Monroe Anderson

Jesse Helms is dead--Let's bury American racism with him

   

    Arch conservative and rabid race baiter, Jesse Helms, died, ironically, on Independence Day. 
    For most of the 86 years he spent on this earth, Helms devoted way too much of his time and energy preventing African Americans from experiencing the freedom and independence that he, along with other Euro-Americans, took for granted.       
   In 1950, Helms became an unofficial researcher for United States Senate candidate Willis Smith, a conservative Democratic lawyer. While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms had a hand in creating an ad that read, "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."
    When not being outright racist, the five-term North Carolina senator was about as negative as he could get. Not only did he oppose civil rights, he opposed gay rights. Not only was he against communism, he also opposed a woman’s right to choose. Helms was against school busing and opposed giving up the Panama Canal.
    "There was plenty to stand up and say 'No!' to during my first term in the U.S. Senate," Helms wrote in his memoir, Here's Where I Stand.
    By the end of his first term, Helms had earned the moniker “Senator No.” He relished the label, even though it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

    "If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond...."

    Before running for the Senate, Helms was a conservative commentator on WRAL-TV. This is what he had to say about America’s greatest civil rights leader and SCLC:  "Dr. King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior."
Helms also called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."
    A conservative icon, Helms defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt—who is African American—if in his last two runs for Senate in 1990 and 1996, by running racially loaded campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumpling up a job application, with these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."   
    Helms will be remembered, noted Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, “for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns.”   
    If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond, who died five years ago. Although both racial dinosaurs are gone, unfortunately, their hate-filled beliefs have been passed down from one generation to the next.
    Just go to some of the right-wing blogs where you will see the pack mule mentality that was wrong-headed and outdated when Jesse and Strom were just good old country boys. The blogs, written by hand-me-down haters in this millennium, perpetuate all that is ugly and ignorant in what passes for conservative thought.
    There’s Tightrope, for one example, a blog where “it’s not illegal to be white, yet,” which features four pages of nigger jokes and sells white power t-shirts on the side.
    Fortunately, the nation former Dixiecrats Helms and Thurmond cherished, and the blog mob on Tightrope pines for, is slowly but surely becoming a bad American memory. 
    And Barack Obama’s swearing in on January 20 as the nation’s new leader will be the clearest signal yet that the twisted convictions of Helms and his ilk are those that belong to a dying breed.

Obama's stab at out-McBushing McCain

    I’m no constitutional scholar. And unlike Barack Obama, I certainly haven’t taught a course on constitutional law at anybody’s college, particularly one as prestigious as the University of Chicago. Still, I couldn’t disagree more with the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president when he says he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing executions of convicted child rapists.
    Like the right-wing political activist Supremes, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Obama fell in line with the murder-the-bastards side of the ruling.  Predictably, so did Obama’s presumptive political opponent, John McCain.
    "Today's Supreme Court ruling is an assault on law enforcement's efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime," McCain said. "That there is a judge anywhere in America who does not believe that the rape of a child represents the most heinous of crimes, which is deserving of the most serious of punishments, is profoundly disturbing."
    "I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes," Obama said in his made-to-order statement for the nation’s conservatives.  "I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution."
    Who’s going to argue about whether or not raping a small child is a heinous crime? Who would argue that those who committed this particular crime aren’t sick mfs? But do we really want state sanctioned murder of these sickos? What does that accomplish? Is anybody sick enough to rape a 6 or 8 year old is not going to be deterred by the prospect of pulling down the death penalty? So, how do you stop them before they rape again? Wouldn’t locking them up for life, keeping them away from any other children, in and of itself, make for a safer society?
    And one last question while I’m at it: In his methodical march from the left to the middle, is Obama trying to out-McBush John McCain?

