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He’s Baaaack!
5 days ago
Thursday, November 13, 2008
We come a long way, baby.
And we've got a long way to go.
I was already done with the Bradley Effect, convinced as I was that the Bradley election after which it was named was victim to as much poor polling as it was racism. Then, yesterday, I catch wind of a hypothesized Huxtable Effect, in which Bill Cosby's TV family of respectable black folks gets credit for Obama's win by "presenting an appealing black family."
My response to all of this was to wonder whether Obama would have won were he the same in every way except his skin color. Did we elect him because he's black? And had he lost, would that have also been because he was black? Really? His policies had nothing to do with it? His cool, focused campaign had nothing to do with it?
I was angry. Angry that evidence was stacking up that we would never see past his color, that he would be not our president, but our black president. And I asked aloud if we weren't past this, if this talk was really necessary in today's world.
Then Lindsay Lohan opened her mouth. And I had to respond, "Oh. Right."
Followed by a deep, depressed sigh.
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8 comments:
Right after that comment, Lohan took a drink from the "White Only" water fountain.
She is irrelevant in any scheme of things--grand or otherwise.
A spokesman for the syndicated entertainment news program said in a statement Wednesday: "We believe the word in question that Ms. Lohan used was unintelligible."
So, she said that Obama is our first unintelligible president? That makes no sense.
She's from the South, isn't she?
I wish the public would just let her and her girlfriend frolic the fuck around in their bikinis on their private island, and move on. There's real shit going down in this country.
I totally agree, Swine, that there are far, far, far more important things than what the Linds has to say.
But, the reality is we do worship in the cult of celebrity in this country, and there are literally millions of people that care more about LL and Paris and Britney than they do about actual substantive issues. They love their celebs and the celebs are famous because of that love.
In that way, Lindsey Lohan is a barometer for the outlook of the great unwashed entertainment-obsessed hoi palloi.
Sad? Yep. True? I think so.
I'd say that's a fair assessment, JJ, though I'll be honest and say that I'm not greatly surprised by any of it.
Recall that story about the door-to-door Obama volunteer in PA?
No, what was that story?
The version of the story I heard went something like this: The volunteer knocks on a door, and an older woman answers the door. The volunteer asks "who will you be voting for?" The woman calls inside to her husband and asks "she wants to know who we're voting for," and gets the answer back "tell her we're voting for the nigger."
Here's the likely source of the story.
Raising two multi-racial children has always kept the fact that America is still hung up on the color thing in clear sight. This is no surprise. I think it's more important how the media and the rest of us deal with it than the fact that it still exists.
Fuck the bigots and full steam ahead, I say.
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