You Know You Flipped That Switch, John McCain

When YOU flipped the switch to start the negative campaigning in earnest, John McCain - YOU know what switch I'm talking about - YOU signaled to your troops how low YOU were willing to go.

I’m here to tell you that you wasted your breath dismissing the comments by Congressman John Lewis that compared recent actions surrounding your campaign to those promulgated by arch segregationist George Wallace. This is EXACTLY how you motivate people to believe your message, John McCain, when logic and common sense have to be abandoned. It's the same way you do it in wartime when you have to learn how to hate an enemy you don't know.

The Gordian Knot of race didn't tie itself. And in all those years since the first guy - who I am certain was not one of us pesky minorities, who have caused all the rest of the nation's ills, including the latest financial crisis - since that same first non-minority guy thought up the concept of discrimination based on skin tone and ethnicity, there were a whole lot of non-minority people through the ages who went along with the idea.

Why? Because it gave them an advantage.

But now that the shoe is on the other foot, having an advantage because of the color of your skin seems to be bad all of a sudden.

It isn't a coincidence that the party who has adopted Christianity as one of its main sponsors is paying the price for this. Over zealous religious believers have been some of our nations most dedicated and fervent oppressors, with centuries of practice under their belts, and even now, they have retained the unique ability to spit intolerance out of the same lips that they use to ask God for personal salvation.

Barack Obama is as much of a politician as the next guy, which is why I will applaud his use of any means necessary to corner, cower, antagonize, browbeat, and generally keep his opponent off balance.

You know who Obama is, John McCain. He's the one wearing the white trunks, not the right trunks. He's the one who you've said is "all show and no go", although he asserts that he is the second coming of "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee".

He's the one that's taller than you. He's the one you've been chasing around the country these last few weeks, trying to keep up with Obama campaign rally rope-a-dope. Now you're about to find out what Joe Frazier knows - the "sting like a bee" part can hurt you real bad.

But its not the "race card" that's doing all this, John McCain, its the collective strength of all those community organizers - remember them? - who are really taking a toll on you, who are showing in these final days that having a longer reach is as invaluable in politics as it is in boxing.

If I were you, John McCain, I would immediately demand an apology from George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Joe McCarthy, Jessie Helms, Lee Atwater, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, and all the rest of those whose vile and despicable acts of the past have forced you to have to try to be a decent and honorable candidate, especially when the cameras are rolling.

Because it's too late to flip that switch back - it's stuck in the "ON" position.

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get to the Center of Barack Obama?

"Mr. Turtle, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" was the opening line of a Tootsie Pop commercial back in the seventies.

Mr. Turtle answered the cartoon boy. "I never made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl."

The boy approached a scholarly looking cartoon version of an owl, its great unblinking eyes staring at us from our television screens, and repeated his question. "Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop."

Mr. Owl said "let's find out" and proceeded to unwrap the hard shelled bit of flavored candy on a stick with a chewy Tootsie Roll center. The owl's tongue extended slowly from its mouth to take deliberate licks of the candy, pausing after each lick to update the count.

"Ah one."

"Ah two."

"Three."

With the third lick, the beak of the owl suddenly opened, and the bird crunched the entire bit of candy from the end of the stick.

"Three," he declared, his feathers unruffled, his unblinking eyes staring out into TV land.




Maybe this popped into my head tonight because the center of the Tootsie Pop was brown, like Barack Obama. Or maybe this popped into my head because in throwing down the race card gauntlet, it seemed that Senator McCain, like the owl in the commercial, couldn't wait to attack the soft spot in the Obama campaign.

Brown skin is at the center of this latest debate - a light brown, to be exact, but brown nonetheless. And if we don't know anything else in America, we know our signals.

Green means go.

Red means stop.

Yellow means proceed with caution.

And brown?

It means "welfare".

It means "baby daddy".

It means "affirmative action".

It means "drug addict".

It means "known felon".

It means "crack head".

This imagery is so pervasive that Courtland Malloy, a black op-ed writer who often challenges mainstream assumptions about blacks, admitted in his column yesterday that when he saw an African American youth in the woods behind his house one day last week, he immediately jumped to the conclusion that the young man was up to no good.

Dressed in a county uniform, the young black man was employed by his local government as a mosquito control technician.

All of the record breaking fundraising, all of the surgically precise campaign strategies, all of the stirring speeches, all of the voter registrations - all of this can be negated in a few weeks if Americans, both black and white, subconsciously connect the dots the way the Republican strategists want.

Over eighty years ago, James Weldon Johnson said, "I am sure it would be safe to wager that no group of Southern white men could get together for sixty minutes without bringing up the race question. If the Northern white man happened to be in the group, the time could be safely cut to thirty minutes."

He could be describing America today.

Talking about race, especially between the races, is uncomfortable. It calls into question an individual's own sense of morality. It forces us to examine closely all those inequities we have learned to rationalize instead of challenge. And nobody knows what the answer is that will get us from where we are now to where we say we want to be. To truly erase the stereotypes and misconceptions that revolve around race in modern society will be as monumental an achievement as it was for those people who thought the earth was flat to finally accept that it was really round.