Chain Email Myths

I received a chain email today with a great article entitled "Obama, the Affirmative Action Candidate."  The email claimed that the article was printed as an editorial in the Washington Post, noting that even this extreme liberal rag had finally seen the light.

I found this hard to believe, so took some of the verbiage from the article and googled it.  There were no links to the Washington Post, but there was a link to American Thinker, where the article actually appeared.  Just as I suspected, the Washington Post had not suddenly "seen the light" and begun criticizing the biggest empty suit since Millard Fillmore.

People who start these chain emails always seem to get some important fact wrong.  Great conservative screeds are wrongly attributed to dyed-in-the-wool liberals like Robin Williams, George Carlin, Andy Rooney or Bill Cosby.   Maybe the wrongful attribution is an honest mistake, or maybe it is designed to give greater weight to the screed by associating it with some beloved star.  In any case, it behooves us to take chain emails with a large grain of salt.  They are almost always wrong.

The American Thinker article, written in August 2011, is spot-on in its description of Obama.  He is the ultimate affirmative action baby, ushered through ivy league universities on the basis of his skin color, not his grades, and sent to the senate and ultimately the presidency, on the same basis.  He is a talentless hack for whom society has provided a paved highway to an undeserved success.  As for beloved stars, Obama's mediocre career can best be compared to a role by Peter Sellers, in the film "Being There."  Here's how "Rotten Tomatoes" describes that film (see anyone you know?):

Having lived his life as the gardener on a millionaire's estate, Chance (Peter Sellers) knows of the real world only what he has seen on TV. When his benefactor dies, Chance walks aimlessly into the streets of Washington D.C., where he is struck by a car owned by wealthy Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine). Identifying himself, the confused man mutters "Chance...gardener," which Eve takes to be "Chauncey Gardiner." Eve takes him to her home to convalesce, and because Chance is so well-dressed and well-groomed, and because he speaks in such a cultured tone, everyone in her orbit assumes that "Chauncey Gardiner" must be a man of profound intelligence. No matter what he says, it is interpreted as a pearl of wisdom and insight. He rises to the top of Washington society, where his simplistic responses to the most difficult questions (responses usually related to his gardening experience) are highly prized by the town's movers and shakers. In fact, there is serious consideration given to running Chance as a presidential candidate. Both a modern fable and a political satire, Being There was based on the novel by Jerzy Kosinski and costars Melvyn Douglas, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Eve's aging power-broker husband. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi 

Emphasis added.

Misuse of The Black National Anthem

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

When a jazz singer last week substituted the lyrics to the "Black National Anthem" for those of the "Star-Spangled Banner" at a ceremony, she not only surprised her Denver audience. She focused attention on a song little known outside the black community.

***

The jazz singer, Rene Marie, was supposed to sing the traditional National Anthem at the ceremony in Denver. She sang the "black National Anthem" instead, without announcing it in advance. This has angered a lot of people.

..

Here are the words to the "Black National Anthem," which was written as a poem in 1899 by James Weldon Johnson:

"Lift every voice and sing Til earth and heaven ring.

..

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.

Let our rejoicing rise High as the glistening skies, Let it resound loud as the roiling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
Sing a song full of the faith that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march til victory is won."

The words are not offensive in themselves. In fact, they are inspirational. Singing them would be appropriate in the right context, particuarly if Rene Marie had announced in advance that she was going to sing them, and had she invited the audience to share with her the hope and inspiration that the words convey. Then she would have been applauded to the skies. Shared experience does much to glue a community together.

The anger comes from the impression that the song was not sung for cultural pride or inspiration, but for use as a cultural wedge, a tool to underscore division rather than unity.

Rene Marie said the traditional National Athem "does not represent me." Okay, Rene, we get it: you don't like white people, and what better way to say it than to denigrate the National Anthem that is sacred to so many Americans.

You don't identify with America or the rest of us who live here too. We can never be friends, for how can the oppressed be friends with the oppressor? So no cinnamon rolls over coffee in the morning for us. No backyard barbeques, no car-pooling together to the football game. It wouldn't work. For you it's endless, burning, smoking anger, and for us, eternal shame, endless mea-culpas, and nonstop apologies like supplications from a Tibetan prayer wheel.

You want to emphasize your separateness, to underscore your eternal victimhood, your unrelenting oppression, your eternal hostility to white America, the fact that white society will forever owe you deference, apology and probably endless monetary reparations as well.

The black grievance industry is getting a bit tiresome these days. We are sick of hearing your endless song of woe. There can never be racial healing while many prominent blacks choose to nurse their sense of grievance and resentment. Think about that, Rene.