In Saturday’s RGJ, one of the contributing columnists wrote a piece so absurd, so hyperbolic, that there are only two possibilities: That the writer is mentally ill, or that he is a Republican impersonating a liberal in order to discredit the Left. For sheer comic value, it must be examined in detail.
He opens up with some good old fashioned Obamessiah rhetoric. Literally.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
These are the last public words of Martin Luther King in Memphis nearly 41 years ago.
In another part of the speech, he said, “I have been to the mountain-top, I have seen the promised land.” In a prophetical sense, these words predict the coming of Barack H. Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. If one were writing a bible, such a connection would probably be made.
The “coming” of Obama? In a “prophetical sense”? And if you read the first two paragraphs in context with the third, I think he is actually saying that the election of Obama is the “coming of the Lord.” Apparently, you don’t even need to write a Bible – just a newspaper column.
In his book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg defined fascism as the religion of the state. It’s scary to see that definition so literally demonstrated in the current political climate.
He has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is qualified for the job several times over.
Uhh…. Really? How’s that? With all the legislation he pushed through the US Senate? The leadership he showed in the Illinois Legislature in combating corruption there, by taking on its corrupt Governor who was of his same party? (Oh, wait – that was someone else.) Perhaps it is his masterful ability to read people’s true natures, which is why it only took him 20 years to realize his pastor was a crazy racist. Or maybe it was his all that he accomplished as a community organizer – now leaving your neighborhood worse off than you found it means you should try the same stuff for the whole country!
Obama may yet succeed – he is an effective communicator who ran a masterful political campaign. He’s proven he’s qualified to be a campaign manager, which ain’t nuthin’. But beyond that, no honest person can seriously claim he’s proven anything about his ability to lead the nation into peace and prosperity.
No longer can the phrase, “Go back to Africa” carry the onus that it used to.
I understand the author is probably pretty old, and that I am not. But I think this phrase stopped carrying any “onus” at all about the time Oprah became the richest woman in America.
Jealousy among some whites toward blacks who have achieved will diminish or disappear.
Oh, Lord – where to start? The assumption here that “jealousy” still exists in any measurable quantity is interesting in and of itself. And what jealousy there may be has nothing to do with racial discrimination, but rather from feeling that government imposed racial quotas meant that they were put in a worse position merely because of the color of their skin instead of their work ethic or qualifications. Isn’t that at least an understandable gripe? A post-racial one, even?
Perhaps many whites will look closer for the real character of an African-American, instead of focusing on skin color.
This is an interesting statement, finding itself as it does in a column devoting much of its space to the fact of Obama’s skin tone, rather than his character. And honestly, “most whites” stopped giving a damn about the color of people’s skin a long time ago. It’s unfortunate this columnist can’t say the same.
Perhaps whites will give better treatment to members of their own race. Many of them suffer similarly to blacks, but you cannot blame race.
There would have been a time when a black liberal would have chastised a white man for saying he needed to focus more on the poor of his own race, and rightfully so.
And how is it that poor blacks, in the same or similar circumstances as poor whites, are allowed to blame race, but the similarly situated whites cannot? This makes no sense at all. There are historical and cultural reasons minorities in this country tend to be less well off, but those reasons stopped being credible excuses decades ago. They would be far better off blaming liberal economic and social policies, particularly local ones, but then, that would require some acceptance of responsibility for their own situation.
How sad it must be to be a liberal, so blind to the glory and promise of the individual that they’re left focusing only on groups of people divided up by skin color!
Even the Israelis declared a cease-fire in honor of the Obama inauguration. Hamas followed suit 12 hours later. Talks have resumed in Zimbabwe. I imagine Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself is waiting with anticipation.
Seriously? The Arabs and the Israelis stopped fighting so they could join hands and sing kumbayah in celebration of Obama’s inauguration? Is that really what he thinks happened? Israel stopped advancing because they felt they met their military objectives, and were in fear of overextending themselves. Hamas stopped because they knew if they didn’t, they would continue to be annihilated (which is why it’s too bad Israel felt they had to stop).
One thing’s for sure, though. I’m sure Ahmadinejad is as excited as this columnist about the election results. What their respective anticipations are, however, is probably a little different.
Certainly, Obama will make some mistakes for which he will be pilloried by the press. But it may be predicted he will have a successful presidency.
It’s hard to square the idea that Obama is Lord with the idea that he might make a mistake or two. (I love the implication, too, that such mistakes will be tiny and overblown in the press, as if the press was not in the tank for the new President they just sacrificed every last vestige of credibility to elect.)
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The author’s name is R. Grant Seals, apparently a local professor emeritus of biochemistry at UNR. I hope he was better at analyzing cell structure than political environments, race relations less than 30 years old, foreign policy, and politicians themselves. I’m sure he suffered hardship in his life, but the world has long since passed this tired old race-monger by.
These day, though, perhaps he can get a new job passing out the new Little Red Blue Book of Obama so that someday the rest of us heathens can get with the program.
