Nevertheless, as the cameras roamed over the millions who turned out to watch Obama take his oath and deliver his speech one couldn’t help being infused with excitement and pride.
I thought of the six hundred years of resistance and agitation that led to this moment, and when he was introduced as president-elect with trumpets blaring like in the Gladiator movies, and walked down the steps toward his seat, I was really moved. This was not only a triumph for the persistence of the African-American movement, but even the intellectuals who’ve commented on this election have failed to mention that Obama is also a member of the Irish Diaspora. And that one of his ancestors fled Ireland during Ireland’s darkest period. A man who came to this country with few assets. For some reason, the guys on Morning Joe—Irish- American guys — can’t bring themselves to mention that Obama’s mother was an Irish American. Wonder why? Shouldn’t Buchanan, Scarborough, Matthews and the rest be proud of a home girl made good?
I thought that the speech was wonkish as well as Kennedyesque. “Let the word go forth to friend and foe alike.” But it was the kind of speech that the president of a country, whose economic system is a kind of welfare capitalism, had to make. As Kennedy said in a back channel exchange with Fidel Castro, he realized the oppression that Cubans suffered under Batista but he was the president of the United States, not a sociologist.
After Obama’s speech, I went out to buy a coffee pot, maybe one that would make both espresso and coffee, my drugs. There was a long line at Macy’s. Could Obama’s speech have spurred a shopping spree? No. They were giving away perfumes and colognes. A salesperson asked me whether I wanted to buy some cologne. The Krup coffee maker I wanted had been sold out. The Mr. Coffee maker at Walmart was too plastic. Carla didn’t even want to step into the place because of its labor policies. Once inside she walked about the place with her nose upturned. I did notice the tell-tale plastic odor of cheapness. I didn’t see any clerks. I figured that they were in the basement hiding from the immigration authorities. I finally ended up on Fourth Street, one of Berkeley’s white zones, like the ones that exist all over Obama’s post-race America. The kind of place frequented by young whites. The kind of people who, as Warren Hinckle said, hang around ice cream parlors all day. They offered this Krup coffee maker that looked like the ones they use in restaurants. Way over my budget. I finally settled on buying a larger version of the one we had at home. A Bodum, the kind of coffeemaker that they must have used in the Gold Rush days. With this machine it takes all morning to brew your coffee but the taste is superior to those of the other types.
When I returned home, I returned to channel surfing. On Hard Ball Chris Matthews was allowing Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee fan Pat Buchanan to carry on his on-going vendetta against the president (among the predictions that he made that didn’t come true, was that if Obama were nominated, the Republican Party would “rip him to pieces.” They lost!). During the first month or so of Obama’s administration Buchanan said that the troubled stock market was sending Obama a message. But on April 13, 2009, MSNBC financial reporter Erin Burnett announced that the stock market had had its best twenty-three-day rally since 1933. So protective of Buchanan, who is on camera for the purpose of selling white supremacy, the old 1830s media formula, that little mention was made of Buchanan’s support of the Nazi prison guard John Demjanjuk, who was deported in May. It’s not that Dan Abrams and the others who employ Buchanan are anti-Semites. Buchanan is a good salesman for racism, which is a big business. The rage he exhibited indicated that MSNBC’s Buchanan was clearly bothered by the election of a black president. He wasn’t the only one. That’s probably why Justice Roberts flubbed the oath. He probably couldn’t stand seeing a black man sworn in. Chris Wallace over at Rupert Murdoch’s big tent said that the fumbled oath meant that Obama wasn’t the president. While a clearly agitated Buchanan was carrying on, I had a vision of old Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee looking up from hell and fulminating over this inauguration.
On April 12, Obama mojoed his critics again. Faced with his first foreign affairs crisis when some “pirates” off the coast of Somalia held an American captain, Newt Gingrich, who left Congress in disgrace, said that “this is an administration which keeps trying to find some kind of magical solution that doesn’t involve effort, doesn’t involve risk and doesn’t involve making hard decisions… nobody has the will to do anything.” A few hours later it was announced that under Obama’s direc-tions, the captain had been freed. On the morning shows, there was a consensus that this was a test for Obama. Yet the next morning Chuck Todd minimized Obama’s role and gave credit to other agencies and individuals.
The Morning Joe show became, during the campaign and afterwards, an adjunct to Sarah Palin’s campaign, yet because of a couple of token liberal and “progressive” programs, Imus Alumni Howard Kurtz was still describing MSNBC as pro-Obama on January 25, 2009.
Later Matthews dragged out this black preacher whom the right, without success, has been trying to install as a black leader since 2000 (but at least he doesn’t wear red shoes like America’s other favorite black preacher.) A Bush fan, his selling point for MSNBC is that he can always be relied upon to boost white moral superiority at the expense of blacks, the old journalistic shell game. This conniving tough-love entrepreneur and lard ball said that when Obama referred to putting away childish things during his address, he was addressing black people who were children and were like back seat drivers complaining all the time and not doing anything. Or, like the late Saul Bellow said, like teenagers begging Dad for the car keys.
My neighbors and I have been trying to rid our block of two criminal operations for four years. We succeeded in closing one but the other one is still in operation. An interracial gang (that’s right, in California the gangs tend to be as mixed as those who riot) is making our lives miserable. Engaging in shootouts, littering up the streets and bursting our eardrums with this dreadful noise from boom cars. Noise that they consider music.
We’ve tried everything. We’ve alerted the police, zoning authorities, the health department — they’re still operating. We’re doing something. Oscar Grant was also doing something. He was a butcher’s apprentice who was dragged off a train and murdered by a Bay Area Transit Policeman. The latest news of January 25, 2009, reports that he was beaten by the police before he was shot in the back by a policeman. A young black filmmaker, quoted in The New York Times, said that class has replaced race as the post-race paradigm. Apparently the police haven’t read that memo. Oscar Grant had class. He was a family man with one child, and a butcher’s apprentice with a job. It’s not class, its one’s black ass.
Over at CNN, Larry King brought in the kind of people who Jonathan Klein feels make whites comfortable to comment about the election: corporate Hip Hoppers, athletes and comedians. MSNBC thought it clever to solicit the views of a ten-year-old black who, in the old days of vaudeville, would be called a “pick.” His white teacher was clearly miffed that President Obama didn’t drop everything to give this journalist an interview.
(While great black journalists like Les Payne have lost their columns, CNN’s Jonathan Klein gave a black comedian a news show.)
Amy Goodman’s inaugural show had some excellent features. She invited a historian who provided some historical background about the building of the Capitol by African captives. I always thought that the figure atop the Capitol building was an Indian. The historian says that it was a slave and that originally the creator of the statue had to replace a cap that was made popular by the French as a symbol of liberty because Jeff Davis, a slaveowner, and a real character who tried to escape Union troops by getting up in drag, objected.