We, The People

Sometimes the yo-yos get just too annoying not to respond.

Pres. Obama has now released his birth certificate for the scrutiny of all, and I regret he did that. By doing so, he lent a small bit of credence to the ill-mannered louts who’ve been dogging him all this time about this non-issue. Taking the high road would have meant answering the question once (he did so in 2008) and then moving on. But as he said this week, the situation has been dominating the news, so he felt compelled to respond in order to redirect our collective attention back to legitimate matters.

When you’re being pursued by a yapping pack of mangy curs, it’s seldom profitable to stop and engage them. They have no rightful claim to your attention and the confrontation they demand will not be bound by the rules of logic, much less probity. They chase you not to bring benefit to themselves but to bring injury to you. The smart money is on just speeding up and leaving the howling pack behind. So, I think Ol’ Barack stubbed his toe on this one.

But now, it seems the precedent has been established for an Oz-like examination of who might be missing which critical artifacts. And it got me to wondering how the song might have gone if some of our contemporaries had been among the characters thinking about what they might ask the Wizard to provide for them.  Hm-m-m, think, think, think ….(Swirling dissolve to collage of characters singing their wishes for largesse from the Man In Green)

Donald Trump: …if I only had a soul (or for that matter, a better comb-over, a less slappable face, etc.)

Michelle Balkin: …if I only knew my history.

Jane Fonda: …if I only had some shame.

Sarah Palin: ...if I only had a brain (some lyrics can’t be improved upon).

Howard Stern:…if I only understood limits.

I could go on and in fact, it might be fun if any of you wish to add your own lyric tag lines.

Meanwhile, back to the point: it’s okay in a representative democracy that we disagree with each other and it’s critical that we air those disagreements. That’s how we fine tune the system when it gets creaky.

But what has been happening with this whole birth certificate foofarah has nothing to do with legitimate issues or policy differences. It has nothing to do with legitimacy. It has everything to do with exclusion.

If President Obama had pink cheeks and was named Axelrod, and had been born in New Hampshire to an American mother and an Icelandic father, there never would have been a question about his citizenship. So I have to ask which of those differences prompted self-important penis-enviers like The Donald to question Obama’s standing as a natural-born citizen.

Was it the color of his skin, his name, his state of birth or his father’s country of origin that makes folks question this President’s eligibility? Perhaps we should take the responsibility for vetting of potential candidates away from their nominating parties and hand it over to the KKK.  Blacks in this country were long considered –constitutionally so – as only part of a human. Now it seems, there are still folks who resent them trying to join the conversation in the big house. And too many of these chowderheads have microphones, and printing presses, and websites.

We have serious issues to confront today that will determine who we are as a people in the next century. The insidious insertion of hate-driven polemic and racist innuendo into our political discourse challenges us to decide if there really is such an entity as ‘we, the people,’ or whether we really are just competing packs of snarling curs.