A long time ago there was a popular song entitled “Three Little Words.” It was about love. Today we have “three little words” that all the liberal spinmeisters in the world can’t turn into something positive: typical white person.
Barack Obama doesn’t know it yet, but those three little words have cost him his chance at becoming president. Not with his base of white and black liberals. For them, Mr. Obama is the Second Coming and absolutely nothing he says or does will interfere with their unconditional love.
The rest of America, aka the swing vote? Not buying it. They know that if you change just one of those three little words–typical black person–all hell would break loose. To them doesn’t matter what the rest of the speech was about. A lot of these well-meaning white people have walked on eggshells around black people for decades wondering if something they say in complete innocence, or thoughtless carelessness, will brand them forever as racist.
That’s the crux of it. Once a racist always a racist, right? If you’re conservative or Republican. Perhaps not if you’re liberal or Democrat, ala Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson, Al “White Interlopers in Harlem” Sharpton, or even Sen. Robert “former KKK member” Byrd (D-WVA).
For middle America, that’s the galling part. It’s bad enough to be called typical anything. It’s worse to see such an obviously racist phrase being glossed over or excused completely by a media determined to get a Democrat in the White House. Most Americans have an innate sense of fairness. They don’t dislike double-standards, they abhor them. And Barack Obama cannot win the general election without their votes. The bet here is he won’t get them–under any circumstances.
Mr. Obama didn’t build bridges with his speech. He burned them. But he’s not alone. The entire Democratic primary has been about dividing people into class, gender and race for the purpose of exploiting them. Just like Democrats always do. If there’s anything one could label “typical,” that’s it.
atahlert@comcast.net
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