Hillary for VEEP--or maybe not

    Hillary Clinton is done. How done she is was made evident yesterday when Patti Solis Doyle was hired as the chief of staff for Obama’s unnamed vice presidential running mate.
    In case you’ve forgotten, Doyle was fired as Hillary’s campaign manager earlier this year, blamed for strategic errors in the campaign during the early primaries. Some have attributed those blunders and loses to Mark Penn, Clinton's top political advisor.
    Whoever is to blame, Hillary was done long before earlier this month when she finally got around to publicly admitting as much. But even as the New York senator was finished, her Hillites kept trying to make her undone.
    The former First Lady’s speech backing Obama earlier this month was still in analysis when her supporters launched a draft Hillary for Veep campaign.
    "No one brings to a ticket what Hillary brings," California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on ABC's "This Week," the Sunday after Hillary’s concession.
    “For me and millions of other Democrats, I believe that the most important step that you can take now is to encourage the Congressional Black Caucus to urge Senator Obama to select Senator Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate," Billionaire Bob Johnson said in a letter to House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who heads the CBC.
    Listening to what these two have had to say at the time—and other Hillites, like hubby Bill, and Terry McAuliffe, Clinton campaign chair and chief cheerleader, I was of two minds on whether the second place winner in the party’s presidential sweeps ought to be placed in the number two spot on the ticket.
    Part of me said, “Let it be,” while the other part of me asked, “are you losing your ever-loving mind?”
    Depending on whose argument I heard or read last, I went back and forth for a while. Finally, I sat down and had a long talk with myself.
    Self: You learned your ABC’s before you went to kindergarten. Have you forgotten them in your advancing years? Anybody But Clinton.
    Other Self: Since you want to play with acronyms, how about DT or SFW or DH? Barack and Hillary would be the Democrats’ dream team. They would be sure-fire winners. They would be double-history, the first African American president and the first woman vice-president.
    Self: Not dream team, nightmare. It would be an unmitigated disaster. Did you listen to Jimmy Carter when he said that if Barack picked Hillary it "would be the worst mistake that could be made”? It would highlight the negatives from both candidates while their positives would suffer in the joining.
Other Self: Did you forget how good the Clintons were to black people? Why do you think so many black politicians backed them over Obama?
    Self: Don’t dare go there.
    Other Self: Well, what about those 18 million Americans who voted for Hillary? That’s no small number. She can deliver them to Obama in November, assuring him victory.
    Self: Hillary does have a hard-core following of older white women but their numbers aren’t as great as her vote tally suggests. Some of those 18 million were Republicans that right-wing mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh encouraged to vote for Hillary just to create chaos on the Democratic ticket. Some of the blue-collar vote, when forced to choose between a white woman and a black man, stayed in their comfort zone, so when it comes to president, John McCain’s their guy.
    Other Self: Skip the Republicans and the racists, what about all the feminists who have waited all their lives and are sorely disappointed because there won’t be a woman in the White House? What if they stay home or vote GOP.
Self: Wicked right-wing wordsmith Ann Coulter was going to vote for Hillary if McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee. She quickly talked herself out of that notion. When Hillary’s women stop to think about McCain’s positions on civil rights and women’s rights, they’ll be giving themselves a good talking to as well.
    Other Self: OK, let’s talk turkey: We had good times in the 1990s under President Clinton. Americans had extra cash in their pockets and a debt-free, peace-loving nation. Besides, with Hillary, you get a two-fer. You get her tenacity and true grit and you get Bill with all his contacts and REAL presidential experience.
    Self: We may get a two-fer but President Obama would be getting too much. He’d have to worry about the husband and wife tag-team backstabbing and undermining him every chance they got.  As former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out, the vice president’s office is not that far from the Oval Office and with Bhillary as his Veep, Obama would have a government-in-exile and a government-in-waiting right down the hall. And, what kind of signal do you think Patti Solis Doyle was to the Clinton cult?
    Other Self: Hmmmm, never mind.

