I am starting a weekly post called the "The Reverend Jeremiah Wright You Are Not Helping!" Award.

This week's award goes to The Idiot Brother Heckling Obama in Florida.

Brother!  YOU ARE NOT HELPING!!!!

I love how Barack  handled it, he got all gangsta on the fool's ass!

Well it's finally happened...The John McCain campaign has gone dirty. John Mccain's all for it!  So much for the maverick, and the different kind of campaign.  After Obama did so well in Europe, McCain said " Well, ok, the only way I can beat him is by destroying his character. I don't have anything myself."  I wonder if he was smoking a cigarette lit by Satan when he decided to sell his soul.

Let's see he's called Obama, unpatriotic and a  traitor even. 

He's compared him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Seriously.  I'm not making this up. I'm not embellishing. I don't need to, he's actually doing things this horrible. Honestly I didn't think he'd go so negative this early. I mean where can he go from here?  I guess he could come out with an ad claiming Obama will rape and impregnate all white daughters in America.  That could be lower.

Now McCain is accusing Obama of playing the race card.  Apparently Obama mentioning that he's different and that people might use it against him is off limits.  Preparing people against false attacks using the race card? 
I'm incredulous. But hey, negative attacks work right?

Well, ok, since McCain is going there. I say, let's go there too. I want Obama to feature ads highlighting McCain's age, his confusion, his lack of intellectual vigor .( Like creating an Iraq and Pakistan border when none exists) His unpatriotic votes against the troops.  ( He voted against the new GI Bill, because hey? who wants soldiers getting educated. We need them to run Iraq for the next 100 years.

Attack! Attack! Attack!

Also since Obama is such a celebrity in McCain's eyes, he should keep it up by meeting more people, having events in major cities across the country leading all the way to the convention in Denver. What about a surprise trip to support US Olympians? I say go with it. Americans love celebrities.

Speaking of that, how about a picture of Obama with Brad and Angelina's twins???

Ok, I'm hungover, so I'll make my analysis quick and easy

Clinton: White women, working class people, latinos, Coasts
Obama: White men, educated people, young people, black people, Middle of the country

McCain will win the Republican nomination.  I said it before, I'll say it again. If it's McCain/ Clinton McCain wins a landslide victory.  I hope Obama gets the nomination, but the old school establishment politics combined with Latinos nonsensical hatred of Black people will give Clinton just enough in the end. ( I think she will win Texas, which will decide it) And we shall see another Republican president, against all common sense.

It's Martin Luther King day.  For most, it's a day off. A helpful three day weekend. For me, it's yet another MLK day that I have to work  AND go to school.  That said the very fact that I have graduated from The Peddie School ( where MLK spoke in the 50's before it was fashionable for Northeast prep schools to be liberal), graduated from Vanderbilt University ( where Black students didn't attend until the late fifties, and de facto segregation lasted through the sixties), and am currently attending Trevecca Nazarene University ( a traditionally conservative school) is probably exactly the kind of life MLK dreamed about in all those speeches before I was born.   
Nationally, I think MLK would be truly pleased by the 2008 election process.  Despite the media's best efforts otherwise, I truly don't think this election is being based on skin color, and truly is about the content of a man's ( Or woman's) character. The issues are far more front and center, whether we are talking about Barack Obama's racial heritage or Mitt Romney's Mormon religion. 

That's a huge statement to how far this country has come.

I am about to write a word that may freak you out so I'm just warning you. If you can't handle it, well tough, in fact if you can't handle it you really need to read what I'm about to write.

Ready? Ok. Here goes.

Nigger.

There! I wrote it! Personally I hate that word, but probably not for the reasons that you assume. Let's start with why it's on my mind.

Last night, as I was closing the bar down, a group of younger college age kids were leaving, a white male probably 22 at the most, answers his phone with the greeting " What up, nigger!" He then repeated it several times, until he turned around and realized that I was standing right behind him. I'll admit it I was staring at him. It wasn't anger I was feeling so much as disappointment and dismay. Of course, he didn't know that. The second, I mean the instant, he saw me watching him he couldn't get out of that bar fast enough.

