Tomorrow night is the night for the Oprah big party bash for Barack Obama. Oh, it will be sweet. Stars and money falling from the sky. 2000 guests will pay $2,300 a head to attend. Guests will be dropped of at a "greeting center" eight miles away from Oprah's 50 million dollar estate and then bused over. I have a "greeting center." It's called my kitchen, but anyway, guests will include Halle Barry, Jamie Foxx, George Clooney, Halle Berry, and John Travolta. And you know this has GOT to have Hillary seething.
Remember the question Time Magazine put out there in Feb asking if Barack was "black enough?" According to this article ,the Oprah factor isn't helping since it seems Oprah isn't black enough either.
If you don't recall the Time piece, here are the juicy parts:
"Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan," Stanley Crouch recently sniffed in a New York Daily News column entitled "What Obama Isn't: Black Like Me." "Black, in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves," wrote Debra Dickerson on the liberal website Salon. Writers like TIME and New Republic columnist Peter Beinart have argued that Obama is seen as a "good black," and thus has less of following among black people. Meanwhile, agitators like Al Sharpton are seen as the authentic "bad blacks."
I have to admit that I haven't noticed alot of excitment among the black community regarding Obama. I thought it may be the loyalty they feel toward Bill Clinton and so I went looking. Searching Ebony magazine I found only one article on Obama. One. Can you believe that? This man is running second for the Democratic nomination for President and he doesn't get but one article? And it wasn't just about him either. It was about both he and Hillary. The article discussed them equally. But I found this nugget interesting:
The senator from New York – in no small part because of her husband – is popular with African Americans. Many of us are divided between voting for her or one of our own, fearing that America is not yet ready for a black man as president.
They are afraid that if they support a black man he won't win? I find that amazing. But it does explain a lot.
I find many liberal blacks that describe themselves a certain way end up insulting themselves without even knowing it. See this last paragraph of the Time piece: (emphasis mine)
Back in the real world, Obama is married to a black woman. He goes to a black church. He's worked with poor people on the South Side of Chicago, and still lives there. That someone given the escape valve of biraciality would choose to be black, would see some beauty in his darker self and still care more about health care and public education than reparations and Confederate flags is just too much for many small-minded racists, both black and white, to comprehend.
Escape valve??? Blackness is something that one is lucky to be able to escape? And it is some kind of honorable thing to not do so?
I'm rooting for Obama on the Democratic side, I admit. Hillary is just too frightening to me. Obama seems to be everything Hillary is not. He is honest, down to earth, charismatic, has a good marriage, and honestly believes in what he says (although he is completely wrong on most issues)
I'd never vote for him, but I think that if our guy was running against him instead of Hillary, I wouldn't feel such a deep down sick feeling that the Democrats might win.
Oprah has turned everything to gold that she touches. We will see if that is enough to fight and win against the Hillary machine.
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