re: #50 jcm

Same outfit selling the Obama’s Little Blue Book.

Many African-American people I know have versions of this egg sculpture in their homes—it is, I think, based on some traditional wood carving styles from West Africa (Ghana?). It isn’t sinister or uncommon. As for the dang “blue book” that is sheer capitalist entrepreneurship—and, no more sinister than the hero-worship of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at MLK-Day gatherings.

I think African-American people are among the most resilient, loyal, enduring, faith-filled people in our country. It has been a privilege for me to work on various “team oriented” civic and service projects with them—they know how to organize, how to “make a way when there ain’t know way!” and they do find inspiration in Africa-centric artwork, mythology, traditions.

These are also fierce, fearsomely passionate individuals, and I would never want to come between them and a cherished, beloved member of the great extended family of black people in America. I don’t think I will ever understand, and Obama is their son, their darling, their pride. Therefore my dissent—even here, my free-speech “home” on LGF—needs to be dissent from policies, anger at bad ideas and failed ideology. We are on very thin ice and on dangerous ground. I have to watch myself, speaking just for myself, because sometimes I shoot from the lip.