He's Bla-a-ack!

August 22, 2008

Recent Pew Research polling data indicates that Barack Obama's deficit among white voters has grown substantially in the weeks since McCain's release of the still-talked-about commercial comparing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to two notorious starlets. While some analysts assert it's because of Obama's "inexperience," the core reason for the decline is arguably the cultural baggage Obama has taken on in the process of advancing his political career.

It's hard to understand why Obama's campaign keeps bringing up the subject of his skin color. Is it because he thinks he might not be black enough, as his critics asserted early on? Ironically, it was Senator Joe Biden, now Obama's running mate, who made this point by noting, in a truly racism-tinged remark, that Obama was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

Or is it because, as his backers are warning us, he's going to be attacked as being too black for American voters, many of whom are understandably queasy at the thought of Reverend Wright's delivering the invocation at Obama's inauguration ceremony, or the rapper Ludacris performing at the inaugural ball?

On Saturday, August 2, The New York Times published a Bob Herbert op ed piece entitled "Running While Black." In it, Herbert asserted that a recent McCain ad comparing Obama to two white celebrity babes, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, was "racist." Herbert wondered "why, if you have a black man running for high public office . . . the opposition needs to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidate [italics mine]."

In this piece, Herbert, one of the cadre of Obama idolators, wilfully refuses to comprehend that the point of the commercial was to say that Obama has about as much depth as these two young female celebrities. Given the relative insubstantiality of Obama's recent speeches and the sycophantism of a press corps that follows him around like papparazi close on the heels of a Hollywood hottie, that's the real meaning of the ad. Nor does Herbert take note of Obama's response to the ad, in which the Democratic candidate made it a point to mention that "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

We can hope that at some point it will dawn on Herbert that Americans are not concerned about the candidate's color so much as they are his celeb-worthy narcissism, coupled with a lack of judgment that would do Wesley Snipes proud. And we can hope that Herbert will note that, as a Rasmussen poll released on Sunday, August 3, has revealed, only 22 percent of respondents found McCain's ad to be racist, while 53 percent found Obama's "dollar bill" comment in response to the ad to be racist.

As the "celebrity ad" has pointed out, this campaign is about whether we're willing to take a chance by electing as president a man who carries an inordinately heavy load of cultural baggage, acquired through his hobnobbing with the likes of the Afro-centrist, anti-American preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright and leftist radicals William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, all three of whom have demonstrated their ongoing commitment to undermining American values, not to say overthrowing our government.

And it's about a candidate who's friends with one of the most degenerate and dangerous of rap music stars, Ludacris. The rapper's latest release, "Politics As Usual," explains that he's got "a slot in the president's ipod," that he's "one of his [Obama's] favorite rappers," and that Obama will "give the Luda a special pardon if [he's] ever in the slammer." In the song, Ludacris also promotes himself as a candidate for the Vice Presidency, referring to Hillary Clinton with the words "that bitch is irrelevant," and going on to assert that "McCain don't belong in any chair unless he's paralyzed." In Ludacris' vision "[t]he first black president is destined and it's meant to be," so we should "paint the White House black."

The question is rapidly becoming, "Are the American people willing to go out on a limb to vote for a man whose judgment is colored by a load of cultural collateral inimical to the American way of life?"

Yes, Senator Obama, we had noticed the color of your skin. Now we're focusing on the substance of your character and your culture.