Barack Obama and Michael Richards: When Worlds Collide

Hy·per·bo·le (hī-pûr'bə-lē) n.A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
[Latin hyperbolē, from Greek huperbolē, excess, from huperballein, to exceed : huper, beyond; see hyper– + ballein, to throw.]

Similarly: Barack Obama may be the best thing to come out of Illinois politics since Abraham Lincoln.

Some people might call Barack Obama the "flavor of the month" in the Democratic party right now. The rock star receptions, the media buzz, the hype, the book tour. He's got a lot of people singing his praises: from Oprah Winfrey to party strategists and newspaper columnists. Recent polls have placed him second or third in popularity with voters among those Democrats likely to run for president in 2008.

That he is still in his first term as junior Senator from Illinois and receiving such attention has many questioning whether he is too young or inexperienced to run. Others speculate as to whether this country is ready for a black man as its Commander-in-Chief. Some of us say it is about time.

Which brings us to a strange confluence of events: Obama delivers a well-received speech on Iraq and foreign policy to the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs while out in Los Angeles, actor Michael Richards is banned from performing at the Laugh Factory and lambasted by his peers for his racist use of the "N"-word during a weekend performance.

Richards' use of the epithet was not part of his regular act. Unlike the legendary Lenny Bruce, Richards didn't use the word to deliver a homily about race and racism. Unlike the incomparable Richard Pryor, he wasn't trying to turn a mirror on us and expose the cracks in our society while making us laugh until we cried.

That Richards, while onstage, felt (or at least appeared to feel) that he could use the word without consequence reveals a distasteful side about the person most of us only know as Cosmo Kramer. What it reveals about us as a country is just as startling.

Barack Obama has a resumé most of us would love to possess. He is smart, articulate, well-educated, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, community organizer and activist, state senator and now U.S. Senator. As this country still struggles to find a word comfortable enough to describe its black citizens, Obama is the walking definition of African-American. The hyphenate fits not because of the color of his skin, but the truth of his heritage: an African father and an American mother.

That he has captured the imagination of so many people, of such diverse backgrounds is encouraging. That he could mount a serious, run-to-win campaign for president is inspiring. And not just the hyperbolic sense of telling a child he could be president one day if...

Obama meets the Constitutional qualifications to be elected to the highest office. All other standards (foreign policy experience, military experience, was a governor, Washington-insider or -outsider) are politically-imposed and not just on Obama, but any and all other candidates. Forty-three men have occupied the presidency. In this country's history, there have been generals, farmers, lawyers, businessmen, a haberdasher, a bachelor, a Catholic, a really fat guy, tall men, short men, the handsome and the non-descript. But they have all been white.

So maybe, just maybe, 141 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we are ready to seriously consider electing a black man to the office of President of the United States of America. And finally stop calling him "nigger."

Read Eugene Robinson's take on the story in the Washington Post.

When the Janjaweed Come...

When the Janjaweed come, death is not far away.

First come the government planes, bombing. To scare the people out into the open from their villages. Then come the Janjaweed. They swoop in, on camel- or horseback. They shoot anything that moves: human or animal. young or old, male or female. They rape the women and girls. Villagers who are not shot, might be hacked to pieces, left to bleed to death. Dead animals are tossed into wells to poison the water as they rot away. Escape into the desert is not escape at all: many die of thirst trying to walk to a refugee camp. And the terror of the dreaded Janjaweed returning is present every minute.

The Sudanese government is conducting a systematic program of ethnic, racial and religious "cleansing" of the Darfur region of Sudan. The government, located in the northern part of the country in Khartoum is Arab-Muslim. Darfur and southern Sudan are sub-Saharan African. The Sudanese government wants Darfur "purified" so that if oil is found in that region, it will not fall into the hands of the black Sudanese. So they have chased some to the borders of Chad and the Central African Republic, where they wait in massive relief stations. The rest die. Walking hundreds of miles in the desert with barely the clothes on their backs. Trying to stay out of sight of the Janjaweed. Because when the Janjaweed come, death is not far away.

The African Union (AU), a coalition of African nations that seeks to unify the continent, and promote peace and economic growth, has a peacekeeping force of about 12,000 in the region, but the Sudanese government has roadblocked any progress toward peace in the region. The government has defied United Nations resolutions. The so-called agreement between the UN and Sudan to allow the AU to increase its presence, and do more for the refugees, has already fallen flat. Khartoum has always rejected plans for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (and have curtailed access and observation by the UN and other non-governmental organizations.) The latest agreement was to allow a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force, but the Sudanese Foreign Minister rejected that option out of hand.

A cloud of dust on the horizon signals the coming of the Janjaweed. Death rides on horseback. Death comes on camel-back. Death comes.

Meanwhile, although President George W. Bush promised, "Not on my watch," would another genocide like that between Rwanda and Burundi occur, the US seems content to talk some, but do very little. When other countries labelled the violence in Darfur a "brewing genocide," the US said nothing. When the United Nations declared the killing in Darfur genocide, the US said it was more like "ethnic cleansing" (genocide lite?). When the BBC and other news organizations broadcast some of the first images out of the region, showing dead bodies and animals, the charred ruins of villages, bones, skulls, limbs strewn along escape routes, the US was surprisingly silent. Perhaps not so surprising, since our government was adventuring in Iraq.

The orphans in the refugee camps describe in horrifying detail, in deliberate monotones, the horrors they suffered, the killings they witnessed, the rapes and other violence they endured. They speak of fleeing into the desert, lucky (if one can call it that) to have escaped the hacking machetes of the Janjaweed. They tell of walking for days, carrying brothers, sisters, babies; leading the injured and sometimes the infirm away from their burning homes. They don't look back. There is nothing to see there.

When a cloud of dust blows across the horizon, it used to be a just a haboob: the hot, Saharan desert wind. Today it may be the early warning that the Janjaweed are coming. And when the Janjaweed come, death is not far away.

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To read more about the crisis in Darfur, visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6161692.stm The BBC offers some of the most compelling reporting about Africa.