By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The presidential election cycle is underway, which means that Michael Erick Dyson is pledging his undying love for Barack Obama. Apparently, the president’s handlers have favored Dyson with “access” – a quality that is worth far more to some folks than truth and self-respect. “What it all comes down to in Dyson’s world, is rubbing elbows with the president and bragging about it.”

“Why does the only response to Obama have to be slavish devotion and a political stand down?”

Not only is there no longer a black press [4] which represents the interests of black people, but the presence of black people in corporate media is also of dubious value. Take the case of “public intellectual” Michael Erick Dyson. Dyson has recently been a substitute host on MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Show, and he has displayed his unique gifts for spouting nonsense and/or boldly displaying opportunism when speaking on the subject of Barack Obama.

Dyson can’t seem to make up his mind about Obama. In January 2008 Dyson debated Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford on the subject of black support for Obama on Democracy Now [5]. Dyson made it clear that he was a wholehearted Obama supporter who advocated suspending any and all criticism or questioning of the candidate in order to reach the holy grail of seeing him elected president.

That debate took place shortly after the Iowa caucus victory proved that Obama could get votes from white people. At that time Dyson proudly proclaimed his unwavering support of Obama, gave him a pass on speaking up for black people, and directly stated the phony mantra of the Obama sycophant in 2008, that they would “hold his feet to the fire” after he won.
The Dyson/Obama love fest didn’t last for very long, however. Just a few months after Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Dyson was interviewed by Davey D [6] and had rather scathing words of criticism for the man whom just a year earlier he said should be treated as if infallible.

“He is willing to sacrifice the interests of African Americans in deference to a conception of universalism because it won’t offend white people.”

“We are so grateful for having a black person in the office we don’t demand anything of him.”

“I expect the president of the United States to address issues of race.”

“He’s fallen short and we must hold him accountable.”

These words, while truthful, didn’t last long either. Now Dyson is not only an Obama lover again, but appears to be in part because he now has up close and personal access to POTUS. Dyson can now preface his statements with words like this, “A couple of years ago when he and I were in the Oval Office talking…”

On the July 25th broadcast [7] of the Ed Show, one of Dyson’s guests rather obliquely mentioned that there is some criticism of Obama because he delivers on issues of importance to the gay and latino communities while doing nothing of the sort for black Americans.

“What is wrong with questioning or criticizing Obama?”

According to Dyson, this mild observation unleashed the wrath of Obama worshippers in social media, and on the July 26th show [8] Dyson let everyone know that he is still an Obama guy and the president is a Dyson guy too. “I ain`t one of them [haters]. How do I know? He [Obama] told me so at the Olympic warm up game the other day in D.C. when he hugged me and thanked me for my love and support. When you get at that level, holler back at me.” Yes, that is what it all comes down to in Dyson’s world, rubbing elbows with the president and bragging about it.

He went further. “Make no mistake, I`m riding hard on the Obama bandwagon. I`ve been on that journey a lot longer than the Black Willy come latelies who voted overwhelmingly against Obama when he ran for Congress and who initially spurned him when he asked for their votes for the presidency because they were beholden to Hillary and Bill Clinton.”
Dyson is an academic, a writer and a minister, but as guest host on The Ed Show, he should act as a journalist. The response to his critics should have been that as such, he has a duty to present a wide variety of viewpoints, even as they relate to dear leader Obama.

Dyson had a unique opportunity to ask questions which are still fraught in the black community. What is wrong with questioning or criticizing Obama? Why does the only response to Obama have to be slavish devotion and a political stand down?

Of course, it may be unfair to expect professional ethics from Dyson when the rest of the journalistic profession is no better. There are huge incentives to being a court scribe instead of a journalist. Scribes get plum assignments, access to movers and shakers, prestigious prizes, and big paychecks because they represent the interests of the people they cover when they should be asking them hard questions.

Dyson’s routine makes it easy to make fun of him. His gift of gab borders on buffoonery, but it has made him a hot commodity. He could put his glibness to good use and spark a conversation about Obama, but that is not to be. Now we get “black Willy come latelies” and man crush hugs.

