The Miseducation Of Maureen Dowd

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:


The Miseducation Of Maureen Dowd

Most white women in America work their asses off. I live smack dab in the middle of stay at home mommy land, complete with the high priced tennis outfits and Mercedes station wagons, but I know this is not reality for the vast majority of white women in America. Most of them work just as hard as their African American counterparts, and in many respects, deal with the exact same issues, concerns and problems.

What amazes me, whenever I read anything by Maureen Dowd, is how the stuff she ultimately gets printed at the New York Times, like last week’s Feliz Cumpleaños, and Adiós even passes editorial muster. It is as if she and her ilk are the new millennium’s equivalent of the 1940’s B-girls, paid to lure readers in off the streets or the web with shiny, showy prose that illuminates nothing so much as the lack of substance in their columns. Dowd has become nothing more than a classic guttersnipe, an op-ed columnist who writes pieces more suited to a Rupert Murdoch tabloid style paper than the New York Times. But the paper keeps paying her to churn out this kind of mindless drivel, as if she is their resident Elizabeth Hasselbeck, minus the perkiness and blonde hair.

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Yardwork, Brown Man Style

There wasn’t much TV watching or newspaper reading or web surfing going on this weekend in our house. I didn't get to see the man who wanted Lindsay Graham come out of the closet, although I had no idea he was even in a damn closet, or watch the endless hours of billowing ash clouds shown over and over that obviously touched the inner child inside of the cable network news producers fascinated by the idea of a real live volcano, or catch the clip of El Dumbo Rusho blaming the volcano eruption on the black man who lives in the White House, or listen to the incessant chatter from political pundits about the Supreme Court nominees as if they were contestants on American Idol.

Nope, this was one of those weekends where instead of cobbling together an extended profane political polemic like “Goldman Sachs Got 99 Problems But Telling Lies Ain’t One”, S. and I were eagerly working in the yard, cleaning away dead leaves, pruning trees and bushes, and spreading a black velvet colored mulch around the yard. Okay, “eagerly” is probably the wrong word for the attitude I had. It was probably more like “why the hell am I, a well documented life-long allergy sufferer, outside in all this damn pollen?”

The yard does look a lot better, although I am still itching and sneezing. I guess “yard” is probably the wrong word too – there is no grass (hallelujah!!) at all, just a couple of narrow, mulch covered areas between the house and the street. The only topiary are bushes that ring the red brick colored pavers of the turnaround and the perimeter of the front, bushes that are now like old friends whose hair I cut every week with scissors-like shears.

A friend of mine from across town showed up Sunday afternoon with his two boys and their friend after attending a soccer game just around the corner. Two four year olds and a nine year old, they were the Three Musketeers – one mini afro, one mini fade, and one Mini Wheats colored shock of blonde hair that kept disappearing around corners and behind cars, at least until the kids from next door came outside.

The family next door are Russians, as in Russians from Russia, with heavy accents like they have in the movies and an insane obsession with cars. Their daughter is in the second or third grade, and their son, who speaks a totally unintelligible polyglot of Russian and English fragments, is three. In twenty minutes, I’d gone from being a lone field negro bagging dead leaves while breathing through a makeshift turban to starring in a cast of characters that included S. with the dog, a bowl of popcorn, three pre-testosterone boys following the Russian princesses every move, and a three year old I had to do sign language with who hollered every time he saw a bee.

Needless to say, a good bit of that pile of mulch remains right where the truck dropped it off. For in the midst of all this chaos, my buddy remembered the brace of cigars he’d brought over, and pulled them out of his pocket. A word to the wise - if you ever get to choose your friends, choose the kind that are apt to pull a handful of Romeo Y Julieta double coronas out of their pocket . They are even better than the occasional bottle of hooch when it comes to making a friend's flaws recede into nothingness.

By the time this was all over, I had been forced to pull out my Super Soaker to defend my manhood. The kids had dropped so much popcorn on the paving stones, the dog had simply given up trying to eat them all. The pink Barbie Escalade had run out of power after careening around the cul-de-sac loaded down with passengers. And young Master Mini Wheats surprised himself by yelling “I love you” to the Russian princess from the backseat of my friend’s truck as he pulled off.

As I write this, there is a Thank You note on the table from another pair of kids who live a few houses down. They are likely to be of Russian origin themselves, although their families have been mainstream Americans for a few generations. The note reads, “Dear Miss S. – Thank you so much for our candy filled pumpkins, We are so happy that you live in our neighborhood!”

