The GSA, the President, and the Bimps: Making Disrespectability Respectable

The General Services Administration website http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/21354  tells us that:

GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government. GSA’s acquisition solutions supplies federal purchasers with cost-effective high-quality products and services from commercial vendors. GSA provides workplaces for federal employees, and oversees the preservation of historic federal properties. Its policies covering travel, property and management practices promote efficient government operations… GSA leverages the buying power of the federal government to secure, in the most cost-effective, transparent, and sustainable manner possible, the goods, services, and real property that the civilian federal government needs to operate.

In essence, the GSA is the nuts and bolts agency literally ensuring that the United States government can work; it, in a sense, is the most federal of the federal agencies.   The GSA administrator is chosen by and reports to the president.  One would expect, therefore, that the GSA chief is philosophically in tune with Barack Obama and attempts to promote policies and practices to please the boss. 

Martha N. Johnson, GSA administrator until her resignation on April 2, 2012 in the wake of the Department’s  abuse scandal, was especially indebted to Obama; he had made her a co-leader of his GSA transition team in 2008 and in 2010 he fought to have her confirmed to the GSA leadership position when Congress balked.  To quote the President, “Nobody can tell me that there's anything particularly wrong with her. They're blocking her because of some unrelated matter. Don't hold this — this woman hostage.”

One would expect that Ms. Johnson’s gratitude might have been such that she fully and enthusiastically fashioned a GSA “corporate culture” complimentary to Barack Obama.  The staff had to know that she admired him and his style.

In any case, news footage of the GSA scandal had Barack Hussein Obama written all over it—the offenders evidenced the same swaggering bimp theatrics that we observed from President-endorsed rap stars such as Cee Lo Green and  Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., both of whom freely and publically broadcast  degrading words such as “nigga,” “fuck,” and other in-the-hood profane expletives and both have performed at the White House..  

The news film showed GSA employees dancing and gesturing in a manner consistent with the bimpest of the bimp rappers.  Workers danced to and fro, pumping their arms and splaying their fingers.   The “performers” wore their caps askew.  They waved money in the air and pointed to their “bling.”   In one skit, an especially “cocky” guy pranced between two approaching policemen, gesticulating and shouldering them aside, as one might see on an MTV rap video.  Of the persons pictured, about 80 percent were white.

All this proves what I have said a thousand times:  You don’t have to be black to be a bimp: arrogance, vulgarity, egotism, and narcissism cross all racial and ethnic boundaries.

Barack Obama contributed to the GSA scandal unwittingly, merely by being the dark-triad personality that he is.  He and his supporters created a culture that elevated bimp antics and self-indulgent disrespect to a governmentally acceptable level.   When bimps and rappers behaved in asocial, anti-American, outrageous manner, Obama had remained mostly silent, the only exception being times when he believed that the crude behavior was widely publicized and would have cost him politically. 

In short, Barack Hussein Obama has fostered an us-versus-them Whitehouse mentality, implying that traditional “white” Leave It to Beaver morality needs to be replaced by 21^st Century rapping bimp with-it-ness.     

The GSA folks, then,  acted out their renditions of bimp behavior—distorted views of what is black cool—consistent with what they had seen their swaggering first black (really biracial) president repeatedly endorsed, directly or implicitly.   As shown in the news footage, the General Services gang was ecstatically living it up— smug and tickled with delight.  They perhaps felt that they had reached a point of 21^st Century social sophistication such that one day, with a little luck, they, too, could make it to the Oval Office as their mentor has.      

Barack Obama: A Post Racial President?

To thunderous applause, Lady Liberty blew out the last celebratory candle that adorned the 2008 presidential election.   America had elected its first “black” (actually biracial) president, Barack Obama.   According to one white writer, Timothy Noah of Slate magazine November 10, 2008, Barack had won “a larger proportion of white votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Carter.”  Noah added, “The sad reality is that no Democratic candidate for president since Lyndon Johnson has won a majority of white votes (and even he lost 1964's white Southern vote to Barry Goldwater). “    

Does this mean that the positive black racism obsessed Noah was crediting white America in the media’s perennial white versus black propaganda war?  Not on your life!  Rather, Timothy felt compelled to complain that Obama receive “only 43 percent of the white vote.”   Not even when underscoring that whites had turned out in greater numbers for Barack Obama than for any white nonincumbent Democrat candidate since Carter could Timothy Noah be racially content.   He conveniently forgot to mention that “only” 96 percent of black voters chose Obama.

