What About Us?
Today, a gentleman asked me a question. "Why," he asked, "should I vote for Obama when the Black crime rate is so high? Also, every American city run by a Black mayor is a mess! So why should I vote for this Black man?"
I told him the answer was simple. Since he had some problems trusting Blacks, I thought I should point out a fact. "Why not, " I asked, "just vote for the half of Obama that is white?"
The truth is, Barack Obama is biracial. He did not grow up in an American ghetto. He attended a public school, primarily white, in Hawaii. Yet, despite the mixture of race, he is constantly described as a Black man who will only help Blacks. Not only that, he is said to be Muslim, which is not the truth, and one communication warned me that he was the AntiChrist, come from the East to lead us all to damnation.
In many ways, we are a nation of lunatics. Some of us are so radically religious, we predict doom for everyone disagreeing with our beliefs. Others are racially prejudiced to a point where, no matter how educated or intelligent a Candidate may be, they swear they will never vote for a Black. Then there are the Chauvinists, who would never consider a woman as President. And the other group, who say that an old man would not be able to withstand the test.
Evidently, we have to find a white, Evangelical, chest-thumping gorilla of a man, about age forty, with a trembling little mouse of a wife who "gives in graciously" to her husband. Even then, someone will find something distasteful in our Macho Candidate and Heaven help him if his preacher has some peculiar ideas or his wife makes a dumb remark.
For years now, I have wondered about Laura Bush. You couldn't find a sweeter, more pleasant woman, but she has done little besides walk a few paces behind George, which may be why the Conservatives like her so much. We know nothing about Laura Bush. She seldom opens her mouth, other than to embrace a cause that is so obvious it doesn't need embracing, like teaching children to read or feeding hungry children. She has been so bland and quiet that one has the urge to pick her up and shake her, hoping that an opinion or two would fall out.
Michelle Obama is definitely a black woman, but she is unused to public life. When she made her remark...."for the first time in my adult life, I am proud to be an American," this was landed upon like a fog of mosquitoes landing on your body as you try to sit around a campfire. It even led to Ads that, of course, involved a great deal of flag-waving. Then, too, Cindy McCain decided to talk about HER patriotism, describing herself as a regular Paul Revere kind of gal. One got the idea that Cindy would leap on her horse to warn everyone of eminent danger. Of course, she wouldn't need a horse. She has a private jet.
Then, when someone complains of this senseless attack on Candidates' wives, the pundits say they are "fair game." What's fair about this game? What is fair about any of the name-calling, dirty tricks type of politics? All it does is muddy the field so voters haven't a clue about any Candidate!
Today, it was announced that Consumer Confidence in the United States has fallen to a record low, the lowest in 16 years. This may be a puzzling fact to politicians, but all they have to do is ask any citizen pumping the over four dollar gas. All they have to do is ask any mother in a grocery store trying to feed her family. All they have to do is ask any college graduate trying to pay off a $200,000 loan, plus interest. They would get the answers to their questions very quickly.
Today, Alan Greenspan, the financial wizard who did a good job running American financial affairs, up to the day he approved those ballooning prime time mortgages, stated that we are going into a recession and that it will take years to recover. He should have asked me; I could have told him that. But there is one good thing about Greenspan's words. Since he is a loyal Republican, the Conservative crowd won't be able to blame it all on Bill Clinton.
Yes, the time has come for the Republicans to practice what they preach. One of their favorite words is....accountability! Of course, they never dreamed that they would be accountable for anything. It was everyone else who had to learn accountability. You know, if you don't invest wisely, you will starve in your old age. This is the kind of accountability they love. One gets the idea that they would be pleased as punch at the sight of a large group of starving, hollow-eyed, trembling and feeble Elderly. The trouble is, most of us do not know a wise investment from a report written in Arabic. Many of us are a little less than financially astute.
Anyway, Republican ideology got us into this mess. While they were worrying about Gay Marriages, their President lied us into a War. While they were slipping Scripture into Math books, their Congress was getting rich off K-Street. While they were fining television stations for saying "Damn!" before nine p.m., their leaders were borrowing from China and the National Debt grew bigger than any megachurch. They were blind to their faults, still are, still yearning for that Evangelical Utopia where a Prayer Breakfast would take place three times a day, along with a Prayer Snack before bedtime.
Knowing all this, what do they do? They find a Conservative Candidate who lauds Bush policies, claims the economy is great, and promises many more years of war. Are they lunatics? Have they got marbles rattling around in their empty heads, bouncing off their skulls and battering any tiny iotas of sense they should have? We're jobless, homeless and lacking Medical Care now What do they want, our skeletal remains scattered around the vacant homes? Then, too, they have embarked on another name-calling, Swift Boating, Karl Rovian campaign, guarranteed to give Wolf Blitzer something to talk about in the Situation Room.