I thought about all of these things later, while S. and I and that handy Romeo Y Julieta I was puffing on began to start spreading the mulch over the deweeded, deleafed areas. I thought about the disconnect in America between our brownskinned president of the United States and those Americans who feel so strongly that he does not belong in the White House, that he is not their president, that he cannot be trusted to talk to their kids. I thought about all of the people I live around, who most of whom are white, to whom S. and the dog or me and my cigars and my hedge clippers are as ubiquitous as the pine trees are in the subdivision we live in. Why can't the crazy folks across America I didn't get to see on my TV this weekend see what my neighbors see? I mean, S. is tall, and is a lawyer, like Michelle. And I like to talk a lot, and I'm biracial myself, just like the president...

...okay, maybe being half black and half Geechie isn't exactly the same as being half black and half white - more like half black and half rice - but you get where I'm going with the general theme. Smart, well educated, well behaved, well mannered black folks like us and practically every black person who reads this blog have been goodwill ambassadors before anybody even knew who the Obama's were, bridging the gap between the ignorance of stereotypes and the reality of our existence.

I thought about the disconnect between my neighbors, who expect to see me and know who I am, and the weekenders touring the neighborhood whose eyes often jump when they see me trimming hedges in my “Obama” t-shirt while puffing a trusty stogie. I think of the one weekender in particular who saw me coming out the garage a couple of years ago and slammed into reverse. It took three months for the paint he scraped away from the bumper of his brand new car when he hit the stone wall ringing the cul-de-sac to fade away.

Meanwhile, a stubborn subset of white America continues to embarrass their saner, more normal brethren on an almost hourly basis these days on my TV. It's almost enough to make me want grab one of those choice Romeo Y Julietas my buddy brought me and head outside to that slowly dwindling pile of mulch and get to spreading.

Then again, I could just smoke the cigar and think about doing some work.

The Obama's Vietnamese Water Torture Dog

Michelle Obama is too kind when she talks about Bo, the new Obama family dog.

"It was like 10 o'clock. Everybody was asleep and we hear all this barking and jumping around," the First Lady said to more than 100 children invited to a White House program marking the annual Take Your Child to Work Day. "The president and I came out and we thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo. He was playing with his ball. And it was like there was another person in the house.

"He's kind of crazy, but he's still a puppy. So he likes to play a lot."

I had to laugh out loud as I read this.

Kinda crazy?

Michelle Obama is too generous.

The First Lady and the president and I are like millions of other people who did not grow up with a dog in the house. To people like us, there is always that lingering "why is this animal in the house with us" feeling that comes over us whenever we temporarily forget about the dog and then he just pops up when we're trying to do something important, like sleep.

It doesn't matter if it's one of those Vietnamese Water Torture dogs like the First Family has, or one of these Chihuahua looking half breed mongrels like we've got, all dogs seem to sense when they are around people who are not totally smitten by them the way true dog lovers are.

The Obama's daughters chose the name Bo for the pup because first lady Michelle Obama's father was nicknamed Diddley, in reference to singer "Bo" Diddley.

S.'s dog is named for Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five (don't ask). S.'s dog is really the Resident Diva's dog, or at least he was until she got tired of him after a couple of months and wanted to send him back. But by then S. was in love with his yappy little ass. He looks just like that damned dog on the Taco Bell commercials, but he's not a purebreed - he might be a Chihuahua and a terrier mixed together.

That little son of a bitch is thirteen pounds of attitude. He has a stubby little chest, a lean, high behind, and a face like an old man. He thinks S. is a toy. He is either jumping into her lap, nuzzling her breasts, nipping at her face or licking her ears - I think he's in love with her.

Now,if he and I are alone here together - there is silence. He doesn't make a sound.

He parks his doggy smelling ass on a couch or a chair, AS IF HE OWNS IT, preening and napping and stretching his little legs like a teenager at the beach. If I'm eating something, he sidles over to the table and tries to give me the "sad eye" routine. Most of the time, I'll hook him up with a bite or two of whatever I'm having, in the hopes of buying some goodwill.

Let S. come home - the son of a bitch loses his mind, as if he has been fighting for his life since she's been gone.

When I wake up in the morning, he goes off like a banshee if I creak the bed rolling over. He snarls and yowls and grunts and warbles if he doesn't get his way, just like a damn two year old.