If Noah had stopped there, he only could be found guilty of “fuzzy” or “sloppy” thinking.  But this was no mere mindless error.  Timothy Noah was determined to rain even more heavily on Miss Liberty’s black-white reconciliation parade.  To do so, he argued that “the stubborn refusal of a majority of whites to vote Democratic is all about race.”

Then again, to people like Noah, isn’t everything ultimately about race?

If a white racial know-it-all like Timothy could find a way to “accentuate the negative and eeeeliminate the positive,” then what about the black identity slavemasters: the Al Sharptons, and Jesse Jacksons?  They were not about to let the “race thing’ get away from them.  They could not survive without real, fancied, overt or covert racial strife.  How would they make a living?  How would they win acclaim?  Where would the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus be if race were put on the backburner? 

No.  Something had to be done and fast.  Thus was born the now clichéd talking point that in one way or another asserts that we have not advanced to a “post racial” America. 

Actually, as I have written many times, I do agree that our country is not racially blind.  I do not believe any country ever has been or ever will be totally racially blind.  But that belief is no different than saying that no country ever will be blind to gender or age.  There is quite a difference, however, between accepting that people are aware of race and the expectation that people must be racially biased because of their awareness.  There is quite a difference between seeing difference and repeatedly underscoring and exploiting it for personal gain to the detriment of the country as a whole.

As recently as the April 9, 2012 edition of Newsweek, Daniel Klaidman, a white man, wrote an article inspired by the Tryvon Martin shooting subtitled, the “treacherous politics of race.” Klaidman spent most of his time writing about black racial identity and the extent of black leadership acceptance of Barack Obama and the Attorney General, Eric H. Holder.  The article concluded with a reference to the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman trial:

Early this week, Holder will get a briefing on the fast-moving developments in the Martin case. Justice Department staffers have interviewed Martin’s parents, and the probe is proceeding apace. The outcome—and how much the Obama administration is identified with it—could have a lasting impact on the president’s legacy on racial issues, and the attorney general’s, too. Come Election Day, it might even help rally the black community, which has sometimes been disappointed that the president has not done more for its members.

Black identity slavemasters—white and black—must keep the nation focused on race for their own self-serving ends.  They need Trayvon Martin and Henry Louis Gates Jr “cases” to keep their racial exploitation businesses going.  In a country of about 312 million people, there always will be plenty of cross race problems to feed the blood lust of racial identity vampires.   In the aggregate, however, you and I will determine whether the ghouls suck America dry.

And, by the way, if Timothy Noah of Slate magazine wants to better investigate the meaning behind his biased belief that “the stubborn refusal of a majority of whites to vote Democratic is all about race,” he should read the Daniel Klaidman Newsweek article.  He might then understand my contention that the stubborn refusal of Barack Hussein Obama and Eric H. Holder to govern America evenhandedly truly is all about race.     

Out of the Closet: Yes, I Am Biracial

I never told my wife.  My kids did not know.  My lifelong friends had no inkling. In fact, not until the last several days did I accept the simple truth that I am biracial.

So how did I discern my dual racial heritage?  As a typically race-naïve former white man, I deferred to a putative race expert: Barack Obama, the guy who subtitled his autobiography, A Story of Race and Inheritance.

In the Obama book, I learned the necessary and sufficient elements that determine racial identity.   Barack explained that he had a black father and a white mother.  With impeccable logic and persuasive narrative, he led me page by page through a narcissistically obsessive journey to the inevitable conclusion that he is a black man.  Like a veritable racial Einstein, through painstaking inferential, deductive analysis, Barack had discovered the counterintuitive fact that in order to be black a person need only have one black parent—satisfying one-half of the racial criteria proves sufficient to balance the entire racial identity equation.

Barack Obama’s insights started my feeble mind whirling, racially introspecting like never before.  As I obsessed about the fact that I had a white father and a white mother, the obvious finally hit me: I am biracial.  Why?  Before Obama, I mistakenly had presumed that a black person is one who had two black parents, as opposed to a biracial person, like Barack, who had one black and one white parent. 

After reading Obama, I know that in racial matters, half a parental inheritance is as good as the whole thing.  The genetic formula goes something like this:  I, Barack Obama, was born one black parent short of the full black complement, but I choose to be black, not biracial. 

If Barack is black but only satisfies half the criteria for being black, I am biracial for the same reason; that is, I satisfy half the parental inheritance of a black and white biracial person: I was born one black parent short of being biracial, and since half a racial inheritance is as good as the whole inheritance, I choose to be biracial, not white.

