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Obama, the impostor; Hillary, the victim
published: Sunday | February 17, 2008
Dawn Ritch, Columnist
Who would have thought that a mixed-race person could successfully make a bid for the leadership of the United States, much less that any president could have a name like 'Obama'?
Yet, this is what seems to be unfolding in that country. They are under the mistaken impression that Barack Obama is a black man, or a brown one. And all of this because he is the product of a black man from Kenya and an American white woman. His father deserted him when he was two, and his mother raised him in Hawaii. These are his racial and presumably socio-economic credentials. They are as hazy as they come.
This is not an American black man, and he is certainly not a brown man, because that can only be produced after generations of miscegenation. Miscegenation is not an overnight thing. It is not only a statement about race, but one about the acculturation of values. Were Obama an American brown man, he'd come from Baltimore or Philadelphia.
Shirley Chisholm, the one-time US presidential candidate and Congresswoman, was an American black woman. Barrington Irving, Jamaica-born, and the youngest person to fly solo around the world, is a black man. Obama is an impostor, or, at best, an American white man, regardless of how he might initially appear.
There is a popular parlour game going the rounds where people try to guess what tribe in Africa Barack Obama most resembles. What is really being said is that he doesn't look like any black man they've ever seen before. Out of sheer frustration, they start to wonder whether or not he has ever seen a ghetto.
nonplussed
In America, the black people were even more nonplussed. For a very long time, it seemed as though there was a deafening silence from them. That is, until Oprah Winfrey endorsed him. But even after that the Rev Jesse Jackson looked deeply uncomfortable on television when talking about the presidential candidate. His wife works on the Obama campaign, and he is on Hillary Clinton's. As always, Jackson has his bread buttered on both sides.
It took the endorsements of the white relations from former presidential families - Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver and the granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower - to get that genuine American brown man, the elderly Governor Douglas Wilder, finally to climb down from his tree and endorse Obama.
All of these manoeuvrings demonstrate not the strength and electability of Obama, but just how intent her own party, the Democrats, is on stabbing Hillary Clinton in her back. They want to humiliate her in the most public manner possible. They don't care if Obama's nomination leads to a Republican victory, just as long as Hillary Clinton is not in the White House.
Jamaicans will recognise this kind of politics immediately. The People's National Party (PNP) did exactly the same thing to Portia Simpson Miller during its internal presidential elections. They didn't want her because she smiled too much. The Democrats don't want Hillary because she doesn't smile enough. Such are the obstacles to which women in politics are subjected.
The PNP lost the election narrowly to the opposing Jamaica Labour Party. That is the fate of parties which indulge too publicly in internal vitriol.
When Bill Clinton described Obama, and what the latter was talking about, as a "fairy tale", that well-known Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile, got vexed about it. Yet, not even she could fume like Brit Hume, a television talking head, once Obama began to sweep whole states in the US election primaries. Hume's indignation was palpable. His face became so sour they had to stop showing it on camera for several minutes.
It is more likely, therefore, that Obama will be shot dead before he reaches the Oval office, in a case of mistaken identity. Since he began to build momentum, the Federal Government has doubled the number of bodyguards around him.
But Bill Clinton is right. He is a fairy tale. Up to now, Obama hasn't come up with a single thing of substance. He just talks very well and promises change, so does his wife, and both of them better than Bruce Golding. They talk and talk, and people are very pleased to see it done so nicely.
government without accountability
When people vote for that, they get what we got: a government without accountability. This JLP government blames everything on external forces, as though this is the first time Jamaica has ever had to operate in a global environment.
We get a lot of book learning of no practical use, prices that shoot through the roof, and a free fall in the value of the Jamaican dollar. But since they still speak so nicely about change, the press falls all over itself trying to ignore their mistakes, not unlike the behaviour of the American press towards Barack Obama.
Take Lorna Golding and Errald Miller, the spouses of the present and former prime ministers, respectively. He kept himself to himself, and she gave a press conference at the House of Representatives. Regardless of how much she surrounded herself with Cabinet ministers and their wives, Mrs Golding is merely a spouse and has no standing whatsoever in the Government. But she even uses an office at Jamaica House at taxpayers' expense, while a number of elected officials in government still have none.
It is now six months since Bruce Golding took office and Mrs Golding "placed herself in the line of fire, figuratively speaking." How is it that all of this has passed without a single comment, much less a cartoon? Nothing has been said or drawn either, about his distinctly less than prime ministerial conduct at his own media party.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The American people and American media are bound and determined to see Obama as 'the real deal'. And six months later, the press here in Jamaica are still unable to say they made a mistake.
published: Sunday | February 17, 2008
Dawn Ritch, Columnist
Who would have thought that a mixed-race person could successfully make a bid for the leadership of the United States, much less that any president could have a name like 'Obama'?
