Note: this web page was written in 2008. For Halim Shayek's poetry, click here.
ObamaMischief.com
"With malice toward none, with charity for all," Abraham Lincoln
Political Humor and a Discussion of Race.
If you send me messages at ObamaMischief@gmail.com, I can add your comments.
Is it right for black people to vote for Obama because of his race and wrong for white people to vote against him because of his race?
Yes, every group has its pride. When Kennedy ran for president we Irish voted for him, and he became both the first Catholic and the first Irish-American to become president. A history of being downtrodden made our bond stronger. My mother told stories about the Ku Klux Klan trying to terrorize her family and drive them out of town. Hell, yes, we Irish voted for Kennedy! (I was too young to vote.)
However, to vote against Obama because of his race is not only to not give him a fair chance, but to vote for the wrong candidate, if you are for his policies.
How will famous African-American conservatives REALLY vote in November?
Condoleezza Rice:
Before the election:
I totally oppose Obama. He would withdraw our troops from the Iraq war and not prosecute the war on terror with the ferver of McCain. Obama would have the US lose a war and leave America weaker for decades. I am completely against his foreign policy. But, come to think of it, my foreign policy hasn't been so great; in fact, it is in shambles.
In the polling booth
He's so handsome… and the foreign policy I defended so brilliantly is a failure. Oh – I'm here alone in the polling booth… What if I called him and said, "Barack – leave your wife and take ME! I can be your wife and Secretary of State! I can defend your foreign policy brilliantly! I can be your Hillary and your Kissinger! Maybe I can be the first first lady who becomes the first female president! Choose ME!"
Click image to enlarge.
Clarence Thomas:
Before the election:
For me as a Supreme Court Justice, Barack Obama is a nightmare! He is the most liberal member of the Senate and he taught Constitutional Law. Senator Obama believes in a "living Constitution:" that is, he thinks the Constitution means whatever a Justice wants it to mean. Obama has the rhetoric to sway the masses and he would know exactly whom to appoint to the Supreme Court to undo all of my work. All of my court decisions could be overturned. My opinions would be relegated to the dustbin of history, and all of my work would be for naught. Everything I have fought for (including the Constitution) would be destroyed.
In the polling booth: This election has brought out racists throughout America. I'm sick of hearing Jeremaih Wright ranting every time I turn on the TV - Jeremiah Wright isn't running for President – Barack Obama is!. . . What's a man to do? . . .With millions of racists trying to pull him down, I have to help. . . If a brother won't help a brother, who will?
Thomas Sowell
Before the election:
Actual quote from National Review Online, March 18, 2008: We don’t need a president of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama’s carefully crafted election-year image. In the polling booth: Why be a stick-in-the-mud over ideology? African-American youth need good role models, and there is none better than the President, warts and all. With President Obama, our young people can dream of becoming President instead of rappers, pimps and drug dealers.
John McWhorter
Actual quote from The Economist, April 25, 2008:
Mr Obama has a once-in-a-lifetime charisma...
It will be intriguing to see what a certain contingent makes of it if we finally have a black president. All rhetoric about America as an apartheid nation, racist to its core, will run up against the fact — which will ironically feel inconvenient to this contingent — that the man who wakes up every morning in the White House and flies on Air Force One is black...
Ward Connerly
Before the election:
Actual quote from The Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2008: As many readers will know, I am intimately involved in the effort to enact race-neutral ballot initiatives around the country (right now in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska). I find it difficult to understand how the senator can "strongly oppose" any initiative that does precisely what he professes to believe and is consistent with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This is the language of the initiatives I am now sponsoring: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." The rationale for using race preferences to "eliminate historic barriers," upon which Mr. Obama relies as his primary justification, has been rejected consistently by the Supreme Court since the Bakke decision in 1978. Only the pursuit of "diversity" by higher education meets the strict constitutional test for race preferences. As a lawyer, I am sure that Mr. Obama must know this. He must also know that blacks and whites are not the only racial groups in America. Every year there are more than 48,000 applicants for one of the 4,500 seats at the University of California campus at Berkeley. Before the passage of the initiative in that state to outlaw race preferences, thousands of Asian students were denied admission so that a greater number of "underrepresented minorities" could be admitted. Similar circumstances exist across the nation, because college admissions, public jobs and government contracts are the ultimate "zero-sum" game, and race and gender should not be the determining factors in picking winners and losers. It simply stretches credulity to argue that an "opportunity" given to one, on the basis of race, is not discrimination against another for the same reason. The issue that troubled many Americans about the widely publicized sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright was his view that America is an "institutionally racist" society. This view lies at the heart of the defense advocates of race preferences make for "affirmative action." It is also at the core of Black Liberation Theology. By supporting race preferences, Mr. Obama is unmistakably attaching himself to despicable ideas like Rev. Wright's. And, if he believes in those precepts, how does he reconcile his impressive political success and that of Mrs. Clinton with this perspective? Thirty-six million Americans didn't vote for the two of them because the majority of the American people are racist and sexist. If Mr. Obama wants to be the candidate of "change," why doesn't he change the idiotic racial classification system that burdens millions of Americans? Why doesn't he call attention to the barbaric "one-drop" (of hereditary blood) rule that continues to haunt our nation, and which drives him to identify with the "black community" at the expense of his white ancestry? If he wants to unite the American people, how does he propose to do that by asking some Americans to accept preferential treatment for others and discrimination against themselves? How does Mr. Obama expect America to compete with China and India when we abandon the principle of individual merit and elevate skin color and sex above performance? In the polling booth: This man inspires people. I have never seen anything like it. This is a historic moment, and I will not oppose it. Even though we disagree about something near and dear to my heart - racial preferences - I will vote for Senator Obama. As for racial preferences, I know that history and the American people are on my side.