You can’t roll the stone back up the hill

As Senator Obama takes a much needed family vacation, and Senator McCain continues to “campaign”, several things have been on my mind:

1. A month after Rolling Stone endorsed Senator Obama for President of the United States, they are now suffering “media remorse” for appreciating him as a candidate.  The current issue has an article trying to paint Senators Obama and McCain as lackeys to money.  While that may be the case with the latter (the article is full of names and details of large checks and policy issues), the former has until now shown that money or not, he is doing what needs to be done and while he is pragmatic (he is a politician, after all), he has not shown himself  beholden to corporate interests in the same way as Senator McCain.  The article attempts to infer, by innuendo, that Senator Obama has been guilty of the same fault.  The whisper campaign is now being spoken, even if it is with an inside voice.  Perhaps the reason the media “is in love with Senator Obama” is because the American people are ready for a candidate (and President) with vision, forethought, A PLAN, and are interested in hearing from him about what he believes, thinks, and plans to do with the job once he is elected.  I hope that RS starts using facts to support their arguments, not just making blanket statements and hoping no one calls them on it.  That would make them FOX-like.

1. As I’m watching Michael Phelps win the first of his gold medals in Beijing, I’m also being subjected to more “campaigning” from Senator McCain.  His “Families” advertisement running on NBC during primetime contains outright lies about Senator Obama’s tax proposals.  Is there no shame?  Senator Obama is taking a week off, deservedly so.  President Bush is taking another vacation on our tax dollars, and Senator McCain is spending his contributors’      money to desecrate the Olympics.  I know that NBC is making millions of dollars on the advertising revenue, but the commercials for products are vetted for their factual nature, aren’t they?  Campaign ads don’t have the same standard, I guess.

1. I miss Tim Russert.  Tom Brokaw this morning let Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, sit on Meet the Press for thirty minutes and not say anything substantive.  He advocated for a bailout of Fannie May and Freddie Mac, but pooh-poohed a second stimulus package for actual taxpayers; he complained that going in front of Congress to ask for money was “unpleasant,” but “easy, because the alternative was bad”; he said that China “has learned that it is hard to operate outside of the world community,” but that the United States cannot dictate China’s record of human rights abuses (is that because of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?)

1. Oh, and I almost forgot . . . all of these Caucasian politicians, Bill Clinton and John McCain chief among them, who are bent out of shape about being called racist.  Race is the third rail of life in the United States – period.  From “the first thanksgiving” to Columbus Day; from Metacomet to General Custer; from Juneteenth to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; from Phyllis Wheatley to the Declaration of Independence; from Nas to Bill O’Reilly; Michelle Obama to terrorist fist jab; from Thomas Jefferson to Jesse Helm’s black children (that they didn’t emancipate or claim); the list is exhausting and quite long.  If you’re not of Euro-Caucasian stock, then race is a constant factor of life everyday, in both positive and negative ways.  I got stopped by a Mexican security guard as I was walking into a predominantly-white, affluent beach club yesterday to pick up my son.  It wouldn’t have been so obviously racial if he hadn’t cut through five white people who were walking in at the same time to get to me.  It must have been my Perry Ellis polo that said “Danger!”  On the presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama’s observation that he “doesn’t look like those other presidents on the dollar bills” was portrayed by SenatorMcCain as “playing the race card”?  He doesn’t look like them.  And what is the race card?  Are we playing carioca?  It’s not a joker to be used when you don’t have anything else to say.  Recognition of race, and actual racism (Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, President Clinton’s “Jesse Jackson” remarks in South Carolina) are part of the conversation because this is politics in the United States.  Perhaps they should be honest about their motives and attacks, and I mean honest with themselves.  FOX “News” is honest – they put their crap out there and make no apologies.  The problem with Bill and John is that they think because they don’t use pejorative racial terms, that they are somehow outside racial thinking.  News for both, and everyone else:  Barack Obama is black and white; John McCain is white; both of them live in the United States, which means that those adjectives are part and parcel of who they are – deal with it.  And President Clinton, let me clear something else up – you were not the first black president.  That will be Barack Obama.  Alice Walker said that you were being treated disrespectfully, with complete disregard for your family or status, almost as if  “you were the first black president.”  Get it straight.