Sound crazy.  Sure is.  Race in 21^st Century America is analogous to anti-Darwinism in the early 20^th Century.

You probably recall something of the famous Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925 during which Bryan, a rabid anti-evolutionist, squared off against Clarence Darrow, a famous criminal defense lawyer.   Bryan and Obama share several similarities: Like Obama, Bryan was a gifted orator and a liberal, Progressive Democrat.  Like Obama, Bryan “truly believed” in his heart that he was right, and that was enough for him.  Like Barack Obama, William Bryan ignored biological and other scientific data inconveniently at odds with his beliefs; his self-evident truth required no empirically supportive data.  And like Barack, William promoted legislation to force-feed his irrationality down the throats of the American people.

William Jennings Bryan could not imagine a God who used evolution to enact his will.  Bryan had framed evolution as an either-or: religion versus biological science, humanity either had resulted from an act of God or from a satanic naturalistic blunder.  Either religion or science, nothing in between; Darwin’s Theory was ipso facto blasphemy. 

And so it is with Obama: either or, white or black with nothing in between, no half-steps.  As a 21^st Century William Jennings Bryan, Barack Hussein Obama approaches his racial identity with evangelical fervor.  Obama wants to be black to fulfill the fanciful dreams that he believes he inherited from his father.  Only one inconvenient complication: he is half white.  How troubling, to be bi-racial. His solution is to employ racially dichotomous thinking, reasoning that since he is not all white, he must be all black. 

By adhering to the half-is-whole rule, Barack silences his biracial identity demons sufficiently to live out his heroic race-based fantasies.  Moreover, he reinforces his racial delusion and insufficient black credibility by seeking likeminded racial extremists who share his identity-oriented delusional system.

Barack’s anti-biracial battle has been a life-long, consuming preoccupation.  To cite merely one example, consider the following excerpt from Obama’s autobiography: “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”
  
Unfortunate for him, Barack Obama’s biracial hide and seek never has worked.  He lives a life dogged by a pervasive national black identity neurosis.  For instance, at the May 2009 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, African American comedian Wanda Sykes exclaims, "The first black president!  I'm proud to be able to say that. That's unless you screw up. And then it's going to be, 'What's up with the half-white guy?'"

To Sykes, mocking biracials is great sport.  Other black identity slavemasters, however, are deadly serious, such as those who excoriated Tiger Woods when he expressed discomfort at being called black rather than the multi-racial person who he is.  The identity slavemasters mock and ostracize non-conforming “mixed” persons, calling them Uncle Tom, Sell-out, or Not-Black-Enough. 

Biracial people, who consistently, unapologetically identify themselves as such, literally embody our nation’s hope for real racial reconciliation.  Down to the cellular level, they are living testaments to racial equality and harmony.  They are not either-or.  They are not half of anything.  They simply are who they are, persons with a black and white parent. 

Our country needs a modern Clarence Darrow to take on President Obama so as to dispel the either-or, half-is-whole racial identity standard and to replace it with an attitude brave enough to celebrate the biological reality of bi-racials and multi-racials.  Even if Clarence comes along, however, I do not expect a quick fix.  Darrow did lose the Scopes Trial.

As one uniquely qualified to initiate and lead a national dialogue about biracial identity, President Obama still has an opportunity to become an All-American racial hero.  In Navy Seal-like fashion, he should conduct search and destroy missions to ferret out and eliminate the double standards, double speak, and double binds that racial terrorists employ daily to poison black-white interpersonal relations.  Barack can initiate the assault by resolutely and consistently proclaiming his self not black, not white, but black and white.  In order to do so, Obama first would need to set aside his narcissistic, dreams-from-my father fantasies, a most improbable action.

So until Barack Hussein Obama and his racially divisive and duplicitous supporters overcome their systemic racial hypocrisy, I will remain one of the approximately 4,856,136 biracial and multi-racial Americans quietly campaigning for justice.  Do you think that Eric Himpton Holder, Jr., our race-absorbed Attorney General, will find a class-action biracial identity civil rights case worthy of federal investigation?   

Obama the First

He is a man of firsts.  To name a couple:  Barack Hussein Obama is the first president to howl in protest if anyone says his middle name during an election campaign; Barack is the only president ever to have written an autobiography whose Introduction ends with the admission that the story he wrote cannot be trusted;  and Mr. Obama is the first self-servingly unable to distinguish between a bi-racial and a black person.

How about his most recent first? 

