Obama’s “three little words” troubling you? Lighten UP.

I gave up watching mainstream news a long time ago. It’s a pretend version of reality that uses spin and simplicity to manipulate us emotionally and redirect our anger away from the real sources of our problems. But sometimes I stumble onto clips and even though I know better I click on them anyway. And now I sure am stirred up emotionally - in fact I’m going to snap my keyboard I’m typing so hard - but it’s not misplaced.

This week we saw Barack Obama give a deeply personal, eminently thoughtful 45 minute speech on the state of racial ideology in America. It was the kind of honest intelligence you do not see from politicians, and it continues to be the reason I am so drawn to his candidacy, even when I know he won’t bring about the true progressive changes that are so badly needed. But I agree with John Stewart when he said that Obama “spoke to Americans as though they were adults”.

Imagine that. You can see the speech - and a full transcript, over at the Huffington Post.

In this beautiful speech there is a particularly moving section where Obama discusses cringing childhood moments when his white grandmother would make racial comments about black men - in his presence. From the speech:

Honest and disturbing but undeniably true. Who among us hasn’t cringed at things our own family members have said in our presence? I know I have, and they’ve been said by people I deeply admire otherwise.

Apparently a day after giving the speech he had the following to say on a Philadelphia Sports-talk morning show:

The media is having a field day with this, with Fox News apparently spending two hours replaying the quote but cutting it off after “typical white person.”. You can watch the clip for yourself here, if you can stomach it.

The corporate media, in its typically simplistic, anti-intellectual manner is using that “if a white person had said this…”argument. The point that they (deliberately) miss is that a white person would not say this because the history of racism in America has been against black people. Do we now need to re-write 230 years of American history just so we can satisfy the corporate infotainment’s need to be “fair and balanced”?

We’ve managed to somehow survive Bush’s eight years and most of the country is eagerly awaiting January 2009. A lot of people are now wondering how a man who uses “fuzzy math” as a scientific term or who boasts about “never reading” ever managed to get elected in the first place. The thing is, if we’re not mature enough to see past Obamas “three little words” in order to recognize the sophisticated and elemental truth of his argument, then we will continue to get the simple-minded leaders we deserve.

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