Monroe Anderson

Is Obama's Mexican-American challenge his and his alone?

    An African American-Hispanic racial controversy has risen its ugly head this Leap Day deep in the heart of Texas.
    “Obama simply has a problem that he happens to be black,” said Adelfa Callejo,  a lawyer and civil rights activist who supports Hillary Clinton.
     In an interview Wednesday night with The Dallas Morning News, Mrs. Callejo said many Hispanics have told her that they have reservations about voting for a black politician because of fights over funding in the Dallas school district. "What I hear is that they do not trust that Obama will do something for Hispanics," Mrs. Callejo said.    
    In response to the statement, Camp Clinton spit out an echo from Tuesday's Democratic debate in Ohio, announcing that the former First Lady “denounces and rejects” Mrs. Callejo’s assertions about Obama.
    As it turns out, Mrs. Callejo is 84 years old. Her anti-black expression may be more generational than typical. Younger Hispanics have been supporting Obama while older ones have been with Clinton. Other Hispanics may want to go with a winner.
    There is another division between African Americans and Mexican Americans which Mrs. Callejo didn’t address: Second and third generation Hispanics are much more accepting of blacks than the newly-arrived and the undocumented.
    Here’s my op-ed page column I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times nearly a year and a half ago.

Mexican immigrants bring negative image of blacks

July 21, 2006
BY MONROE ANDERSON

In Mexico, the n-word is negritos. The word, which refers to dark-skinned Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike, does not carry the virulent, vicious hatred it historically has stateside. Some argue that the word, which loosely translates into little black people, is more like a term of endearment. That’s the same argument the hip-hop set employs to defend the use of the United States’ very own n-word. Last year, President Vicente Fox didn’t use either Mexico’s word or ours when he defended his government’s sale of the minstrel-modeled cartoon character Memin Pinguin on a commemorative stamp. Nor was he reported to have used either word when he said last year that “there is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work, are doing the jobs the not even blacks want to do there in the United States.”
They say it’s the thought that counts, and as it turns out, El Presidente may have been expressing what his fellow countrymen think. At least, that’s what I concluded after reading the results of a new study released in the August issue of the Journal of Politics.

The 2003 survey, conducted in Durham, N.C., found that Mexican immigrants come to the United States with negative stereotypes of black Americans. According to the Duke University study, “Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Latino Immigrants’ Views of Black Americans,” a majority of Latino immigrants, almost all from Mexico, believed that black Americans were lazy liars. A third of the immigrants believed African Americans to be troublesome.

Among those immigrants surveyed, 58.9 percent felt that “few or almost no blacks are hardworking”; 32.5 percent felt that “few or almost no blacks are easy to get along with,” and 56.9 percent felt that “few or almost no blacks could be trusted.”

The study’s findings remind me of that old black folk saying: “If you’re white, you’re right. If you’re brown, stick around. But if you’re black, get back.”

The survey reveals that while more than half of the immigrants feel “they have the least in common with blacks,” more than three-fourths of those same respondents feel “they have the most in common with whites.”

But this is the era of the new South, and the feelings aren’t mutual. The study reports “that while 45.9 percent of white respondents see themselves as having the most in common with blacks, just 22.2 percent of whites see themselves as having the most in common with Latinos.”

To further distort this new paradigm of race relations, half of the blacks surveyed felt close to Latinos and half the blacks felt they had “the most in common with whites.”

Ironically, the white Southerners, whose ancestors authored the old black stereotypes, no longer subscribe to them. Only 9.3 percent of the whites “indicate that few or almost no blacks are hardworking; only 8.4 percent believe that few or almost no blacks are easy to get along with…”

“We were depressed about a lot of our study,” Duke University Professor Paula McClain, who headed the study, told me in a telephone interview, because the Latino immigrants are “not coming into this country with a blank slate on this issue.”