His most common nickname is "that motherfucker." "S., I'm tired of that motherfucker." "Motherfucker, we rescued your mongrel ass off of doggy death row and all this fucking barking is the thanks we get?" "S., that motherfucker looks just like my old roommate Herb. Look, look, look - look at how he's shrugging his shoulders! Look at the way he's crossing his long ass front legs! Look at that hang dog face! Those droopy eyes! Those tawny brown wrinkles around his mouth! Put some glasses on that son of a bitch and he looks just like Herb! I'm telling you - this damned dog looks like Herb!"

When he's being a real annoying ass because he can't get his way, I call him "M." - the name of S.'s dead mother. "Yep," S. says, "he's acting just like mamma. Trying to control everything. And refusing to shut up." Even now, after I finish writing this, he will be waiting for my foot to hit the wrong floorboard so he can get in a last growl or two before I go to bed.

The most satisfying part of any trip we take, at least for me, is at the beginning, when we are pulling out of the parking lot of the kennel, sans dog. You have no idea how good it feels to know that he is locked up for a few days, and will not be barking when you least expect it, and has no possible way to leave one of those pungent little gifts for us to discover in when he doesn't get his way.

I see why the president is out of town so much lately.

There are a lot of people who are bent out of shape about the president not keeping his promise to get a rescue dog. First Lady and Mr. President, I live with a rescue dog. He is tended to by a lifelong dog lover, who could not give him any more attention if she tried, and he is still hard to handle most of the time, and unpredictable as hell the rest of the time. Getting a rescue dog is a crap shoot at best. Since you two don't look like gamblers, I will tell you - the odds in crap shooting are terrible. Trust me, first time dog owners who are as busy as you two are had no business even thinking about getting the kind of dog that would need that much attention.

Obama On America's Mind

Barack Obama at lunch in the White House

Barack Obama almost made me forget my mother's birthday was today. It is a date that is hard coded into my memory banks. But even though I've talked to my mother several times this week, it wasn't until Friday that I felt like I was forgetting something, and even then, it took awhile to burrow through all things Obama swirling about in my head to finally retrieve that information.

Obamamania has practically eliminated all the overdone hype for the Super Bowl we normally have to live through this time of year. I didn't think about the game until yesterday, when I saw three commercials for it in a five minute span. Maybe its the fact that its the Arizona Cardinals versus the Pittsburgh Steelers that has contributed to the diminished level of anticipation I normally have for the game. In some ways, the inauguration and its surrounding festivities were the Super Bowl, with all the same type of hoopla, fan hysteria, and musical performances - except you already knew what the outcome was going to be, and the winners were not going to Disney Land.

And like the Super Bowl, there comes a point of saturation - a point at which you start getting tired of hearing "the first African American president" from the announcers on TV, a point at which you begin to resent all the needless attention that is being paid to Michelle Obama's wardrobe, or her hairdo, or her makeup, or any one of the other fifty stupid things lazy media producers insist on using to compare the First Lady to Jackie Kennedy.

One of S.'s friends came over for dinner on Friday. We were all hungry by the time she arrived, so during the brief moments before the meal was ready to be served, with the news announcer reeling off one story after another than began with "President Obama", "Obama" or "the Obama Adminstration", I asked our guest a question. "Are you about tired of all this focus on Obama?"

"Yes, frankly I am," she said.

Then we turned off the TV, sat down to eat, and all proceeded to talk happily, in one way or another, about Barack Obama or Obama-related stories for the next three hours.

The power of this one thing is so great it seems to have the strength of a nuclear chain reaction, which releases several million times the energy of the initial reaction in the ensuing self-propagating reactions. The campaign, election, and inauguration of Barack Obama has unleashed something powerful, especially among us who are African Americans, that only seems to grow stronger with each day.

It is as if there has been a shift in the axis of the entire world, changing the angle at which the world rotates just enough to lessen the pull of gravity - because right now, not only does almost everybody seem to be walking a little taller, and holding their heads a little higher - it looks like we all intend to stay that way.

The Steps You Take Are Not Yours Alone

The mass of people on the National Mall who gathered to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on Tuesday was simply stupendous. The anticipation seemed to reach around the globe. The announcers were all falling all over themselves to remind us that Barack Obama was about to be the nation’s first African American president. As we watched the Obama family settle in behind the lectern, I thought back to this time last year, when the frenzy had just begun over this one term Senator from Illinois with the million dollar smile.

