This is Gina. Well I guess this is time from one of those public service announcement and Black culture encyclopedia entries that I occasionally do on this blog.
One of the reasons why First Lady Michelle Obama totally rocks is that no matter how idiotic and unhinged her critic become, she keeps going with dignity and grace and class. The image she’s cultivated since entering the White House is a glaring indictment of he most vitriolic critics. After all, who can quarrel with someone who hugs every child in sight, plays soccer with them, and reads (entirely too long) children’s stories. Furthermore, her children appear to be well adjusted, happy, and sane. Which is more than I can say for the folks grabbing hold of the latest “Barack Obama was born in Kenya” meme.
Apparently when First lady Obama was speaking at the 2008 Democratic National Convention she discussed the fact that she and the president underwent HIV testing to help destroy stigmas related to the disease. During such she referred to Kenya as the President’s “Home Country.” Now someone with too much time on their hands has taken that clip out of context and offered it as evidence that President Obama was not born in the United States of America.
Rush Limbaugh repeated this audio on his show recently, just as he “mentioned” the Whitey Tape Rumors:
Audio of Michelle Obama has surfaced. Audio from 2008, August of that year in Denver at a luncheon for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender delegates to the Democrat National Convention. There are others? Anyway, here is a portion of what she said, and this is causing quite a sir out there.
MICHELLE: Barack has led by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested, and we did it as a couple. Rush Limbaugh
First of all, MANY people who can trace their family’s heritage to other countries like to feel as if they have a connection to that country. If you are a Black person you are EXTREMELY lucky if you can trace your heritage back across the Atlantic. Due to the slave trade many people have been denied that opportunity. In my experience as a Black person, Black people love to view Africa as “the motherland,” although they tend to over simplify the geography and think of the continent as one big monolithic country. Some also like to say where “our people” are from. I’m sure ethnic White people who have connections to their relatives in Europe had some similar phenomenon, but I can only speak of my experience. I routinely say “my people are from Louisiana.” Though both my parents were born and raised in Texas. But every summer we went back to see “our people” across the state line.
So a sane person might conclude that when Michelle Obama said “home country” she was referring to the fact that President Obama has a LEGITIMATE connection to Kenya. His Father, and all of this Father’s relatives are there. His half siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, its “a home” to him. Where his roots are and that has NOTHING to do with what jurisdiction he was born in.
At some point we have to decide that an election is over. There have been lawsuits and court challenges and document inquiries. Once again, the Judicial Branch has basically indicated that it will not take up the charge that the President is not a natural born citizen. So the only reason for this continued “birther” meme is to undermine the legitimacy of the Obama Presidency its self as a political strategy. The problem is that an attack on the presidency does far more damage than attacks on whatever administration is in control of it. Its like jack hammering the foundation of a house because you don’t like the paint… you can change the paint in 4 years, if you jack up the foundation, you’re stuck with the damage to the structure of the house forever.
I’m sick of Both Sides
Let me also add that if John McCain had won the presidency, I have no doubt that elements on the left would have made and issue out of the fact that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone and not the continental US. Both political extremes are absurd and get on my dayum nerves. We had an election. Just like we’ll have an election in 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. The “mainstream media” if such a thing exists anymore needs to seriously consider the health of our republic if the political opposition is CONSTANTLY attempting to undermine the legitimacy of election outcomes.
You can brush it off as a joke, but ever since Bill Clinton won by a plurality in 1992 the opposition party’s supporters have sought to countermand the decisions of the people of the 50 states. First they said a plurality wasn’t’ a mandate. Then after his reelection, we spent millions of taxpayers dollars impeaching him for having sex with an intern and LYING ABOUT IT- as if disbarment and civil lawsuits, and the release of the embarrassing GRAPHIC details of his escapades becoming public weren’t enough.
Then there was 2000’s “hanging chad” election of George W. Bush. We’re a democracy with three branches of government, the judicial branch made a decision that impacted the outcome of the Presidential Election.At the end of the day, the election shouldn’t have been that close in the first dad gum place and Al Gore shouldn’t have placed himself in the position of having the Supreme Court do a judicial coin flip. If people truly felt that the decision was illegitimate, then they should have rioted in the streets. If people truly hated the Electoral College system then they should have amended Article II of the Constitution. I still remember the day that the Congressional Black Caucus Sought to Challenge the results of the 2000 election and all they needed to continue fighting was a single US Senator to join them. NONE, including Al Gore would do so. He rolled and went off to make his millions- ignoring serious allegations of the suppression of African American votes in Ohio and Florida. Yet that didn’t stop the Democratic fringe from trying to push the illegitimacy of the first Bush term.
At the end of the day, we have to have “A” President. We can’t keep going in this political death spiral where no election result is valid. Its one thing to vigorously fight an Administration’s agenda on every front, but questioning the legitimacy of the presidency itself might make you feel good, but you’re still subject to the decisions that the Administration makes while further eroding the legitimacy of the office and looking like fools.
This pattern has also spread down to lower offices where the meme of “Vote Stealing” has taken hold I has to make you wonder what will happen when these individuals from both sides get what they want. . . the ability of the judicial branch to reverse the decision of the electorate.
And what happens if either of these sides ever gets what it wants and the Supreme Court removes a sitting President? I predict total and complete anarchy. And don’t mention Nixon, he got out before it came to that.
Barack Obama is the President of the United States. If you don’t like that, there will be an election on the second Tuesday of November in the year 2012.
PPS. Michelle Obama Totally Rocks!