Mexico has a colonial past and all the racial baggage that historically comes with it. That many recent Mexican immigrants bring racist attitudes should come as no surprise. But as our nation moves forward, this backward thinking must be addressed in Durham, Chicago and nationwide. We have too many homegrown racists. We don’t need to import any more.

When the next wave of pro-illegal immigrant demonstrations sweeps our nation, I hope African-American leaders will have talked to Latino leaders about the need to talk to the new arrivals and explain to them that we’re all in this together. Such a bicultural, bilingual dialogue could forge a black-Mexican bond too powerful for words.

Hillary's Hail Mary, punt and possible foul play

    Hillary Clinton is hoping for an Hail Mary finish that will leave her holding the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in hand and doing a victory dance in Denver this summer.
    The former First Lady needs to win both the Texas and Ohio primaries somewhere in the 60 percentage range to remain in the game.    

    But Hillary, we have a problem: The polls are showing the Illinois senator slightly ahead in the Lone Star state and the New York senator’s lead steadily shrinking in the Buckeye state.

    Time is running out as big Mo’ runs with Barack.
    In closing last week’s debate in Texas, Hillary seemed to be politically punting.  "I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored," she said. "Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about."
    The day after the Austin debate, a friend of mine, who is a Hillite, got this e-mail from James Carville, the Democratic political consultant whose moniker is the Ragin' Cajun:

Dear J---- K----,

You know why I am always calling my friends at the DSCC before I go on the air? Because if you don't have all the facts, you look awfully foolish.

The DSCC seems to know all the outrageous things Republicans do in every Senate race out there. After a ten-minute phone call, I end up madder than ever.

But you know what they say: Don't get mad, get even. And the best way to get even is with the facts and the truth on your side. So now, the DSCC is going to send regular updates with the absolute latest news about every Senate race.

It's called "The Rant" which I think is perfect because there is plenty in here that gets me fired up. I had to send it on to you, because I know you'll just love it.

Sincerely,

James Carville

    After receiving the email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, my friend forwarded it me with this brief note: Interesting and a sign of the times. There is absolutely no mention of Hillary. I think that she is done and her conciliatory manner toward Barack was the tipoff.
I give up. You win!

    But not so fast. Hillary’s latest campaign ploy looks like foul play.

     A photo of Barack in a turban is being e-mailed out.  With  a  lot of luck, the  Clinton camp may have the picture doing  to the Obama  campaign what the  photo of a helmeted Michael  Dukakis sitting atop an M1 Abrams tank did  to  his presidential  campaign 20 years ago.

    The traditional African-Muslim-garb flick was taken when Obama visited his father's homeland, Kenya, in 2006 and tried on some native attire. This little head fake comes from the same bag of tricks as emphasizing Obama's middle name, Hussein, implying he's a Muslim without explaining that he is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. and a devout Christian.

    The Drudge Report posted the photograph today and asserting it was being circulated by "Clinton staffers" and quoted an e-mail from an unidentified campaign aide. Drudge, a gossip and sometimes news website, did not include proof of the e-mail in the report.

    The Clinton camp denies any connection.

    "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely," said Clinton Campaign Manager Maggie Williams.

    "This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry."

    Whoever said "politics ain't bean bag" was right--we're talking NFL here and Team Clinton just got called for roughing the passer.

Deadly silencer: The NRA

    Barack Obama and John McCain are the big winners in the Wisconsin primaries. Both men re-tooled their victory speeches--they're no longer talking about their party challengers, they're taking pot shots at each other.
    But last night's Wisconsin primary race speeches, in the wake of four mass shootings earlier this month, tell another tale: The real victor in the presidential primaries is the National Rifle Association.
    I took aim in my commentary on Tuesday's ebonyjet.com website.

Bullets and Ballots
The real health care crisis has yet to be addressed
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
By Monroe Anderson

The tragedy at Northern Illinois University last week where 22 men and women were shot and six killed was news and no news at all. It was also a test to see which of the three major presidential contenders, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, had the political will to tackle one of our nation's greatest ills -– gun violence.

