Norman Kelley Calls Out President Obama On His Chutzpah Vis-A-Vis Black America

http://open.salon.com/blog/norman_kelley/2011/09/25/obamas_chutzpah_performance_before_the_cbc

All,

I'm a big fan of Kelley's work and have been for a long time--even when he's dead wrong. I especially liked his 2004 tome entitled The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Nation Books), which though flawed is still a serious, honest, and insightful attempt at a genuinely independent and critical theoretical analysis of black political thought and practice in the United States. Really good to see him and his often intellectually scathing and deeply incisive work again...He's a real social and cultural critic as well as political analyst and we sorely need many more like him generally--and especially in the African American intellectual and politically activist community nationwide...

Kofi

Norman Kelley

Location
Washington, District of Columbia, USA

Bio

Norman Kelley is an independent journalist, author, and former segment radio producer at WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio. He has written for Society, L A Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, The Nation, New York Press, Newsday, Word.com, The Black Star News, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Noir, and The Bedford Stuyvesant Current. He is also the author of the "noir soul"/ mystery series that features "Nina Halligan" in Black Heat (Amistad), The Big Mango (Akashic Books), and A Phat Death (2003). Norman Kelley was also a contributing writer to Brooklyn Noir (Akashic Books, 2004) and DC Noir (Akashic Books, 2006) and Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium (Random House 2000). He edited and contributed to R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music (Akashic Books, 2005; 2002).


Obama's Chutzpah Performance Before the CBC
by Norman Kelley

Watching Obama telling the Black Congressional Caucus to stop its bellyachin' has got to be one of the greatest chutzpah performances of all time.

Here's a guy who even cratered his own accomplishments by being the master of pre-emptive compromise, yet he's going to get an attitude that black elected officials and blacks are pissed at his poor performance as a leader?!

And don't forget, days before his appearance at the CBC event, he showed what a man of steel he was by doing what all American politicians are great at: genuflecting before the state of Israel.

Meanwhile it's been reported that Obama okayed that country getting "bunker buster" bombs, which will undoubtedly be used on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Yet cynical Republicans sensing weakness and some Jewish Americans are trying to drum up a "Jewish problem" for Obama because he wants Israel to stop building settlements and get down to negotiating with the Palestinians.

Let's face it: he ain't a real Christian devotee of Israel like Rick Perry.

Obama's real complaint regarding the black electorate? They aren't fully appreciative of the symbolic importance of him being the first black president, which surely dwarfs their economic despair.

I mean, get your priorities right, people!


MY RECENT POSTS
The 99% Anthem: "This Land is Your Land"
October 09, 2011 09:50PM
Predator Drone Strikes on Wall Street Banskters! Yowza!
October 04, 2011 08:23PM
A Pot of Cain Calling a Kettle of Perry Black!
October 02, 2011 10:04PM
The Post's "Niggerhead" article Is Missing the Photo
October 02, 2011 05:01PM
Carl Bernstein on Hacking, Murdoch, and Journalism
September 29, 2011 10:18PM

President Obama Condescends to African Americans in Congressional Black Caucus Dinner Speech

President Obama

The President and First Lady Michelle Obama
at 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Dinner

http://www.popularcritic.com/2011/09/26/president-obama-is-not-a-fighter-michelle-obama-regal-in-black/

All,

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) speech by President Obama last saturday night (before a nearly all black audience) was not only a corny insipid speech full of empty clichés and hollow platitudes but was also incredibly condescending, patronizing, and downright INSULTING. What is wrong with Barack? Has he lost his damn mind? I can tell you all one thing for damn sure: If he had given this same type of dismissive, insulting speech to any other constituent group of American citizens in the entire country (i.e. Hispanics/Latinos, Jews, labor unions, Gays and Lesbians, members of the military, poor, working and middle class whites, etc. etc.) he would have been justifiably VILLIFIED and attacked by these groups and the media for his outrageous arrogance, smugness, and incredible rudeness. The utterly patronizing way the President talks DOWN to black folks in public is absolutely appalling and one more indication that he is only taking us and our legitimate and important concerns and issues as a People AND as American CITIZENS for granted. A LOT of black people across the country (myself included) were highly upset with the president's overly cavalier and pompous attitude and have said as much, including our black Congressional Representative from Los Angeles, the always redoubtable and gutsy Maxine Waters:

(See her important response to the speech in the CBS YouTube videolink below)...Just below her link is one to an excerpt of the President's CBC speech...Stay tuned...

