Throw Grandma Under the Bus
By: Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 20, 2008
Obama gave a nice speech, except for everything he said about race. He
apparently believes we're not talking enough about race. This is like
hearing Britney Spears say we're not talking enough about pop-tarts
with substance-abuse problems.
By now, the country has spent
more time talking about race than John Kerry has talked about Vietnam,
John McCain has talked about being a POW, John Edwards has talked about
his dead son, and Al Franken has talked about his USO tours.
But
the "post-racial candidate" thinks we need to talk yet more about race.
How much more? I had had my fill by around 1974. How long must we all
marinate in the angry resentment of black people?
As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by
pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than
a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said
-- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I
think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David
Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and the Rev. Wright referred
to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming "home to roost.")
Imagine
a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this
country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe
in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we
believe in God."
Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice."
Imagine a white pastor saying: "No, no, no, God damn America -- that's in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!"
We
treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper
tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I
will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a
post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives
black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.
Obama
tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized
discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other
African-Americans of his generation grew up." He said that a "lack of
economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration
that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed
to the erosion of black families."
That may accurately describe
the libretto of "Porgy and Bess," but it has no connection to reality.
By Rev. Wright's own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an
integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was
announced, ending "separate but equal" schooling.
Meanwhile, at
least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v.
Bakke in 1978 -- and obviously long before that, or there wouldn't have
been a case or controversy for the court to consider -- it has been
legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of
their race.
Consequently, any white person 30 years old or
younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is
legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just
legal, but mandatory, for example, in education, in hiring and in
Academy Award nominations.
So for half of Rev. Wright's 66
years, discrimination against blacks was legal -- though he never
experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country
where he did not live. For the second half of Wright's life,
discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.
Discrimination
has become so openly accepted that -- in a speech meant to tamp down
his association with a black racist -- Obama felt perfectly comfortable
throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white
racist counterpart to his black racist "old uncle," Rev. Wright.
First
of all, Wright is not Obama's uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy
uncles is that everyone understands that people don't choose their
relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors.
No one quarrels with idea that you can't be expected to publicly
denounce your blood relatives.
But Wright is not a relative of
Obama's at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright's racist invective
to his actual grandmother, who "once confessed her fear of black men
who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has
uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
Rev.
Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but
Obama's grandmother -- who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in
at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school -- has
expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that
Jesse Jackson has.
Unlike his "old uncle" -- who is not his
uncle -- Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama's grandmother
never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn't get the
same pass as the crazy uncle; she's white. Denounce the racist!
Fine. Can we move on now?
No,
of course, not. It never ends. To be fair, Obama hinted that we might
have one way out: If we elect him president, then maybe, just maybe, we
can stop talking about race.
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