<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/reed11052008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/reed11052008.html</a><br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">November 5,
2008<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Change, Change,
Change?<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Morning in Obamerica
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By ISHMAEL
REED <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>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.
<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>he 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. <br><br>
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. )
<br><br>
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? <br><br>
<a href="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
</a></u>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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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<br>
admit that all of his novels are autobiographical. Several prominent<br>
abstract expressionists will confess that they can’t draw.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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?<br><br>
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). <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Ishmael Reed</b> is the publisher of Konch. His new book,
"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568583397/counterpunchmaga">
Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies</a>" was published by De
Capo. <br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>