How far we had come.

To some people, Barack Obama was simply a man running for president. For others of us who were African American, he was more than that. He was a man who not only looked like us, but remembered us, and sounded like he was going to work to continue to connect to us even after he joined the most exclusive men's club in the world.

In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama recognized the small village that was the birthplace of his father as a part of his heritage, but to many of us watching, he was from Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina and Maryland and California and Illinois and Georgia and Florida as much as he was from Kenya or Kansas or Hawaii.

The president's steps and the first lady's steps as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue during the parade weren’t just the steps of two people - they were the steps of generations of men and women denied full participation in American society by the color of their skin, the steps of millions of peoples of color who live in America today whose lives are just beginning to resemble those of our paler brethren, the steps of their long dead ancestors, and the steps for their own children, who may very likely get the chance to live as adults in a world that sees them more for who they are than any generation of brown-skinned people in the history of this country.

Some of us are almost there already. Some of our neighbors are white. Our friends are multicultural. Our educations have been obtained from the best schools in the land.

But this is not the mass of black Americans. Too many of us are still struggling to connect intimately with other cultures. Too many of us are still rolling our eyes at the thought of higher learning. Too many of us are now bound more from within than without, more from our own narrow worldviews than how the world now views us.

Those steps down Pennsylvania Avenue that Barack and Michelle Obama took yesterday, after the inauguration ceremony – they were for the mass of black Americans too. But they are not going to walk up to your home, knock on your door, then come in and take a seat on your couch. You’ve got to meet them halfway.

Barack Obama did not slide into the White House on his silver tongue. He trained his mind to think wider, deeper, faster, and longer than the competition. He took advantage of the best university system in the world. And he remembered, even after deciding to more fully embrace the African side of his heritage, to never forget how to connect to the rest of America that he grew up in.

So conjure up your own parade in your mind. Throw your shoulders back. Hold your head high. And when you walk, whether it's down the street, or in the grocery store, or the locker court, or the mall, remember that the steps you take are not yours alone – that you have just as many ancestors and forebears and modern day cheerleaders who are counting on you to stride into a future filled with all the good things America has to offer.

Christmas Tree Surgery Harder Than It Looks

I spent last night performing surgery on our Christmas tree. It's one of those artificial ones, the kind that comes in three pieces and has the Christmas lights already strung around the limbs. It weighs a lot, and is a little unwieldy to handle while you are putting it together, but once you get the three parts assembled all you have to do is plug all the cords for the lights into their assigned receptacles and the whole thing lights right up, ready to be decorated with ornaments. That's how it has worked for the last eight years. This year it's a little more complicated.

I normally don't pay much attention to any of this after I get the thing assembled. S. is the tree decorator. She starts with a basic arrangement of ornaments and adds a few everyday as she remembers where she stashed them away. Some are mementos, given to her by friends. Others are sentimental keepsakes that have been deemed much to valuable to store with the run of the mill ornaments, so their whereabouts are often a mystery that she has to solve, poking in the bottom of closets and the backs of drawers to eventually ferret them out.

But it seems this ritual can't begin until the tree itself is squared away. Which is why last night I found myself tracing individual strands of lights down intricately twisted paths over, under and around the stiff wire branches that were covered with fake pine needles, looking for burned out light bulbs, because two of the eight strands surrounding the Christmas tree won't light this year.

As I took the blackened glass bulbs from out of their plastic chassis and reattached clear bulbs I'd cannibalized from a new strand of icicle lights, I thought longingly of the football game I'd turned on down in the basement.

By the third quarter, the tree was in post op. My fingertips, tender from bending and rebending delicate wires around the tiny plastic pieces, were wrapped around a cold beer as I finally settled in to watch the Chicago Bears host the New Orleans Saints on Thursday Night football.

"I'll bet Barack Obama has NFL Network," I said to myself, because the only way you could see this game was if you were a subscriber, something I was still mad about ever since I'd signed up. "I'll bet Barack doesn't have to mess around with any old Christmas tree. Come to think of it, he's a big Bears fan - he's probably watching the game right now." The whole idea of imagining Obama sitting at home in Chicago, watching the game just like me, brought on a feeling of spiritual kinship so strong that I completely missed the action of the next play.

Then a Coors Light commercial came on.

