Brownskinned People Won't Tarnish Presidency

I was underwhelmed by the speakers leading up to the speech by Michelle Obama earlier tonight, so I went upstairs to tool around the internet for a minute. After about fifteen minutes of web surfing, I was about to get up from my chair when I saw the words "Obama assasination plot" on the screen. I figured it was one of the ones from the spring, but when I pulled up Google to see what was going on, I froze - the time stamp on the first article said "38 minutes ago".

By the time I had gathered enough information - namely, that Obama had not been in any immediate danger, and the two three men had been arrested - I went back to the basement, where Michelle Obama had already launched into her opening night speech. Her delivery was superb, the imagery crisp, the language simple but powerful, the narrative that we are all at least a little familiar with rewoven into an even more compelling story about her life than the ones I'd already heard. Why the punditocracy would have expected anything less, I said to myself, as they tepidly praised her effort, was beyond me.

Maybe it was the fact that I had had one foot anchored in reality by the news update I'd read that kept me from accepting a lot of the reasons the CNN pundits were giving for the extraordinary length the Obama family seemed to be going to in order to show America that they were "alright". That they could be "comfortable" with them. That this highly choreographed forty five minute extravaganza had been put together for the sole purpose of "reassuring" mainstream America that these brownskinned people wouldn't tarnish the office of the presidency.

Why, I asked S., didn't one of the brighter pundits like Jeff Toobin look squarely into the camera and simply tell the American public who were watching that black people who live the type of high profile lives like the Obamas are experts at explaining who they are to white Americans because they've been doing it all their lives? Why couldn't one of them have played devil's advocate and asked the real question - what is wrong with our nation when people are uneasy at the thought of members of the "Well Scrubbed Negro Club" holding positions of power and influence?

I was bewildered when Obama appeared on a large TV monitor over the stage when Michelle got through with her speech - why was he in the living room of a nondescript family in St. Louis, Missouri ? Where they the winners of one of the those fundraising contests at www.barackobama.com ? But then the Google search I'd done earlier came back to me, and I was kind of glad - actually, I was thankful that Barack had not been in Denver.

If this post doesn't make a lot of sense, it is because I am still flustered over the idea that high powered rifles could have been trained on Obama Thursday night by the two three men in custody. And I'm pretty damn upset about the thought that these people will probably not be the last to try.

But the worst thing about the evening, the thing that gets me hotter than anything else, is the fact that even though the Obamas are just like any other successful American family, its the color of their skin that makes all the difference, a darker tint that is the cause of all the anxiety and unrest, as if the color of a car makes it run faster, or drive differently, or break down more often.