Nobody made the grade.

The campus shooting was the fourth separate mass shooting in the United States in 12 days. In that brief period, six died in a shooting spree at a city council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb; five died after a SWAT standoff in Los Angeles where a gunman killed three of his relatives and a police officer before the police killed him; and five women died in a Lane Bryant store in suburban Chicago after a botched robbery attempt.

In that brief 12-day period, a total of 19 citizens and three police officers were shot to death.

The first three of this month's four multiple murders were met with a curious code of silence from this year's leading presidential nomination contenders, but when a mentally-ill gunman opened fire on a group of innocent students in an NIU lecture hall on Valentine's Day, remaining mum became a challenge.

Sen. McCain managed to keep quiet, not even giving his name, rank or serial number in addressing the spate of mass shootings. The former prisoner of war, however, had let his actions speak louder than words the day before the NIU slaughter by voting against the senate bill which would have banned torture, particularly waterboarding.

The Arizona senator let his convictions cave to pressure from his party's extreme right. While McCain was the only senator-seeking-the-presidency who was unwilling to speak up, he wasn't the only one unwilling to take a stand.

Illinois Senator Obama went both ways, saying that while he respects the Second Amendment, there is no reason local governments can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with violence in their communities.

New York Senator Clinton did too. Like her Democratic challenger, she defended the right to bear arms while asserting that authorities must keep those arms out of the hands of "criminals, terrorists, gang member and people with mental health problems."

There's only one explanation for why their tongues are tied: the National Rifle Association.

If there is one lobbying organization a politician fears, it's the NRA. President Bill Clinton pushed a ban on assault rifles through Congress back in 1994. The NRA targeted the well-meaning Democrats. Nineteen of the 24 House members the NRA targeted lost their seats in 1994. A decade later the ban was allowed to expire. Any open discussion of gun control had expired long before then.

In the meantime, every day in America, 32 people are murdered with guns. A fourth of those daily deaths are black men between the ages of 15 and 24.

Gun violence is an epidemic in America. If there were eight Mad Cow cases diagnosed daily, the beef industry would find itself under fire. If 32 Americans died daily from bird flu, the nation's politicians would be in a panic to pass legislation that would tamp down the death toll. Thirty-two MRSA cases a day and there would be an outbreak of congressional hearings -– not silence.

Not counting the nearly 12,000 homicides in this nation annually, there are another 70,000 or so annual gunshot victims clogging up hospital emergency rooms from coast-to-coast.

We've got a national health crisis here.

The three presidential candidates stay on message as they engage in a debate over a national health care program. McCain pretends the private sector will take care of it. Clinton claims her universal health care program is the right prescription, while Obama argues that we must take care of the children while letting the adults decide if they want to take care of themselves.

As this war of words wages on all the way to November's general election between McCain and the eventual Democratic party nominee, some 52,000 more Americans will need medical treatment for gunshot wounds and another 9,000 will be shot dead.

Now that's a crime.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow his blog at http://www.monroeanderson.typepad.com/

 

George Washington's Birthday: Blues for Blacks

   

The United States celebrated President's day today, honoring the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The birthday of the nation's 16th president is actually February 12th. The birthday of the nation's first commander-in-chief is February 22nd. Celebrated as two of America's great presidents among the 43, besides being born on different days in different centuries, there is another major difference: Abe Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves, George Washington was a slave master.
    Washington was so dependent on his slaves that he bought more than a handful with him up from Virginia to the nation's first executive mansion in Philadelphia.
    After a meeting of The Trotter Group, a collective of African American columnist from across the nation, in the City of Brotherly Love, I wrote a commentary about Washington's slave quarters for ebonyjet.com.

I think it's holiday appropriate.

The Washington Legacy
the president's house project unearths an ugly history
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
By Monroe Anderson

     George Washington may not have told a lie, but he sure lived one.
   
