in the midst of Obama’s run for presidency. In the Christmas 2007 sermon where he made the Hillary statement, Wright contrasted the differences between Hillary’s struggles with in popular sentiment vs. Obama’s with the story of Jesus as a backdrop which coincidentally parallels the message of hope Obama sticks so strongly to. The April 2003 sermon “Confusing God and Government”, from which the “God Damn America” and “HIV” quotes derive, detailed American government’s morally unjust actions against its own citizens historically and currently and the evolution of those policies. In furious indignation at the treatment of minority groups (most notably Blacks) seen as a continuation of poor U.S. domestic policy, Wright compares evolving American government to a static God and made the moral point that God’s policies always supersede these American policies which are ethically not in line. That America is not over God. In the September 2001 sermon on chickens roosting, Wright paraphrases words from outspoken former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck (a White man) who met with controversy on a Fox News show mentioning the numerous historic American actions in the world including the nuclear bombings of Japan in WWII and killings of innocents as a karmic boomerang which laid the groundwork for the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers. Wright went on to reflect upon growing religious devotion in 9/11’s aftermath as he employed these words of eventual Iraq War opponent, Ambassador Peck (former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq, former Deputy Director of the Reagan Administration’s White House Task Force on Terrorism among his many Washington D.C. positions in his 1956 to 1989 career in the U.S. Foreign Service).

Silver linings from these dark campaign clouds were that they seriously conflicted with the old low-rent rumor that Barack Hussein Obama (!) was a ‘secret’ Muslim subversive bent on delivering the U.S.A. to “Islamic rule”, whatever that’s about (or perhaps Minister Louis Farrakhan, I don’t know). Three popularly ostracized groups in America for unfounded irrational fears currently are Blacks, Mexicans, and Middle Easterners or those who vaguely resemble them. The fact that the religion of Islam is automatically equated with terrorism and a boogeyman sentiment is insulting to begin with and no doubt is just the 2000’s variety of xenophobia that once was assigned to the Japanese, the Russians, the Native Americans and the “Communists”. A picture circulated of Obama in a Somalian outfit could look benign if the sentiment wasn’t about “the evil boogeyman Muslim under your bed”. “Look! I told you! See?! He IS a Secret Muslim™!” So what if he was a Muslim? He would be no less a monster than Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith. It sounds like the same panic that went on with Catholic John F. Kennedy in the 50’s and 60’s. How come Barack has to answer for what his pastor says when so many religious figures like the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club, Rev. John Hagee and others have said far more controversial things than these statements yet still have access to the White House? When other candidates’ personal pastors may have said or done storm-stirring things yet no one asks these candidates to answer for their religious leader’s words.

These things are about as inane as the old argument from Blacks about “Is he Black enough? (grab the cocoa butter)” It was to be expected. This was the first non-all-white candidate to come so far in a Presidential race. His caramel colored skin, his hair texture, his middle name, his religion, his wife, and his roots were going to be exhaustively explored as he tested the country’s maturity by running for this election. No doubt that the man who seeks to bridge the various boundaries causing the name of “United States” to be an oxymoron would inevitably have to comment on the race besides the race.

As his Democratic opponent went silent into the background, Obama delivered an invigorating realistic self-written speech that reflects the very person he is: a man of mixed background who has seen different walks of life and can see the differing points of view. Not shying away from the controversy a bit Obama directly explained his relationship with his former inflammatorily-spoken pastor as an adult of intelligence. The community-serving Rev. Wright was like family to Barack and he could not disown him no more than he could disown the Black community, no more than he could disown his White grandmother who while loving her multiethnic grandson like no other has said disagreeable things about Blacks in his presence. He spoke of the pastor’s limitations in vision as a product of the times he comes from and experiences he dealt with much like his grandmother’s occasional comments. He disagreed with and condemned his mentor’s statements and remarked on the “racial stalemate” which keeps distrustful members of the same society walled off in camps which further fuel these kinds of views and prohibit productive dialogue between them. In a masterstroke, Obama paralleled this discussion about ethnic divisions to a larger context about political, theological, economic divisions which has created the lack of necessary communication and cooperation in society and government that he seeks to remedy. In this speech he underlined the themes what have become the catchphrases of his campaign: Hope and Change. Hope that things can improve and Change of the way people interact to improve those things. They were more than buzzwords; they were at the core philosophy of his campaign. And without Unity how can these be achieved.

And we’ve seen the drama queen media look for any reason to plant seeds of division by attempting to pit Latinos against Blacks, women against men, White males against White females trying to pigeonhole allegiance for Hillary vs. Barack vs. John McCain (nobody ever mentions the Asians or Middle Easterners). We’ve seen crazed discourse in message boards, on airwaves, and in person with veiled and unveiled prejudices in the tragedy of fear that is at the core of this country’s history. Obama blended all perspectives together showing simultaneously a mirror and a window to each POV of this nation’s past, present, and potential future if we choose to accept it. We saw ‘us’ and ‘them’ and found that the two are indeed ourselves. He didn’t rail against Ferraro’s statements towards him in further evidence that while he understands the anger that stems from ancient divisions he has the ability to not to be caged by them. All of these situations were susceptible to remedy and unlike his pastor who may be too tied to the pain of the past he can take the struggle to the next evolution. It was a new time. This speech of “A More Perfect Union” reminded anyone watching why Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all got behind this candidate so enthusiastically. Why a virtual cross-section of America ethnically, religiously, economically from every region fearlessly support the man known as Barack Hussein Obama. He is an extension of his optimistic forward thinking mother who changed the world for the better in her own way decades ago through her benevolent actions and attitudes.

The comments of Barack’s pastor received violent disagreement as well as surprising agreement from whites and even atheists but now that was beside the point. Though all didn’t follow Barack’s take on his monumental speech and that he may have actually lost a few supporters looking for an outright rejection of his pastor, it gained him much more than he lost and verified that his vision for the future was no idle talk. Ironically defended in his position on Rev. Wright by Republican opponents like Mike Huckabee and John McCain, “Bosnian sniper survivor” Hillary Clinton chose to aggravate the wound trying to harp on the subject hoping it would distract from her exposure by comedian Sinbad. The meaningless polls, which showed him below opponent Clinton for the first time in a long time, quickly reversed back to normal as Obama exampled the leadership and frankness many have been waiting for a long time. Add a few more carts onto the Obama Train as we head to Unity Junction.

The Obama Drama is not over by a long-shot as a fading Hillary Clinton panics in the face of what looks like an inevitable Democratic nominee named Obama. One time prez runner Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, inspired by Obama’s speech on race added one more onto the Super delegate endorsement for Obama thumbing nose at assumed favors and loyalties for the Clintons dispelling the hyped Black/Brown divide in the process (could Dave Chappelle’s prophecy be coming true?). The kitchen sink strategy of low road smears and substance-less distractions was not working and time was slipping away with the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary nearby. Obama’s momentum here could keep a predicted Hillary victory closer than expected or even lost and the states that follow certainly don’t favor Hillary. John McCain has been patiently waiting for the Democrats to get it together to face for November and the Democratic party is at a crossroads which one way or another will destroy the party as you knew it for so many decades. Either reborn anew or retired altogether are the options and in this fight for supremacy expect more insanity (race-based and otherwise) to test the mettle of the man who had the gall, the audacity to hope.

Every drama must have its hopeful resolution. Ask Mary J. Blige. ‘Til next time.