The problem is Obama, not "Obamaphobia"

By Michael Gaynor

Obama is the problem, not the solution, and he's President due to ACORN and liberal media pollution.

"The Rising Stakes of Obamaphobia," by John L. Jackson Jr., appeared on August 13, 2009 in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Jackson previously wrote a book titled Racial Paranoia.

Now he's claiming the Right is paranoid about Obama and diagnosing that as Obamaphobia.

Jackson opened with these comments about Obama: "He's a socialist." "He's a communist." "He's anti-American." "Heck, he wasn't even born in the United States."

But Jackson did not offer any evidence to refute any of those comments.

He just offered those comments as evidence of Obamaphobia, to be automatically accepted as true.

Fact: National Journal rated Obama the most liberal of the 100 United States Senators, even more liberal than avowed socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Fact: Obama as a Senator described himself as a proponent of a single payer health plan for America (while acknowledging it would not be achievable immediately.

Fact: Obama wrote in his autobiography about his decision to associate himself with his "Marxist professors" and won the Democrats' presidential nomination by running to the left of Hillary Clinton.

Fact: Obama admittedly wants to "transform" America, and thus is "anti" a great deal of what has made America America.

Fact: Obama is hiding his birth certificate. Is that an example of whimsy on his part, or is there a reason he does not want it scrutinized? What's wrong with having presidents and presidential candidates produce their birth certificates? (John McCain promptly produced his.)

Jackson depicts himself as a sensible centrist assuring his readers that we have nothing to fear but fear itself: "In my book Racial Paranoia, I discuss similar theories from the 1950s and 60s about secret concentration camps being built for troublesome Americans. In that earlier version of things, those on the Left were prime candidates for such ideologically driven gulags. Today, far Right conservatives are the ones imagining[] themselves most vulnerable to the possibility of political imprisonment. And pundits such as Lou Dobbs (for his straight-faced coverage of the 'birthers') and...Glenn Beck have been consistently criticized for fomenting such outlandishness."

But calling something "outlandish" does not make it so and Jackson did not go beyond name calling.

Jackson was upset that Beck had opined that Obama is "a racist."

Jackson: "'This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people,' Beck claimed (on another FOX News program). 'This guy is, I believe, a racist.' (Some of Beck's show's advertisers have dropped his program as a function of such statements.)"

The myth that was sold during the 2008 presidential election campaign was that Obama transcended race and would be a post-racial president. The liberal media establishment gave Obama a pass on his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright, Obama's pastor of choice.

That strained credulity, but after a policeman arrested a Harvard professor friend of Obama recently, Obama himself exposed himself as racial or racist in commenting on the arrest at a televised press conference, by saying that the police had acted "stupidly" right after saying he did not know all the facts. Obviously he knew that the police officer who made the arrest is white and the professor is black and that was enough for him to jump to what turned out to be a wrong conclusion. That's not transcending race.

Jackson bashed both Beck and Michelle Malkin for participating in "this game of high-profile Obama-bashing."

Jackson conclusion: "Michelle Malkin's bestselling book Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies is a manifesto of Obamaphobia."

Facts in Ms. Malkin's well sourced book refuted by Jackson: none.

In the absence of evidence, Jackson offered his assurance that questions about and criticism of Obama are unfair, "fringe" and politics as usual.

Jackson: "In many ways, this is simply how politics gets done. And it probably always has been. Many of the attacks on George W. Bush were brutal and merciless, and they still hardly hold a candle to some of the partisan rhetorical assaults of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In some ways, we've mellowed as a nation, even as the non-mellow among us gain increasing access to far-flung members of their 'fringe' with advances in global media. A relatively small group of like-minded people can have a disproportionate impact on our collective public stage, especially if they make effective use of new media technologies. They can almost create Movements, and seemingly overnight. Indeed, we might be living in an era of the incessant and media-spawned Mini Social Movement. (Again, think of the 'Birthers Movement' and its claim about Obama not really being an American citizen.) We could call such things social movements du jour, maybe pseudo social movements. But with a little media coverage, even pseudo social movements become 'real' in ways that can have substantive consequences for all of us."

But are the folks responsible for the success of the Obama campaign last year "[a] relatively small group of like-minded people" who had "a disproportionate impact on our collective public stage" by "mak[ing] effective use of new media technologies"?

Jackson did not say.

The answer is yes.

America was and still is a center-right country, and Obama, the most liberal United States Senator, was sold to a majority of the voters as a post-racial candidate who would govern from the center and voting for his as evidence of not being racially biased.

It hasn't taken long for most of the American people to realize they were deceived and to disapprove of the direction in which Obama is trying to take America.

But for the liberal media establishment, they would not have been deceived last year.

If the true relationship between ACORN and Obama and the Obama campaign had been generally reported last October, the McCains would be living in the White House and Obamatons would be whining that Mrs. McCain has too many houses.

Unsurprisingly, Jackson sees white racism as the problem.

Jackson: "Americans' current 'run on guns' isn't just about a potential change in national policy around gun control and the right to bear arms. Some of it also seems to be predicated on an uptick in right-wing militias and their renewed calls for a 'race war.' Part of it is about a kind of 'racial paranoia' linked to economic insecurities, a racial paranoia that pivots on a growing social movement around reactionary racial politicking. (The way 'race' functioned in the Sotomayor confirmation hearings was one example of what this reactionary racial rhetoric sounds like today. The fallout from the Gates-Crowley Affair was another.)"

In reality, the problem with now Justice Sotomayor was her judicial activism, and her race helped her to be confirmed.

In reality, the problem with Obamacare is the problem with government control of health care, not race.

In reality, Obama has only himself to blame for "[t]he fallout from the Gates-Crowley Affair."

But Jackson is intent on making white people "bogeymen."

Jackson: "Mark Potok, editor the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report sees 'a resurgence of right-wing hate groups and radical ideas' linked to the ascendance of America's first Black President. Recent reports put out by the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms seem to corroborate that claim. With unemployment and deficit spending on the rise and Americans full of fear about their own economic futures, we should be careful not to fall into the same old trap of racial scapegoating. It is easy. We've mastered it. It might even allow some of us to sleep more soundly at night. But it is utterly and ultimately the most self-destructive response we can have to our present predicament."

Both racism and "reverse racism" must be avoided.

Jackson's strategy is to use race as a sword for Obama and his agenda: if you oppose judicial activism, or cap and tax, or judicial activism, you're a racial scapegoater upset that Obama is "America's first lack President."

That's a non sequitur (or, if you are not familiar with Latin, nonsense).

But it does call to mind Obama's actual thinking, as revealed at a private fundraiser in San Francisco early last year, at which Obama was caught on tape blaming poor economic circumstances for Americans "clinging" to religion and guns.

That's ignorant and unAmerican.

Obama is the problem, not the solution, and he's President due to ACORN and liberal media pollution.

© Michael Gaynor