The White Elephant in the Room

When it comes to huge impacting realities about American society, The MSM is militant…they employ a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

For example, it was an open secret for decades that Catholic Priests had been abusing young boys. It was so well known “unofficially” that it became a throw away joke for many standup comics, SNL and many comedy shows. And yet the MSM kept the news and investigations just between them and their priests.

There was all the Bush insanity, the 2000 election to begin with that had blatant evidence of tampering with our democracy, the nasty secrets of The Patriot Act, WMDs and Iraq, Iraq being conflated with 9/11, aw hell, the whole 8 years under Bush.

The MSM just played the role of a ventriloquist dummy, letting ideologues on the right especially make outrageous charges and just repeating them without analysis…of just calling obvious bullshit for what it was. Instead, they call the broadcast of phony propaganda, “balance”.

Now we come to The White Elephant in the Room.

Racism.

As with the Catholic Priests molesting young boys, it is an open “secret” that those most insane at the Tea Parties and Town Halls, those most repeating the phrase, “I want my country back!”, calling Obama a Muslim, Nigerian, Socialist, etc. are for the most part, racists.

And yet, watch the MSM. They ask questions like, “Why do you think there’s so much outrage out there?” and “Is all the government spending on the bail out, stimulus and possibly on health care, upsetting people?” WTF? These people who can’t even spell the word “moron” correctly are sitting around their trailer reading the Wall Street Journal to check their stock portfolios and while discussing offshore tax havens, remark about the effect of the increased deficit on the bond market?

Or how about this…the people we’re talking about use whatever cover they can for expressing their hatred of other races. They hate this black man for destroying their one claim to being “special”. Sure they may be poor, live in trailers, fry their Thanksgiving turkeys in a barrel of oil, have more children and less teeth than most Americans but the one thing that let them hold their heads up proudly (and all of their chins), the one accomplishment they had that made them superior to others in this nation was that they were white.

For them, only white people could and should do the most important things and be the most important people. But not anymore. By becoming president, Barack Obama affirmed that such racist garbage should remain behind their trailers for pickup. However, from the racist perspective, he has taken away “their” country.

What does it mean when a poor, white, frothing-at-the-mouth southerner wails, “I want my country back?” It means a nostalgia for separate drinking fountains and schools, back of the bus, having “them” step off the sidewalk to get out of white people’s way…the country they want is the country their racist predecessors had that validated their feelings of superiority simply because they were born with light colored skin.

Quite an accomplishment indeed, being born with light colored skin, ya gotta hand it to them.

Now, there is an odd flip side to this. Pres. Obama does not want the media talking about racism either. He does not want it as a distraction to the issues or for its reality to be broadly acknowledged because it would bring up the issue that his being black DOES make him different as a president, a segment of the population DOES despise the President of the United States simply for being black.

Admirably, Pres. Obama wants to be president of a post-racial America. He does not want his having a darker skin tone than some Americans to be a focus of his presidency because then “the terrorists” have won and he’d be participating in being judged by the color of his skin and not the content of his character.

However, by believing that if you claim not to see the White Racist Elephant in the room that others won’t see it, I think he makes the mistake of providing cover for those who are racists and ultimately is not being honest.

Over 70% of Republicans don’t believe Pres. Obama is an American or legally president. No white president has ever had “being an American like us” so challenged. That is not the “small minority” (love the phrase “minority” applied to racists though) that Pres. Obama and his Admin are describing as racially motivated.

Granted, this is a complex and difficult issue. Perhaps Pres. Obama’s approach will best achieve the results of a true evolution to a post racial America. Then again, maybe by obscuring the truth of the rampant racism in this nation, it is protected from greater scrutiny and scorn and allowed to flourish.

I don’t know for sure but I do know one thing…the evolution won’t be televised…not by the MSM.