For God's sake, stop this merry-go-round, I want to get off. I want our country to be what our country has always been, a free land, not too concerned with the neighbor's religion, with all of us managing to find jobs and pay our mortgage payments. I want these idiotic, giddy, stupid pastors to shut up and attend their congregations on Sunday morning as pastor's should, keeping their noses out of politics and not suggesting we assassinate any foreign leaders. I want us to move past the days when redneck fools hung a Black man on Saturday night, then went to Church on Sunday and called themselves Christian. I want someone to pay attention to the needs of Middle Class America, and stop these companies from taking advantage of cheap labor in other countries. I want them to stop selling off America.
The other day, I had to make a call and, wouldn't you know, I ran into a man with a thick Indian accent. I could not understand a word he said, yet Bill Gates wants our Congress to pass a law that allows many more of these people into our country to work! He wants this at a time when we have millions of college graduates, some of them with Doctorates, looking for jobs. Oh, sure! It isn't enough that you have to wade through a thick, intense accent to make a hotel reservation or call through to a company about a problem, let's triple the situation. Let's bring more than the legal 65,000 in here. Perhaps they could take a few more jobs that could be filled by American workers, the same workers that bought the computers than made Bill Gates filthy rich!
So, the next time Bentizar answers my phone call, with his resonant.."Zees eez Benteezzarr, may yi hep yu plee=azz?" I am going to say, "Benteezzarr, I love you. You are a fellow human, who only wants to live comfortably and get ahead, even though your English is atrocious! Please go home! Have your Boston Tea Party, only have it in Delhi or some other place. Fight your Revolution and write your Constitution! Have an Indian Betsy Ross sew up your flag, and win the first war only to be plunged into the second. Have a Civil War, too, just to hold everything together and correct any inequity! Then have some major World Wars that threaten everyone. Fight for victory, justice and truth! Fight to build up your country! But, for Heaven sake, don't come over here and try to take away what we have built! Sixty-five thousand Bentizars are enough, no matter what Bill Gates says."
You see, the price of gas probably doesn't affect the life of Bill Gates at all. He is a good man, a humanitarian that has become very rich and has donated much of his fortune to helping others, but I cannot help wondering..."What about us? Someone..... anyone........ what about us?"
I told him the answer was simple. Since he had some problems trusting Blacks, I thought I should point out a fact. "Why not, " I asked, "just vote for the half of Obama that is white?"
The truth is, Barack Obama is biracial. He did not grow up in an American ghetto. He attended a public school, primarily white, in Hawaii. Yet, despite the mixture of race, he is constantly described as a Black man who will only help Blacks. Not only that, he is said to be Muslim, which is not the truth, and one communication warned me that he was the AntiChrist, come from the East to lead us all to damnation.
In many ways, we are a nation of lunatics. Some of us are so radically religious, we predict doom for everyone disagreeing with our beliefs. Others are racially prejudiced to a point where, no matter how educated or intelligent a Candidate may be, they swear they will never vote for a Black. Then there are the Chauvinists, who would never consider a woman as President. And the other group, who say that an old man would not be able to withstand the test.
Evidently, we have to find a white, Evangelical, chest-thumping gorilla of a man, about age forty, with a trembling little mouse of a wife who "gives in graciously" to her husband. Even then, someone will find something distasteful in our Macho Candidate and Heaven help him if his preacher has some peculiar ideas or his wife makes a dumb remark.
For years now, I have wondered about Laura Bush. You couldn't find a sweeter, more pleasant woman, but she has done little besides walk a few paces behind George, which may be why the Conservatives like her so much. We know nothing about Laura Bush. She seldom opens her mouth, other than to embrace a cause that is so obvious it doesn't need embracing, like teaching children to read or feeding hungry children. She has been so bland and quiet that one has the urge to pick her up and shake her, hoping that an opinion or two would fall out.
Michelle Obama is definitely a black woman, but she is unused to public life. When she made her remark...."for the first time in my adult life, I am proud to be an American," this was landed upon like a fog of mosquitoes landing on your body as you try to sit around a campfire. It even led to Ads that, of course, involved a great deal of flag-waving. Then, too, Cindy McCain decided to talk about HER patriotism, describing herself as a regular Paul Revere kind of gal. One got the idea that Cindy would leap on her horse to warn everyone of eminent danger. Of course, she wouldn't need a horse. She has a private jet.