Now I do not pretend to be a historian, but I am confident that Barack Obama broke new ground on March 16, 2012.  That day, black rapper, Cee Lo Green, warmed up the partisan re-elect-the-president crowd at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia as it was preparing to Barack around the clock.  The event was not a teeny bopper extravaganza, either.  Rather, Obama lovers paid had $500-per-ticket to attend.   It surely was a well-educated, sophisticated group of in-the-knows who had assembled that day.

Up stepped Cee Lo to prove how low Obama supporters can go as he sang his x-rated song, “Forget You.” 

I see you driving ’round town

With the girl i love and i’m like,

Fuck you!

Oo, oo, ooo

I guess the change in my pocket

Wasn’t enough i’m like,

Fuck you!

And fuck her too!

I said, if i was richer, i’d still be with ya

Ha, now ain’t that some shit? (ain’t that some shit?)

And although there’s pain in my chest

I still wish you the best with a…

Fuck you!

Oo, oo, ooo

“Forget You” also contained a couple obligatory “nigga” comments, just so everyone would be sure of Cee Lo’s other affiliation; that is, his bimp connection.

What was President Barack Obama’s opinion about the Honorable Mr. Green’s conduct at his campaign site?  Dead silence.  How about Barack’s flunkey-in-chief, Press Secretary Jay Carney?  Carney admitted only that the swaggering, super cool, with-it Mr. Obama is a card-carrying fan of Cee Lo Green and that he might have a few Cee Lo songs on his iPod.

On May 11, 2011 a similar incident had played out.  Rapper Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., known as Common, was invited to the White House to read “poetry.”  Common had gotten lots of press for his misogynistic and crude language, just the kind of guy that government should endorse.  Consider “Ghetto Dreams:”

I Want A Bitch That Look Good And Cook Good

Cinderella Fancy, But She Still Look Hood

Butt Naked In The Kitchen Flipping Pancakes

Plus She Tricking From The Dough That Her Man Makes

We Got Our Own Handshake

Her Titties Ain’t Fake

Fucking In The Car Cause We Just Can’t Wait To Get Home

Early In The Morn’ Getting Stoned

Pretty With Her Eyes Low, Bunny Buy A Bible

This The Type Of Bitch That BIG Said He Would Die For

It's Type That I'd Ride Or Stay Alive For

Tatts On Her Back, Looking All Tribal

She Know Shoes Like She Know Survival

Well Put Together, She Weathers The Storm

Seen Her Brother Die So Forever She Strong

Hear Beyonce’s Song And She Gotta Perform

Whether Fucking Or Fighting: We Getting It On!

As with Cee Lo Green ,  Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr. also sprinkled the word “nigga” throughout his song to add a little race-baiting spice. 

So, let’s get this straight: Barack Obama, the guy with the abiding desire to “lift up” black children by encouraging them to stay in school, eat nutritiously, and refrain from gang-banging and other forms of banging, gives his presidential seal of approval  to over-inflated, egotistical, foul-mouthed bimps.

 

Obama chooses to endorse and to be endorsed by in-the-hood criminal role models like Green and Common.   Barack and his boys do not see the connection between bimp lifestyle-promoting role models such as Cee Lo and Common, and the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.  Right now, in-the-street blame is directed at the “white Hispanic,” George Zimmerman, and, as always, the police.   Who will Barack Obama racially scapegoat when the next black child or adolescent is gunned-down?

One thing is certain.  Barack is the first swaggering president ever to publically promote bimp language and behavior that celebrates a violent, arrogant, inner-city black male subculture diametrically at odds with traditional American mores.   He is the first president ever to elevate his own misguided, distorted racial identity affiliation and preoccupation above presidential responsibility to all of our youth, to our entire nation, and to the futures of all of our ethnicities and races.   And he is the first president unable to differentiate his biracial heritage from that of people who have an exclusively black heritage. 

The last presidential first is particularly unfortunate, given that biracial people often suffer discrimination from both blacks and whites.  Biracials sure could use a president courageous enough to be the first to advocate that they be accepted for the equally two-race people that they are, the first president to suggest that people simple be honest about who they are and not play the perennial American side-taking race game.

The hopelessly identity-conflicted Barack Obama has lived his life desperate to prove to himself and others that he is black, rather than bi-racial.  Accordingly, he feels compelled to promote whatever he thinks will further his tenuous black credentials, regardless of the consequences for our black, white, and in-between citizens.  Obama thinks that by pretending to be all-black he can hide behind a shield of racial invulnerability, that neither media nor private citizens would dare question his racial extremism so long as they are cloaked in the mantle of African Americanism.  That’s another Barry Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama egoistic presidential first.

