Obama: Black Dream Come True or Living Nightmare?

The day after the “historic election of America’s first black president” I wrote a post called, “The Struggle Is Over,” where I speculated that white Americans who voted for a black man for president, whatever their stated reasons, were partially motivated by a desire to free themselves and the nation from the burden of “white guilt,” and would no longer tolerate protestations of systemic disadvantage by black people.  I wrote:

Now that America has elected Barack Obama, “the struggle” is officially over.  We are all equal; if you’ve got problems, they’re your fault.  The feel-good liberals who voted to disprove the validity of our shared racial history will have no further patience for complaint.  “Whaddaya mean?  Ya got a black president!”  Expect to hear variations of that refrain a lot in the next four years.

Well, it seems that not only “feel-good liberals” who voted for Obama are “feeling good” for their liberalism, staunch conservatives are positively giddy.  Tom Adkins, said to be the publisher of CommonConservative.com, writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The Era of White Guilt is over.

This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn’t give a fluff about skin color and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively working with America-hating domestic terrorists. Yet white Americans made Barack Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov. 4, 2008, white guilt is dead.

So today, I’m feeling a little “uppity,” if you will. For more than a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 1960s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution to the country’s problems. But if a black man can become president, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barack Obama destroys the validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.

Adkins gleefully dismisses all the black individuals and entities he can think of who have dedicated themselves to the fight for racial equality as being suddenly, yet emphatically, irrelevant:

Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.)? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. To those Eurosnots who forged careers hating America? I’m still waiting for the first black French president.

No more quotas. No more handouts. No more complaining that “the man” is keeping you down. “The man” is now black.

Oh, well, there goes Ebony, Jet and the Miss Black Universe Pageant, I guess.  But, maybe Adkins should hold off on the celebration for a bit.  The Southern Poverty Law Center says hate group membership rates are surging:

Even as they rail against the election of the nation’s first black president, some white supremacist leaders are claiming that people have flocked to their organizations since Barack Obama’s victory.

“The League of the South is reporting a surge in new members within hours of the results from yesterday’s elections,” proclaimed an E-mail that the neo-Confederate group sent to supporters the day after the election. “League president, Dr. Michael Hill, stated that it is from an awakening of many Southerners that the constitutional Republic is now dead and has been replaced with a national socialist empire.”

Don Black, who runs the leading white supremacist hate site Stormfront.org, boasted in an online post Wednesday afternoon that his website was seeing six times its usual traffic. “There are a lot of angry White people out there looking for answers,” he wrote. “Let’s show them. We will not be defeated.”

The same kinds of claims were made after Obama secured the Democratic nomination however, it didn’t seem to hurt him in the general election.  There was that thwarted “top hat and white tuxedo” assassination attempt, though.  And just the other day, CNN reported that most Americans thought Obama would heal our racial divide:

The public thinks it’s likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.

As many African Americans bask in the reflective glow of Obama’s so-called “monumental, historic achievement” on their (our) behalf, Reuters has a story today of young black people who say, “wait up, not so fast:”

The election of the first black president in U.S. history should send a powerful signal to young black Americans: If Barack Obama made it, so can you.

But some African Americans living in inner city Atlanta said that while Obama is a role model his life appeared so far removed from their own struggles that it was difficult to see how they could use it to spur their own success.

There are about a gazillion “what Obama means for racism” stories floating around on the internet, but the truth is, Obama’s election doesn’t amount to much in that regard at all.  Race relationships in this country are just as complex today as they were the day before the election, as they were thirty years ago.  While those who voted for Obama pat themselves on the back, and those who didn’t, pat themselves on the back for being part of a country that has progressed to the point that it can pat itself on the back, disproportionate numbers of black men still languish in jail, huge numbers of black families still live in poverty, and inner-city schools still suck.  Nobody sitting in an overcrowded county hospital emergency room seeking substandard medical care they couldn’t pay for on November 3, can suddenly walk into a private hospital today and demand treatment.

If we’re completely honest with ourselves and each other, we would admit that a politician like say, Bobby Rush or Willie Brown probably wouldn’t make it past the primaries, even if they could marshal the forces necessary to get into them in the first place.  They’re too black.  For Democrats.  If Barack Obama didn’t have an exotic background story to tell, he wouldn’t be…well, Barack Obama.  He’s be just another Illinois state senator, since it’s doubtful an ordinary black guy gets the support and greasing through the system Obama enjoyed.  If he had a mustache, or was a beefier, darker-skinned, “by his own bootstraps” kind of black man, he’d be toast.  The truth is, racism wasn’t overcome with the election of Barack Obama, racism is what got him elected.

Other than that, nothing much’s changed.

Obama Lets Media Pick Cabinet

See, Jimmy, this is how you play president...

I guess West Wing-lite President-elect Barack Obantos is so uncomfortable making decisions that the idea of sitting back and letting Chris Matthews’ frat brothers in the media who want to help him be a success ‘cuz it’s their jobs, do it for him, is just fine.  After handing out a couple of plum gigs to his ace boon cronies Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, and naming a “transition team” straight out of the library of past Harvard year books, the soon-to-be-Waffler-In-Chief was tapped out.  Since even he knows he’s got to name somebody to something sooner or later, he, or most likely David Axelrod, since Obie never thinks anything Axelturf doesn’t think first, dispatched a couple of the professional “unnamed sources” they keep on the payroll to metaphorically stick their fingers in the wind to see which way which trial balloons would float.

“Obama asks…”  “Obama is thinking of asking…” “Obama weighs…” “Clinton said to be…” “Obama met with Clinton and Richardson…” “Democrats jockeying..” “Dean out as health..” “Larry Summers…”   The speculation from “sources,” “observers,” and other assorted “experts” goes on and on.  Where’s the bold change?  Letting the media do the dirty work?

