King Coon Returns

That is the face of an uber-coon.

Study it. Learn it. Despise it.

A friend of mine referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a "troubled man." He said he feels sorry for someone who is so obviously messed up in the head.

Sympathy for uber-coons is hard to come by in my house.

Why am I using such strong language for a man I've never met? Check out this story that I found on Jack and Jill Politics. That, my readers, is the work of an uber-coon.

For those of you allergic to links, the story details exactly how Uncle Clarence is trying to derail President-elect Barack Obama's ascension into the White House. The Cliff Notes are that Thomas is going out of his way to investigate whether Obama is a legal citizen of this country. Uncle Clarence is bucking (pun intended) some longstanding Supreme Court tradition to conduct his "investigation," and he's aligned himself with some kooky people.

Truthfully, this case has very little chance of progressing. Not only would stripping Obama of the presidency pretty much assure that the Supreme Court lost all public trust considering the Florida debacle, but it would mean that we'd have to have George W. Bush as president longer.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants that.

I'm not upset because this might prevent Obama from becoming the HNIC. Nah, I'm upset because this is such a flamboyant display of coonery that it makes me sick to my stomach. Really, I just had to swallow bile.

I only have a passing familiarity with Uncle Clarence. What has been written about him suggests that he is deeply troubled by feelings of inferiority that are rooted in color issues and were heightened by a mistaken belief that Affirmative Action's sole purpose was to promote unqualified folks. From my vantage point, he's a deeply disturbed individual.

But, if he was only disturbed, I would be loathe to label him an uber-coon. Maybe a regular coon, but not an uber-coon. Uber-coonery requires malice and evilness, not just an overwhelming sense of self hate or greed.

I have a friend who hypothesized that Thomas believes, mistakenly, that by taking a hardline stance against affirmative action he is really saving black people from a lifetime of victimhood. My friend saw Thomas as a Quixotic figure, tilting against a black pathology he has grossly overestimated. Someone deserving of pity, but not anger or disgust.

It's not the first time we've had a difference of opinion.

Clarence Thomas is the prototypical crab in a barrel. Sure he had a hard childhood. Orphaned and mentally abused, he definitely earned some leeway regarding his lack of social grace and even some of his color issues. But, that's as far as I can go.

Uncle Clarence has benefited from affirmative action at every stage of his life and he has the nerve to tell other black people that he's trying to prevent them from using the same tool because it's bad for them? Is he serious?

No, if Thomas really opposed affirmative action he would have refused that first federal appointment from George Bush I, the appointment that later led him to the Supreme Court to replace the court's only black member. If he really opposed affirmative action there was no way he would have replaced Marshall in what was clearly an affirmative action hire. In fact, there is no way Thomas would still be practicing law if he truly abhorred his tainted degree from Yale's Law School. If his feelings were that intense, he would have abandoned his pursuit of a career in the law and sought to make his mark in another career without the help of sympathetic white administrators.

He didn't do any of that.

Instead, he reaped all the benefits he could from affirmative action and then dedicated himself to insuring that no other black person could ever have that opportunity. He believes that any black person who has as much success as a white person must be unworthy of their position, and should be deemed inferior. He willingly claimed an uber-coon destiny.

Now, Thomas may actually believe that he is a martyr and that his courage and perseverance will be celebrated by later generations. He may have convinced himself that is his real motive. But, I have seen beyond that facade.

Uncle Clarence is looking out for Number One. He is protecting himself and his position, all while abasing himself at the altar of white superiority that is his real God. Thomas is willing to endure ridicule from black people because he does not care what we think, after all, we aren't white. As long as white people treat him with love and respect, and there are many white people who do just that, then he is fine. His life work is complete as long as he receives that figurative pat on the head from his smiling master.

He can die a happy uber-coon.



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I Hear Those Rumbles

The grumbling continues.

Across the political landscape, folks are wondering if the presidency of Barack Obama will be change they can believe in, or just $700 billion worth of the same old thing.

The streets are talking.

I'm not listening.

It's too early for me to get all excited about who Obama picks for what post. I understand the concerns folks have about Clinton, Holder and Geithner. The disappointment regarding Obama's backtracking on several issues, like tax cuts, NAFTA and ending the war in Iraq is understandable. After all, people elected Obama because they thought he represented certain interests and if he fails to hold up his end of the deal, well people have the right to stay home in 2012.

I get it.

Only, I guess I don't.

I've said this in several places, but it's worth repeating. There is only one HNIC, and he's the one who has ultimate decision making ability. It doesn't matter that much who is in his cabinet because they will be carrying out the vision he has set forth.

I know that's a gross simplification of how the executive branch works. I fully understand that the president is dependent on his advisers to provide him with information, and I know that the people who control the flow of information have a lot of power.

The point I'm trying to make is that nobody is going to take bold action unless Obama signs off on it. Conversely, nobody is going sit on their asses when Obama wants action taken. He's smart enough, and informed enough to stay on top of the people working for him.

Plus, homeboy has a vision.

I think that's what comforts me even as I wonder about some of the changes he's made to his rhetoric and actions. See, from what I've noticed, Obama is excessively pragmatic and somewhat obsessed with having his vision of the world come to fruition. He has definite plans for his legacy and the world, and I'm convinced his selection of political retreads is an attempt to hit the ground running and get his vision moving.