For my father and sons, no time for lessons on life

 

  There is no good time to die.  But Tim Russert’s untimely death two days before Father’s Day was one of the worst.  The death of the beloved Meet the Press host also happened a day after he had returned from a family vacation in Italy, celebrating his son Luke’s graduation from Boston College.
    I only knew Russert from what I saw on television and read about him, but I have no doubt that he was a great father and son.  So I feel sorry for Big Russ, his father, who just recently was moved into a nursing facility. But my heart goes out to Luke,         Tim’s son, who will forever connect his graduation and Father’s Day with the loss of his caring and loving dad.
    Russert was only 58 years old when he died. That’s three years younger than I am now. That’s way too young. My father died way too young as well. He was the same age I am now when he, like Russert, died suddenly from a heart attack.
    I’ve never fully recovered from his death, which was 24 years ago. My older son, Scott, was just five months old. My younger son, Kyle, was not yet born.  Over the years, as I fumbled my way through fatherhood, I frequently wished my father was to teach my sons lessons on life.  I regularly wished he was around for my sons to know the joy they surely would have experienced had he lived to share with them a grandfather’s love.
    That was not to be. I am reminded as much this Father’s Day as I cherish my wonderful sons and miss my great father.

    (The photo above is of my father and my nephew, Chuck. It was shot in 1973. The one to the right is of Kyle, Scott and me. It was taken four years ago.)

 

    Here’s an op-ed page column I wrote commemorating my father’s life just days after he passed away.

 

 

A good man and great father
The Chicago Tribune
January 20, 1984

Life is a series of wishes for second chances.

For me, that impulse to backtrack has sometimes been sparked by insignificant little moments. Hasty motions leading to the spilling of milk or the breaking of treasured objects have prompted me to wish my actions had been more measured. Cutting words to close friends during heated arguments have left me wishing I had thought longer before speaking. Missed catches in the outfield have had me wishing I had kept my eyes on the ball.

At other times, rather than an instant replay, I’ve tried to guess what would have happened if I had had a chance to draw up an entirely different game plan during the pivotal periods in my life. When I was going through a divorce several years back, I felt that way. What if I had done this rather than that? Could the marriage have been saved? Should it have occurred in the first place?

Last week, I craved a second chance. I would have traded a year of my life for the ability to turn back the clock a mere 12 hours.

Monroe Anderson, my father and my friend, died, without warning, on the morning of Jan. 9 at his home in Gary. He suffered a heart attack at the age of 61.

As soon as I learned of his death, I began second-guessing what might have happened if I could have stopped the clock and turned it back 12 hours for a second chance. I would have been there at his side. Maybe I could have done something to save his life. If fate had to prevail, then at least I could have had final words with him. In reality, there was only the finality of it all. There were no second chances.

But while he was alive, my father had had a second chance. In a curious and vicarious way, I was it.

To explain how and why I came to be my father’s second chance. I’ll have to go back to the beginning. He was the son of yet another Monroe Anderson, a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta. In 1923, my father’s family’s little tenant shack was uprooted by a tornado. The bodies of his father, mother and 6-year-old sister were found in a field a mile away. My father, one year old, was found there too. As his tiny body was being loaded on the horse drawn cart bearing the heap of corpses, someone noticed him shudder. He was raised by his grandmother and two young aunts.

As a teenager, he came to the North to improve his life. He moved to Gary where life and earning a living were easier for an unskilled young black man with an eighth grade education. In late 1942, he received his draft notice. He persuaded Norma, the 17-year-old love of his life, to elope with him so that if he went overseas, he’d have a family of his own back home.

After he received his honorable discharge, he returned to Gary to establish an instant family by inviting his widowed mother-in-law to share his home; she has been there since. I was born about a year later; my sister and brother followed. Although during his life he would labor as a coal truck deliveryman, a cab driver, a cabinetmaker and a steelworker, his true profession was that of a father and family man.

When he wasn’t working, he was at home. When he went out, he took us with him. What little money he managed to make, he spent on us. He wanted us to have the things he hadn’t had—an education was the most important of those things.

To send his first-born to college, he worked two full-time jobs at two steel mills so my tuition and room and board wouldn’t impose a financial hardship on the rest of the family. It was worth the price to him. My success was his reward.

I remember his telling me how he had taken a clipping of my first newspaper article to show people at the mill. “That’s funny,” his superintendent commented cruelly when shown the article. “Your son’s a writer but you can barely write your name.”

