H.N.I.C. Rebukes G.O.P.

For years, Colin Powell has been the Republican Party's favorite black man, their beloved "Head Negro In Charge" who didn't threaten any of the Party's leading presidential contenders because he was not going to run for president. He was their light skinned Morgan Freeman - wise, solemn, with a dignity and a bearing that made him the conservative movement's bulwark against the Jessie Jackson's and the Al Sharpton's, an accomplished, polished, no nonsense kind of black guy whose dynamic personality appealed to the GOP's free enterprise capitalism ideologists.

You couldn't have ordered a black actor from central casting, if Morgan Freeman was busy, who could better play the role of the Republican Party H.N.I.C. than Colin Powell. Which is why Sunday's announcement of him coming out in support of Barack Obama was all the more heartbreaking for John McCain and his allies.

In an excerpt from a piece of short fiction I wrote a couple of years ago, titled The Black Folks Guide To Survival, I expounded on the Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice's images within the power structure, and how they were relevant to any young black professional who had his eyes on the executive suite:

There are ex-Crackers out there, especially the ones you work with, who wonder why we all can’t be like Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell – smart but not uppity, aggressive but not angry, ambitious but not power hungry.

As unpopular as some of the decisions are that Rice and Powell have made in our community, they are still two black folks in blue suits using complex language on television to articulate their thoughts.

DO NOT FALL FOR THE OKIE DOKE! Condi and Colin don’t want to get to the top spot in their organization. You do. If your goal is to be “The Man” in your organization, you are going to have to take the gloves off and duke it out sometimes.

As I watched Powell calmly and methodically lay out his reasons for supporting Barack Obama, his mannerisms seemed reminiscent of those of a high school principal who has gotten tired of his students who are perpetual troublemakers. His blunt assessment of his own party's failings was probably the most candid seven minutes of presidential election commentary that has been shown this year.

The talk radio court jesters didn't miss a beat, mercilessly pounding on the validity of Powell's actions since then, but what they don't seem to realize is they are not talking about O.J. Simpson.

Colin Powell has stood in foxholes.

Colin Powell has commanded battalions.

Colin Powell has four stars to go along with the rank of general.

Colin Powell has been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Colin Powell has served as the Secretary of State of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Beside Powell's thoughtful, measured comments, these radio shills sound like all the other pretend Republicans and fake conservatives who feel the need to cling to a rigid ideology instead of allowing their thinking to be guided by core principles. The "Straight Talk Express" can't haul much more of this hypocrisy - the wheels were already starting to fall off of the McCain campaign.

Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts are trying to turn the clock back to 1945, when black soldiers who fought to keep America free were supposed to get back in their "place" when their ships hit our shores. When the black man's opinion, whatever his station in life, only mattered when the rest of the country wanted it to matter.

The drumbeat on the airwaves, the kind of revealing dialogue being shown between these scared white men and their audiences about what THEY'RE feeling - by last night, when the evening news shows came on, I had become more than a little ticked off, partly at myself for lumping this rhetoric into the same old "this is the kind of shit black people have to put up with" and partly at the way the media pundits had taken out their toolkits to subtly reshape the boundaries of discussion, imperceptibly pointing their commentator colleagues into directions they were more familiar with.

If our faith-based friends would only exhibit a little more "faith" in the process, instead of worrying about what they see in front of them, I think they will be able to get through this.


Because Colin Powell and Barack Obama are going to be black for a long time.

They Can't Kill All The Indians This Time

"We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach."

Bertrand Russell

I watched Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin come on stage Wednesday night like a couple of cowpokes from the Wild Wild West with their six shooters drawn. After listening to the two of them, it appears that the easiest way for us to "circle our wagons" to save America from the bad guys would be to evacuate the nation from top to bottom - then allow only right thinking, completely certifiable Anglo-Saxons back in.

When "us" versus "them" is your theme song - the righteous versus the damned, the right to lifers versus the baby killers, the evolutionists versus the creationists, "pure hearted" America against the "evil doers" - you should not surprised when your supporters boil these images down to their most simplistic form, the way you've taught them to do in every other situation.

I guess that makes the rest of us as relevant as the Indians used to be when the America decided to tame the West. We're just a bunch of peace pipe smokers who don't have any guns, taking up space on valuable land that should be developed, speaking a language that is incomprehensible to those whose native tongue is Gasolinia - "drill baby drill!"

Take Christianity, for instance. Who was that guy back in Galilee, way back when, who went from house to house, from corner to corner, ready to help those in need? Jesus Christ himself, it seems, was one of those lousy"community organizer" types.

A self designated American patriot who only sees the world in red, white and white while driving an Expedition, a Suburban, an Excursion, a Hummer, or any other big ass SUV slash school bus is as patriotic as the reverend who spends money from his parishioners at the strip club is religious.

Now if you're reading this, and your politics leans to the left, before you go getting on your high horse about the minuscule size of your carbon footprint, you need to remember that righteousness, that good old salve for the prickled consciences on both the left and the right, has never won an election, even when married to the best of intentions.

For those of you who have been thinking critically, you can see beyond the rhetoric that Palin has been pushing the last...well, the last thirty six hours...and think about where the locus of power really resides in political arenas. Is it the person who can write a check to a campaign for $4600? Is it the person who can write a check for $4600 to a campaign AND $28,500 to the party?

Or is it the person who is a center of influence in his community, whose judgment and advice is trusted because his or her community sees it in action everyday? Community organizers are one of the cornerstones of the Obama campaign, helping to keep costs down and enthusiasm up as they attempt to pull off the most massive voter registration drive in the history of this country.

There are not enough big donors out there to fund this kind of gargantuan registration effort if you had to do it with paid staff, which is why people who believe, the same armies of people in every single state in the union who are working for the Obama campaign for little or nothing, are so powerful.

With the help of their tireless efforts, the expanded electorate McCain/Palin will face in November pose an extremely tough challenge to the Republican ticket in states like Missouri, Florida, New Mexico and Colorado. It could even make it a horse race for our electoral votes here in good ole Georgia, as well as North Carolina and Virginia.

At some point this October, the campaign ads will reach a point of saturation. The colorful mailers will get thrown out before the mail hits the counter. And even though there is nothing so sweet as the sound of a robo call to bond a voter with his candidate, voters will inexplicably stop listening to them.

The “code of the west” was romantic, but John Wayne is dead, there is no more cavalry, and they can't kill all the Indians this time.