Kofi

Maxine Waters response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd5ZnSOYUkg

Excerpt from President's speech:



President Obama Is Not A Fighter;
Michelle Obama Regal In Black
September 26, 2011
Posted by Popular Critic

Tags: Barack Obama, Congressional Black Caucus, Michelle Obama, President

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wrapped up the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference on Saturday night at the Phoenix Awards in the Washington, D.C. Michelle Obama was her usual regal self in all black. But this time, Michelle’s fashion choices took the back seat to her husband’s speech. President Obama is working really hard to maintain his track record for saying things that contradicts his base. He knows he needs black voters, as he stated in his speech, “And I know we won’t get where we need to go if we don’t travel down this road together. I need you with me.” Yet, for such an eloquent speak President Obama manages to put his foot in his mouth – again!

Here’s another snippet below:

“So I don’t know about you, CBC, but the future rewards those who press on. With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.” “I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.”

Well, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Nick Chiles had a thing or two to say about President Obama:

"Last week President Obama stepped onto the stage of the Congressional Black Caucus desperately trying to light a fire under black folks before the election season heats up—just as we got word that he is having trouble eliciting campaign contributions from the army of small donors who threw money at him in 2008. It occurs to me that the President is in such a vulnerable state because he forgot a fundamental lesson he probably learned in elementary school: People will have more love and respect for the guy who stands up to the bully—even if he gets his face bashed in—than the guy who tries to pull the bully aside and talk the bully out of beating him up..."

Read the full article below: "When Will President Obama Start Fighting Back?"

http://dimewars.com/Blog/ViewBlogArticle.aspx?vn=When+Will+President+Obama+Start+Fighting+Back?&BlogID=f6076015-c288-4279-bf8a-fc29d36830b8


When Will President Obama Start Fighting Back?
By Nick Chiles

Nick Chiles

Last week President Obama stepped onto the stage of the Congressional Black Caucus desperately trying to light a fire under black folks before the election season heats up—just as we got word that he is having trouble eliciting campaign contributions from the army of small donors who threw money at him in 2008. It occurs to me that the President is in such a vulnerable state because he forgot a fundamental lesson he probably learned in elementary school: People will have more love and respect for the guy who stands up to the bully—even if he gets his face bashed in—than the guy who tries to pull the bully aside and talk the bully out of beating him up.

The Republicans in Congress have been acting like bullies since the day Obama took office. He thought he could get things done by reasoning with them, trying to compromise with them, caving in to them when necessary, with the ultimate goal being a track record of legislative achievement. While we all may intellectually understand the wisdom of that approach, it’s hard to be inspired and stand behind someone who we believe deep in our hearts has acted like a punk. Human nature compels us to be attracted to the guy who goes down swinging, who confronts the bad guy and takes his shots, even if he is badly defeated in the end. It’s the formula of a thousand Hollywood features, from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” to Queen Latifah in “Set It Off.”

During the election, Obama inspired us with the message that he could bring together a divided country, Gandhi-like, and lead us to a new age of harmony. That all sounded wonderfully utopian, but the Republicans wanted none of it. They wanted a fight. And as they started throwing their blows, it began to sound suspiciously like a race war, with a lot of veiled insults that were clearly the 2011 version of nigger. Black people have a lot of experience with racial conflicts in this country; they are an indelible part of our history. And when they go down, we don’t want a leader who is busy trying to make nice with the other side, trying to conciliate and negotiate. One of our most revered leader, Martin Luther King Jr., a well-known pacifist, was not a conciliator. After all, there is nothing more confrontational and assertive than refusing to move to the back of the bus or give up the lunch counter seat. Fighting back is not necessarily a reference to violence; it means using whatever means you have at your disposal to take down the opposition. Giving in to the opposition is not an acceptable battle strategy.

When a fight breaks out, we want to march into battle behind Duane “The Rock” Johnson, not Gandhi. We will always fall in love with the fighter, while we tolerate the thoughtful negotiator. We worship revenge and confrontation, not reasoned discussion and capitulation.

