20 August 2009 >> Not too long ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with signs comparing our president to Adolf Hitler, painting him as “the world’s biggest terrorist,” even calling outright for his killing. Here in New York City, posters of a cartoon George W. Bush replete with simulated bullet holes began springing up around town.

It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”

During the Bush era, the media looked the other way at the extremist element in the protest movement; the large number of protest signs bearing swastikas and mathematical formulae like “Bush=Hitler” just didn’t interest them. But it did interest me, and because the media didn’t want to report it, I did some reporting of my own. The videos I posted online inadvertently launched me on a second career as a documentary filmmaker.

I recently dug through my old footage and found many examples of the same kind of inflammatory speech that the media and the Democratic Party—forgive the redundancy—now decry. What follows are just a few examples. More >>

8 January 2009 >> Liberal political comedian Baratunde Thurston attended Washington D.C.’s prestigious Sidwell Friends School, where he often found himself as the only black student in the classroom.

Now that Barack and Michelle Obama are sending their kids to Sidwell, Thurston decided to share his experience in an open letter of advice to the incoming First Family:

Sidwell will assuredly meet the challenges of educating and providing security for the first daughters. Back in my day, Sidwell parents included three senators, the publishers of both The New York Times and Washington Post and, oh yeah, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose pubescent progeny was two years behind me. The Roosevelts, Nixons, and Gores also sent their kids to Sidwell.

But what may prove more challenging is the burden Malia and Sasha will face, not as first daughters, but as plain ol’ black girls. They already represent the United States of America, but in a school like Sidwell, even though it may have a greater representation of minorities than in my time, they also will be expected to represent the United States of Black America, as I was.

They’ll be The Black Friend. They’ll suffer through many a white person wanting to touch their hair. (I strongly recommend Sasha and Malia avoid cornrows.) And they will likely be viewed as both exceptions to and spokespeople for their race. This means they should be prepared when fellow students and even teachers turn to them for “expertise” when the curriculum touches on anything black.

Black Sidwell students are often likely to end up being the only black kid in a classroom. When this happens, we are automatically deputized as a sort of Assistant Professor X. During a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Hurricane Katrina, or even Black Lung, all eyes swivel toward us as everyone expects us to break out our copy of The Negropedia: A Comprehensive Guide to All Black Knowledge for the Edification of White Folks. Let your daughters know this moment is coming. Drill them on black facts. Make them memorize Roots. This way, they can prepare their lesson plans in advance.

[...]

I joined Sidwell in seventh grade. My first day at school, a black student who’d attended since kindergarten pulled me aside and asked if I knew what an Oreo was. “Yeah,” I answered. “It’s a cream-filled chocolate wafer manufactured by the Nabisco Corporation since 1952, and it’s mad tasty.” He corrected me: “No, an Oreo is somebody who’s black on the outside and white on the inside.” He then pointed across the room. “See Darryl? He’s an Oreo.”

What I saw was a slightly nerdy black kid hanging out with some white friends. What I failed to see was the problem. Being nerdy was practically a prerequisite for admission, and with the small number of black kids at Sidwell, it’d be a pretty lonely life for a kid with no white friends. Besides, isn’t the point of being black at an elite prep school to collect as many white friends as possible for later use?

[...]

Be prepared to hear “I’m not racist. I voted for you!” as an excuse for such closed-mindedness, ignorance, or worse. Mark my words, this will be our era’s equivalent of “I’m not racist. I have a black friend.”

The assumption that any given individual is a natural spokesman for an entire race is a manifestation of an underlying belief that people of that race are essentially interchangeable.

It’s also the belief that leads to racial preference systems like Affirmative Action, which makes the assumption that white=privileged and black=oppressed, an equation that’s equally insulting to both races because it fails to recognize the fact that individuals are different—even individuals of the same race! (Shocking, I know.)

A lot of people would love to be as oppressed as the Obama family.

20 February 2008 >> Commandments from on high:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

[...]

You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.Michelle Obama,
wife of Senator Barack Obama