Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

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In this ridiculous political climate, attacks focus not only on the President, but his wife and his religion.

First Ladies usually are immune from public criticism, unless they’re Democrats, of course. Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong but when her hubby was found to be a cad, somehow she was considered party to it.
Michele Obama has been criticized for sleeveless fashions, taking vacations–and now for trying to improve the health of the nation’s children, while Republicans do all they to keep that from happening.

Of course, President Ford’s wife has a drug treatment center named after her but I don’t recall tacky references to that, just acclaim for having come out regarding her own problems and thereafter trying to make a positive difference in other people’s lives. People laid off Pat Nixon, given that she had suffered enough just being married to the Big Loser.

Carter’s daughter was the issue during his tenure, enduring a constant patter about how homely she was, forgetting that Congress is a leper colony of appearance; politics, as we say, is just show business for ugly people.
With Obama himself, you name it, anything goes that can be dreamed up. Oh, we dare not suggest that his race is a factor, but as Bill Maher said recently on Larry King Live, there are two things certain folks hate–one is being called racist, and the other is: black people. Shortly thereafter a study showed some schools even in Massachusetts are among the most segregated in the nation.

But aside from his skin color, politics, and supposedly questionable citizenship, the dogs of denial are after Obama’s religion. White folks, who after all these years don’t know jack about black religion, had assumed that Christianity had been a successful pacification process that would make them more like other Americans–except for skin tone, natch.

It was also supposed to have induced their collective amnesia regarding how they got here and all they crap they put up with even after Emancipation. Rev. Jeremiah Wright was the perfect excuse for whites to feel betrayed–gosh, after all they’d done for African Americans.

But other complaints must always be sought. One smoke-screen is that Obama isn’t a chummy enough guy for us. We want a prez we can have a beer with–and so he did, with the black professor and the white cop in Cambridge, but as you may guess, that wasn’t enough.

I don’t want to have a beer with Obama. I want him to stay at work, and I don’t mean writing doggerel to his wife from the Oval Office, like Reagan did for Nancy–and for which Republicans wanted to give him a Nobel in Literature. I want our prez to have a brain and I know can count on this one to make sense (as did Clinton) in his speeches, regardless of the spin that Fox and “Fiends” put on them. I long tired of George W’s lisping, simplistic folks-isms for complicated problems.

As for religion, Obama was a devout church-goer till Wright occasioned such public pain with his rhetoric that one can’t blame Barack for taking a long look at where to settle in next on Sunday mornings.

We forget that among recent presidents, Democrats were the biggest frequenters of churches. Reagan, who enjoyed support from the televangelists and the Bible Belt, was largely a no-show–citing always “security” issues, though that didn’t stop the Clintons from regular participation. Reagan’s religion was so deep that he always referred to God as “the Man Upstairs,” and he was always the most uneasy guy on the platform during prayer at rallies for him.

Carter was both a church-goer and Sunday School teacher for decades in his home church. Since retirement, he and Clinton have been peace brokers and creators of foundations for all sorts of domestic and international humanitarian causes. All I remember from Reagan, post-White House was that trip to Japan for a speech to CEOs, shake hands all around and come back with a cool two million for his charitable efforts.

Today there is no decency regarding political or partisan utterance: just open the floodgates, let the sewage pour in, and say it’s all Obama’s fault.
I’m no prophet (I leave that for Glenn Beck) but the economy will turn at some point, and hopefully in time to make some faces as red as the states they’re in. Because it is about the economy. Should the rebound come after a few more right wingers are elected in November, they’ll grab all the credit that their Spin Doctors can muster. With Fox News’ help, of course. But that, too, will pass.

You want a beer, go have it with Joe Sixpack. Ya wanna pray, talk to God. As for a president, I’ll take Obama any day.