[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Look what the mailman delivered this afternoon:
“I certainly don't begrudge you your criticism of the President. As a publicly-elected official, he is fair game. However, I would caution you to temper your tendency for personal invective, which frequently contains a racist twinge. I am as thick-skinned as the next fellow. But sometimes your valued and valid criticisms become obscured by your obvious love for the turned phrase.
“I realize that you are pushing the edges of the envelope because you believe that as an African-American, Obama is getting an undeserved free pass from the media. This may be true. However, as Marshall McLuhan observed, ‘The message is the medium.’
“I appreciate your sensibilities, and I know you to be a man of high ideals and integrity. Unfortunately, not all of the folks you are trying to reach have the either capacity or patience to find your core message if is wrapped in metaphors that they find patently offensive.
“While I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh, I find him entertaining. He is by his own admission an entertainer first and commentator second. Unlike you, he has the opportunity and license to continuously retune and recast his message even if the first iteration offends. As a print journalist, you don't have a similar available mechanism. If your intent is to continue preaching to the choir, then by all means, change nothing. On the other hand, if you hope to foster a productive discourse at a new level, you may want to reconsider your patois.”
The letter is signed by a former Culver City businessman who asked his name not be used.
The gentlemen’s criticism is welcome, and may even be fair. Let us more closely examine his two main points:
1. The President is (half) black, and I know that is why you are criticizing him.
Every defender of President Obama I have encountered begins at the identical location.
Because he is half-black, critiques of Mr. Obama, ipso-facto, are racially laced. Cleverly, this obviates the possibility of a reflective debate.
Surely defenses can be raised on the President’s behalf.
But his defenders cloak themselves in a cheap silk robe of inviolable racial virginity.
Therefore, whether the subject is healthcare, cap-and-trade, his retreats from heavily intellectualized campaign claims, his increasingly bold cozying up to thug regimes, many of which, coincidentally, are Islamic, his treatment of Israel, the nutty people around him, his shameless narcissism that is alienating leaders on the Left, his obsessive genuflection for perceived past American shortcomings, his flagrant lies, his resume or his style, the critic is automatically guilty of a racist slur. Typically, his defenders — radio, television, in print — resist cerebral discussions, preferring instead to fire race bombs, forcefully nullifying a reasoned response.
The elegant commentator Thomas Sowell frequently is pilloried by black Democrats for betraying his race by thinking independently. Unlike 95 percent of blacks, he did not say me-too when Dem solicitors knocked on his door. Mr. Sowell said this week that Mr. Obama’s much-papered-over past clearly foreshadowed how toxically racial he would behave in the White House. He said it was nonsensical to bill him as a “post-racial candidate,” merely a marketing gimmick. President Obama is, in fact, the opposite, an intentional, carefully structured racial lightning rod.
Said Mr. Sowell:
“What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.
“To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as President is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.
“Not only Barack Obama's past, but his present, tell the same story. His appointment of an attorney general who called America ‘a nation of cowards’ for not dialoguing about race was a foretaste of what to expect from Eric Holder. The way Attorney General Holder has refused to prosecute young black thugs who gathered at a voting site with menacing clubs, in blatant violation of federal laws against intimidating voters, speaks louder than any words from him or his President.”
The letter-writer’s other principal point will not win a ribbon for originality.
2. Rush Limbaugh.
The Left’s head-swizzling obsessions with both Sarah Palin and Rush are the two saddest best punchlines I have heard this century. The Left is envious of the shrewd Ms. Palin’s unique appeal. They are deadly jealous of Mr. Limbaugh’s world record ratings, which single-handedly have drowned left-wing radio.
In the nine months since Mr. Obama was elected, not one commentator has lifted a finger in defense of the President without first invoking trademark foot-stomping anger over Ms. Palin and Mr. Limbaugh. Children, children.
Why?
For the Left’s favorite, deeply reflective reason: Just because.
These puerile antics deprive us of deserved national debate over the economy, the President’s artificial deadlines, healthcare reform and global warming or whatever corrupted name Henry (Brrr) Waxman is calling the climate change bill this week.
