All that changed last night while watching the State Of The Union address and the resulting media coverage of it. It was 70 minutes of prepared remarks by the President and an ensuing 24 hours of prepared remarks by the media. The market for teleprompters must be sky high right now. All the usual suspects had all the usual comments. From Olberman and Hannity to Matthews and Limbaugh on down, they all said exactly what we all thought they'd say.
With the exception of Chris Matthews. His comments stood out for me in a very startling way. In case you've been under a rock in the last 24 hours and haven't heard it, I'll transcribe it here. Matthews was cooing lovingly with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman after the speech had ended and he uttered this,
"You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight, and it's interesting: He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour... I was watching, I said, "Wait a minute. He's an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people, and there he is, President of the United States, and we've completely forgotten that tonight. Completely forgotten it."
I'm going to leave aside the obvious charges of a double standard by the media and the black community that would allow a left leaning commentator to say this kind of thing. I'm even going to forgive him for it due in part to the tingle that must have been traveling up his leg after the speech. Matthews "bro-mance" with Obama is well documented and need not be explored here. I'm not even going to point my finger at the thinly, if at all, disguised support that's shown for this president in almost all corners of the media.
No, that's not what I want to explore here. I'd like to delve a bit deeper into the psyche of Matthews using this statement and some other statements as they relate to this line of thinking.
When I first read that statement I laughed at how incredibly stupid it sounded and how the talking heads can lose focus of their jobs at times. I perused the different blogs and news outlets that I usually consume in the mornings before work and left thinking how silly the mainstream media can sometimes be.
As the day wore on though, those words kept coming back to me over and over again,
"I forgot he was black tonight for an hour ."
A horrible thought occurred to me. I almost didn't want to think it but it seemed so obvious, so completely clear. As much as I tried to rationalize the words spoken by Matthews, I couldn't do it. What could he possibly have meant by that statement? Did he mean that For all the rest of the time that he thinks about Obama, he only sees his skin color? Or did he mean that Obama was so good, he seemed white? As if a black man shouldn't be expected to be that good at speaking? Is that what he was saying?
I will confess that I can't ultimately speak intelligently as to what Matthews might really have meant but I can draw a comparison that should make my point quite well.
We've all heard the story of Rush Limbaugh's short lived stint on ESPN as a commentator due to his comments about the media's treatment of Donovan McNabb. His comments, while not exactly the smartest ever made, were pointed more towards the media's treatment of McNabb. Limbaugh pointed out, truthfully, that the media used kid gloves with McNabb in describing his talents while avoiding discussion of his weaknesses. Limbaugh's statement was that the sports media had always been desirous that a black quarterback do well.
There's even an anecdote from Doug Johnson, former Redskins quarterback, who fielded an idiotic question during media day before Superbowl XXII that went something like this,
"How long have you been a black quarterback?"
It's that desire for "social engineering" that I'm getting at. Chris Matthews is playing the same game here I think. For Matthews, who obviously sees everyone through the prism of race. You see, for Matthews, seeing a black man as president, is an accomplishment for himself. Not for the man himself but for all the social engineers out there.
Matthews off-hand words hint at a darker, more insidious force at work in America today. Let me put it another way with a little comparison and then judge for yourself whether you'd see Matthews comments any other way.
"I had an appointment today to have a little problem with numbness in my hand and spoke at great length with a very smart, very compassionate doctor about the problem. We talked for over an hour and he left me feeling much better about the diagnosis and the treatment. You know, he was so knowledgeable and competent that for an hour today, I forgot he was black."
Taken at face value, those words are inflammatory at best and pure racism at worst and just the kind of racial bias that the NAACP and the black caucus would have my head for if I had really said it.
The media has been employing a very common tactic in their praise and admiration of Obama. They're simply playing the game of affirmative action by covering up his faults and blunders while crowing to the heavens about his oratory skills (Matthews), the fact that he's clean and articulate (Biden) and that he has no "negro dialect" unless he chooses to (Reid).
Taken at face value, those comments that point to his race or the fact that he's not at all like a white man simply illustrate that the media created this man, cut him from whole cloth and now have it all on the line to keep him at the god-like level that they've built him up to.
I don't see the president's skin color at all. Not during speeches or at any other time. I see a man I vehemently disagree with who has radical views that I find disturbing to say the least. I see a man with no qualifications to be president whatsoever, no leadership skills and no ability to govern effectively. I do not, however, see a black man who's clean and articulate as Joe Biden does. Nor do I see a man with no negro dialect as Harry Reid does.
I've made great strides throughout the course of my life to avoid using race as a qualifier for how I feel about someone or how I treat them and done my best to instill that in others I associate with. I don't take kindly to casual accusations of racism hurled at me or others who I feel have earned it unjustly.
To bring this to a merciful close for those of you either too enraged or too bored to continue by saying this:
The only truly racist comments I've heard spoken about our president in the last year...
have come from the left.