I also recall his reaction to an appearance I made on a Phil Donahue show in 1976 following an investigative series I had worked on for The Tribune. As I spoke, my name appeared on the screen. “Look. Look, that’s my name on television,” he said with unbridled excitement.

I was not only his namesake, I was an alter ego. He took pride in my accomplishments while I found comfort in my belief that had he been given the same support and opportunities, he would have achieved that much and more.

Over the years, my love and gratitude were spoken and unspoken time and time again. Still, there is this hollow feeling inside me that hungers for one more chance to tell him how good a man he had been and what a great father he’ll always be.

For McCain, straight talk ain't what it used to be

    Somebody needs to explain the new Millennium to John McCain. In these modern times, there is YouTube so that what a politician says stands a good chance of being looked up in a flash--by anyone with a computer and an on-line connection.
    Denying and lying just doesn't work as well as it did in, say, oh, the campaign and first term and first half of the second term of George W. Bush. So Mr. Straight Talk ought to try straight talking. If he doesn't, his credibility is going to be right up there with the current Republican occupant in the White House.

    And I am still trying to figure out why Barack Obama isn't jumping at the chance to engage  Sen. McBush in the town hall meetings. I'm also trying to figure out why the Arizona senator keeps pushing to debate the Illinois senator. Must be the money.

    Want to see what I mean? Watch this:

Welcome back to Kansas, Hillary

   

    In this twisted tale of realpolitik, Hillary Clinton has been following a long and winding yellow brick road to nowhere for weeks now. She proved to be an odd mixture of Dorothy, trying to get back home to the White House, and the Wizard of Oz, standing behind a curtain of distortions, misrepresentations and racial coded pronouncements while distracting us with some dazzling smoke and mirror work.
    Her journey ended today.
    Hillary suspended her historic presidential bid to throw her unqualified endorsement behind Barack Obama’s historic presidential bid.
    "Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary campaign he has won. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me," the former First Lady said in her gut-wrenching 28-minute speech.
    Just days ago, Hillary was still hiding behind the curtain, sending out smoking signals that insisted that she was the more qualified candidate. Meanwhile the Tin Man, aka Bill, was complaining about the msm giving her a raw deal.
    Well, now it’s a done deal—Obama’s the one. "The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States."
    The senator from New York may never be able to go home again, but she’s finally left the Land of Oz, landing gracefully back on Terra firm. The Democratic Party will need her spirit, feistyness and   tenacity—a long, tough battle against its wounded and weary adversary is already underway.

June is now Black History Month

   

    History happened last night. Or as Sen. Barack Obama described it, it was an eventful evening as he became the first African American to win the Democratic nomination for president. A year and a half ago, Obama’s journey this far with nothing but a notion. Hillary Clinton had the name recognition, a leg up in the money chase and her hand on the party’s political machinery.
    Back then, I was soberly skeptical while secretly hoping the improbable would become the reality. Obama is now five months away from being the winner who takes all. 
    Still, yesterday was good. Let’s hope that tomorrow will be even better.   
    Here’s a column I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times a year and a half ago, right before Obama officially announced his candidacy for the party nomination.

Can Obama prove me wrong again?

Chicago Sun-Times

January 21, 2007
BY MONROE ANDERSON

Not long after Barack Obama lost his bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, I ran into him at a downtown restaurant. I stopped at his table for a quick hello before joining my lunch date. Before I could nod goodbye, Obama told me that he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. I was taken aback. ''From a state senator to a U.S. senator? That's too big a leap,'' I warned.

''It doesn't matter. It's all the same,'' Obama said, summarizing in the shorthand exchange of a chance restaurant encounter that either you're qualified and capable or you're not. Remembering that he'd expressed an interest in running for mayor during another lunch meeting years before, I think I shook my head in disbelief. Time, obviously, has proved Obama right and me wrong.

The short period it took him to go from a relatively unknown Illinois state senator to a relatively unknown political force with rock-star stature could have happened only in these modern times, where the currents of cable network news and the World Wide Web ebb and flow 24/7. In less than three weeks, we'll see if it's his time again as he launches his bid to become the next president of the United States. When Obama announces, he'll make history as the first black candidate whose presidential campaign goes well beyond symbolic protest or civil rights activism. As he announces, the time and place cannot be ignored: He'll do it in the midst of Black History Month, from Springfield, the center of the Land of Lincoln.

And this season we're in now may never be the same.

Almost as soon as the nation's holiday season ends, the black history season begins, starting with the Jan. 15 national holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy of freedom and equality in modern American life. With the slain civil rights leader's ''I Have a Dream'' speech as its coda, the black history season lasts six weeks -- from King's birthday until the end of February. While that window of opportunity is open, African Americans of some note -- or those who have something to say -- become the perennial flavors of the month. It's a heyday. The chosen are sought out for speechmaking and interviews on network television. For those six weeks, the trials, tribulations and triumphs of great American blacks become our nation's wallpaper: always there but not always noticed. During the season, from morning to night, day in and day out, there are Black History Month exhibitions, concerts, programs, performances, galas and fund-raisers. The cable movie channels spotlight black film directors and black movies. Sponsored public service announcements are featured on network television. Public radio and television broadcast special features. Public school children are taught the heroism of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver.

Then it's all over. We have to wait until next year.

Shoehorning centuries of conflict and contributions into six short weeks once a year always struck me as a peculiar practice. As slaves and as freedmen, from Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the civil rights movement and now, African Americans are tightly woven into all aspects of the American fabric. Our heritage is the back story in all American history and often a main plot.

To be sure, Obama won't be running on the African-American platform but, seek it or not, he'll be the African-American presidential candidate. That's fine with me. Every time this brilliant, compassionate man speaks to American citizens will be at once, a lesson in current events now and a history lesson for generations to come. And should he win, believe it or not, black history will become America's history 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days of the year. So I, like millions of other Americans of all races, creeds and national origins, would like to see him become the Jackie Robinson of major league politics in this nation.

Only time will tell if, exactly two years from yesterday, Obama will be front and center at the swearing-in ceremony on Pennsylvania Avenue. I honestly doubt it, but I sincerely hope the Illinois senator will prove me wrong again.

Talk about a dream team...how about an Obama-Powell dynamic duo?

    Ebonyjet.com has asked its political contributors to pick cabinet members in a fantasy draft for Barack Obama should he become president. Eric Easter, Johnson Publishing's chief of digital strategy, was the first to voice his choice.
    I thought about the challenge and decided to go out the box in choosing the Veep in my dream team:  Colin Powell.
    Putting the retired general in the number two slot on the Democratic ticket would be the ultimate cross-party gesture from the candidate of change. Over the past two or three decades, a gaggle of conservative Democrats have denounced their party affiliation to before becoming instant Republicans. Turn about would be fair play with Powell's public rejection of President Bush's Iraq war policies; his public explanation on how the Bush Administration hoodwinked him into making the WMD argument before the United Nations; and his public criticism of the Republican party's dreadful mishandling of national governance since it's introduction of the "Contract with America."
    Of course, the power players in Democratic Party would never allow a recently-converted Republican to land the much coveted second spot...but while I'm in a fantasy mode, I figured I'd make a quick case for something completely different. Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary posted earlier today.

Obama’s Cabinet: The Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft, Part II


June 2, 2008 

By Monroe Anderson

Monroe Anderson’s been busy over the last couple of days breaking news on our stalwart Democratic presidential candidate. Fortunately, we corralled him a bit earlier to share his picks for the Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft for an Obama White House cabinet. He has a few opinions...)

Before I name my fantasy cabinet, allow me to be for real. Cabinet members are not just selected for their administrative abilities; there are also political considerations and paybacks to be brokered. Some appointments will come out of the Washington bureaucracy. Others will be marquee name Democrats—and, most likely, a Republican or two. During the process of inclusion and elimination, Obama will get tons of suggestions. So, here’s two pounds worth.

Vice President— Colin Powell
Forget get about Hillary Clinton. She can’t be trusted to watch Obama’s back and besides—he’ll get two for the cost of one with hubby Bill attached to the deal.  John Edwards looks good on camera but demonstrated as Kerry’s Veep that he’s not good at playing bad cop to the party nominee’s good cop; neither is Bill Richardson. Powell will make an unmistakable change statement for presidential nominee Obama.  Selecting a Republican as his running mate would turn tradition on its head. The retired four-star general would cancel out John McCain’s military advantage. As a former presidential cabinet member for both Papa and Junior Bush, Powell was so popular among Republicans, independents and Reagan Democrats that many thought him a more viable candidate in 2000 than George W. I know this is out-of-the box thinking but Powell is basically a Republican by opportunity only and should be a welcomed addition to the other side of the aisle. Finally, for the nut jobs out there that might be planning an assassination attempt of the nation’s first African American Chief Executive, they’d be forced to think twice.

Chief of Staff—Gov. Bill Richardson
During the double-digit number of debates among the candidates for Democratic Party nomination for president, the governor of New Mexico demonstrated time and time again that he is both level-headed and a peace-maker.  Richardson, who was one of the highest-ranking Hispanic appointees in President Clinton’s administration, brings the right blend of experience and respect to keep Obama’s White House in order.

Secretary of State—Sen. Joe Biden
At the risk of upsetting the balance of power in the senate, Obama will have to be frugal when it comes to recruiting for his cabinet among Democrats in the upper chamber.  Fortunately, with the Republican brand in ruins, the Democrats should end up with enough new senate seats to offset Biden’s move into the inner-sanctum of the Oval Office. As the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the senior senator from Delaware has been a major proponent of a no-nonsense approach to bringing the troops home. Biden also commands respect on The Hill and in the Pentagon.

Attorney General—Lani Guinier
For the past seven years, justice has been denied to virtually any American whose net worth was seven digits or greater. Labeled by the right as “anti-Constitution” and “the quota queen” when Bill Clinton nominated her for assistant attorney general in 1993, the president caved, kicking his former Yale Law School classmate under the bus. Imminently qualified, Guiner will make sure that the poor and the wage earner gets their just due.

Secretary of Defense—Sam Nunn
As a member of the Obama administration, the four-term retired Georgia senator will have to tamp down his opposition to gays in the military if any change is gonna come. But, beyond that discriminatory instinct, the former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services is ideal for Defense Secretary.  Right now, Nunn is the co-chairman—with Ted Turner--and Chief Executive Officer of the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative), a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

National Security Advisor—Susan Rice
Rice will have her hands full correcting the international miscalculations of President Bush’s Condoleezza Rice. Currently on leave from the Brookings Institute, Dr. Susan Rice served President Clinton as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  She now serves as the Obama campaign’s senior foreign policy advisor.

Secretary of Veteran Affairs--John Murtha
The House already has a Democratic-margin safety net; therefore Obama can deftly move the Pennsylvania congressman into this important post. Like McCain, Murtha is a Vietnam War hero. Unlike McCain, three years ago Murtha called for a redeployment of American troops in Iraq. A Clinton supporter in the primary race, Murtha—along with Powell and Biden—would help the Obama administration consolidate support in military and veteran quarters.

Department of Energy—Gov. Christine Gregoire
With global warming threatening to end the world as we know it and oil prices at record highs and rising, Obama will need a director willing to steer our energy practices away from old fossil fuels and into alternative energy. As the governor of Washington, Gregoire is known for her green dedication. She made sure her state was the first in the nation to enact a mandate for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for public buildings.

Secretary of Commerce— Jeffrey Sachs
We’re going to need a heavy-hitter to undo all the damage to the economy Bush and his Republican majority perpetrated on us in this new millennium. Sachs is the solution. Currently a professor on the faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs and director of the Earth Institute, both at Columbia University, Sachs is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In his critically acclaimed book, “The End of Poverty,” Sachs asserts, "Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time."