Being a bully is mostly about PR—convincing onlookers that you are a big, bad, scary dude. When the bully is revealed as a coward or an idiot, his cloak of invincibility is snatched away. Obama has badly lost the PR battle—he has capitulated to the bully so many times that it may be nearly impossible for him to alter our deep-seated fear that he is a punk. He has 13 months to go before the election. After all the debates are done, the country has been crisscrossed many times over and the hundreds of millions of campaign dollars are spent, his success in November 2012 will depend largely on how our gut answers one basic question: Is he ready to fight?


Nick Chiles is a New York Times bestselling author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Congressional Black Caucus Take On President Obama and the National Jobs Crisis

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rep-waters-pushes-back-at-obama-during-congressional-black-caucus-talk-were-getting-tired/

All,

At some point even the national black community is going to have to seriously recover from the ongoing political coma/fever dream/mass hypnosis induced by the mesmerizing specter/spectacle of the "first black President" and actually deal with political, economic, and social REALITY once again. There's a traditional African American proverb that goes "Nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream." Well folks (and this goes for all "others" in this rapidly declining country as well) it's way past time to finally WAKE UP. Even the usually clueless, moribund, and hopelessly asleep at the switch petty bourgeois members of the Congressional Black Caucus understand that...People need JOBS AND JUSTICE not empty electoral stump speeches and endless silly platitudes about the so-called "greatness of America." President Obama-- and the rest of us!-- had better get very busy and very soon creating a real, viable alternative to the misery, fear, and confusion we find all around us or otherwise we will all find ourselves stuck with and imprisoned by a truly lethal rightwing Tea Party government before we can say "what happened?"

Kofi


Rep. Waters Pushes Back At Obama During Black Caucus Talk: ‘We’re Getting Tired’
by Frances Martel
August 17th, 2011
Mediaite

VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP44ngv9hZI





It’s town hall season, and the Congressional Black Caucus is the first this year to get a mouthful from frustrated constituents on the economy. In a clip that quickly made the rounds in the news cycle, the panel meeting the Detroit crowd yesterday defended the President’s work, but with a bit of malaise, as Rep. Maxine Waters argued they were “getting tired” and “don’t know why on this trip… he’s not in any black community.” That the President is having trouble with his most loyal constituency is already being touted as a sign that 2012 isn’t going to be a Democratic cakewalk.

At some points during the public meeting last night, the mostly black crowd became so agitated the representatives found difficulty speaking– this was certainly the case as Rep. Waters explained to the crowd that she believed “we’ve got to put pressure on the President, because you all love the President.” She said she understood the hesitation on attacking him, but then lay into the President once she got the crowd to settle, wondering where his economics plan was and lamenting that his August bus tour did not include any black neighborhoods:

“The Congressional Black Caucus loves the President, too. We’re supportive of the president, but we’re getting tired. We’re getting tired yall. And so, what we want to do is, we want to give the president every opportunity to show what he can do and what he’s prepared to lead on. We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is. We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community. We don’t know that.”

The frustration among members of the black community seemed to reflect to some in the media why the President’s approval ratings have been dwindling in such a dramatic way recently, such that his core support group feels alienated has he tours rural communities where he has never had a solid following and has already encountered some trouble with the local Tea Party leaders there. As panel moderator Jeff Johnson explained in his wrap-up, “the ‘hope and change’ message that rallied support from African-American communities in Detroit and beyond is long gone. Many are unclear what message can motivate this base to the polls again, while so many are suffering under a devastating economy and the reality of unemployment.” This, “exacerbated by the fact that at the same time the CBC Detroit town hall was taking place, the president was in Iowa dealing with the issues of rural Americans,” gave the panel, to its host, a new sense of urgency.

Meanwhile, the news was covered on the cable networks as a sign of concern for the President. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing hosted a discussion with Roll Call’s John Traynham and MSNBC contributor Karen Hunter, the former who found that “it’s not by chance” the President was traveling to rural swing states– he has a serious problem among “rural white voters”– but the frustration due to the high levels of unemployment was palpable. Meanwhile, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly checked in with White House Correspondent Ed Henry, on the road with the President in Iowa, both of whom agreed that it was “extraordinary” to see the people who voted in the highest percentages for the President so raucous at a meeting featuring mostly Democratic Obama supporters.

REP. WATERS PUSHES BACK AT OBAMA ...

Rep. Water’s statements, followed by commentary from MSNBC and Fox News, respectively, below: