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CLARIFICATION

Following is Matador’s response to yesterday’s posting, “Bifocal Perception USA.” I respond immediately thereafter to Matador’s statement.

Matador:

“It seems that Michelle believes that when blacks wake up, they will support her husband because he is black and they are black.

“I think that it is ridiculous and an insult to black people to think that black people should and would vote for a person to be president simply because he or she happens to be black.

“I hope this is not what she meant because if every black person voted for her husband, he would still need the white vote.”

Moi:

Yesterday’s posting was not intended to be a puff-piece for Barak Obama. Apart from the discussion as to whether he is electable, the waters are much too muddy (no pun) with the candidates of both parties for me even to begin to concentrate on one individual. My intention, in the piece in question, was merely to give my impression of what I perceive Michelle Barak to be saying. In that regard, I may not have made it clear in the piece that I do not think that she means to imply that all blacks should vote for Obama; rather, that they at least expand their history-truncated “expectations” to encompass the possibility of his being elected.

With the preliminary reports of Mrs. Obama’s comments, my initial attitude was, “Oh, Lord, why doesn’t she just shut up and do her candidate’s-wife thing?” By that, I meant uttering inanities and gazing Stepford-wifely upon her lord and master as he blathers forth in his proper role in a white, Christian, male-only political contest. After contemplation, it dawned on me that I was being reactionary and not considering the moment. This was 2007, and the times had changed considerably in this future in which I was living, after having been born under the presidency of Herbert Hoover. I realized that the role of the spouse (we now must use this term) has changed, and that he/she usually is better educated and more involved, and has taken on a much more active role in the campaign.

When again I heard the Michelle Obama interview, I listened to it in full. My posting yesterday delineates what I perceive to be the crux of what she was attempting to put forth. I discovered that it was not Michelle who initiated the ethnocentric discussion; it was the interviewer who asked about the metrics of the opinion polls. Mrs. Obama attempted, in sound-bite restriction, to explain what I hope I was able to in the fuller space afforded by blog posting.

I have no personal preference for Barak Obama (despite the Oprah hoopla). As a matter of fact, there is a lot about him that disturbs me. Nevertheless, regardless of what my personal feelings may be about any of the candidates, they all (or their spokesfolk) deserve a fair hearing.