Ta-Nehisi Coates, making sense. Excerpt:
I think there is a serious lesson for black folks in the manner in which Obama handles opposition--the legitimate opposition, but especially the illegitimate opposition.More than any black public figure in recent memory, Obama understands the problems with a strategy premised on taking offense. It's not that Obama never takes umbrage, it's that he's careful about what and when he takes umbrage. I don't really know what the line is. But I know taking offense at calling the stimulus bill a spending bill hits people in a way that, say, taking offense at Michael Steele wouldn't.
There a certain sect of the American commentariat which believes black people complain about the country too much. Usually this same sect spends their time complaining about the country even more. I'm not down with that. But I think all of us should think hard about what we take offense, why, and what good ultimately comes of it.
It will be a good day when the head of the NAACP president is even half as upset over the failure of so many black students to thrive in school, or the black illegitimacy rate, or a whole host of real problems facing black America, than he is over a cartoon in the New York Post. But then, that would require him to be a serious person, and the NAACP to once again be an organization worth taking seriously. That would require the NAACP to actually concern itself with the advancement of colored people, instead of cheaply mau-mau'ing a white cartoonist and his editor.
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Rod: "It will be a good day when the head of the NAACP president is even half as upset, &c."
And an even better day still when the rest of his body follows suit...
"cheaply mau-mau'ing a white cartoonist and his editor"
Speaking of mau-mauing, as one blogger put it:
"a half-black president pushes a profligate stimulus package through Congress, and when a few southern governors question accepting part of the funds directed their way, they provoke a House race-card sharp*
*Anyone for a “Ban Clyburn” competition?
so good at (giddyap oom-pa-pa) mau-mauing in hopes of forcing his opponents to bow-bowing he might have been on speed-dial during the recording of “Elvira” and “Help Me Rhonda” in the event that one or another of the divers Boys Oak Ridge or Beach on backing rhythm vocals fell before a laryngitis not prey when in pharm’s sway; an editorial cartoonist known for his in-your-faith way of finding once-removed images of the penis mightier than the word draws a panel straight out of Grand Guignol of gun-blazing cops dropping the emblematic chimp - a stand-in for the stimulus authors, to some minds an Obamaphobe bit of archaic minstrelsy; protest ensues by mau-mauing flak-cachers more expert still; the ‘toonist’s editors first brush off the protest as a mere Gleasonesque bag of shells, then issue a half-apology after the old brotherly punchline “I’m sorry you’re stupid, Sis”; oh, and lest we forget to make of this the oddest Weak That Was, the first black American Attorney General under its first (half-)black president, best known for his work in helping pardon an egregious felon, before cashing in on his public service big-time, lectures a nation the majority of whose voters directly enabled his breaking of said racial barriers, on their presumed cowardice in racial matters...**
**Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/22/09:
"Eric Holder, who showed precious little bravery in standing up to Clinton on a pardon for the scoundrel Marc Rich, is wrong. We have just inaugurated a black president who installed a black attorney general.
"We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.
"In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that."
Wow, Maureen Dowd wrote that? I'm startled. Well said, Mo.
I didn't particularly like that cartoon and I voted for Obama, but I know I've seen cartoons comparing Bush to a simian of some sort and I also recall that commercial with the tech guy imaginging the people at the business meeting as a bunch of apes. At some point we have got to reach a point where it's OK to make fun of Obama exactly the same way we make fun of every other President. It's downright insulting to him to treat him with kid gloves because he's a "black President." He's GOT to become "just our president." No more adulation, no more fawning, no more talk about how wonderful it is that we have a black president, no more talk about racism is still present or racism has gone away or what have you. Obama is currently the most powerful man in the world, with the world's worst problems, and we have to have a right to poke fun at him if we are so inclined and have frank discussions that are not inhibited by fear of being called racist. Speaking as a journalist, the newspaper publishers who are cowering here are not doing their jobs.
I always felt that Ta-Nehisi Coates was a tell-it-like-is kind of guy, so I was not surprised to see what he wrote. I was very surprised (pleasantly) by MoDo’s comments. Who’d a thunk it? She actually has some integrity.
Andrea is right. He has to be “just our President.” We can’t be obsessing over B.S. like birth certificates and we can’t be sighing and saying “I pledge. . .”
Perhaps for just a few minutes, even a few seconds, we need to look at Obama as a six-year old does. They are not sighing rapturously; they are not fulminating. He’s just an older man (to them) who is the president. Maybe if we were to do that for a moment we would get ourselves on a more even keel. I want to see Obama succeed, but at the same time he should be fair game for reasoned critiques.
Andrea, I hate to have to state the obvious, but Bush is white, Obama is black, and it is the African-American race which has often suffered being compared to apes. The cartoon has a context which blacks know very well and which the cartoonish must have, or should have, remembered as well.
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