Toxic Mix

2011_4_28 Toxic Mix

The Republicans turned the tables again on the Democrats. Their gall and audacity is truly amazing. Today, the day after Obama’s press conference to release his full birth certificate and to remark about the “silliness” of the whole affair, which had gotten blown out of proportion by a “carnival barker,” the GOP slammed the president for indulging in a distraction to suck up media attention when he should be trying to solve our nation’s serious problems. It was like saying; you shoot baskets while Rome burns. Moreover they mocked his comment about having more important things to do than deal with trivial issues. So what did he do after the news conference? He flew to Chicago to be on the Oprah’s TV Show and to attend a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Wow, did that invite ridicule. It made him look insincere and hypocritical. It is one more example of a Democrat shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t need to feed the Spinmeisters of the GOP. So they were able to hit the ball back into Obama’s court, making Trump the courageous one and the president the court jester.

Then there was the other side of the coin: an editorial in the New York Times called “A Certificate of Embarrassment.” They saw Obama as the exemplary rational man trying to deal with irrational nonsense. But they felt it wasn’t necessary to genuflect to the purveyors of irrationality. They called it “a profound and debasing moment in American life.” They accurately bemoaned the fact he felt compelled to react to something with “heavy racial undertones.” And it is true that the second birth certificate won’t matter much because it won’t change anything on the Right. Today Sarah Palin called the birther issues still “fair game.” But the editorial did go to the heart of the matter with this summation of the affair.

“So it will not quiet most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never really accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race.”

Toxic mix is right! The most extreme of the conservative Republicans are now constantly playing the race card through the vehicle of the birther issue. It all boils down to the effrontery of having an uppity black man as the leader of the nation. That fact is the new “white man’s burden, “ and it arouses that unrepentant racism still festering at the bottom of the American psyche. It is only Political Correctness that holds that angry demon in check. I’d guess anywhere from 20% to 40% of Americans are capable of exploding around this issue, with the right provocation or encouragement, especially in the South and other red states. By the time we get to late summer of 2012 passions will be running hot, especially if the economy is still limping along. If it looks like Obama might win again things could get dangerous.