[News] Morning in Obamerica

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/reed11052008.html

November 5, 2008


Change, Change, Change?


Morning in Obamerica

By ISHMAEL REED

The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the  leopard shall lie 
down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling 
together; and a little child shall lead them.

The great American satirist George Schuyler's prescient and comic 
work, Black No More, is about a scientist named Dr. Crookmore who 
comes up with a formula that turns blacks to white (I wonder how 
Schuyler would treat the current profitable back- to- Africa DNA 
hokum). As a result of a country that is totally white, The Civil 
Rights organizations go out of business, and even the last hold out, 
the character, based upon the black nationalist Marcus Garvey, in the 
end, tries some of Dr.  Crookmore solution. Would something like this 
happen were Barack Obama to become president?  A country where there 
exists no social divisions and the issue of race has become defused.

The leader of the NAACP says that the work of the organization will 
continue even with an Obama victory.  Why?Wouldn't it be better that 
the NAACP shut its doors as cable's leading conservative 
intellectual, Tucker Carlson has suggested?Auction off its assets and 
join the post race fever?  In his "The New Black Aesthetic, " (1989,) 
author Trey Ellis announced the arrival of a generation of African 
Americans who would place the issue of race in the background unlike 
we "curmudgeons" and "cranks, " who came of age in the 1960s and who 
are still carrying on like those Japanese soldiers who weren't aware 
that the war was over. "The New Black Intellectuals" were even 
praised by Robert Boynton in an essay that appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly (March, 1995:53-69. )

To many, Martin Luther King's dream  has been realized. He said, " I 
have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill 
and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, 
and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the 
Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." 
Obviously me and my over sixty pals are still lingering in those 
crooked places and refusing to process the sunlight that is available 
to everybody else.  (Tavis Smiley is our leader).  People like us are 
going to have to adjust to this post race America which resembles a 
painting by Edward Hicks. A place where Blacks  have reached the 
Promised Land?

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568583397/counterpunchmaga>What 
does this promise land look like?This Obamerica? Shortly after Obama 
is sworn in, the police, instead of subjecting blacks and Hispanics 
to capricious traffic stops, will only stop them to offer free 
tickets to the policeman's ball.  Throughout the country, they will 
address blacks and Hispanics as sir and ma'm. The overcrowding prison 
problem will end, because all of the blacks and Hispanics who've been 
sent there as a result of prosecutorial and police misconduct, 
-probably half- will be set free. And all of those police who have 
murdered unarmed blacks only to be acquitted by all-white juries will 
be retried. Blacks will have the freedom to shop in department stores 
without being watched.

In the media, all of the black Hispanic and Native American and Asian 
American journalists, who, according to the Maynard Institute's media 
watcher, Richard Prince, are being "shown the door, " will be 
rehired. The progressive media will spend as much time on the torture 
of black suspects in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles as they do 
torture at Gitmo. Blacks will be liberated from the crime, 
entertainment and sports pages exclusively and appear in other 
sections. More cerebral sections as scientists, 
engineers,   astronomers. Jonathan Klein and other cable producers 
will stop managing black opinion so that it doesn't alienate its 
white audience and voices other than those of black correspondents 
from Rev.  Moon's church will be awarded air time. Global warming 
denier Michelle Bernard will be replaced by Jill Nelson.

  Jesse Jackson will be appointed lead editorial writer for The Wall 
Street Journal. and Al Sharpton will assume duties at The National 
Review.  Rush Limbaugh will inaugurate a series called "Great African 
American Inventors." Spike Lee will be invited to run Columbia 
Pictures  and Amy Goodman will take over at NBC. The Newspaper 
Society of America will apologize for the lynchings and civil 
disturbances caused by an inflammatory media over the last one 
hundred or so years. A choked up Rupert Murdoch will read the 
statement on behalf of his colleagues.

In an emotional press conference, John McWhorter, Ward Connerly and 
Shelby Steele will admit that  they have been tools of the Eugenics 
movement and donate all of the millions they have received from far 
right organizations to scholarships for black and Hispanic students. 
Blacks will have as much access to a good education as those members 
of Al-Qaeda and Saddam's government who studied in  the United 
States. This will end the policy of you educate them, we fight them.

Gertrude Himmlefarb and Lynne Cheney will insist that the works by 
Hispanic, black and Native Americans be added to the cannon.  Cornel 
West will co host  a show with Dr.  Phil. The New York Review of 
Books will end its white only policy and begin to resemble America. 
Phillip Roth will
admit that all of his novels are autobiographical. Several prominent
abstract expressionists will confess that they can't draw.

All of the blacks and Hispanics who have been driven out of New York, 
Oakland, and San Francisco, as a result of the policies of ethnic 
cleansing, advocated by Jerry Brown, Giuliani and Newsom, will be 
invited to return. The banks that aimed toxic mortgage loans to 
blacks and Hispanics, who would have qualified for conventional loans 
had they been white, will halt the foreclosure process and 
renegotiate these loans. CEOs on Wall Street will forego bonuses and 
golden parachutes. Sales conferences will be held at Day's Inn. For 
rent signs will go up on K street. The American Enterprise will close 
its doors.

The right will stop using worn out phrases like " political 
correctness, ' and victimization" and hire Sean "Puffy" Combs to 
provide them with some hip language.

An Obama administration will launch the Obama doctrine, which will 
advocate friendly aggression and soft diplomacy in Africa, Asia  the 
Middle East and other global spots where American forces are killing 
people.  These trouble spots will be inundated with artists, writers, 
dancers and musicians, engineers, doctors and people who speak their 
languages.

American students will be required to lean an Asian and African 
languages well as a western one. He will call for an end to warfare 
by air so that these forces will at least look their victims in the 
eye before murdering them.  No more drones. Missiles. Members of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff will address him as Mr, President, both in 
private and in public. The white house, haunted by the ghosts of the 
Indian fighters and slave owners and KKK sympathizers like Woodrow 
Wilson, who once ruled from there, will be demolished and the first 
family will reside in a St.  Louis condo as the country seeks a fresh 
start.  Cindy McCain will sell her wardrobe and donate the proceeds 
to rebuilding New Orlean's 9th ward. Any one outfit that she wears on 
a given day would help to rebuild a block. John McCain will 
acknowledge the black members of his family whom he has snubbed up to 
now.  Obama critic Governor Schwarzenegger's will be among the new 
president's well wishers. He will offer to improve president Obama's 
physique by sending him some steroids from his private stash. And, by 
the way, doesn't an effort to put some meat on somebody's bones begin  at home?

A big step toward a green America would be to return the land that 
was stolen from Native Americans. (The southwest will be returned to Mexico).

And as a gesture to this new Era of Good Feeling, George Bush, Condi 
Rice, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Judith Miller, Osama Bin Laden 
and Jonathan Klein will turn themselves in at the Hague.

Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, 
"<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568583397/counterpunchmaga>Mixing 
It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies" was published by De Capo.




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