I was still lost in my "Brown Man is watching the game, just like Obama is watching the game" reverie when I noticed, about a third of the way through the commercial, that there was something about the black woman sitting on the couch that was vaguely reminiscent of Michelle Obama. She didn't look exactly like her, but there was something about her professional demeanor, something about the look in her eyes as she said something to the black guy in the shirt and tie sitting next to her who was holding two Coors Light beers in his hand-

"Wait a minute," I said to myself as I sat up, grabbing the remote to rewind the action. "Since when does Coors have only black people in a commercial?" When I watched it again, from the beginning, I saw that the woman had come home from a hard day at the office, and told her husband, who was sitting on the couch in a still crisp blue dress shirt with his tie loosened, that she "just wanted to vent." He said "so do I. Let's vent together." and disappeared into the kitchen. The wife began to complain about her day, until her husband reappeared with a smile on his face and two cold beers. "We can vent together," he said with smile. The camera cut to his wife. An exasperated look appeared on her face and she left the room.

The camera cut back to the husband, cheerily watching a football game, holding an open beer. he looked up and yelled over his shoulder, "honey, am I going to have to start venting without you?"

A smile came over my face for a second as I thought about just how powerful that simple commercial was, mostly because what it wasn't doing was showing two African Americans slapping each other five, or hand jiving, or yelling "whasssup!" into a phone while they slouched on a couch in sweats.

Then my lips flattened as the real game came back on. They were flattened because I was back to imagining "Brown Man is watching the game, just like Obama is watching the game", only this time, what I imagined was probably more realistic.

"What do you mean you want to watch the game, Barack? We need to start looking at the list of movers, we need to-"

"Baby,baby, I'm just trying to catch the Bears game."

"Mr. Obama - you mean to tell me, as smart as you are, that you can't do this and watch the game at the same time?"

"Baby, I'm not just watching the game. I'm trying to enjoy the game."

"I thought football only came on during the weekend?"

"Barack Obama and I probably have more in common," I said to myself, "than I originally thought." Which can be a good thing, because some times there are things I need to be doing besides watching a football game.

My imagination kicked in again later, after the Bears terrible offense had turned the ball over, and their legendary defense was on the field, swarming all over the Saints offensive line in search of the ballcarrier. Barack Obama was probably wishing he could get the Bears defense to blitz Rod Blagojevich the same way they went after the Saints, dropping him in the political backfield before he could get started trying to cut a deal with the prosecutor.

The game went to overtime. I did not. I woke up a couple of hours later, twisting and turning on the couch to find the remote because I must be lying on it, the way it was changing the channels-

"You fell asleep." I jerked my head and there was S., sitting in the chair next to the couch,remote in her hand, flipping through the channels. She paused on SportsCenter long enough for me to see that the Bears had won, then kept clicking until she saw Anderson Cooper's pained face next to a picture of Chris Dodd speaking before the Senate.

The network switched to another camera that showed most of the Senate chamber, where it looked like the middle of a regular work day, except it was almost 2 AM.

The graphics superimposed over the scene read "Bailout Expected To Fail The Senate".

As the commentator started with the now familiar litany of ills that awaited the economy without the passage of this bailout, S. and I soberly listened to the news.

I thought about the real people whose lives were being messed with because a group of grown men who were still embarrassed about how easily they gave away 700 bllion dollars, 335 billion of which has already disappeared, were too proud to admit that they had been wrong before, and were willing instead to make the auto industry the whipping boy for their own shortcomings over a lousy 15 billion more dollars. They probably weren't worried right now about the lights on their Christmas tree, or the vagaries of the NFL Network.

Christmas tree surgery is harder than it looks. But I took a five dollar strand of lights and got a tree we paid two hundred dollars for to shine like it was new again.

The auto bailout is easier than it looks. 15 billion dollars is just TWO lousy percent of the 700 billion dollars that just got authorized for who really knows what, since all of our banks seem to have forgotten how to actually loan money to new customers.

To all the Congress people who voted against this bill, who are smugly going home to enjoy the holidays in their warm, cozy abodes - I sincerely hope Santa drops 15 tons of coal on top of each one of your houses this Christmas.

The Most Watched Black Woman In The World

Alright - Anxious Desperate Real Housewives of Atlanta is over, at least until next week, but I've already seen too much of them in the last two days to watch a Reunion: The Real Housewives of Atlanta show next Tuesday.

