Eight Feet Deep

 It has been, how long, five hours? Still no reports are forth­com­ing that hordes of lit­tle chil­dren from the mostly white enclaves of Lum­ber­ton, Vidor or Bridge City in my area of South­east Texas are tak­ing to the streets dressed in Mao-style peas­ant garb com­plete with red com­mie stars.

 Like­wise, I’ve not heard from other parts of these United States of thou­sands of red and yel­low, black and white, they are pre­cioius in His sight chil­dren march­ing with clinched fists extended toward the heav­ens shout­ing their praise for Barack.

 What? It couldn’t pos­si­bly be that Pres­i­dent Obama’s speech to the nation’s school chil­dren has not touched off the so-feared social­ist indoc­tri­na­tion the right-wing tried so hard to sug­gest would hap­pen. Oh my. Per­haps it will be some­thing covert.

 Lit­tle boys cut­ting their hair short and wear­ing polo shirts like their sav­ior Barack and lit­tle girls dressed like Sasha and Malia are prob­a­bly in their dens right now plot­ting the coup of the children.

 Teens, instead of play­ing ball, drink­ing some illicit beers and smok­ing cig­a­rettes are meet­ing inside libraries try­ing with all their might to ignite the social­ist will for their hero, the great Barack Hus­sein, o mighty social­ist ruler!

 Silly? Hell yes it’s silly. Like Obama press sec­re­tary Robert Gibbs said the other day: “It’s the silly sea­son.” It was a thought echoed by Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can. The furor, Dun­can said, is “just silly.”  Silli­ness is the right’s forte and it has been spread like wild­fire via a cable news cabal full of folks who are too f**king lazy to go out and report real news with mean­ing. No, they want drama. Drama is all important.

 Let the hairy-armed, Joe the Plumbers wear­ing wife-beaters, tell the story with their igno­rance. Scream­ing and cry­ing: “We want our coun­try back!” makes for more dra­matic shots than pointy-headed Demo­c­ra­tic smart guys and gals sit­ting around doing the pol­icy wonk thing.

 And then, there is, how shall I put this? There is this 800-pound g*****a in the room about which no one is say­ing a word.

 Many didn’t want their kids to watch Obama’s speech today because they held deep-seated beliefs that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment needs to be out of their schools. No mat­ter that tons of fed­eral bucks help keep their schools up and run­ning. Oth­ers didn’t want their kids to get “brain­washed” by the social­ism being warned about by the right-wing noise machine. And if  either rea­sons one or two didn’t do the trick, we still have that 800-pound g*****a in the room.

 Yes, some peo­ple don’t want their kids being spo­ken to by a black man, or at least a black pres­i­dent. Maybe it would be okay if the kids heard a speech from Michael Jor­dan, or Shaq, or Bill Cosby, or even Collin Pow­ell. You know, they all be the “hired help.” But it just won’t do to let their kids hear from some black man who dares holds him­self up as the pres­i­dent. Why, he wasn’t even born in the USA was he?

 You think I am imag­in­ing some­thing? You think I have “black guilt?” Not one iota. I am sorry many blacks were enslaved many, many, many years before I was born, some of whom were sold into slav­ery by their own peo­ple. I am sorry but not wracked with guilt.

 I talked with an old col­lege friend yes­ter­day who was raised in an afflu­ent and very white part of a large Amer­i­can city. We got to talk­ing about this silli­ness sur­round­ing the Obama speech and with­out hear­ing my views, he said that the silli­ness stems from peo­ple not want­ing their kids to hear a speech from a black pres­i­dent. Bingo!

 Where is all the talk about a new day and hope and per­haps a new dia­logue on race that the cable pun­dits and reporters (except from Fox) gushed about when Obama was elected? Now those same cable wise men and women seem to sali­vate when they can find any fault with BHO, not to men­tion an angry crowd of men in wifebeat­ers whose big-haired wives are ruin­ing their painted faces, Tammy Baker style, by cry­ing for a lost Amer­ica that either was never lost to begin with or at the very least was lost by Mrs. Heavy Hair.

 If you want to know the truth, I haven’t been as scared at what might hap­pen in this coun­try since 1968.

 Dur­ing that year of Tet, riots, assas­si­na­tions, the world going topsy-turvy and not to men­tion being 12-turning-13 years old, there was plenty to freak about. The last eight years of George W., 9/11, the no weapons of mass destruc­tion inva­sion of Iraq and a war in Afghanistan, were unset­tling enough. The right wing was angry. Hell, they’re always pissed about something.

 And it was not unex­pected they would get pissed when the Democ­rats took over, led by a black man.

 But the right wing wing nuts have become even nut­tier. It seems that since they can’t get their way, right away, the old George W. “My Way or the High­way Style,” then they will just throw tantrum after tantrum and show how infan­tile and unsteady they are.

 I don’t know about you, but that scares the ever-loving hell out of me.