Well, one of my bravely anonymous posters finally found a way to slip the following spiel into the Cannonfire comments. Third time's the charm, as they say. Turns out this bit of rhetoric has been making the rounds, appearing on lots of blogs and in many email inboxes. Always, always the sender is bravely anonymous. Let's take a closer look:
How Racism Works
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating
class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are? This is what racism does. It
covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one
candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a
color difference.
We can use the same argument to prove that Barack Obama would have gotten nowhere near the nomination if he were white. White guilt has granted Obama a free pass on failings that would have destroyed a lighter-hued Democrat.
How did Barack Obama become president of the Harvard Law Review? How did he get into Columbia and Harvard? His grades, by all accounts, were not spectacular. And why didn't he publish anything while he held that position at the Harvard Law Review?
Why was an unpublished author -- a nobody -- given a massive advance to write
Dreams From My Father? An advance big enough to justify renting an office and going on a "working holiday" in Bali? (Correction: A reader informs me that the office was granted unto him by the Powers That Be at the University of Illinois, where Obama was immediately granted a comfy sinecure that most lawyers could not hope to attain until later in life.)
Joe Biden saw his presidential ambitions end amid accusations of plagiarism. Obama has been caught plagiarizing repeatedly, the Deval Patrick "just words" speech being only the most flagrant example. If Obama's skin were the same color as Joe Biden's, wouldn't he have shared Biden's fate?
What if John McCain said during a debate "I barely know Tony Rezko" -- and then an FBI informant later came forward to tell a tale of daily contacts? Wouldn't McCain's candidacy have ended right then and there?
What if John McCain had frequently made sure that fat government contracts went to crooks who poured big bucks into his campaign?
What if the money for Stately McCain Mansion came from Nadhmi Auchi, the billionaire associate of Khaddafy and Saddam Hussein, convicted by the French for theft of public funds?
What if John McCain had sponsored changing a state law in order to help scamsters and thieves raid a hospital fund?
What if John McCain had done everything he could to make sure that subsidized housing was "privatized" in order for crooks to abscond with $100 million in state monies?
What if John McCain's first general election commercial claimed that he voted for a bill (on military health care) that he
actually did not vote for?
What if John McCain had promised to take public financing for his campaign and then suddenly reneged?
What if John McCain counted the crooked head of Fannie Mae among his financial advisers?
What if John McCain refused to denounce those supporters who
threatened the lives of those advocating for an opponent?
What if John McCain had firmly promised not to run in 2008 -- and did anyway?
What if John McCain had no record of accomplishments whatsoever?
What if John McCain had worked closely with a terrorist like William Ayers? What if John McCain
lied about the association?
How quick would Democrats be to forgive any white candidate who rigged the caucuses?
How quickly would Democrats forgive any white candidate who rigged the roll call vote at the convention?
What if John McCain had insisted that Social Security was
"not in crisis" during an October debate, only to call it a "crisis" a month later?
What if John McCain had taken
every conceivable position on Iran?
What if a white candidate claimed to be a staunch opponent of the Iraq war, yet refused to support Russ Feingold's pullout measure and voted repeatedly to fund the conflict?
What if John McCain claimed in campaign literature that he never supported NAFTA, when in fact he had and continues to do so?
What if John McCain was caught giving the Canadians backdoor reassurances that he didn't really mean what he said on the campaign trail? Wouldn't that scandal have ended the campaign of
any white candidate?
What if
any white candidate said that he was a vigorous opponent of the Iraq war during a 2004 Senate campaign -- when the record shows that, during this time period, he did everything he could to avoid talking about the invasion?
What if any white candidate purged his website of his speeches condemning the Surge?
What if any white candidate said that he would filibuster any bill offering telecom immunity, only to vote
for it?
What if John McCain had spent twenty years attending a white racist "identity" church? Okay, never mind that: What if he had spent twenty years in Jerry Falwell's church? Or, heck, even a Gnostic church, or the Theosophical Society, or a Buddhist temple, or any other religious institution that was even
slightly off-beat? Realistically speaking, would such a candidate have
any chance at the presidency?
What if a white Democrat had headed up a campaign which encouraged an army of zombie followers to shout an unending stream of insults and lies at a former first lady and a former Democratic president?
Would
any white candidate be allowed to run a smear campaign in a primary?
Would any white candidate be allowed to change his positions so radically on gay marriage, taxes, and gun control?
What if McCain's father were a self-proclaimed Socialist tied to a corrupt foreign regime?
What if John McCain's mom had irresponsibly handed the kids off to Grandma in order to travel the world on a voyage of self-discovery?
What if John McCain had never served in the military and never held a real job?
Would any white candidate get away with lying about "living on food stamps" when in fact he was brought up in affluence?
Would any white candidate get away with claiming that his parents were married when, in fact, they were not? (I don't care either way, personally -- still, I think the matter would have been a bigger deal if the political bastard were, say, Chris Dodd.)
I could go on and on. But the point is made: No white candidate in history -- at least, in recent Democratic history -- has had so many career-endangering political sins forgiven so readily.
So why does Obama hold a "get out of political jail" card?
The answer comes down to
guilt. White guilt.
Frankly, that guilt exists because history is inescapable, and because white people have indeed done much to justify a deep and lasting sense of shame. Many Democrats feel, as I feel, that the party should have fielded an African American candidate a long, long time ago.
That's the reason why Barack Obama has been allowed to do what others may not.
Let's not pretend that he has struggled. This man has
never struggled -- for anything -- ever. Golden opportunities have been handed to him, just as they were handed to Dubya. Many black people have a perfect right to sing "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen," but Barack Obama does
not.
Stop pretending that he has had a tough row to hoe. If Barack Obama were white, he would not be the nominee. In fact, his Senate career would probably be limited to a single term.
By the way... Dick Nixon stayed married to the same woman throughout his adult life. George W. Bush has been married a long time. Did fidelity make them good presidents? Does Obama have so few virtues that we must praise the fact that he has never see the interior of a divorce court? Are Democrats now arguing that divorced people must not be president? Are progressives suddenly
that intolerant?