I'm ready to get back to "The Most Watched Black Woman In The World" program, starring Michelle Obama, premiering next January on every news channel on the planet.

The good thing about the White House is that it produces as much spin on the First Family as the producers at the Bravo! channel do for their Real Housewives franchise. One of the things that used to be a real sore spot among black folks, especially in the seventies and eighties, was the way black people were portrayed on TV. One bad image was one too many for a lot of us, who felt that with so few roles in TV, anything that negatively portrayed black people was perpetuating the very inequalities we were trying to eradicate.

You don't here as much about this these days - whether or not a lot of that has to do with the demise of UPN I don't know. But I can still watch an entire night of TV and see no black actors in starring roles.

Reality TV is scripted, with exaggerated personality conflicts, artificially contrived settings, and the most provocative editing decisions you can find outside of the Fox News studio, all done in an effort to force their preconceived storylines to pay off with a big bang. Bravo! will play these shows to death for a few more weeks before bringing something else into their rotation.

The White House spin machine will just be getting started. Michelle Obama will not be on TV as much as her husband, but she will be on there a lot, talking about real issues and real problems facing American families. The most watched black woman in the world will be on camera in her own hair, wearing tasteful accessories and keeping her cleavage to herself. The producers of her clips will have a mandate from the Office of the President to leave all the bloopers, bad angles, and awkward sounding phrases on the cutting room floor. What the cumulative effect of seeing thousands of positive minded clips and soundbites of this image of a black woman will be, I can't say.

I'll just be glad to finally see THIS kind of spin begin.

Measuring The Drapes At The White House

Barack and Michelle Obama took a spin around the White House today with George and Laura Bush. I'm not usually one for photos, but man, it sure looked good just seeing these two walk through the door.

I guess John McCain was right - they were already "measuring the drapes" at the White House - along with setting up a top shelf "transition" website called change.gov, selecting a few key staffers, holding a press conference, and compiling an exhaustive list of items that could be changed immediately, by executive order, without going through Congress, in the first few days of the Obama presidency.

Not bad for the first six days as president-elect.



I'll give him a gold star if he makes it back home in time to help his daughters with their homework.

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Get Your Obama Mojo Back On Track

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If your nerves are a little raw...

If you seem a little tired...

If you haven't slept well in a couple of days...


...you're not alone. Anyone who is a supporter of Barack Obama has the same feeling, a general undercurrent of unease that envelopes each of us even as our candidate enters these final hours before Election Day with a solid lead in the polls.

Over the last few months I've accumulated quite a collection of campaign photos, ones you may not have seen before.

So get yourself a cup of coffee, watch the slide show, and get your Barack Obama mojo back on track so you can get some sleep tonight - because you might not go to sleep at all tomorrow.

The Punditocracy - Keeping You Uninformed

Benjamin Sparrow, in his book Uncertain Guardians, cites industry research reports when he states "the people who create the public images of elected officials, those to be elected, and high ranking appointees know each other. ‘They believe in polls. They believe in television. They believe in talk, they believe most profoundly in talk television. They believe in irony. They believe that nothing a politician does in public can be taken at face value, but that everything he does is a metaphor for something he is hiding."

One of the things I've noticed, after spending the last two evenings watching Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton speak, is a wide disconnect between what I see and what some of the punditocracy write the next day. Granted, many of them are there in the flesh, but with the magic of the internet streaming and the army of bloggers in attendance, I am able to see a lot more than the heavily edited product the news networks put on the screen. And what I see, in many cases, doesn't jibe with what they are telling me.

The thing that seems to get weighted too heavily in these speeches is their appeal to the press. Mrs. Obama hit all her notes on cue, like she does everyday as a successful Harvard trained lawyer. Many of the elements of her speech catered directly to the pundits who would be dissecting the text of her speech the moment she left the stage. Mrs. Clinton, a wily veteran of the political oratory, showed she knew her way around a microphone, with an array of quotable sound bites built right into her delivery, giving extra emphasis to the key phrases to make sure the punditocracy picked on them immediately.

To me, the "no way, no how, no McCain" soundbite ready phrase Clinton started off with was as explicit as she could get without personally threatening the small but vocal subset of her followers who are threatening to changing ideological horses in midstream. It was the kind of statement a person says when they are not interested in having a debate; when they are not interested in hearing your side of the story.