At least I hope so.

I really want the brother to succeed. Honestly, I'm not sure what success would entail, but like pornography, I'll know it when I see it. If Hillary and the rest of the crew can help him get this country back on the right track, I'm all for them joining the team. If they are standing in the way of progress, I fully expect him to jettison them quickly. He's cold-blooded like that.

Basically, I hear the rumbles, but I ain't listening.



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Not This Again

You would think that with the world's economy on the brink of collapse, terrorists rapidly regaining their strength and our plant dying faster than ever, journalists would have more than enough serious topics to discuss.

Yet, when I turned on CNN Tuesday morning, what was the topic that merited a special panel of experts? "Is Barack Obama really black?" The other day the Washington Post ran a column that said that people calling Obama black are really mistaken.

Seriously, WTF?

I thought we'd cleared this up months ago. Look, Obama's daddy was African, his momma was white. They made a little mixed-up baby in 1961. Back then, the "one-drop" rule was still in effect, so if you had some black blood and looked like it, you were black. Period.

Obama recognized this early, bonded with the brothers, and whenever anybody asked him about his race, he told them he was black. Not mixed, not bi-racial, not half-black. Obama is blackity, black, black. Simple, right?

Wrong.

Truth is, some folks don't like how Obama took the whole "black president" mantle and ran with it. Some of these people are mixed race people themselves who never liked the idea of having to choose between their parents, but many of them are just white people who want to steal black people's joy. Happy Negroes just give some folks heartburn.

For the mixed race folks, I understand their pain. After all, if Obama viewed himself differently, he would be first bi-racial president, which would likely give mixed race folks the same sort of feeling that black folks have today. Y'all know what I'm talking about, that whole "I can do anything" vibe that's been going around.

However, while I have sympathy for their plight, I'm perturbed that some of them are trying to force Obama to be bi-racial instead of being just plain black. These same folks have a problem with anyone trying to stuff them into a racial box, but they're doing the same thing to Obama. If Barack wanted to check "other" on the census, that would be his business, but he doesn't, and they should leave it at that. Some folks don't mind choosing one race over another, particularly if they grew up in a time when the world wasn't as accepting of riding the race fence.

Now, the white folks who are making this argument out of spite just tickle me. After all, these same people were the ones willing to call Obama a Muslim because his father was a Muslim even though Obama says he's a Christian and he was raised in a non-religious household. These folks claimed that according to traditional Islamic law, if your father was a Muslim you are automatically a Muslim, no questions asked.

Apparently these folks have never heard of the traditional rules of blackness.

See, before he became a senator or politician, Obama was just another nappy-headed Negro to most white folks. The rules of blackness said that his daddy was black, so he was black, end of story. Add in the fact that he wasn't light enough to pass, and there really was little wiggle room. The fact that the same people who established these draconian rules of limitation on black people back in the day are now trying to change those rules because a black man beat the odds is ridiculously ironic.

Y'all got some nerve.

Thing is, this new flip-flop shouldn't pass the smell test and should be roundly deconstructed and vilified by any intelligent person. And I'm specifically talking about all the intelligent people who make up our media. We should not be having discussions about Obama's blackness. His blackness is like Hillary Clinton's womanhood. Damn the pantsuits and rumors, when Hillary was born, she was a woman, she will always be a woman. And despite his lovely white grandparents and mother, when Obama was born, he was black and he will always be black.

Let this thing go, and explain to me how to survive when civilization collapses.

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Man, Man, Man....

This thing in Mumbai is troubling.

It appears to have the potential to turn an already volatile situation between Pakistan and India even worse, and just adds another item to the to-do list of President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. More importantly, nearly 200 people died, some of them after being tortured, and the world has even more proof that terrorists still have the power to strike anybody anywhere.

Like I said, it's troubling.

I've been trying to decide how I wanted to write about this issue for a few days. I even had a disjointed, piece of crap blog finished, but I threw it out once I realized just how bad it was.

I'm no foreign policy expert, and I'm not even a political expert. Truthfully, all I can really do is watch people for a short amount of time and make pretty good guesses about how they view the world. I'm also not half-bad at writing down my guesses in a way that entertains people.

I say all that because unlike most of the talking heads on television and on the web, I don't want to pretend like I know what this means for America or the world. I don't.

All I know is that it hurts my heart that hundreds of families were devastated this weekend. It pains me that so many people died such horrible deaths. I'm appalled that no one had any inkling this activity was being planned, and it's shocking how poorly officials in India responded to what happened.

I'm dismayed by the rapidly growing expectations for Obama's presidency, and I'm disgusted by the way his victory has been used by some idiots to promote their hateful ideology. I'm happy that no one I loved was hurt in those attacks, but I'm frightened because I know there is no guarantee that will be the case next time.

However, I'm encouraged by one thing. In the Book of Job, Chapter 2 Verse 10, Job says "...What? Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil..."

Life is full of suffering and prosperity, full of good and evil. When we learn to take these changes in stride we learn the true meaning of peace and the true benefit of faith.

Until then, we can only mutter "man, man, man..."




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