     The Father of His Country, in accord with the Declaration of Independence that serves up the "all men are created equal" little white line, was as two-faced as they come when it came to slavery. Our nation's first president was a slave master. He owned 36 slaves when he married the widower Martha Custis, who had inherited nearly 100 slaves from the estate of Daniel Parke Custis. Washington couldn't run his Mount Vernon estate -- nor the newly-minted union -- without the free black labor. So when the general of the Revolutionary War became the first commander-in-chief and moved into the nation's first "White House" in Philadelphia he brought more than a handful of his negroes with him.
   
     Washington's dependency on enslaved Africans is not news. What is news, however, is that this been-told-but-seldom-discussed chunk of American history will soon forever go public.

     Within the next two to three weeks in the City of Brotherly Love, an architectural rendering for the President's House Project/Slavery Commemoration will be unveiled on Sixth and Market Streets, the site  where the old executive mansion stood until the 1830s and where the new Liberty Bell Center stands today. It's where Washington and John Adams lived when Philadelphia was the national Capitol from 1790–1800.  It's where President Washington kept nine enslaved blacks in close quarters -– exactly five feet away from America's first executive mansion. When construction is complete, the project will lay out in excruciating detail the historical hypocrisy that is the undergirding of this nation.
   
     "It changes the foundation of American history as we know it,"  says activist attorney Michael Coard who spoke last week before the Trotter Group, a collection of black columnists from across the nation. Coard heads up the Avenging Activists coalition which bills itself as "a broad-based coalition of historians, activists, attorneys, elected officials, religious leaders, media personalities, and other taxpaying voters — descendants of the victims of the greatest holocaust in the history of humankind." The coalition formed five years ago and began protests when it was discovered that the story of slavery in the executive mansion was being footnoted.
   
     Thanks to the efforts of the Avenging coalition, Independence National Park officials oversaw an archeological dig that uncovered the buried slave quarters. So, when the President's House Project becomes a reality, the old history books will have to be trashed. The new textbooks will have to reveal what tourists from home and abroad will see as they come to check out the new site of the old big busted bell.

    "The slavery commemoration component is our Statue of  Liberty," Coard said. "It shows for the first time in American history that black folk are responsible for the greatness of America."
   
      Our contribution to America's greatness is not a pretty picture. As if a metaphor for this nation, the President's House was built by slaves for slave masters. The mansion was built in 1767-68 by the widow of the aptly named William Masters, the mayor of Philadelphia in the 1750s and a powerful merchant who was most likely the city's largest slave owner. It was bought in1781 by Financier Robert Morris, who bankrolled General Washington and much of the American Revolution.

      Morris, a signatory of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, was also a partner of Willing and Morris, an import-export business that imported kidnaped Africans and other valuables. After restoring the Mansion to its former glory, Morris made it available to Washington a year after his first inauguration. Although Washington's Mount Vernon plantation had as many as 316 slaves, the president had only nine at his Philadelphia executive mansion, which, according to Temple University's Charles L. Blockson,  curator emeritus of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, was not the "president's house" but the "prisoner's house." He had been attempting to draw attention to Washington and his Philadelphia slaves long before it came to the attention of the Avenging coalition.
   
     Blockson, whose slave memorabilia collection includes books bound with the skin from enslaved Africans, knows from his extensive research that our first president was not necessarily a believer in benign bondage. The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 required that any slave in the state be set free after six months. Washington did an end run around the legislation by rotating his slaves between Philly and  Mt. Vernon -- every six months.

    But it may be that our first president's bite was worse -- much worse -- than his bark. As it turns out, those false teeth we've all read about weren't made of wood after all. Some scholars now believe they were real teeth yanked from the mouths of Washington's slaves.
   
     No lie.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He is a regular contributor to Ebonyjet.com.

 

Democrats in democracy

    I first became aware of this video about two weeks ago after it showed up on the Jack and Jill Politics blog. I was instantly impressed with the political awareness and on-point answers that this young man, Derrick Ashong, presented as he talked about Barack Obama's health care plan.
    Since seeing his interview on video, I began to realize how democratizing this year's Democratic presidential nomination race has become. Folks who had little to no interest in presidential politics are engaged in critical discussions, citing their candidate's plans as they make their political points. The old line, "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line," needs to be revived to Democrats in democracy--falling for the intimate details of their candidate's political positions.
    That many more Americans can engage in informed discussion about those who would like to become the next leader of the free world, instead of just talking about the latest gossip involving Britney and Brangelina's adventures, is good for the future of America.
    Of course, Ashong does it better than most, which is why his interview has gone viral. Like Detrick DeBurr's email, I keep getting the video of Ashong's interview. I've become tired of informing the well-meaning senders that I've seen it already.
    So, this is my personal affirmative action. From now on, anyone who sends the video to me will get a return email with my blog's url address.
    Been there, seen that.

In Search of Intelligence in the Multiverse--not on Forbes on Fox, not in Forbes in print

    Fox Cable is better entertainment than the cartoon shows on Saturday mornings.
    So on almost any given Saturday you can catch me in front of my flat screen chuckling as I watch the business bloc on the fair-and-balanced news channel. I just sit back with my morning coffee in hand and laptop within reach and enjoy a steady stream of right-wing platitudes and pseudo-business banter masquerading as thoughtful analysis.
    It’s hard to really say which of the four business shows I find funniest but if I had to choose, it’d probably be Forbes on Fox. Steve Forbes is a self-appointed regular panelist on the show.
    Yes, Steve Forbes, the goofy-looking guy with the oddball flat tax platform, who got roundly rejected by GOP voters in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000. He’s the guy who was smart enough and industrious enough to pick billionaire Malcolm Forbes for his father, therefore assuring that he’d be super-rich for life.
    The show also features other Forbes Magazine editors, each one expressing cutting-edge political thought and business analysis straight out of  the mid-20th Century.
    So when I read that Forbes Magazine had published a pointless list of America’s Most Miserable Cities, I was not surprised to find Chicago, New York and Los Angeles in the top 10.
    Forbes is funny that way.
    If the 15 million people living in those three cities were half as smart as the Forbes editors and had any idea how miserable they were, why they’d move to somewhere like Darien, Connecticut or Pierce City, Missouri.
    Since I live in Chicago, between snickers, I gave the Forbes list a little thought. The first thing I noticed was that nine out of the 10 most miserable cities just happen to be in blue states.
Before the second thought occurred to me, I ran across Sheeple Herder’s Weblog which lists the top 10 cities on the Forbes Most Miserable Cities list while providing some U.S. Census Bureau racial statistics along with them. Here’s the rundown:

Detroit, MI = 89% Non-White: Black 83%, Hispanic 6%
Stockton, CA = 48% Non-White: Black 11%, Hispanic 37%
Flint, MI = 59% Non-White: Black, 56% Hispanic 3%
New York, NY = 53% Non-White: Black 25%, Hispanic 28%
Philadelphia, PA = 55% Non-White: Black 44%, Hispanic 11%
Chicago, Il = 63% Non-White:Black 35%, Hispanic 28%
Los Angeles, CA = 59% Non-White: Black 10%, Hispanic 49%
Modesto, CA = 36% Non-White: Black 4%, Hispanic 32%
Charlotte, NC = 45% Non-White: Black 34%, Hispanic 11%
Providence, RI = 52% Non-White: Black 16%, Hispanic 36%

    This belongs in the "liars can figures, figures can lie"  or "garbage-in, garbage out" column. You can get the results you want by creating a cock-eyed criteria. In Forbes' case, it came to its figures by employing the late economist Arthur Okun's "discomfort index"--which is the sum of unemployment and inflation--and adding weather, crime and toxic waste for good measure.
   By throwing in weather, for example, the publication gets to be super subjective, boiling it all down to rather you prefer extreme heat or extreme cold, hurricanes or firestorms. Using Okun's misery index alone and applying it to nations, the U.S. is a more miserable country than Japan, Canada, Germany and Italy.
   Apparently the Forbes concoction prefers not to measure in shades of gray. The magazine's bottom line seems to be simply this: If a city is too black and brown, it’s got to be a miserable place to live.

