The media's convoluted storyline for Obama

Here are a couple of stories which are probably harbingers of what is to come in the next year or so:

Obama and the ghosts of racism

THEY SAID this day would never come," Barack Obama declared in Iowa last week, and the ghosts of this nation nodded. With an African-American competing seriously for the presidency of the United States, the last act of a centuries-old drama begins. Obama's blood tie to the story of American slavery, ironically, comes through his white mother's ancestry, which apparently includes both slave owners and those who fought for the Union to end slavery. That Obama's father was a Kenyan links him more directly than anyone could have imagined both to Africa's past as an exploited continent, and to its present, where the bloody legacy of colonialism plays itself out. (Obama's father was a member of the Luo tribe, like Raila Odinga, the leader of the Kenyan opposition, whose people are protesting the recent election.)''

Note: will some inquiring mind among the journalists investigate Obama's paternal lines to see if any of his African ancestors were slave traders or slave-hunters? No? I thought not; it doesn't fit the liberal view of history, in which only European-descended people are guilty.

In the American memory, slavery and then the war to abolish it are taken to be the two poles of the story, but it isn't that simple. If racial injustice continued to be a hallmark of life in the United States, it was thought to be an inevitable, but essentially unchosen consequence of the "250 years of unrequited toil," in Abraham Lincoln's phrase, that were imposed on kidnapped Africans and their descendants. Nearly a million Americans died in the war to end slavery, and - still in the American memory - the nation has felt badly ever since that slavery's hangover includes discrimination against black people to this day.

The conventional wisdom, given powerful articulation a generation ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is that the plight of African-Americans - from broad family dysfunction, to almost unshakeable poverty, to disproportionate incarceration rates of black males - is a tragic consequence of the social evil that America nobly renounced in the mid-19th century. Black people are socially disadvantaged, according to this narrative, because of the unhealed wound that was inflicted on them across the early centuries. Innately equal, yes, but they have been made a crippled people, which accounts for their still inferior position.
[...]
African-Americans have not been passive victims of this heinous tradition. ''

Wait, wait! What's this? Are we about to finally hear how Africans captured other tribesmen as slaves and sold them to Arabs or Europeans?
Obviously not; the media would never call attention to such facts; read on:

Blacks led the resistance to it, culminating in the triumphs of the civil rights movement, preparing the way for leaders like Obama. But his arrival, at a level below the surface of whatever policies he advances, calls into question the dominant way in which this nation thinks of itself - not only in terms of race, but in terms of war. After all, the American belief in the righteousness of mass killing for the sake of abstract values like "freedom" springs not from the Revolution, where the killing was relatively slight and the freedom limited to a merchant class, but from the Civil War, where a spirit of total killing was justified by a professed commitment to racial equality that simply did not exist.''

Whatever happened to the white role in abolishing slavery in the West? How could blacks lead the resistance when they were supposedly in bondage and subjection? Isn't it wonderful how they could lead the resistance, while imprisoned?

Obama embodies more than he can know. "Change" is his mantra, but the potential for transformation goes far beyond the kinds of policies pursued in Washington. Those policies are rooted in assumptions sunk deep into the national psyche, and into the structure of memory that gives it shape. War is not necessarily redemptive. Africans are not necessarily disadvantaged. African-Americans are not mere victims. Race, for that matter, need not be definitive. An old story is offered a new ending - which is the beginning America has been awaiting. The day has come.''

Obama is being groomed not just to be the Democrat nominee, or the next President, but to be some kind of messianic figure who will deliver us all. He is like a Moses figure who not only leads His People out of bondage but frees the villainous white race from their guilt. Except it won't work that way; the guilt would only be intensified.

The one baffling thing about this melodrama about our 'heritage of slavery and racism' is: what has it got to do with Barack Hussein Obama? His ancestors were not slaves, at least not in this country. His only connection to American slavery is through his ostensible slave-holding white ancestors. So why is he the victim in this saga and not one of the culprits? Is this insane?

Obama's ancestors were not among those who were brought to this continent as slaves. There is no reason to make him a symbol of the suffering slaves and there is no reason for a guilt-fest over slavery in connection with his candidacy. If there is, then surely Obama should take the lead in apologizing for his slave-owning white ancestors. But instead he is associated with the noble victims and not the arch-villainous slaveowners. Will someone please explain this to me? It makes no sense. Not an iota.

But according to the bizarre logic of the liberal media, Obama represents suffering slaves, and his candidacy is a great test. Only his election, seemingly, would mean a 'happy ending' to the tragic story of 'racism', and presumably his defeat would be an unhappy ending, proof that the country was still incurably sick and racist.

This is what I said some months ago: Obama's candidacy would be used as the ultimate test of America's 'racism'. Just as the recently-elected Bobby Jindal's previous defeat at the polls was declared by many to be an indication that Louisiana was incurably 'racist', the same things will be said in Obama's case. We will have racial moralizing and preachifying from the media on a daily basis. The race issue will be put front and center and it will stay there.

And this next story is another indication of what is to come:

Obama gets beefed-up protection

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Secret Service presence has increased for Sen. Barack Obama since his dramatic win in Iowa, amid fears over the safety of the man seeking to become America's first black president.

The Illinois senator's security now rivals that of President Bush, with a dozen Secret Service agents wearing dark suits and earpieces leading bomb-sniffing dogs through event venues, sweeping all equipment brought by journalists and flanking the candidate as he plunges into crowds of supporters.

"For many black supporters, there is a lot of anxiety that he will be killed, and it is on people's minds," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor of political science and contemporary black culture.

"You can't make a prediction like this — like he has 'a 50 percent chance of getting shot.' But the greater his visibility and the greater his access to people, there is a danger," she said.

This is stereotyping, as far as I am concerned; it is presuming that the country is crawling with violent racist whites who are lying in wait to harm Obama.

Mr. Obama, who reportedly resisted asking for Secret Service protection but personally requested a detail of agents after friends insisted, has been under federal watch since early last year. No one will say whether he has received an explicit death threat — his campaign said yesterday only that "we don't comment on security" — but officials have tracked racist chatter on white-supremacist Web sites.

The Internet is rife with theories that someone may try to assassinate the senator — typing into Google "assassinate Obama" brings up more than 2,000 hits. Anyone from Islamist terrorists to racist Americans to operatives of Halliburton and Blackwater are speculated about, but other, more nefarious Web sites are for real, according to reports from the Associated Press.''

Does this mean that anyone who publicly opposes or criticizes Obama will be under scrutiny? Obviously the internet is being monitored for 'hate speech.' Will criticism of Obama, even principled criticism, be subject to investigation under the new 'hate crime' legislation? Will it be prima facie proof of 'racism' to oppose Obama or to say unflattering or unfriendly things about him?

I've said before that Obama will be protected from criticism by virtue of his race.

I guarantee we will see the race card being played like never before in the upcoming election. This will be made a test of "how far America has come". We had better not 'fail' the test, will be the mantra.

The annual ritual of penance for the sins of our ancestors, which begins around this time every year, and which usually continues through February's 'black history month' will be intensified, and I have a feeling we will have a 'black history year' ahead of us.

I think that those pollyannas who think that an Obama presidency or even an Obama nomination would 'heal the divisions' are as wrong as they can be; the divisions will be intensified thanks to the hectoring media and the grievance-mongers.