Still Have Far To Go

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

So, it turns out that those three black guys who killed the Australian baseball player were actually only two black guys and one white guy.

Kind of reminds me when it turned out that George Zimmerman was more Hispanic than white and that Trayvon Martin turned out to be less a choir boy and more a pot-smoking thug.

The Drudge Report loves to highlight every story where a black person kills a white person or when a pack of black kids go on a rampage, both of which seem to happen with some regularity.

MSNBC likes to run whole weeks of programming when a white person does something bad to a black person or a white politician or pundit says something offensive about the President, which happens with some regularity.

Apparently, there is an employee who works for Obama’s Department of Homeland Security who really, really hates white people. No, it wasn’t Janet Napolitano. It was some black dude who had a racist web site dedicated to starting a race war. I don’t think that fit in with DHS’s long-term security plans, although it isn’t clear if he has been fired yet. I learned all of this on the Drudge Report, by the way.

Joy-Ann Reid, of the Grio fame (what is the Grio?), made a comment about how she couldn’t understand how anybody could think that race had anything to do with the Oklahoma shooting. But these days, everything is about race.

We used to avoid talking about racial matters, but the Barack Obama election changed all of that. When the President became President, the country gave itself a collective pat on the back, as we congratulated ourselves about getting over the racial thing.

Now, we seem to be on the verge of race war, which would really, really make the Drudge Report and MSNBC happy, since potential race wars is all they focus on.

The President gave a big speech about race before he became President. He was trying to explain why his former Pastor was such a racist. The media, who loved the President (and still love him, by the way, despite his obvious incompetence) thought it was greatest speech in history.

The President then stepped in it when his friend Skip Gates got accosted by a Boston cop who was afraid that Gates was breaking into what turned out to be his own home. Mr. Obama said the cop was stupid, and the firestorm that created caused the President to call for a beer summit with the cop and Gates. Beer puts everybody in a better mood (unless you are Mitt Romney, who tried it once, but didn’t like the taste).

Mr. Obama then opined on Trayvon Martin, saying how Mr. Martin could have look like his son (if he had one), although it is unlikely that Mr. Obama would have a pulled the MMA moves that ultimately led to Martin’s demise.

The President has made some speeches and some off the cuff remarks on the state of racial understanding in the country, but he hasn’t done much else. He hasn’t pushed for surge in the inner city, to crack down on lawlessness, provide jobs and otherwise stop the vicious cycle of moral and economic breakdown that has plagued so many black communities (and some white ones as well). He hasn’t done anything of substance to make the situation any better.

I am being too hard on the President, because I do think that his election to the White House was a tremendous step forward for this country. That being said, I still think he is a lousy President and I disagree with most of what he is trying to do to expand the size, scope and power of the government over the people.

The frustrating thing about expressing opinions in the Age of Obama is that if you too frankly express your dislike of this President, you run the risk of being called a racist. And to be candid, many of the most bitter of critics of this President are racist. There is an air of irrationality in many of the comments aimed at Mr. Obama, the rumors that he is Muslim, the doubts about his birth certificate, the fears that he is the anti-Christ. It’s all nonsense, and worse it is counter-productive.

None of this irrationality helps my side make a rational case against the President’s philosophy and against his party.  It complicates things unnecessarily.

You can build a pretty good case against the record of the Obama White House, but those arguments go out the window when the racists start getting a hold of them.

We have come further than anybody could have possibly thought 50 years ago when Martin Luther King marched on Washington in search of racial justice. We have come so far but we still have so far to go. Just ask Matt Drudge and Phil Griffin.

Editor’s Note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. Feehery is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. He is a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com.