Yet, this is what seems to be unfolding in that country. They are under the mistaken impression that Barack Obama is a black man, or a brown one. And all of this because he is the product of a black man from Kenya and an American white woman. His father deserted him when he was two, and his mother raised him in Hawaii. These are his racial and presumably socio-economic credentials. They are as hazy as they come.
This is not an American black man, and he is certainly not a brown man, because that can only be produced after generations of miscegenation. Miscegenation is not an overnight thing. It is not only a statement about race, but one about the acculturation of values. Were Obama an American brown man, he'd come from Baltimore or Philadelphia.
Shirley Chisholm, the one-time US presidential candidate and Congresswoman, was an American black woman. Barrington Irving, Jamaica-born, and the youngest person to fly solo around the world, is a black man. Obama is an impostor, or, at best, an American white man, regardless of how he might initially appear.
There is a popular parlour game going the rounds where people try to guess what tribe in Africa Barack Obama most resembles. What is really being said is that he doesn't look like any black man they've ever seen before. Out of sheer frustration, they start to wonder whether or not he has ever seen a ghetto.
nonplussed
In America, the black people were even more nonplussed. For a very long time, it seemed as though there was a deafening silence from them. That is, until Oprah Winfrey endorsed him. But even after that the Rev Jesse Jackson looked deeply uncomfortable on television when talking about the presidential candidate. His wife works on the Obama campaign, and he is on Hillary Clinton's. As always, Jackson has his bread buttered on both sides.
It took the endorsements of the white relations from former presidential families - Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver and the granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower - to get that genuine American brown man, the elderly Governor Douglas Wilder, finally to climb down from his tree and endorse Obama.
All of these manoeuvrings demonstrate not the strength and electability of Obama, but just how intent her own party, the Democrats, is on stabbing Hillary Clinton in her back. They want to humiliate her in the most public manner possible. They don't care if Obama's nomination leads to a Republican victory, just as long as Hillary Clinton is not in the White House.
Jamaicans will recognise this kind of politics immediately. The People's National Party (PNP) did exactly the same thing to Portia Simpson Miller during its internal presidential elections. They didn't want her because she smiled too much. The Democrats don't want Hillary because she doesn't smile enough. Such are the obstacles to which women in politics are subjected.
The PNP lost the election narrowly to the opposing Jamaica Labour Party. That is the fate of parties which indulge too publicly in internal vitriol.
When Bill Clinton described Obama, and what the latter was talking about, as a "fairy tale", that well-known Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile, got vexed about it. Yet, not even she could fume like Brit Hume, a television talking head, once Obama began to sweep whole states in the US election primaries. Hume's indignation was palpable. His face became so sour they had to stop showing it on camera for several minutes.
It is more likely, therefore, that Obama will be shot dead before he reaches the Oval office, in a case of mistaken identity. Since he began to build momentum, the Federal Government has doubled the number of bodyguards around him.
But Bill Clinton is right. He is a fairy tale. Up to now, Obama hasn't come up with a single thing of substance. He just talks very well and promises change, so does his wife, and both of them better than Bruce Golding. They talk and talk, and people are very pleased to see it done so nicely.
government without accountability
When people vote for that, they get what we got: a government without accountability. This JLP government blames everything on external forces, as though this is the first time Jamaica has ever had to operate in a global environment.
We get a lot of book learning of no practical use, prices that shoot through the roof, and a free fall in the value of the Jamaican dollar. But since they still speak so nicely about change, the press falls all over itself trying to ignore their mistakes, not unlike the behaviour of the American press towards Barack Obama.
Take Lorna Golding and Errald Miller, the spouses of the present and former prime ministers, respectively. He kept himself to himself, and she gave a press conference at the House of Representatives. Regardless of how much she surrounded herself with Cabinet ministers and their wives, Mrs Golding is merely a spouse and has no standing whatsoever in the Government. But she even uses an office at Jamaica House at taxpayers' expense, while a number of elected officials in government still have none.
It is now six months since Bruce Golding took office and Mrs Golding "placed herself in the line of fire, figuratively speaking." How is it that all of this has passed without a single comment, much less a cartoon? Nothing has been said or drawn either, about his distinctly less than prime ministerial conduct at his own media party.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The American people and American media are bound and determined to see Obama as 'the real deal'. And six months later, the press here in Jamaica are still unable to say they made a mistake.
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