The full quote from Thomas Jefferson reads, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Your job, dear readers, is to decide, using the frame of reference enjoyed by our elected national leadership and presidential aspirants, what constitutes the . . . → Read More: Contest: The tree of liberty must be refreshed with what?
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Following on the heels of his courageous stand against the Constitution generally, and specifically the Fourth Amendment, with respect to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and immunity for law-breaking telecommunications firms, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has announced his support for widening the range of felonies subject to the death penalty and . . . → Read More: Obama to support executing heinous corporate criminals The Honorary Consul, by Graham Greene “He imagined that in this history there was much more of magic than of love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the devil; in short, a comedy, or to use the language of those days, a mystery, of a very disagreeable nature…” I couldn’t be more pleased to put these two books side-by-side in a review. I can’t say I was down on romance when I picked up Graham Greene’s novel (nor am I now), but as a cynical, anti-love story, it’s a fine vehicle for immersing yourself in the selfish depths of the emotion, for the projection we mistake for empathy, for (as both authors manage to state it) the highly scripted comedy. I picked up Notre-Dame with only a mental outline how Victor Hugo hit the same themes 140 years earlier, but it was close in spirit, with perhaps the salient difference that Hugo’s pessimism is a lot funnier. Greene and Hugo also have a lot to say about the comedy of Justice, and the more historical- and political-minded readers of Weldon’s blog may be interested to compare and contrast Stroessner’s Paraguay with Louis XI’s France, the shanties of Corrientes with the Cour de Miracles, the Catholic church as the enabler of dictatorial power or its opponent. (Fitting American foreign policy into such an exercise is just too damn depressing, however.) Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has followed the lead of House majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-AT&T) and House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Vichy) and endorsed a “compromise” electronic surveillance bill that legitimates the Nixon-Cheney belief that the presidency confers immunity from any law the current holder of it chooses to ignore. Even better, it . . . → Read More: Democrats: appalling scum who deserve your unstinting support The more we learn of the Bush administration’s proposed long-term security agreement with Iraq, the less sensible Iraqi acquiescence seems. In essence, it codifies the administration’s desire to turn Iraq into the world’s least seaworthy but largest, by many orders of magnitude, aircraft carrier. Under the Bush plan, the US would have massive, permanent . . . → Read More: Bush resorts to extortion on military basing agreement with Iraq Back in 1999, then-Slate political correspondent Jacob Weisberg, now the online journalistic Cream of Wheat site’s editor, penned a story called “Why the Press Loves John McCain“. He opened it with a charmingly self-effacing and abashed confession: Journalists go weak in the knees around the guy. The few who have attempted to write debunking . . . → Read More: McCain and the press: from love affair to common-law marriage A lot of people are facing a tough November. Barack Obama seems certain to be the Democratic candidate for president. He’s a black guy in a country that continues to host a lot of people who don’t like black guys, especially ones that are smarter than they are and can talk rings around them. . . . → Read More: The dilemma Barack Obama poses for pragmatic racists |
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Barack Obama and the One-Drop Rule
So Barack Obama is planning to become the first African-American president of the United States. The first black president. Or so we’re told. But wait just a second here. How come Obama is black? When someone is tagged “white,” it’s because s/he’s all white. Allegedly. If s/he has one drop of African-American blood, s/he’s black. Of course Obama is half-black. So it’s no contest: He’s all black.
This is the One-Drop Rule of American race relations. We all follow this rule, with greater or lesser slavishness, whites and non-whites alike. I suppose it’s true for Latinos and Asians, too, though maybe not as much, and that’s a curious thing. Maybe it’s not so bad to have Hispanic or Asian heritage? Not so bad in white eyes anyway, and they’re the ones who seem to make all the rules about race, including the One-Drop. Well, guess what that says about whites. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re white. And even if you’re black, you follow the rule. It’s just how it’s done.
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