PodKast Transcript: Ugly Unintended Consequences
editor’s note-the following is a transcript of the LK PodKast posted earlier today:
No bumper music today. No time for gussied up production. Some things are too important to wait on and this is one of them.
I’d be shirking my duties if I didn’t get into the ugly and nationally embarrassing unintended consequences of the Obama presidency. Unintended consequences, by the way, is just a fancy name for outcomes that weren’t expected or desired as a result of a particular action. In this case, that particular action, which is producing some putrid side effects that reflect poorly on more Americans than I’m comfortable thinking about, was the election of the first black president of the United States.
This past Sunday, Maureen Dowd, who I don’t particularly enjoy reading (I find her kind of snarky), opened the mainstream media floodgates with her piece on the racism fueling the anti-Obama movement, including the anti-health care reform protests, and the anti-government intervention tea parties, among others. A lot of anti’s.
Jimmy Carter, another character I have my differences with, but who also happens to be an 85 year old white southerner with no fear of speaking his mind, confirmed that from his vantage point, only a fool couldn’t see the racism that runs through the roots of the anti-Obama groundswell.
And then CNN picked up the ball, and they’re running with it big time, featuring a Klansman type who forgot his hood named Mark Williams. Monday they had him on a panel with Gergen and Carville; last night he went one on one with Roland Martin. The unmitigated hatred for Obama flows out of this guy’s pores, and he’s a wily, clever bastard. On TV at least, he stays millimeters and milliseconds away from dropping his euphemisms and going straight to raw hate speech. On his web site he doesn’t bother holding back. Ugly stuff.
And he’s got plenty of followers. Under the guise of representing the working stiff, and that’s his description, “the working stiff who pays the bills”, he’s tapped into a whole bunch of folks who, especially now that their personal economic outlooks aren’t all that bright, are ripe for the picking.
Which raises some difficult but necessary questions.
Who among the Obama supporters, over half of the Americans who came out to vote last November, foresaw what, in retrospect, was the very easy to predict emergence of the racism that still lies just beneath the surface of tens of millions in this country?
Did any of his supporters, of which I was one, whether they were in Obama’s inner circle, people who worked on the campaign, college students, union workers, black or white, take into account the highly combustible combination of a black president and a severe economic crisis?
And, in 20/20 hindsight, would this awareness of the almost inevitable re-surfacing of racial tensions have changed anyone’s vote, either out of fear (because Mark Williams and his crew are pretty damn scary) or out of the sad but quite possibly true understanding that the country wasn’t ready for a black president?
Clearly, racism and sexism are still running neck and neck, judging from a recent quote about Hillary attributed to President Bush by one of his former speechwriters, in which Bush was heard to say something to the effect of “Wait till her fat ass is sitting at this desk”. But there’s a precedent for Hillary; her name was Margaret Thatcher. There’s no such precedent for Barack Obama.
It’s time for all good men and women, black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, to forcefully declare that the issues before us will be debated and decided based on the merits. It’s time for all good men and women to reject catering to or cowering in the face of Mark Williams and his ilk, who are nothing but white supremacists masquerading as populists.
It’s time for all Americans to dig deep and wrench out the best in themselves, however difficult that may be while dealing with economic hardships that can easily cause them to blame others, instead of displaying the fabled American quality of picking one’s self up by one’s bootstraps and taking responsibility for getting back on the horse.
We either get civil real quickly, or get suited up for some very uncivil times ahead.
Better to face things now, or lie face down in them later.
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No truer prophesy has been spoken. The setting was a recommended barbershop in central Florida. I sat in the chair and FOX news was on. I looked around and saw the work of a taxidermist on numerous wild animals. The barber, a white man in his mid to late forties, complained about being unable to attend the “tea party” in Washington. He was upset because he couldn’t afford it. I thought to remain silent as the sound of clipping scissors grew closer to my ears. On Fox, the topic of Joe Wilson came up, and the barber blurted out something about a pending “race war.” I was proudly shown a loaded gun kept in a drawer close by. Having just slightly more hair than LK himself, my haircut was over in a matter of minutes. As I got up from the chair, I felt compelled to say something on point. I told the barber that Joe Wilson was wrong on many levels to yell out at President Obama during the President’s address to Congress and to the American people. I suggested that the President was accurate in stating that the health care reform bill does not provide coverage for illegal aliens. And that Wilson was actually upset about the apparent lack of sufficient enforcement provisions to guarantee against such coverage. I said “the President did not lie.” The barber gave me a puzzled look and said, “now you’re just splittin’ hairs aren’t ya?” I said “no, those are the facts. And seems to me, your profession would suggest that splittin’ hairs was your expertise.” He flashed me another puzzled look, and just shook his head, smiling. I walked out vowing never to return.
Yes, Jimmy Carter, Maureen Dowd and LK are all correct. All you have to do is walk into a small barber shop in Central Florida (we’re not talking Alabama or Mississippi here) to see first hand how racism is very much alive and well on the ground. And how bigotry and racism are ready to take it to the next unimaginable level if things don’t get better fast, and right-wing stations and their pundits don’t stop spewing vile assertions of false truths aimed solely at arousing fear, mistrust, anger and division. A bottle filled with such a large dose of bad economy, and high unemployment, combined with the presence of an African American president in the White House, offers up a potentially deadly Molotov Cocktail of circumstances. President Obama’s power, intelligence, and mere presence as the leader of the Free World, simply scares the hell out of both the blatant and latent racist alike. The aforementioned cocktail is just waiting for the sufficient spark. Does Fox, et. al., really want that kind of potential bomb on their conscience? Are they really thinking this all through? Is all that money really worth it? Unfortunately, I’ve been around long enough to think I know the answer. I just hope I’m wrong.
America has been greatly divided over issues before. Many people actually DID leave the country rather than fight in an unjust war in the past.
Two Americas??? Yes, the rich and the ones the rich would like to kill off now that they don’t need us for cheap labor any longer—-they can get that in COMMUNIST China!!! No offense, just bursting out what I feel..
God Bless America? Yes, God Bless America!! There’s only ONE and it’s OUR country!