Then, when someone complains of this senseless attack on Candidates' wives, the pundits say they are "fair game." What's fair about this game? What is fair about any of the name-calling, dirty tricks type of politics? All it does is muddy the field so voters haven't a clue about any Candidate!
Today, it was announced that Consumer Confidence in the United States has fallen to a record low, the lowest in 16 years. This may be a puzzling fact to politicians, but all they have to do is ask any citizen pumping the over four dollar gas. All they have to do is ask any mother in a grocery store trying to feed her family. All they have to do is ask any college graduate trying to pay off a $200,000 loan, plus interest. They would get the answers to their questions very quickly.
Today, Alan Greenspan, the financial wizard who did a good job running American financial affairs, up to the day he approved those ballooning prime time mortgages, stated that we are going into a recession and that it will take years to recover. He should have asked me; I could have told him that. But there is one good thing about Greenspan's words. Since he is a loyal Republican, the Conservative crowd won't be able to blame it all on Bill Clinton.
Yes, the time has come for the Republicans to practice what they preach. One of their favorite words is....accountability! Of course, they never dreamed that they would be accountable for anything. It was everyone else who had to learn accountability. You know, if you don't invest wisely, you will starve in your old age. This is the kind of accountability they love. One gets the idea that they would be pleased as punch at the sight of a large group of starving, hollow-eyed, trembling and feeble Elderly. The trouble is, most of us do not know a wise investment from a report written in Arabic. Many of us are a little less than financially astute.
Anyway, Republican ideology got us into this mess. While they were worrying about Gay Marriages, their President lied us into a War. While they were slipping Scripture into Math books, their Congress was getting rich off K-Street. While they were fining television stations for saying "Damn!" before nine p.m., their leaders were borrowing from China and the National Debt grew bigger than any megachurch. They were blind to their faults, still are, still yearning for that Evangelical Utopia where a Prayer Breakfast would take place three times a day, along with a Prayer Snack before bedtime.
Knowing all this, what do they do? They find a Conservative Candidate who lauds Bush policies, claims the economy is great, and promises many more years of war. Are they lunatics? Have they got marbles rattling around in their empty heads, bouncing off their skulls and battering any tiny iotas of sense they should have? We're jobless, homeless and lacking Medical Care now What do they want, our skeletal remains scattered around the vacant homes? Then, too, they have embarked on another name-calling, Swift Boating, Karl Rovian campaign, guarranteed to give Wolf Blitzer something to talk about in the Situation Room.
For God's sake, stop this merry-go-round, I want to get off. I want our country to be what our country has always been, a free land, not too concerned with the neighbor's religion, with all of us managing to find jobs and pay our mortgage payments. I want these idiotic, giddy, stupid pastors to shut up and attend their congregations on Sunday morning as pastor's should, keeping their noses out of politics and not suggesting we assassinate any foreign leaders. I want us to move past the days when redneck fools hung a Black man on Saturday night, then went to Church on Sunday and called themselves Christian. I want someone to pay attention to the needs of Middle Class America, and stop these companies from taking advantage of cheap labor in other countries. I want them to stop selling off America.
The other day, I had to make a call and, wouldn't you know, I ran into a man with a thick Indian accent. I could not understand a word he said, yet Bill Gates wants our Congress to pass a law that allows many more of these people into our country to work! He wants this at a time when we have millions of college graduates, some of them with Doctorates, looking for jobs. Oh, sure! It isn't enough that you have to wade through a thick, intense accent to make a hotel reservation or call through to a company about a problem, let's triple the situation. Let's bring more than the legal 65,000 in here. Perhaps they could take a few more jobs that could be filled by American workers, the same workers that bought the computers than made Bill Gates filthy rich!
So, the next time Bentizar answers my phone call, with his resonant.."Zees eez Benteezzarr, may yi hep yu plee=azz?" I am going to say, "Benteezzarr, I love you. You are a fellow human, who only wants to live comfortably and get ahead, even though your English is atrocious! Please go home! Have your Boston Tea Party, only have it in Delhi or some other place. Fight your Revolution and write your Constitution! Have an Indian Betsy Ross sew up your flag, and win the first war only to be plunged into the second. Have a Civil War, too, just to hold everything together and correct any inequity! Then have some major World Wars that threaten everyone. Fight for victory, justice and truth! Fight to build up your country! But, for Heaven sake, don't come over here and try to take away what we have built! Sixty-five thousand Bentizars are enough, no matter what Bill Gates says."
You see, the price of gas probably doesn't affect the life of Bill Gates at all. He is a good man, a humanitarian that has become very rich and has donated much of his fortune to helping others, but I cannot help wondering..."What about us? Someone..... anyone........ what about us?"
posted by Herma Snider at 6/24/2008 08:49:00 PM
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