Presidential electric slide

 

     Four Barack Obama wins over the weekend still leave his foot race with Hillary Clinton too close to call--although big mo is in his favor. John McCain has a different problem. Although the Arizona senator is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mike Huckabee is the candidate leaving all the right-wingers' hearts a fluttering. That means Obama, Clinton and McCain had better watch their steps. Huckabee is looking to keep on stepping.
    Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary posted earlier today.

Political Two Step
who's stepping on toes on the primary floor?

Monday, February 11, 2008
By Monroe Anderson

This is the year of delicate dancing.
   
Playing naughty or nice has not managed to give Clinton or Obama a leg-up over the other. The senators who would be president remain virtually tied in their quest for their party's nomination. Even after Obama's sweep Saturday in Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana, he and his challenger are so close that the winner may be decided by the party's super-delegates in a brokered convention this summer in Denver.
   
But Obama and Clinton are not the only contenders tangled in a tango. John McCain, who is looking like the sure thing for the Republican party's presidential nomination, is learning to two-step between the race he'd like to run and the one the radical right wants to run for him. Somewhere during the 20 years he's been in the senate and this past year's presidential race, McCain has become a RINO (Republican in Name Only), according to the loudest and looniest in the GOP. 

 

    "Even Fox Cable Network airhead Sean Hannity has thrown his two cents worth of “McCain's not worthy” into the right's national temper tantrum over not having Ronald Reagan to schtick around anymore."

 

Although McCain has been recognized as a genuine American hero since his days as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam era, the rock-rib conservative was simultaneously cheered and booed when he spoke last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. The far right's rank-and-file are not falling in line for McCain.   

Even after dropping out of the race, Mitt Romney won the straw poll over McCain at that event. And on Saturday, long-shot challenger Mike Huckabee trounced McCain in the Kansas caucus even as the Arkansas senator was being hailed as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
   
Ann Coulter, the far right's poison-pen-for-hire, has announced that if McCain is the party's candidate, she'll vote for "the she-devil," Hillary Clinton. Right-wing radio shrews, Russ Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have been spewing out daily doses of anti-McCain diatribes to their national talk show audiences. Even Fox Cable Network airhead Sean Hannity has thrown his two cents worth of “McCain's not worthy” into the right's national temper tantrum over not having Ronald Reagan to schtick around anymore.
   
There is a long list of outspoken Republicans who are voicing their lack of enthusiasm for their likely candidate, the top criticisms being McCain's stances on taxes, immigration reform, gay marriage, stem cell research and global warming. And, he has a nasty temper and a foul mouth to boot.
   
Long considered to be a maverick, McCain voted against President Bush's tax cuts twice, in 2001 and again two years later. The first time, he argued that the tax cuts helped the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the second time he said there should be no tax relief until the cost of the Iraq war was known. He has also supported making a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants while refusing to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And, in the ultimate betrayal of right-thinking, the senator from Arizona sides with science, preferring relaxed restrictions on federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research and calling for an aggressive action against global warming.
   
The Republican's radical right considered tax cuts part of the scripture, illegal immigration a cardinal sin and the pursuit of science blasphemous. Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham and the gang are subscribing to a scorched earth where Hillary is allowed to win in November. They believe she'll do an even worse job than Bush has done over the past eight years, paving the way for a true conservative to win the White House in 2012.
   