Rush to Judgment

Bobby Rush, that is.  You probably noticed Bobby when, on March 28^th. he wore a “hoodie” on the floor of the House Of Representatives and rambled half-incoherently about the Trayvon Martin shooting, only desisting after being “bum’s-rushed“ off the House floor.

The inimitable Mr. Rush had tried to lecture America about racism and gun control, two subjects on which he, admittedly, can speak with some authority.  Racism, because this congressman of nearly 20 years had been a militantly racist Black Panther, and gun control because in 1969 he  served six months in jail for illegal weapons possession.  Apparently, since becoming a legislator, Rushy has gotten religion.  But, then again, don’t they all?

Rush asserted that Trayvon had been shot because he wore a hoodie.

I beg to differ.  Trayvon was shot because of the bimp subculture.  Those who read Barack Obama, Identity, and Racial Hypocrisy in America know that I coined the term “bimp” to mean black inner-city male persona, a persona mostly referring to so-called “gangsta” lifestyle. 

The gangsta subculture celebrates crude, racist, sexist rap music, hyper-masculine, criminal behavior, misogynistic treatment of women, and, of course, rap garb of which the hoodie is the essential marker.  Skim through NBA magazines or watch a couple surveillance camera videos of crime scenes and you undoubtedly will see a snarling hooded face staring back at you. 

You might now be thinking that all bimps, by definition, are black, but, if so, you are wrong.  Ninety-eight percent of black people are no more bimp than I am.  There certainly are whites and persons of every race and ethnicity who qualify for bimp “status.”  Not skin color or ethnicity, but behavior makes a bimp a bimp.  Even some females fit the criteria.

Bimp is associated with African Americans because it was pioneered by a handful of them and reinforced by an army of mostly white media and mostly white elitist opinion-makers.  Media and elitist whites always are on the prowl for any way to garner attention and make money.  How could they let the attention-grabbing bimp subculture go unexploited?  Even if they had, there always are black identity slavemasters—the Bobby Rushes, Jesse Jacksons, and Al Sharptons—who will define as black-obligatory any money-making persona, behavior, or activity that draws a sharp distinction between what is black versus white, anything that divides rather than unites the races.

If  Bobby Rush wants to spearhead a movement to counter the senseless murder of Trayvon Martin, I suggest that he organize against the bimp subculture.  That would require him to switch sides as he claims he had done about possession of illegal firearms, to figuratively speaking, take off his hoodie, and encourage his constituents to do so as well or, in Spike Lee’s words, simply to “do the right thing.”

Lest you think that I do not agree with anything that Bobby Rush ever has said, I want to quote what I believe are some of the most perspicacious comments ever spoken regarding Barack Hussein Obama.  To quote Mr. Rush in the year 2000: “Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool.  Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it."  

“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”

Every year thousands of adolescents are raped, abused, or murdered.  Virtually none of them look like our President.   Barack Obama never makes public comments personalizing their tragedies.  So, why now and what is he really saying when he says, “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”?

Of course, we need a little context.  First, the comment occurrs in the midst of the President’s latest sustained campaigning-rather-than-governing blitzkrieg.   Second, at this moment, every media outlet in America is  suffused with items devoted to the senseless killing of Tryvon Martin.  Third, every civil rights race monger in the country is either saying or strongly implying that Tryvon died because he was black.  And fourth, Bill Lee, the white chief of the Sanford Police Department, is being excoriated because he did not arrest the alleged perpetrator quickly enough.   In short, the Tryvon Martin “case” provides a perfect opportunity for Obama to do what he does best:  exploit a racially-charged situation for his own personal political gain while displaying uncharacteristic emotional sensitivity in the process.

When President Obama asserts that he sees Tryvon “looking like” the son he never had, what does that mean?  Perhaps the statement is nothing more than Barack’s typical preoccupation with race as the defining element in personality.  After all, Barack Obama calls himself “a black man,” always conveniently forgetting that his heritage at least back as far as the Neolithic Period is as much white as black, and that every chromosome in his body contains as many white as black genes.  Given his irrational racial mentation, then, we should expect Barack to find communion with a black boy senselessly shot down in the street.   On the other hand, what if Tryvon had been white?   Would Obama then have perceived a white 17-year-old as the son he never had?    Would Obama have been so strongly moved?

