Too much and too little to say

I've intended to elaborate on race and Geraldine Ferraro, but I've been busy. I apologize to all three of my readers.

But today Barack Obama gave a truly incredible speech, one that a) deals with race in a beautifully nuanced way, and b) reinforces why I will vote for him. Given that nuance, I'd like to mention a few words and phrases about race that demonstrate how shallow American discourse is:

• the race card: I've written about this before, so I'll just link to that post and mention one other thing. Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford published a book in January called The Race Card: How Bluffing about Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. I haven't read the book yet, though I want to. But I hate the title; it reinforces this stupid notion that talking about race is a game. Ford's black, and that's really what disappoints me. He's allowing a term designed to short-circuit discussion a certain weight in a book that is, by many accounts, intelligent and nuanced.
  
• racist: When asked about Geraldine Ferraro's idiotic comment that Obama is only a serious candidate because he's black and whether her comments were racist, he said he hesitates to use the term. And here's why: overt racism isn't as easy to identify these days. Does Ferraro look racist next to, say, the KKK? Or, for a less extreme comparison, to Rush Limbaugh?
• race baiting: If you want to feel ill, go read the National Review blog "The Corner." (I won't link to it; you know how to use google.) For some reason, and I just can't figure out why, the writers there compare Obama to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; one approvingly cites an email that says Obama is practicing race baiting. This term is similar to "race card," similar enough that I don't feel compelled to explain why. (But if one of my three readers wants an explanation, I'll append one.)

And one more sad thing: Obama gave a great speech today, and writers at Slate and The New Republic worry that the speech is too nuanced for Americans and might put voters off. Sigh.

Barack Obama is not all about the benjamins

Given the idiocy of most American media, Barack Obama must distance himself from the odious statements of every black person, whereas there's no such litmus test for whites. Not only did Tim Russert attempt to connect Obama to Louis Farrakhan (which led to Hillary Clinton's ever-important parsing of "reject" and "denounce"), he's also questioned Obama about comments made by Harry Belafonte. Though Obama has no association with either man other than his skin color, he must explain that he's not like the dark-skinned guys who have said horrible things. (Thankfully, John McCain's getting some scrutiny for his associations.)

And, of course, when Obama mentioned that he likes rap--he singles out Jay-Z and Kanye West, pretty safe choices--he also had to say, "I don’t always love the message of Hip-Hop." With that in mind, I did some research and dug up the messages of hip-hop and rap that Obama disagrees with.

• "Pimpin' ain't easy." Obama has argued--and pretty convincingly, I think--that a lot of the difficulties of pimpin' can be eased.
  
• "I like big butts and I cannot lie." Obama doesn't exactly disagree with this, but he thinks men should be open to butts of all shapes and sizes: "Can we appreciate a flatter, tighter derriere?" Obama asked a crowd in Des Moines. "Yes we can."
• "The jury has found you guilty of being a redneck, white bread, chickenshit mother fucker," Dr. Dre says at the end of "Fuck tha Police. Obama believes Dre should not have stopped short of calling the police officer in the song a "cracker-ass cracker."
  
• Obama believes that LL Cool J's return was, in fact, a comeback.
• Snoop Dogg is short-sighted, Obama believes, in claiming that "ain't nuthin' but a g thang." The circumstances, Obama has repeatedly said, are more nuanced than that.

It should be noted that Obama does like a lot of rap. In fact, to show white people he's not a scary black man, he often begins speeches by quoting Vanilla Ice: "Stop, collaborate and listen."

A small footnote: Obama isn't crazy about Harry Belafonte's "Matilda," in part because she did not, in fact, sell he cat and horse.