Hilary Rosen, a CNN correspondent who seemed to be very impressed with Clinton's speech, believed Hilary was "calling out" the bitterest of her supporters who were still not interested in getting behind Obama. "Basically," Rosen said, "Hillary was telling these women, 'I am not your therapist. So get over it, because I'm ready to move on, and we've got work to do.'" Rosen was one of the few pundits who was unequivocally positive about Clinton's address.

This tendency of the punditocracy to be supercritical of the politicians they examine is best explained by an anonymous pundit. "You can be wrong as long as you're skeptical. But if you're going to say something remotely positive, you'd better be 150% right, or you're going to be accused of rolling over."

So if you are listening to the commentators on CNN or Fox or MSNBC this morning, take what they are saying with a grain of salt - the things they are focusing on, those things that were not said, those signals that were not given, that body language that didn't telegraph the right message, are a lot like the things FAA inspectors look at when they inspect a plane crash. But Clinton didn't crash last night.

She glided her campaign in for a three point landing, the way veteran pilots do.

I Already Know Michelle Obama

If you live with a black woman who is a lawyer, like I do, you already know Michelle Obama.

You know, when you see her turned out in a perfectly fitted business suit, or a tailored dress, that this woman doesn't really need a stylist - she has been styling herself for years, and has become an expert on how to project power, exude expertise, and look like she belongs at the executive level.

You know, when you see her children, that they are more familiar with polysyllabic words than most adult Americans. That they understand how to look a person in the eye when they shake their hand. That they know the purpose of being courteous, and truly understand the value of an education.

You know, when you look at the things she has accomplished in her career, that she is capable of doing long range planning and short term problem solving with one arm tied behind her back. That she has negotiated big business deals, and nurtured small ones. That the people she has worked with have always trusted her judgment.

You know, when you see her mother, that behind all of the degrees and the polish and the panache is a woman who has been trained to live by the Golden Rule. Who has always understood the importance of family. Who has always believed in God.

You know, because she is a consummate professional, that just because you see her smiling, it doesn’t always mean everything is okay – but it does mean that if something is amiss, she is willing to put every ounce of her style, her intellect, her experience, and her faith to work to rectify the problem.

When you know these things, like I do, because I see them everyday, I know instinctively what Barack Obama does - that despite all the conjecture from the punditocracy, Michelle Obama is going to do just fine tonight when she steps on that stage in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

Off The Record

In an innermost recess of CNN:

"The Oh-bahma Admini-stration-"

"Say it slower this time, Charlie. You're our best anchor - the phone will be ringing off the hook if you sound like you're spitting his name out."

"The Ohh-bahh-mah Ad-min-i-stra-tion-"

"Charlie - I didn't say sound like you were an idiot!"

"Dude, I got nothing to wrap my tongue around. Bush? 'Buh.' Clinton? 'Ccc.' Bush? 'Buh.' Reagan? 'Ruh.' THOSE are presidential names. I mean, Jesus Christ, his name starts with a vowel!"





At a presidential campaign headquarters:

"That son of a bitch must of worn a rubber every time. You can't find not one woman he abused? Are we even sure he's a man?"

"Senator, I understand your-"

"He has screwed someone, I mean screwed her and screwed her over - maybe in college - and now she wants to get him back. We just have to find her."

"Senator, our investigators are drawing blanks-"

"Jimmy, investigators do not draw blanks when their client is running for the presidency of the United States. I don't care who she is, I don't care how much you have to pay her to say he raped her. Raped her and beat her up. Just make sure she's blonde. Blonde and pale."



At a hotel bar after the NAACP national board meeting:

"So Roy, off the record, what do you think - is he black or what?"

"Gotta a black wife, go to a black church-"

"I don't mean that. What I'm saying is, how do we know he won't pull a Tiger Woods?"

"That Cablasian stuff? Come on, man - Tiger doesn't even believe that."

"Goddammit, Roy, you're beating around the bush. Will he still claim us if he wins?"



At a soul food restaurant/beauty shop/nail salon:

"Chile, that Michelle Obama got her a fine light skinned man."

"What you talkin' bout fine? You see them ears?"

"Chile, he give her girls that good hair. Ain't nothin' wrong with his ears."

"I get stuck with a man like that, first thing I'ma do is feed him. Ain't he skinny?"

"Chile - that man wear a size THIRTEEN shoe!"



At an American Legion Hall:

"I got underwear older'n that Hussein fella `sposed be runnin' for president."