How about the assailant?  Imagine if a black man had shot down a white teen, as so often happens.  Would there have been the outrage, media attention, and political posturing that we see today?   Would the President and his handlers have calculated that this is the time, place, and situation for Barack Obama to reveal his intense personal anguish over the crime?

One last thought. 

“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” might remind you of a previous racial Obamafuscation.   Roll back the DVD.  After a Juy 16, 2009 temper tantrum-like tirade, Barack's black buddy, Henry Louis Gates, was detained on suspicion of breaking into a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   To paraphrase myself, every civil rights race monger in the country was either saying or strongly implying that Gates was bullied by police because he is black.  That is, all the political, race-pandering conditions surrounding the Trayvon Martin situation obtained in the Henry Louis Gates situation.  And Barack Obama, how did he respond on July 22, 2009?  Just as he is responding today.  You probably remember: Barack  personalized the event, suggesting that he, his self, would “probably get shot” trying to “break into” the White House or into his house in Chicago. 

Given the life-long, extreme, race-based deprivation and oppression that Barack Hussein Obama has suffered at the hands of the wicked white establishment, we can understand his obsessive race-oriented ruminations.  And we can accept that he never fails to remind us of his racial heartache when the reminding can be twisted to his political advantage. 

Race: The Obligatory, Ubiquitous Issue

Ten Ideas That Are Changing Your Life: the March 12, 2012 Time cover story. 

Intriguing title.  Is this a must read for anyone interested in taking control of his or her well-being?   Will we find here information worthy of deep contemplation and life-altering insight?

The magazine issue discusses topics such as our increasing over-dependence on computers for access to basic information, what we can do proactively to improve our ecosystems, and how science is using health-friendly ways to  promote the shelf life of food that reduces waste, and, therefore, helps to feed an increasingly hungry world.

Now, the punch line.  Big idea number five is “Black Irony,” or “People using blackness as a text to comment on and perhaps critique or reconfigure it.” Now there’s a topic deserving top 10 status in the pantheon of life-changing ideas. 

Why would Time include black irony in this particular issue?   Perhaps it is purely a marketing ploy.  The black identity lobby is so relentless and so successful in attracting the attention of the general American population that any money-hungry media manager who fails to exploit it in order to drum-up sales is guilty of malfeasance in office.  Second, a black irony article indicates, ipso facto, the intellectual cachet of the magazine itself, since it demonstrates superlative insight implicit in including a black topic in its “Big Ten.”  (Do I detect a college basketball metaphor?)   And, third, by talking black, Time sucks-in those—white, black, and all in-between shades— whose own identities derive sustenance from the intellectual gravitas and swaggering with-it-ness tethered to black identity issues.

What is it about the Time article that irks me?  

The racial pandering of placing Black Irony in the big ten list is as gloppy as breakfast at Pancake House, but that is rather trivial complaint in the grand scheme of things.  The real tragedy is that the Time article elevates and reinforces the pathetic notion that racial minutia is something about which we All (“Ten Ideas That Are Changing Your Life’) must obsess.  Even when merely framed in terms of the intellectual gymnastics of irony, it is patently absurd to think that race is critical to everyone’s everyday well being, that it demands such an obsessive-compulsive focus.  I can only conclude that race truly is the OCD content of American media psychopathology.

The Time management hierarchy either do not realize or do not care that racial preoccupation is not the solution, it is the problem.  Every year for a minimum of one solid month, they bludgeon us with Martin Luther King, Junior’s admonition to judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Next February—Black History Month 2013—the media needs to listen to its own racial propaganda and to spend the remainder of the year heeding MLK’s advice.

Decoupling Individual Success from Societal Success: A Prescription for Disaster

What’s good for the individual is good for society and what’s good for society is good for the individual.  It’s an intuitive logic that most of us accept, at least implicitly.  It’s how the world is supposed to work.  When individuals do the “right thing” society flourishes and flourishing societies create the conditions necessary to nurture its members.  The formula is as old as civilization itself.  For instance, presidents and parents advise the young to stay in school and work hard to succeed.  In the aggregate, well-schooled individuals comprise a superior work force that competes favorably in the international worlds of commerce and science.

So, in theory, at least, individuals and their society constitute a mutually-reinforcing, self-sustaining system that is “good.” 

In the first half of the twentieth century, opinion makers and media tended to support ideals that seemed healthful both for individual citizens and for the nation as a whole.  Television “propagandized” morality in the guise of I Remember Momma, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Lone Ranger-like programs.  Everyone knew who the “good guys” were.  And the good guys not only came out on top, but taught lessons in the process. 