Now, I'm going to say something that most of Black America is going to consider downright traitorous. Yes, it was a white Southern male saying "Nigger". Yet, he was saying it with, dare I say it? Affection. He is operating under the impression that this term is somehow hip, cool, an expression of brotherhood. How did he get this impression? Who told him that?

Black people told him that.

Sure, he got nervous when he saw me staring at him (which is why I am fairly certain it was a white person not an all too understanding fellow Black person on the other end of that cellphone), but he got nervous because Black people haven't clarified when exactly that word is OK and when it isn't.

Some Black folks will tell you it's fine for us to say it, but it's terribly wrong for them to say it.
Of course, it's perfectly fine for them to buy, listen, and dance to us saying it. We're not saying it to them you see, we're only saying it to each other. Even though they hear us.
They will argue we have taken the word " Nigger" and changed it's meaning, made it our own, long since removed from it's dark and dirty past.
Yet, if this is true, why do we get upset when people of other races use it?
Why have you never heard Colin Powell referred to as "My Nigger, Colin Powell" on BET?
Because it's not true. It's still a negative term. The only difference is Black America, in particular Black entertainment has glamorized being a nigger.

Ludacris, Jay-Z, T.I., and many smaller name rappers have made being a nigger into an international bestseller. I discovered that when I saw 13 year old German boys wearing baggy clothes affecting a look of disenfranchised youths from the projects.
Being a nigger, being a gangsta', having a "baby momma", making it rain on strippers (always with cash because niggers don't have bank accounts), hustlin', and the eternal struggle to get out of the hood prison which "the Man" created for them. These themes have made record companies, rappers, and media outfits millions maybe even billions of dollars by now.

But what a very high price the Black community has paid. Well some of us. You see, the Black community despite what CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, even BET would like you to believe is not one monolithic political voice.
The most pronounced split between us is an economic one. Middle and Upper Class Blacks versus Urban Poor Blacks. This economic split manifest itself in increasingly disparate cultures. The Condis, the Oprahs, The Baracks, The Cosbys, The Chris Rocks of our community. Those names are merely representative of a successful, integrated, upwardly mobile Black community. You know, Rhonda the sassy Black woman in HR, or Harold the competent and funny man in IT with three kids and a house in the suburbs.
These images of Black people are juxtaposed by the images of Black people on the other end, Blacks who work primarily in low level service jobs... if at all. Janitors and Cleaning ladys.  GED's and prison records.
Now before people get on my back, I'm not saying there is no dignity in these jobs. People need to do these jobs. Yet, the lack of motivation to move onto something better either for themselves or for their children is unsettling and upsetting.
It's as if Blacks in this segment of society have simply opted out of the American dream. Instead reverting into a completely self-destructive subculture. The culture of the Nigger. A culture where illiteracy and criminality are celebrated. Children are raised outside of stable marriages as the norm. Absent fathers can blame "the system" for their inability to take care of family responsibilities. Black women can sing of their desire for a "thug" who'll take care of them in the bedroom and nowhere else. And all those educated Blacks? Harold in IT? Harold sold out, guilty of "acting white". If he didn't make his money ballin', hustlin', rappin' then his success is built on being an Uncle Tom.
There are many in the Black intelligentsia, the academics who have decided it's better to legitimize and blame others for these problems. Spending their time arguing what constitutes authentic "Blackness" and looking for new forms of institutionalized racism. Always, Always, Always looking for causes. When exactly will we start looking for solutions?
Yes, just like any disease you can look for the causes and the cure but in the mean time we can start treating the symptoms.
I, for one, am tired of Niggers. There shouldn't be anymore Niggers in America. I can't imagine Martin Luther King or Malcolm X being pleased with the Black community not only continuing to live as second class citizens but now celebrating it.
And you know what, my brothers and sisters, there isn't a white person in America who can save us. It's entirely up to us. The only question is,when it's so easy to accuse the lighter ones around us, do we have the will to face the darkness within?


For more thoughts:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17121916/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/the-manifesto-of-ascendan_b_33774.html