In his attempt to court the party's crazies, McCain now says he wants to extend the tax cuts and that he now understands that the border between Mexico and the United States must be sealed first. He's also promising to appoint supreme justices cloning Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts to further the radical right's efforts to turn back the clock on women and civil rights.
   
So Obama and Clinton tread lightly, but they need not worry: With McCain traipsing between satisfying the right, the far rights, and wooing the independents, the Democratic nominee should be able to waltz into the White House come November.

 

Super Tuesday's Super Draw

   

    Here's the story I filed from Chicago for the Afro American Newspapers the morning after Super Tuesday's election. The change-sign toting Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has a nationally-syndicated newspaper column, was drawn to the press section--but allowed no where near the candidate's platform.
    What a difference two decades make.
    While hanging out with the press, Jackson did a couple of local TV interviews and gave Obama's campaign chief strategist, David Axelrod, the thumbs up before the speech began. Once Barack Obama began to address the audience, Jackson appeared to pay rapt attention. He was the only one, by the way, in the cordoned-off media section carrying and waving a campaign placard.

    I shot the photo from my perch in the press section.

 

Democratic Presidential to be decided at National Convention

By Monroe Anderson
Special to the AFRO

Chicago --Super Tuesday has come and gone with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both emerging victorious and both eying the beltway primaries–Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia–on February 12 as the election that may make their opponent the loser.

Political observers expected that next week's primary in the Chesapeake region favors Obama over Clinton. The senator from Illinois has been drawing an overwhelming percentage of Black and youth votes while the New York senator wins the White women's vote.

Sen. Obama walked away from Super Tuesday with the most states won, 13, including Missouri, the bellweather state that will be a general election battleground, while Sen. Clinton laid claim to a popular vote victory with wins in the three most populous states–California, New York and New Jersey.

As the tallies rolled in on Tuesday night, the Obama and Clinton campaign camps worked hard at putting a positive spin on election results while emphasizing what was becoming the obvious, it wouldn't be over until it was over.

While Clinton leads Obama in the delegate count, her lead is too close to matter at this point in the presidential contest. She has slightly more than 800 delegates, while Obama has slightly more than 700. The battle in next week's primary will be over 70 delegates in Maryland, 83 in Virginia and 15 in D.C.

"We're both preparing for a long, drawn-out affair," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. "If it goes through June, it goes through June."

Plouffe's sentiments were shared by the thousands of Obama supporters gathered at a Chicago hotel to await election results.

Describing Obama's Super Tuesday performance as "fantastic, marvelous, stupendous and terrific," Willie W. Walden was all smiles as he filed out with the rest of the fired up supporters.

The 75-year-old businessman said when Obama first announced his candidacy for president, Walden wasn't sure the Illinois senator would go as far as he had in his bid to become the Democratic party's first African American nominee, but now felt good about Obama's prospects because of grass roots support.

"People want a change. People see their jobs, their health, the homes kind of escaping them," said Walden. "He's the man for change."

"We're going to win this," said Garnett Hall, a sales and marketing professional. "He's got support across the country."

Obama has already surpassed the 11-state total Jesse Jackson won 20 years ago in his then-historic run for the Democratic party's presidential nomination.

Jackson, who like Obama, is a Chicago resident, stood in the press section, watching Obama speak to supporters. The civil rights leader, with a "Change We Can Believe In" sign in hand, smiled and gestured throughout segments of Obama's speech. Close to the end, Jackson held his sign overhead, waving it to the beat of the crowd chanting "Yes We Can!"

