Dear Media....Don't Take the Bait

Here it comes. The election and inaugeration of America's first black president. And along with it, here come the crazies who are going to try to get their five minutes of fame by doing something negative. Already stories are starting to pop up about dead bears with campaign posters and things hanging from trees. Folks in California put our future president's head on a food stamp surrounded by derogatory racial stereotypes like fried chicken and watermelon.

Autherine Lucy desegregated my alma mater, the University of Alabama. John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic president. George Washington was our nation's first president while were still a wobbly toddler and someone in the congress actually suggested making him King. Someone's gotta be first. It's YOUR responsibility, dear Media, not to encourage some basement-dwelling, mouth-breather longing for love and acceptance to decide that denigrating the first black president might be a quick way to get their own reality show called the Evening News. In fact, I can already imagine the reports, so popular that they become like a reality show called:
"Who Said (or Did) Something Racist Today?"

I'm not suggesting that if we ignore it, it will just go away. But most of these "pranks" are just angry expressions by people who are unhappy and feel powerless about a changing world. Last year when that kid shot up Von Maur in Omaha he did it because he was depressed and to get attention. Don't give that unhappiness, that depression, those cries for attention any more power than warranted. Because like Lee Harvey Oswald, it won't be the real culprits who will put their face on the crime. It will be the aforementioned mouth-breather, stirred to a frenzy by the insanity he sees on TV, and a little warm fuzzy encouragement by the wrong social club.

All those years of "liberal media" name-calling has got you on the defensive now, dear Media, and you're ready to show the world that you can be as tough on a Democrat president as you have these past eight years on the most incompetent world leader in history. They know you're afraid to be accused of sweeping things under the rug. They're gearing up for it and they're going to manipulate your good journalistic ethics for their own dark purposes to wage a campaign of fear and ensure that no other great men of color, like Colin Powell, will ever have the audacity to run for president again.
Don't...take... the bait.

The Scariest Halloween Ever

Frankenstein is loose, just in time for Halloween...and no, I am not referring to McCain or Obama.

There's a story out about Senator McCain and how he was booed tonight at his own rally in Wisconsin for saying that Senator Barrack Obama is " a decent man". These are the same people who are supposed to be conservative Christians for family values. Amidst cries of "traitor", "treason" and "kill him" aimed at Senator Obama, Senator McCain tried to reason with what has become the Republican mob and they turned on him for being decent himself.

I have been mostly silent throughout this election cycle because I did not want to offend my Christian brothers and sisters. But the tme for silence is over. A man's life is being threatened.

Sarah Palin has been applying the principles she learned from the "Republican Campaign for Dummies" playbook, using scare tactics and emotion to win the loyalty of her supporters while ruthlessly tearing down the reputation of her opponent who in this case happens to be a good and decent man. What Governor Palin lacks is the sophistication, political savvy and, yes, downright evil genius of the men who wrote that playbook. What do you get when you give that kind of power and that sized audience to a political outsider with very little understanding of the issues defining her contest but with a talent for cheerleading? You get a mob of frightened, angry people roused into an emotional fervor, irrational, irresponsible, and downright dangerous.

If Obama does win the election, and it looks as if he will, the American people are going to need to unite behind the new leader. Obama is a good man, a decent man, a man who worked hard for everything he's ever gotten in life and left behind the potential wealth a Harvard education could provide in order to live a life of service and, for a time, poverty. He is an example of the best our country can produce. But instead of being proud of him as we should all be, the American people are being told to demonize him, and they are happily and willingly obeying. He is more Christ like I think, right now, with angry mobs yelling at an innocent and, yes, a good man who has dedicated his life to serving others, than at any other time. And the people who should recognize his story best are not even noticing because he once ate a meal with "the unclean". Like Christ, he is not being condemned for what he has done, for he has done nothing wrong, but rather he is being condemned for the people he has known.

The use of these hate-mongering tactics are blinding people to the goodness of both of these men. Right now McCain, bless his heart, is the only member of the Republican party I see who is trying to lead his supporters to behave honorably and to have respect for the political process. I respect him for it and history will remember him well for doing so. But he has lost control of his protege'. Palin, his female Frankenstein, has got control of the mob and someone could get hurt.