That’s what it looks like with the “Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State” rumors.  Whether Camp O put Clinton’s name out as a serious contender, or for appearances sake in an effort to avoid a replay of the “not even vetted for veep” uproar, or, if, as I believe, the job really is hers for the taking, it’s also pretty clear that final approval comes not from the O Team or the Senate, but from the public, via the media.  That’s why, in this American Idol-inspired public vetting process, AP has been running, and continuously updating, a story about Bill Clinton being a potential threat to a possible Hillary appointment:

Former President Bill Clinton’s globe-trotting business deals and fundraising for his foundation sometimes put his activities abroad at odds with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and could cause complications if President-elect Barack Obama picks her to be secretary of state.

It’s doubtful that the current Senate-elect would reject any Democrat for anything for any reason.  And if Joe (Gird Your Loins) Biden’s plagiarizing, racially insensitive, gaffe-prone ass can be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, which is soon to be occupied by the least experienced candidate for president in the world, Peewee Herman should be able to qualify any other job available.  Therefore, I’m willing to bet Obama did indeed offer Clinton the job Friday, and she, as reported, said, “maybe.”  Thus, the AP assist on a semi-plausible “out” in case “maybe” becomes “I’ll pass.”

Recession Food: It’s Not That Bad

With the economy headed into the crapper, I think a regular “Recession Recipe” feature might not be a bad idea.  It came to me while reading PUMA Pac, where Murphy had posted a link to a New York Times article about how in this economy, Spam, the quasi-meat, not the web junk, sales are booming.

But these days, consumers are rediscovering relatively cheap foods, Spam among them. A 12-ounce can of Spam, marketed as “Crazy Tasty,” costs about $2.40. “People are realizing it’s not that bad a product,” said Dan Johnson, 55, who operates a 70-foot-high Spam oven.

While the article notes that the economic downturn is responsible for such an increased demand for Spam that workers at the Hormel plant can get all the overtime they want, it also says Spam is not the only cheap stomach stretcher selling off the shelves:

Pancake mixes and instant potatoes are booming. So are vitamins, fruit and vegetable preservatives and beer, according to data from October compiled by Information Resources, a market research firm.

“We’ve seen a double-digit increase in the sale of rice and beans,” said Teena Massingill, spokeswoman for the Safeway grocery chain, in an e-mail message. “They’re real belly fillers.”

Kraft Foods said recently that some of its value-oriented products like macaroni and cheese, Jell-O and Kool-Aid were experiencing robust growth. And sales are still growing, if not booming, for Velveeta, a Kraft product that bears the same passing resemblance to cheese as Spam bears to ham.

I don’t know about instant potatoes.  Seems to me a bag of real potatoes is a better bargain.  But, other than that, cheap, preservative-laden, chemically-processed, pseudo-foods just might be the way to go, considering the way the latest financial news is going.

Now, this could all be part of a nefarious plot by Barack Obama to promote Hawaii’s state meat.  Just like he’s lobbying hard to bring the Olympics to Chicago, it’s conceivable that he’s planning to keep the overall economy depressed in order to help boost attendance at Waikiki’s “Spam Jam.”  From Wikipedia:

In the United States, the residents of the state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) consume the most Spam per capita. On average, each person on Guam consumes 16 tins of Spam each year and the numbers at least equal this in the CNMI. Guam, Hawaii, and Saipan, the CNMI’s principal island, have the only McDonald’s restaurants that feature Spam on the menu. Burger King, in Hawaii, began serving Spam in 2007 on its menu to compete with the local McDonald’s chains.^[9][10]

In Hawaii, Spam is so popular it is sometimes dubbed “The Hawaiian Steak.” ^[11] It is traditionally reheated (cooked), resulting in a different taste than Spam eaten by many Americans on the mainland, who may eat Spam cold.^[12] One popular Spam dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, in which cooked Spam is combined with rice and nori seaweed and classified as onigiri.^[13]

Okay, so maybe the “depressed economy/increased Spam Jam traffic” thing will just be a happy byproduct of the “failed policies” of the next four years, but, give me credit for trying to give Obama credit for something, will ya?  Now that he’s appointed Valerie Jarrett to be Senior White House Adviser, with all her problems, like questionable donations to the Obama campaign, questionable Habitat practices and associations, a Judicial Watch investigation/witch hunt, and whose housing policies as head of Habitat Company (privatizing public housing with government subsidies) mirror those of HUD and the president-elect, we can probably expect similarly dismal results as Chicago’s.  And we all know housing sales affect the economy, right?  Especially when you try to build “mixed income housing” in upscale neighborhoods.  Then again, if the housing bubble causes googobs of people to lose their homes, “mixed income housing” could become a far bigger necessity than anyone ever imagined.

So, all things considered, maybe we should all stock up on Spam, Velveeta and free packs of ketchup from fast food restaurants.  A couple packets in hot water makes a decent cup of soup.  Laugh if you will, but if you don’t work for Hormel, these recipe suggestions just might be more handy in the coming years than any of us currently want to think.

Country Spam Casserole Recipe

Ingredients:
1 can Spam luncheon meat; cubed
1 Onion; chopped
1 pound Bag frozen mixed vegetables; thawed, drained
2 cans Cream of potato soup
3 cups Prepared instant mashed potatoes
1 package (3 oz size) Chives and onion cream cheese; softened
1/4 cup Grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In skillet over medium-high heat, saute Spam and onion until browned. In bowl, combine vegetables, Spam mixture, and soup. Spoon into 3-quart casserole dish.

In bowl, combine mashed potatoes and cream cheese. Spread over Spam mixture. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly.