“Obama triumphed in the face of adversity,” “Obama has paved the way for generations of black Americans,” “Obama, Obama!, Oh-bama!”
Freakin’ STOP already!
Is anyone else tired of hearing these lies (not lines, lies; but certainly both) over and over again? Or is it just me? At first, I thought the media was just sensationalizing. Nothing wrong with that, you have to get people’s attention somehow, right? But now I’m hearing these lines that the media has been spoon feeding to our brains come out of rational students so freely and without any second thought, like a military brainwash mantra: “pain is weakness leaving the body,” “there are no guarantees in life,” “Obama has overcome so much.”
Are you guys even listening to yourself?
Think about it—Obama didn’t overcome anything except Hillary.
Think about it—MLK and Jimi Hendrix paved the way for generations of black Americans, this presidency is just another historic first. These “firsts” should inspire hope and sorrow—we’ve come a long way from slavery, yea, but we’ve got a long way to go.
Think about it—Obama is not the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are many more people with many more challenges who overcome true adversity everyday, I promise. You want a success story? Read Chicken Soup.
Laugh if you must, but know I’m deadly serious.
And if you think Obama overcame his ethnicity (which is mixed, for those of you wondering) and hat was his “adversity” then you are a racist son-of-a-gun if I ever knew one (believe me, in Arkansas you run into a few). First things first: Obama was not a poor, destitute thug with racist peers. Obama grew up with well-to-do parents (and several prominent, well-off father figures, although his biological father passed away) and globe trotted around the world, living a majority of his life in Hawaii and Indonesia, before going to Colombia College in New York and eventually Harvard Law—where he was a legacy because his father went to Harvard Law. Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude with a book deal, contract, and a job offer in hand; all three from Chicago University of Law. Can you say cushy? I can. Cushy. Not adversity—elementary. Certainly it took some work to graduate Magna Cum Laude and yes, yes it takes some kind of tenacity to impress the academics at Harvard, but this is what any student willingly signs up for when they attend Harvard freakin’ Law School! In his several volumes of memoirs that he has published (you’d think the man would wait until he was out of office to begin his autobiography, but I guess when you’re this accomplished and financially backed, book signing is a sport), Obama has detailed the parts of his life that he feels are important. These pivotal life points include his seventh-grade torment of being called a “coon” once and, as reported by the New York Times in 2007, his experiences in New York “with a Pakistani [roommate] whom
he calls Sadik. He [recalled] that when he lived in a walk-up on East 94th Street, he would chat with his Puerto Rican neighbors about the Knicks or the sound of gunfire at night.”1 If these small instances are grounds for claiming thugdom then I’mma a true gangsta. Do you understand? I, the small, white, caucus girl from Southern suburbia have equal claim to thug life as Barack Obama. This shit ain’t legit. Note that these statements in no way serve to belittle Obama’s personal turmoil as a multiracial boy growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, but rather to put his experiences in perspective of, oh, let’s say Martin Luther King, Jr. who grew up in rural Atlanta; or Abraham Lincoln who grew up in impoverished Hardin County, Kentucky; or even Oprah Winfrey who was raised on the family farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi. These men and women faced true and lifelong challenges of poverty, classism and racism; not just during their stint as poor college students or ‘this one time in middle school.’
As for the claim of drug addiction(s), let me just say this: Obama openly admits to his brief addiction to cocaine in high school. And if you know anything about anything, you know cocaine is an expensive and destructive habit. If he was impoverished during his college years, I am not surprised (what college student isn’t impoverished) and I am certainly not forgiving. If Obama was truly an inner city kid, he would have, in all honesty, turned to hustling crack cocaine before buying a gram to avoid his identity issues. Obama writes in Dreams from My Father, he used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”2 Does anyone really buy this? Firstly, what high school student can afford cocaine? The rich ones. Secondly, I’m pretty sure people use drugs to get fucked up, not as substitute mental therapy. And if they do, then they need mental therapy.
Now, second things second: Obama is not the greatest African-American achiever to ever grace our nation. Yes, his successes are notable, but anyone who is given greater acclaim for their life achievements because of their race, in this day and age (that is, post civil rights movment), should be deeply insulted. Was Obama’s election an historical election? Yes. An important election? Certainly, given the political climate of the world. But an important election solely because it is historical? No. Obama did not “achieve” or “overcome adversity” by being black and being President-elect simultaneously. He did so by playing the political game, very well, and running the most expensive and progressive political campaign in the history of Presidential campaigns. Again, this argument is not to sully or besmirch Obama’s fine campaign, but it is simply not moral or just to claim that the greatness of Obama’s win lies only in the historical aspect of his election. That statement in itself is subversively racist. There are many intelligent campaign strategies and triumphs (and not to mention a brilliant and now filthy rich campaign manager) that are discredited in one sweep of a thoughtless sentence that was spoon fed to you by a mind-dulling, corporate-owned media machine. Just ‘cause he’s black doesn’t mean it’s special. It just means we’re still trying to distance ourselves from the persistent guilt of slavery—the original sin of white-born Americans across the nation.
So, the take home lesson: think before you speak. Really think. Are these your thoughts that are coming out of your mouth or is it lobby owned media mantras? When you repeat these sound-bites and repetitive commentary about Obama’s election, you may not realize that you are being racist. This is why it is important to avoid such blind ignorance by using your clever brains. You all have them and I know you all can use them well. Have you ever repeated “well Fox news is so conservative”or “CNN is just too liberal” while not actually ever watching the two to make an assessment for yourself? I will not tell you my opinion on those stations as that would further encourage blind trust.
Instead, form your own opinions by being informed. And as difficult as that is, what with the television being owned by seventeen major corporations with deep pockets and iron-clad contracts, I know you can do it. It may sound like a conspiracy theory—and I wish it were just that. But truthfully, there is no way to get accurate information these days without tenacity and relentless scrutiny. The only thing you can rely on is that everything is unreliable. Not even the sky is truly blue, it’s all in your mind. If you value your intelligence then use it to gain truth and knowledge. Otherwise you’re just another lemming, another parrot, another uninformed bumbling American. And we’ve got enough of those.
Endnotes:
1 Scott, Janny. “Obama’s Account of New York Years
Often Differs From What Others Say.” New York
Times. accessed online at <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html>
2 The Associated Press. “Obama gets blunt with
N.H. students.” The Boston Globe. accessed online
at <http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/21/obama_gets_blunt_with_nh_students/>
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment