Finally
it comes out, point blank. No mistake
about it, racism in the so called post-racist USA and its possible impact on
the election.
One
of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign advisors, John Sununu, in an interview
on CNN when asked about Colin Powell’s endorsement of President Obama for a
second term, said, “Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to
wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a
slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.” When asked to
clarify what that issue might be he said “well, I think when you have somebody
of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I
applaud Colin for standing with him.”
Does
that mean Sununu supports Romney, not based on the issues, but because of race? It is not too farfetched to wonder why ”according to Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted October 1 to October 7, likely white male voters favored Romney 55.5 percent to 31.9 percent.”
An
earlier entry mentioned that I was reading the last of the “Schmidt trilogy” by
Louis Begley, the current one being Schmidt
Steps Back, published this year but probably written over the two prior
years. I think of Begley as being the intellectual
equivalent of John Updike, who coincidently was Begley’s classmate at Harvard,
both graduating summa cum laude in 1954.
From there, their careers diverged, Updike becoming a writer and Begley
an international lawyer. But Begley is
now a full time writer, and to me, writes with the intellectual ease of his
classmate and, like Updike, follows a character in multiple novels over years
(Rabbit and Schmidt).
I
intend to some more on Begley when I finish the book, but I have to quote
something from Schmidt Steps Back which
has a direct bearing, on “the gorilla in the room.” One of the characters in the book, Mike Mansour, an ultra wealthy and powerful
international financier, gives voice to the issue (bear in mind, Begley does
not use quotation marks for dialogue in the novel, an idiosyncratic style I’ve
become accustomed to so the quotation marks here are mine): “Then Mr. Mansour took
over. He began to orate, his voice rising
as he expounded his theory, which in other versions he revealed to Schmidt more than once, to the
effect that Obama’s presidency, however much he personally wished it to
succeed, was doomed. The question is, he insisted, the question is can he make
American politicians do his will. The
last Democrat able to accomplish that was LBJ.
He’d grab them by the balls….—and they said, Yes Mr. President, before
he’d even begun to squeeze…But Obama is black!
Black in the most racist country in the world.” Another character reminds Mansour that Obama
was just elected by a landslide. “The question is, the great financier
continued, whether it knew what it was doing. I tell you that too many of those
who voted for him didn’t have a clear idea.
Now they’re saying the White House is going to be the Black House, and
they didn’t sign up for that….Obama has to be such a good guy that his hands
and feet are tied. You watched him
debate McCain?....You saw him smirk whenever Obama talked? Not once, not twice, but every time. LBJ would have said, Wipe that smirk off your
face or I’ll tear your head off. Barack
can’t do that. You can’t have a black
man telling off the Man. Please, there
is no place here for angry black men! Obama has to be polite and make nice, and
you know what they say about nice guys – they finish last.”
It will be a close election as the one in 2000 decided by the Supreme Court ....
