If the president’s State of The Union Address proved anything, it was that congressional Republicans (and many Democrats as well) simply refuse to accept this man as president. Racism being as intangible and often as inexplicable as sexism, I’m sure the number of white men apparently tweeting (using handheld devices to post to Twiitter.Com) while the president spoke seemed unbearably disrespectful, unprecedented in both scale and manner. Grown men behaving like teenage girls who can’t put the blasted thing down even for a minute. I have never before in my life seen such capriciously calculated displays of disrespect and, yes, irrational and overtly racist hatred aimed at a sitting U.S. president. I am told John F. Kennedy had similar detractors, particularly in the far right. But the rule has always been to show the president of the United States a reasonable and expected measure of respect and temperance, most especially during such national events as the State of The Union.
Of course, Obama was heckled during last year’s address to a joint session of Congress (it wasn’t officially a state of the union speech). And every black man, woman and child knew what the talking head pundits debated and poked at with a stick: that Joe Wilson’s loathing of the president was—as is most other burgeoning irrational hatred directed toward the president—colored by racism. To deny racism plays any role in the surreal refusal to accept a duly elected sitting president simply insults my intelligence, and I’d guess that of millions of other Americans who sat horrified, watching flabby old men ignore one of the most provocative SOTU speeches in U.S. history.
Which isn’t to say it was one of the best. Obama’s cautious tip-toeing around likely only added to the disingenuous front of these guys’ refusal to accept him as president. It boggles that so many of these men accepted George W. Bush—demonstrably and unquestioningly the worst U.S. president in modern history—while treating Obama with a contempt I can scarcely imagine.
It reminded me of James Earl Jones playing a U.S. circuit judge in the Jodie Foster film Somersby, gasps elicited from the gallery as Jones’ judge entered the 19th century courtroom. There was a kind of reluctant, minimal respect accorded Jones, whose character was packing heat at the time, but Jones’ thoughtful portrayal told the same story the president’s face often does: he expected no less.
As the first elected black president of the U.S., I suspect Barack Obama knew the hypocritical racism in government would not only be exposed but would be on full display. The only people who can’t apparently see it are the racists themselves, most of whom cling to increasingly ridiculous and torturously thin distinctions between racism and political differences.
I’ll have to check, but I seem to recall Republicans hated Bill Clinton. Despised him. Wasted a billion dollars on a useless trial over what should have been a private family matter simply to humiliate him and sully his record. But, at this writing, I cannot recall a single time when even one of those Republicans treated Clinton as abusively as they routinely treat this president.
This lack of civility, on full display to the world, only encourages fringe wing-nuts who, seeing these hateful white men behave like children, reinforce and validate their own fringe thinking as racist vilification of the president becomes both acceptable and deeply ingrained into our society.
And I have to blame the president for some of it. I’m sure he’s been coached not to respond to senators and congressmen dozing off or ignoring him as they send text messages, but he is the president of the United States. He should have embarrassed them. He should have pointed out, there and in the moment, that their calculated displays of ignorance and hatred are precisely the kind of incivility that has polarized the political process. Obama should have called these guys out—not for personal reasons or out of ego, but because of the lesson being taught to our children and our society. A lesson that will be taught whether the president teaches it or the bloated, ignorant, hateful morons wearing their racism on their sleeve do.
Even sadder: I’d bet serious money (if I bet, or if I had serious money) that most if not all of these guys slouching in their chairs and pretending to ignore a man they dressed up and drove across town to see consider themselves Christians. As if Christ would ever, under any circumstances, behave that way. This behavior is the political equivalent of Church Folk. Nasty, easily-offended, motor-mouthed, gregarious, mean-spirited, ridiculous people who, I suppose, measure their status in the Kingdom by how fluent they are in tongues or how well they dance. These are people trapped in a bubble, Lost In the Matrix, having become so consumed with their charismatic Sunday experience that they’ve completely lost track of Christ.
These blubbery morons showing contempt to the president of the United States have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Jesus Christ. And yet they claim to speak for Him and to act in His name.
It was a good speech. Could have been better if the president wasn’t being so cautious and professerly. Not sure if the lecture to the Republicans would do any good, though it certainly was cathartic to many of us who are sick and tired of the childishness of the Party Of No. But the speech felt halting and piecemeal, the president unable to lay out an inspiring or even hopeful vision—just a collection of legislative ideas.
And I think he missed an even greater opportunity to improve America by interrupting himself long enough to ask the Senators to either pay attention or leave. If they’re going to behave like children, they should be treated like children. More important, the right lesson—that incivility is simple not acceptable—needed to be taught. Instead, Obama took the high ground, ignored these guys, and let them send the message that undermines everything we are as a people and everything we claim to be.