 

Illinois pols did favorite son Obama no favor

    Put this in the “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” category. In their zeal to help the favorite son, Barack Obama, when he was still considering making his bid for his party’s presidential nomination, the state’s Dems-with-clout started a drive to move the primary date up from March 18 to February 5.
    Mike Madigan, the Illinois Speaker of the House, figured moving up the date would help fundraising for Obama and kick-start his momentum into later state primaries. Knowing that Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina would all be up earlier in the presidential derby, Madigan reasoned that none of those states are “as representative of America as Illinois would be.”
    When Speaker Madigan first came up with the idea 13 months ago, it was greeted with an amen chorus. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich pledged to sign any such legislation that landed on his desk. Emil Jones, Obama’s political mentor and the Illinois senate president, welcomed the idea because "it would be nice if the rest of the nation could see him come out strong.”
    As it turns out, Obama came out strong from Day One, unexpectedly winning the Iowa caucus. By the time Illinois got to vote in its strategically placed primary, every state and its mother had moved its primary or caucus up as well.
    The result: Superduper Tuesday with 22 states holding Democratic presidential nomination elections.
    While Obama won Illinois 65-33 percent over Sen. Clinton, it played nationally as a mere home state victory. All eyes were on California. Other eyes were on New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Missouri.
    If the state’s power brokers hadn’t come up with such a good idea, Illinois could have well been the closer in the too-close-to-call race six weeks from now.
    That lesson might be put in the “leave well enough alone” category.

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton: Meritocracy or Aristocracy?

   

    At 24 and 21, both my sons are old enough--and well-trained enough--to have already voted in an election. Kyle, my younger son, has voted in Chicago's mayoral election but this Super Tuesday election was his first presidential one.
    We went to the polling booth together, but I resisted advising him who to vote for. Since he is young, intelligent and open-minded, with a reasonable amount of ethnic pride, I'm assuming he voted for Barack Obama; that if anyone might want change, it would be Kyle and his generation.
    This thought crossed my mind after we'd cast our ballots: that for all Kyle's life, there has been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Five years before Kyle was born, George H.W. Bush was Ronald Reagan's vice president. Kyle was a toddler when Bush became the 41st president of the United States. He was six years old when Bill Clinton became number 42 and he 14 years old when George W. Bush became number 43.
    This has occurred in a nation that pretends to value meritocracy and disdain aristocracy. It has been discussed by a writer in a British publication, The Guardian.
    It was well-written, well-reasoned piece. Here's the beginning:

In this great meritocracy,

only one thing matters: who

is your daddy?

To change the political sclerosis gripping their country, Americans need a president distinguished by his lack of pedigree

Gary Younge
Monday February 4, 2008
The Guardian

While running for Congress in West Texas in 1978, a young George W Bush attended a training school for Republican candidates. In a class on fundraising he was struck by inspiration. "I've got the greatest idea of how to raise money for the campaign," he told David Dreier, now a California congressman. "Have your mother send a letter to your family's Christmas card list! I just did, and I got $350,000."

The web of wealth and family connections that has levered Bush to power and has since characterised his administration is an indictment of America's political culture. "George W Bush was named [after] a father who excelled at everything," argued Bush Jr's former speechwriter David Frum. "He tried everything his father tried - and well into his 40s, succeeded at almost nothing."

Therapy could have dealt with this quite effectively. Instead we have been afflicted with one of the most ostentatious and wrong-headed affirmative action programmes known to the western world, in which a man unburdened by imagination inherited - almost literally - a cabinet unburdened by merit.

His father's secretary of state (James Baker) oversaw the Florida recount in 2000 as chief legal adviser and was instrumental in taking the case to the supreme court. Once installed, Bush took his father's joint chief of staff (Colin Powell) and made him secretary of state; his father's defence secretary (Dick Cheney) became vice-president; his father's special assistant on national security affairs (Condoleezza Rice) became national security adviser; and in a fit of oedipal petulance, he took one of his dad's enemies (Donald Rumsfeld) and made him defence secretary.

Not only did such appointments set new lows for cronyism, sleaze, dysfunction and incompetence. But by drawing leadership from such a tiny gene puddle they reflected an aberration of the very democratic impulses and meritocratic culture with which most Americans identify and apparently cherish.

If you'd like to read the rest, click here.