Obligatory Speech Post: Now with 100% more John Barrowman offering cunninglingus!

John Barrowman was in a movie once upon a time.

It was a bad movie.

Here is that movie cut down to a run time of 4 minutes.



I was gonna do a post about the way Obama juxtaposed the daily experience of being a POC in a racist society with the paranoid delusion some white people have about affirmative action, but Kai mostly covered it really.

The only thing I have to add is that, judging by his past speeches, Obama does, unfortunately, seem to be one of those ladder pulling types who's "thing" among his fellow white people is to be okay with white people who object to affirmative action, and even going so far as to apologise and approve of anti-AA politics.

It's why I get this little twiching eyebrow thing going on when people compare him to MLK - basically, affirmative action was something MLK thought was not the whole of the solution, becuase while it dealt with some of the long lasting problems facing POC as a result of the vast history of even-worse-than-current racisms it wasn't the magic bullet that would solve all of them, it was basically a good start to a process that still needs a lot of work to be done on top of that start. So when someone starts talking about how some white people are suffering under delusions of inferiority regarding AA, and that such delusions have just as much validity as does the daily lived experience of POC, (to the point where they can be treated, as Obama did, as equivalent and equal) I imnagine that MLK, if he hadn't been shotm he'd have responded with a stirring, heartfelt speech that could be summarized thusly:

How, in the name of God and all that is holy, is it fairer for white people to pretend they're not getting benefits from historical racism - which they certainly are - to the continued detriment of POC, yet unfair if something is done to counter act that assault upon justice, love and human rights?

I don't like it, I don't like the deep seated waft of Cosby that permeates anything Obama says with regard to race.

But on the other hand the tone, and the subject was new, and shiney and something which no other potential president in the history of our nation has even touched upon.

So my overall feeling is that time may tell if the speech is either a irrelevent peice of pretty sounding hogwash, or a "1.5 steps forward, 1 step back" sort of affair.

Though if Hillary does steal the fucking nomination, no one will even remember it by june so...


HOWEVER, let me point out to all the people who have decided to come out about hating Obama now that, for the first time in his fucking career, he's done something not weaselly and entirely meaingingless; I hated Obama back before it was popular, since 2005 in fact, when he whipped out the Letter To The Kossacks and declared that not only wasn't opposing AA programs racist (which is and was a factually inaccurate statement), but also that being anti-choice wasn't misgynistic at all.

Which was a nice thing for him and penis to declare.

However let me just point out the ways in which arch-sHillacrat Ferraro was in fact kinda right when she said that Obama wouldn't be in the position he is in today if he weren't black.

The surface level aspect of the statement was what caused all the controversy becuase it's playing the race card yada yada, but let's posit some way to make her statement accurate.

for instance, if by "position he is in today" she had meant "in a position where the Klan would threaten to shoot both him and his immediate family" then yes, he would not be in that position today if he weren't black.

But the sad thing is that Ferraro was partially correct in the context she intended as well, Obama is undeniably a token, and hence would not have gotten where he was today if he wasn't black.

But let me explain to you the great racist little twist to the stabbage of racial tokenism; no black person could get away with being as stupid, buffoonish, childish, badly spoken, ineloquent and prone to episodes of borderline kleptomaniacal greed and avarice as white politicians get away with every fucking day of their careers.

Which is to say that Condi and Powell were undeniably the smartest members of the bush administration, and their routine habit of being grossly incompetent is most probably an accidental side effect of the Bush admin's consistent commitment to massive incompetence, that would have seen either of them being thrown out of the administration if they had actually dared to be fully competent anyway.

Now understand what I'm saying: I'm not saying that POC of color are smarter or somehow better than white people, what I'm saying is that politics is racist and that that racism means that there are limitations to how high a POC can go in government unless they act in ways that make them "not scary" to the eyes of the white politicians they'll need to fellate to get any where meaningful.

Imagine for instance you had a presidential candidate who spoke with a thick southern accent, couldn't get through a single speech without flubbing most of the words including the monosyllabic ones, constantly played up his ability to ape gross stereotypes of working class people, acting dumber than a rock in the process and looked a bit like a chimpanzee.

Now imagine he was black, how close to the presidency do you think he'd be able to get?

The deep seated and unintentional irony of Ferraro's declaration is that it preceded the Wright controversy, in which Obama's pastor, with classic black baptist bombastic style and righteous, justified, anger suddenly painted Obama as maybe not as antiseptic a black token as they had believed - which is why you've got the conservative talking heads on every crappy fauz-news type channel calling Obama and his pastor racist.

Because like with the "unfairness" and "racism" of Affirmative Action, there is no racism more unpalletable, no injustice less worthy of nasty little white people wailing and gnashing there teeth at though that maybe, just maybe, a black person somewhere out there is acting like a person, complex, multilayered and not neccesarily your loyal servant, without in someway bending and bowing and constraining themselves to act, at all times and in all ways, to standards and limitations that white people put upon them.

So here's the thing:

When Obama gets confirmed as the DLC's "boy", and he's tearing into senile old Grampa McCain like a small fat child goes at a mountain of ice cream shovel first, I will be delighted to tear both of the bastards apart as they present reasons to.

But while Hillary, extension to Bill's penis that she is, represents no one but herself and other waffling mercenary DINOs who will cling to any brief political fad that passes her way, Obama represents the flip side of the experiences of POC like Andrea Smith, like every POC who's been passed over for promotion, denied a raise or otherwise had their careers retarded because someone above them who's support they need to advance hates them for "what" they are and not how they perform their job.

Ferraro was right, he really wouldn't be where he was today if he wasn't black, just as he wouldn't be where he is today if washington wasn't powered by the heat of burning crosses and it's economy maintained by the pointy white hood industry. If politics weren't racist it's likely another, probably dumber, less well spoken black guy would be in his place.

And the funny thing is that Hillary would still be losing to that dumber black guy, not because of misogyny (because anyone who won't vote for Hillary "because she's a woman" is gonna vote for McCain anyway or is going to vote for hillary on the principle that doing so might give McCain an easy election, so they're not why Obama is doing so well) but because she went from being a reasonably okay politician back in the 90's to being the shallow, superficial rightwing hack she is today and we remember the difference, and hate that shift and her with it.

If it weren't for her immense experience as a campaigner, having helped both Bill on his campaigns and having fought her own various campaigns for senate and for the NYC mayorship*, she wouldn't even be in the position she's in to make those not particularly veiled threats about cheating Obama of his well deserved victory.

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