Some considered the shows a bit corny, but virtually everyone admitted that the virtual morality plays reinforced ideals and behaviors that the family and state championed.  On television, no guys or gals said the “f word” or grabbed their crotches. The stars invariable were the good guys and girls.  Parents could trust the media to support, or at least not to undermine, child-rearing scripts that they, their religious organizations, and their government regarded as good for individuals and for communities.  Children knew who both their parents were, where their parents were, and what their parents stood for.  Children did not see crotch-holding, expletive- spewing, bling-ladened Neanderthals reaping lush adulation and financial remuneration for their miscreant behaviors.  Society-wide messages about proper behavior — marriage, parenting, education, constructive work habits —were so consistent then that, at best, most people were reluctant to act in a blatantly unlawful or immoral manner, or, at worst, they attempted to hide their infractions, since there was no benefit and plenty of risk in doing otherwise.

Over the decades, the good media-good child rearing practices synergy began to erode.  Like the proverbial snowball accelerating down a ravine, the pace has quickened so that today’s parents search mostly in vain for family-friendly media.  Critically, this is much more than a matter of mere entertainment; it will determine how long our nation can continue its preeminence.

My point is not that America faces serious social challenges.  Our nation has managed to overcome past potentially debilitating crises—prejudice, war, recessions, and natural disasters, to name a few.  The current crisis is different, however.  Heretofore, citizens understood the enemy and united against it.  Today, on the other hand, there are determined subgroups advocating and advertising all types of culturally self-destructive social practices.  The advocates, of course, do not see the practices as corrosive.  Rather, they view them through the prism of their vested self-interests; they have a stake in promoting the very practices that our parents and grandparents would have immediately, soundly and widely condemned. In fact, the promoters of American disintegration try to make us believe that democracy requires us not only to tolerate but to celebrate morally offensive behavior.  To their ways of thinking, for instance, there is nothing inherently “bad” with racist, misogynistic rap music or with serially-impregnating and absconding males. Rather, those behaviors are freely chosen ‘lifestyles” and no one should attempt to “dictate” lifestyle to anyone; it’s a matter of “personal freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.”  In fact, since those “choices” tend to be more greatly associated with inner city, low-income persons, speaking out against them is a form of insensitive, reactionary bias against “poor folks.”  Only racists, Nazis, or racist Nazis could speak out against freedom to enjoy hate-filled rap music or unbridled sexual liberty.

We find in our country today, then, a perverse discrepancy between what is “good” for individuals and good for society.  An army of elitist intelligentsia led by Barack Hussein Obama-like generals are on the offensive, fighting to advance personal freedoms contrary to the moral and social traditions that made America America.  The elitists believe that by championing their self-defined individual “human” rights, they will create a new, more tolerant 21^st Century America. 

To my way of thinking, however, President Obama and his legions are undermining the most essential element in the machinery of our country: the synergy between what is good for us as individuals and what is good for the nation as a whole.  Barack Obama seeks to decouple what is good for each of us from what is good for us collectively, individual character divorced from national character  If he succeeds, we will lose the very self-correcting self-reinforcing, I Remember Momma, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Lone Ranger-like engine that has driven our progress to date.  Obama’s assault on America’s legacy culture is not limited to one or two issues.  It is not just a matter of requiring all citizens to subscribe to Obama’s version of universal healthcare.  Obama and his band want to immediately disassemble the very mechanisms that created and sustained America.  They, however, will accept a steady, sustained corrosion of our ideals because they see that method as most likely to achieve their ultimate ends.  We need to be alert in order to detect and counter elements of the corrosive process that they already have set in motion.

                                    

Who Is Reponsible for the Illegitimacy Explosion?

On February 17, 2012, Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times write, Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage, advertising what we all know: that the opinion makers in our country have become increasingly tolerant of, even apologetic about, what “used to be called illegitimacy.” They describe it as, “the new normal,” failing to differentiate the statistical norm from the ideal norm. In some neighborhoods, drug abuse is the statistical norm. Would the New York Times call that “the new normal” too?

De Parle and Tavernise cite some statistical facts:

Percentages by Race of Children Born to Unmarried Mothers: black children, 73%; Latinos, 53%; whites, 29%

Percentages of Women Married at the Time of Their Child’s Birth According to Mothers’ Level of Education: college-educated women, 92%; women with some post-secondary schooling, 62%; women with a high school diploma or less, 43%.

“Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.”