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

Wright out or wimp out? Obama quits Trinity

    In the wake of the Father Michael Pfleger controversial sermon last Sunday at Trinity United Church of Christ, Barack Obama sent a letter yesterday resigning from his place of worship for the past 20 years.
    I sort of, kind of, understand why he did it. But I’m also sort of, kind of, concerned about what this might portend for an Obama presidency.
    Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity are community building blocks that the right wing has turned into bricks to be thrown at presidential candidate Obama from now until the general election ends in November—and perhaps beyond.
    So in an attempt to turn manufactured right-wing ammo into blanks, Obama has completely separated himself from his minister and his church. What worries me is this: Can we expect a President Obama to cave in to the whims and will of the right on policies and issues he knows are important, if this nation is to move forward in a progressive and compassionate manner? Can we expect him to genuflect to negative reports by an uninformed, misinformed or ill-willed media?  Is the candidate of change willing to go-along in a willy-nilly get-along fashion?
    I hope not, but I’m not sure.
    Obama knows what Trinity is about. I’ve only set foot in the church twice in my life and I know what it’s about. It’s nothing like it’s being portrayed in the national media. Nor is Rev. Wright.
    Obama knows that Rev. Wright and his church and Father Pfleger have been forces for good on Chicago’s South Side for three decades. Both Trinity and Father Pfleger should have known the Catholic priest’s racially-tinged mocking Hillary Clinton performance would only be perceived as another weapon to use against Obama. They should know, as I know, that they ultimately left the Illinois senator with little political choice.
    I also know that perception can become reality in our media-defined world. But reality is not always perception.  And, the reality is that Obama cannot let the right-wing dictate his principles.
    Should this become his practice as president, then for those who have invested so much hope in him, his victory will only be a pyrrhic one.

There are no atheists in this Fox hole

   

    Fox News, a major engine in the right-wing smear and fear machine, is apparently on a Mission From God: To deliver John McCain to the White House.
    The propaganda practicing cable news operation featured Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s limited-edition sermon snippets all day and all night until even its small-minded, narrowly informed audience came to realize the Chicago minister was old news. I think that was around the point when Fox started doing breaking news every night on Rev. Wright’s travel schedule.
    The “Fair and Balanced” news network is now promoting Rev. Michael Pfleger as the latest albatross to be hung around Barack Obama’s neck. Fleer’s sin: having the audacity to mock Hillary Clinton’s sense of white entitlement.
    It doesn’t matter that Father Pfleger, the pastor of Chicago’s St. Sabina Catholic Church, is white. It doesn’t matter that Rev. Pfleger said, “I regret the words I chose on Sunday," he said. "These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them." 
    And it doesn’t matter that Obama was forced to issue this statement: "As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us. That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric."
    All that matters, for Fox, is that an activist Catholic priest in Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, said something they could label as Obama’s new “preacher problem” with a "hateful speech."
    As a matter of comparison, this is a glimpse into Father Pfleger’s performance as he referenced Clinton’s teary performance the right before the New Hampshire primary. "I really don't believe it was a put-on. I always thought she felt 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white. And this is mine. I just got to get up and step into the plate,'" he said. "And then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama.' And she said, 'Oh damn, where did you come from? I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show.'"
    At that point, Pfleger, whose Catholic parish is all black, pretended to cry, using a handkerchief to wipe his eyes. "She wasn't the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying," he said.
    Hate filled stuff. Huh?
    Now let’s look at what Rev. John Hagee, one of the fundamentalist preachers John McCain sought out for a political endorsement had to say. According to Hagee, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, to create the holocaust to make it possible for the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.
    When Hagee’s latest nut-laced pronouncement broke a week ago, Fox couldn’t imagine that it was breaking news: The story ran about 10 minutes into the cable news network’s Special Report with anchor Brit Hume chucking through his summary of the story. Unlike its ad nauseam airing of the Wright and Pfleger videos, Humes didn’t bother to show Hagee’s snippet at all.
    As it turns out, Fox is pretty much done with Rev. Hagee. As for Wright and Pfleger, they’ve only just begun.
    Here are some of Father Pfleger’s recorded antics from last Sunday’s sermon.

    And here’s what Dan Abrams of MSNBC’s The Verdict thought about it.