"Didja heered Limbaugh say he used to be a drug dealer?"

"I still don't unnerstan' how they put that boy in the Senate."

"Didja ever know anybody whose mind wadn't OFF once they been on them drugs?"

"I ain't got nuthin' `ginst colored, but...you know whut I'm sayin' here..."



In the mall-sized parking lot of a prominent southern Baptist church:

"We in the final hour of this thing, and this little redbone negro who call his self a preacher got to SHOW HIS ASS every night on TV."

"Why hasn't she dropped out yet?"

"I'll bet that little negro is gettin' paid off. Selling us out for a bag of silver."

"Why isn't this thing over? You still didn't tell me what you thought about this new dress."

"I wish I would run up on him, talking `bout he a man of God. He'll be praying for me to take my hands from `round his neck!"



In a living room in a western state after dinner:

"Goddamn Democrats gonna turn me into a Republican! Turn that TV off, will ya honey?'"

"Dear, it's going to be alright. Didn't you tell me your new boss is black?"

"Yeah, but that's different. This is for the PRESIDENCY...to be the president of the United States!"

"Let's see...eats arugula lettuce...dotes on his children...doesn't really like beer...goes to church regularly - even if his pastor was crazy...sounds like a good husband."

"What the hell is arugula lettuce? Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, other than the thing with the lettuce, he sounds a lot like you, dear."

For The First Time In My Adult Lifetime...

I guess I'm "fired up" and "ready to go" - and I'm not talking about what's happening on the campaign trail either.

I could knock Jeffrey Toobin's smarmy, over paid ass all the way back to the kibbutz he crawled out of - his disingenuousness about Michelle Obama's recent comments makes Hillary's crocodile tears seem sincere.

How does he and his ilk sit there on national TV, as well educated and connected as he and his brethren appear to be, and say with a straight face that Michelle Obama's line "“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country" is an aggrieved pronouncement that strikes a "discordant note" in an otherwise well orchestrated campaign by her husband?

Because if you are black, or brown, or yellow (although Asians in America have a propensity to self identify themselves as equal to being white) the thing you are feeling right now, that thing that threatens to tear through your chest, is the same thing she's feeling, because it looks like some of the diversity rhetoric we have been hearing for years is about to be matched for the first time by actual deed.

When Ed Rendell, the governor of a major state, can stand in front of a microphone and say with a straight face that "I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate", he is stating a fact - there are still many parts of the country where my brownness is only tolerated.

The thing that is in some ways more disgusting than Hillary's attempts to set the agenda, in her efforts to frame her arguments as if she is still the front runner in this race is the attempts by the gaggle of reporters from the major news venues covering this phenomenal political drama to marginalize the success of the superior campaign run by Senator Obama.

I almost feel like I am watching the scene from the 60's movie "In The Heat Of The Night" where Rod Steiger, who plays a southern police chief has learned that Sidney Poitier, who plays a detective from Philadelphia, makes more money than Steiger's character does, and has a better education - Steiger's only answer is to belittle Poitier, to remind Poitier of his limitations as a black man in the south.

The tension in that scene isn't much different than some of the tensions I see fifty years later as black people become better educated and more affluent. I can understand the discomfort if I look like a gang banger, or a rap star, but when I wear the same clothes, display an advanced mastery of the King's English, possess at least one post secondary degree, and have an equal if not greater understanding of the way our laws work and how our economy functions, I have no choice but to blame the white man's discomfort with me squarely on him.

In essence, Michelle Obama is saying that this election is a referendum on me and those who look like me, because it is posing a question that America as a nation has to answer. Given that everything else is pretty much equal - well connected, well versed, well funded Ivy League trained lawyer versus well connected well versed well funded Ivy League trained lawyer - can the country accept the idea of having a brown man as their next commander in chief? If leadership depends in part on a certain level of submission by those who are being led, can our country submit to the leadership of a brown man, even one as well educated and accomplished as Obama?

Ken Chenault is the CEO of American Express. Stanley O'Neal was the head of Merrill Lynch until a few months ago. Colin Powell has been Secretary of State. But no one is on TV more than the president of the United States. If it is Barack Obama's brown hand that ends up waving to the world from behind the podium at White House press conferences, he will represent all of America to the world. I cannot begin to tell you how much that moment will mean to me and those who look like me, who have waiting too, too long to be fully accepted into the fabric of American life in its totality.