A Pose By Any Other Name

The veneer is peeling, the wax is melting … and hell may indeed be freezing over – and after what appeared to be a dazzling, near-perfect pitch campaign reminiscent of the flawlessly timed cadences of Johnny Mathis when he sang ‘Chances Are.’

From where I sit, the wunderkind’s façade has slipped, and what we might be seeing now is the tried and true Barack Obama. Like water seeking its own level, his principles, too, have bubbled up through the glossy surface – and they are not so wunderbar.

Up to now, Obama – using fast & loose rhetoric – has gotten himself farther up the social and political ladders than any other non-caucasian in American history. The devotion and cheering on of the African-American communities and, by enormous measure, the white communities have aided in propelling him straight toward the highest, most coveted executive position this country has to offer.

He has played his role beautifully, delivering long stretches of imaginative, albeit immature, speculation, which his followers have eaten up like free ice cream on a hot day. According to those adoring fans, there seems to be nothing he could ever say that is wide of the mark. One liberal ladyfriend even said to me, “If Barack could sprout wings, we’d see him fly.”

Now, however, Obama’s long-term, personal association with a certain racist pastor has grounded him, at least for the time being. This close association might possibly cancel out a significant share of all the good will, trust, and hope for progress – and I am not talking just in terms of the Presidency. I include the ongoing, exhaustive and frustrating wars against racial prejudice in America in general, which we were winning.

Each inch-by-bloody-inch victory was bringing us closer, similar in nature to the centuries-long vicious turmoil in the Middle East where countries are crying out for freedom, democracy and equality. When you add up all those inches that we here in America have gained, everyone would realize that we had in fact come a very long way.

Then, just at the moment when evolution occurs, another hothead – another homegrown jihadist – comes scurrying out of his hole and starts hurling verbal IEDs in every direction causing widespread damage. This hothead – this pastor – refuses to let go of the past, because he is not happy unless he dredges up old ghosts and shoots every good intention in the head to impede social advancement and cameraderie.

The stage was set for the pastor’s ignominious emergence (like an irascible first-time homeowner who purposely blows his leaves into a neighbor’s yard, “Because now I can.”). He must have been thinking that his chummy friendship with Obama gave him the right to platform farcical and hateful statements such as “The government invented AIDS to kill black people,” and “The government is building concentration camps for black people,” and “The government provides drugs to blacks to hold them down,” etcetera, ad nauseum.

What I find astonishing is not what this pastor blurted but rather that Obama, who has been mentored by this person for over twenty years, claims he was not aware of his most intimate feelings, and has clumsily made excuses for same, which are all unquestionably uber radical and unprogressive. It is for his obvious reluctance to put the pastor fully and equivocally in his place that I perceive a rapid withering of Obama’s perfect presentations of himself.

When I had read the pastor’s rantings, I thought for a moment they were Stokely Carmichael’s words rising from his grave (about the cancer that took his life). He had said, it was “… given to me by the forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them.” He further claimed that the FBI had put the disease in his body to assassinate him.

Oceans of water have passed since Carmichael was on the scene and sparked the term Black Power. His attitude nonetheless remains inured in the pastor’s heart and mind. He has proven without a shadow of doubt that he, and persons like himself (and not all of them black) who perpetually and unnecessarily let fly the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ at our faces and into our collective consciousness, have no intention of changing one iota either their points of view or their off-color tune any time soon.

Strangely enough, I must thank the pastor for his horrid honesty. Until now, conservatives have chosen to regard Obama’s spell over his followers as charming. No prima facie evidence we have presented has been beefy enough to cause Democrats and liberals to understand and accept the fact that he is not yet qualified or experienced to assume the mantle of Commander in Chief – most particularly at this volatile time.

The pastor, however, quite possibly has single-handedly delivered the long-overdue hangover remedy the masses of spellbound Obama followers have needed to sober up and face reality. That reality is, if their candidate cannot – or will not – take control over one person’s ravings, how can they expect him to control the White House?