Barack Obama - Black Hair Magazines

Posts tagged "Barack Obama"

I’m Not Lou Dobbs

I’m not Lou Dobbs and I’m not Joe the Plumber, so when it comes to political knowledge I’m somewhere in between: smart enough to cover my butt-crack but too busy to follow things full time.

Still, I can tell which way the wind’s blowing and the difference between something real and media-manufactured (I think) and here’s what I think of Barack Obama, the training-wheels senator bold enough to sail either the Amistad or the floundering U.S. through Katrina-like waters: he’s just what we need. Not “we” the U.S., you understand, or even “we” its allies; but for the first time, “WE” as in The World.

And demonstrably, I’m not alone in this, as millions of pilgrims made their way to Washington while a billion more tuned in worldwide. Thank God, we’re all saying, for this genuine black man. Thank God for his intellect, his candor, his fitness, his smile. Thank God for his ability to visibly think before speaking and his understanding that speaking—with minorities and power brokers, enemies and allies alike—is the key to solving the myriad illnesses—greed, distrust, inequity, violence—that so ail the world.

Thank God for his youth, thank God for his quiet strength, thank God he’s not George Bush, or any other politician that’s made the term such a dirty, distrustful word for so long.

But will it all be enough, I ask? Can Obama’s twin philosophies of partnership and sacrifice reverse the ill-will (hell, hatred) fostered by years of Republican-fueled, Cheney-driven, America-first foreign policy? Will there be time for his ‘Yes, We Can’ mantra to take hold, to become more than just a five-second sound-bite in a four year minefield certain with media muck-raking, Democratic in-fighting, Republican antagonism, foreign conflict and world-wide economic turmoil?

We’ll see, I think, we’ll see. But for the first time in a long time—like many—I’m hopeful.

Hopeful that Obama will make decisions based on what’s good for the world as opposed to what’s good for the super-rich—the powerful A-list Americans and friends that created this mess in the first place. Hopeful that Obama will re-interpret MAD Magazine’s little ditty—“Diplomacy is to do and say, the nastiest thing in the nicest way”—and win people over with tough, transparent, responsible decisions, rather than the back-room deal-making we’ve long come to dread. Hopeful that the joy I watched during the pre-inauguration ceremonies—a group of spirited, teen black boys singing and dancing in a way that most of us only wish we could—will somehow take hold of our Caucasian, constipated culture so that white men really can jump (and sing and smile and dance) with the same unencumbered, genuine, money-be-damned spirit.

But like I said, I’m not Lou Dobbs. I’m not a political insider. I don’t know the intricacies of the Supreme Court or Senate, blue states from red, that make Obama’s present hold on the world something more than a naïve, starry-eyed fairytale. I’m just a guy caught up in the spirit of things. A little afraid but spurred on by his daughter’s smiling/fearless thumbs up; buoyed like Beyonce with Obama-bred confidence to “want to be smarter and do better for this man”, to join in with those rollicking black kids, bursting with pride and potential, beaming as they . . . I . . . WE continue to sing:

“You broke it down.

No limits anymore.

O-BA-MA!

Yes, We Can!”

Amazon.com Widgets

The Real First Black President?

Did South Carolina change anything? Is there any logic or sanity to all these primaries? While I have to admit that the whole process seems antiquated and a waste of time, it seems as though something has changed since Obama’s overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary. Here’s just a couple of the tremors coming from last Saturday.

First there was the speech. I’ve listened to both Obama’s New Hampshire losing candidate speech and the South Carolina winning speech. To say they are inspirational is an under statement. The more he speaks, the more people are drawn to him like a bug incapable of staying away from a warm porch light on a cool fall evening. Something has changed!

Then there was Caroline Kennedy!

Her long and articulate Op-ed in the New York Times was remarkable. I mean, here’s a woman talking about her father, Jack Kennedy, and saying that Obama stirs up reminders of her father: and, that her children are enraptured by Obama as well. Barack Obama can’t buy advertisements like that. Something has changed!

The very next day, word leaks out that Ted Kennedy will endorse Barack-Star today and go on a tour for a couple of days to stand with him. They are going West, where the Latino vote is, where Kennedy has a base, and where Hillary has built what’s now being known as a “Brown Firewall”. Can it be breached? With Ted’s endorsement, surely something has changed!

And we’ll know a lot more come Super Tuesday!

And now there’s Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison who famously declared Bill Clinton to be the nation’s “first black president”. He is endorsing Barack Obama for president today, an Obama campaign source tells ABC News. In an October 1998 essay in The New Yorker, Morrison wrote: “Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

But now- something has changed!

There is truly a black man running for president who is articulate, intelligent, charismatic, and full of charm and hope. And he just may become the second black president- but the first with black skin!

tafbutton blue16 The Real First Black President?

Amazon.com Widgets

Barack Wins, One Proud Black Man’s Thoughts

Barack wins, the feelings of one black man by George Cook www.letstalkhonestly.com 11/06/08

On Tuesday November 4, 2008 Barack Obama won the presidential election to become the 44th President of the United States. This was a great day for my family. It so moved me that I haven’t been able to sleep for two days and am still trying to come to grips with the Barack Obama victory.

Everything is like a blur and I am just starting to realize on November 6 that we have a black president. Even now in my slightly delirious state I keep waiting for some reporter on Fox News to start screaming about a voter discrepancy somewhere. Most likely Alaska.

I knew I had to write something but I was just too emotional or exhausted. Probably a combination of both. That and a few celebratory Heinekens.

Election Day was very special for me and besides the 3 hour wait to vote ( which will become six hours as I age and tell the story of how I walked in six inches of snow with no shoes to vote for Obama 30 years from now ) it was a beautiful day.

Early on I drove 3 elderly African American women who were all over 75 years old to the polls. They were acting like little school girls giggling and smiling. I almost said, “Don’t make me pull this car over.”

But it hit me that as happy as I was that I could not really appreciate what they felt. At only forty I have not faced real overt racism. But they had, They lived through Jim Crow and segregation. They saw America’s ugly side.

Their joy was really one of “We have overcome” and I knew they really appreciated and understood what was happening in their lifetime.

That made me think of my daughter who will in her lifetime think it’s normal for a black man to be president and hopefully one day will see a woman attain the highest office in the land. Now when I tell my daughter she can be president I wont be talking out one side of my mouth.

All these thoughts brought a few tears to my eyes. That’s a big deal for me since I can only remember crying three times in my adult life. Those three being when my great grandmother died, when my daughter was born, and when the Giants lost the Super Bowl in 2000.

I want to close by returning to those three old women I drove to the polls. Now everyone who has ever been in an old black persons home knows along with plastic covers on the furniture there are pictures of three people you will always see on the wall.

Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy.

Now they can add one more…………..

George L. Cook III www.letstalkhonestly.com