Armed with that data, the authors spin it to their purpose which is either to directly state or imply that poverty is responsible for illegitimacy, and, therefore, for the misery that out-of-wedlock children and society often suffers. The failure is our collective failure rather than any shortcoming of irresponsible mothers and fathers. Consider the following statement by De Parle and Tavernise: “Amber Strader, 27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant.”

Found herself pregnant? How did that happen? Did she find herself deciding to have unprotected sex, find herself looking for a place to have unprotected sex, find herself enjoying unprotected sex, and, no doubt, find herself having subsequent unprotected sex?

If you and I had only acted more socially responsibly, Amber never would have become pregnant, and her illegitimate child would have had a better chance to realize the American Dream.

The New York Times article fails to acknowledge that America has included poor and/or uneducated citizens since its inception. Instead, it quotes University of Pennsylvania sociologist, Frank Furstenberg: “Marriage has become a luxury good.” The Times, apparently, does not realize that heretofore poor people always have been able to “afford” marriage. The cost is not financial but moral, the mores of sexually consenting individuals, their families of origin, and their communities.

And, as for education, the correlation with out-of-wedlock motherhood is presented as though it is a direct consequence of poverty, that poor “folks” cannot get a proper education and, therefore, “get" pregnant. Could it be that responsible women are more likely to stay in school, that they have the intelligence and self-control necessary to make the sensible choices required to wait for marriage before having unprotected sex?

De Parle and Tavernise inadvertently touch on the central issue concerning illegitimate births when they write, “Ms. Strader said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. ‘It was like living with another kid,’ she said.”

The authors choose not to interview a single father of illegitimacy. To do so, they would have to hunt the father down, probably at the basketball court or corner hangout, and they would have run the risk of being called prejudiced. In fact, the Times piece does not offer a single statement about absconding impregnating males.

The irresponsible male has learned that only a fool marries the casual sex object that he impregnates. He even has a word to describe her: “baby momma.” Why incur life-long commitment to a woman or child merely for having a good time? Better to let society accept responsibility, blame, and guilt for the consequences of casual sex. The perpetrator always can depend on the New York Times in his attempt to project blame onto you, me, and our country.

Emperor Barack Obama: Mandating Morality

For many on the right and left, Barack Obama’s current stand on abortion funding is a matter of morality, infinitely more important than anyone’s election or re-election.   For the moment, however, let’s view the issue exclusively through the prism of the President’s dark-triad personality that is characterized by narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

Since abortion is all about values, one cannot point to any definitive, objective data to resolve the searing social dilemma with which we struggle.  At the level of the individual, however, the question of abortion is deeply enmeshed within the core of our personalities: who and what we are and what we stand for.  Because abortion is so personal, I believe that no one should “tell” anyone else what they “should” believe about abortion, provided, and this is my essential point, that the individual’s position authentically represents that person’s true beliefs.

Enter Barack Obama.  His narcissism is such that he knows not only what is best for him, but also what is best for every American citizen.  He truly believes that he has the righteous authority to impose his will on the nation, and that after his policies are enacted we all will realize that the Emperor had been correct.  (Recall his health care “mandate.”) 

Obama, the psychopath, is not an axe murderer, but a man so devoid of empathy and emotional insight that neither shame nor guilt plays any part in enabling him to consider the inalienable moral rights of those whose opinions diverge from his.  Barack Obama comforts himself by readily recalling all the wickedness of America–past racism, Imperialism, blah, blah, blah.  Like his wife, the inimitable Michelle Antoinette Obama, Barry Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama conveniently forgets the blood, treasure, and tears that Americans have shed when fighting for, feeding, clothing, and comforting people from virtually every major nation on earth   

Finally, Barack Obama, the Machiavellian, evidences a superior capacity to conveniently amend his rhetoric whenever his highness perceives national outrage so intense that it threatens his essential self-serving goals, such as his re-election.  He likely comforts himself by conspiring with his supporters to find some subterfuge by which later to get what he must publically concede.  

So, what about the current abortion funding issue?   Since he knows that the policy is costing him, in true dark-triad personality style, Obama has adopted a widely-publicized strategy of policy revision.  Like a snake, he slithers forward, halts, and tastes the wind before proceeding.  He will be checking his focus groups and opinion polls in order to decide which next move is best for HIM.

As of this moment, the media suggests that Barack Obama is “considering” revisions to the abortion funding mandate.  Time for the administration to pause in order to see who says what, how loudly, and the potential affect on Obama’s chances to remain at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after January 20, 2013.