The hard truth is that Black Agenda Report and its allies are unique in their determination to continue advocating for self-determination and movement based leftist politics, and not just idol worship of the black face in the high place. Dyson is not alone in changing his mind about Obama depending upon whether or not he has access to the Oval Office. There are not many principled people in the world of political commentary, but anyone reading these words doesn’t have to be concerned about that. No one at Black Agenda Report is in danger of mincing words about Obama, or the rest of American political leadership. We also aren’t in danger of getting any hugs.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [9] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.
[10]
Michael Eric Dyson Obamarama
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-michael-eric-dyson-and-barack-obama

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Looking for answers to the flood of excuses offered for the betrayals and failures of the Obama presidency. We offer our gentle readers this handy list of ten of the most frequently encountered excuses for the misfeasance, malfeasance, non-feasance and disappointments of the Obama presidency.

One of America’s top radical Black intellectuals and activists demolishes the carefully constructed image of Obama as a champion of popular interests.

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon | 04/27/2011

QUICK ANSWER: This excuse supposes Barack Obama really is dedicated to undoing the horrible damage of the Bush-Cheney crime wave. There is no evidence of this. You have to look mighty long and hard to find any Bush era crime that Obama has reversed. But you can find plenty of Bush era crimes and atrocities President Obama has doubled down on.

Whatever “doing the best he can means, it does not include undoing the Bush-Cheney crime wave.

QUICK ANSWER: Like excuses 7 and 8, this one is designed to deflect blame not just from the president, but from Democrats in Congress. The president and his party passed their 2009 health care bill, which was really a bailout of health insurance companies through the Senate with a simple majority. Congressional Democrats can sweep aside the super majority rule any time they choose. They choose not to. But the excuse is too valuable to lose.

EXCUSE NUMBER 2: “Only the most naïve souls among us believe a president can or should work for justice at home and peace abroad. Wise up. Do for self, and be content with the symbolic value of a pretty brown family in that big White House.

QUICK ANSWER: This excuse is based on an apocryphal tale about a 1940s meeting between black socialist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph, the first lady and President Franklin Roosevelt. After hearing a litany of black demands, Roosevelt is supposed to have said he agreed with everything Randolph told him, but that he must compel the president to do those worthy things.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Marietta GA, where he is a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party, and one of the principals of a technology and consulting firm. He can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

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Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/top_ten_excuses_4_obama_failures_betrayals

Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-misleadership-class
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/democrats
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obamarama
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/excuses_excuses.jpg
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By Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

President Obama seems positively eager to dismantle the safety nets put in place in the Thirties and strengthened by a Black-led movement in the Sixties. He calls it “Winning the Future” – a future that “holds nothing but further pain and decline for Black America.” By virtually all indices, Black fortunes have plummeted under the First Black President, whose policy is to let the (chocolate) chips fall where they may.

“Where previous Democratic administrations have treated Black communities with benign neglect, Obama’s policy is best described as depraved indifference.”

It was one of the First Black President’s greatest “I Have Nothing for the Blacks” moments. “My general approach is that if the economy is strong, that it will lift all boats,” replied the man who had brought millions to the Washington Mall just three months earlier, transforming an inaugural formality into a must-be-there-if-you-are-breathing Great Black Hajj [10]. Obama then offered smug assurances that “folks who are most vulnerable are most likely to be helped because they need the most help.” Under his presidency, the exact opposite would occur.

In the year that followed, Obama would pump $14 trillion into Wall Street’s accounts, the biggest transfer of wealth in human history, but the “rising tide” would swamp Black America. Black male unemployment, which stood at an official rate of 17.2 percent when Showell posed his question, would exceed 20 percent as the crisis deepened, with never a hint of targeted policy consideration from the Obama administration. Today, at 16.8 percent, Black male unemployment [11] is markedly higher than twice that of white men (7.7 percent) – a significant widening of the great gap that has come to be thought of as “normal,” beginning in the early Seventies. The “hidden” chasms of Black joblessness have grown even more under Obama’s economic tutelage, as Blacks disproportionately crowd the subterranean corridors of the long-term and “discouraged” unemployed – a despairing cohort whose ranks have swelled to record levels during this rich man’s “recovery.”

“Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president.”

Black wealth has virtually disappeared. Data gathered prior to 2007, when the full scope of the subprime mortgage catastrophe was just becoming known, showed median Black family wealth at about $5,000, one-twentieth [12] of the median white family’s $100,000 holdings. Since then, the bottom has fallen out from under whole communities, with Blacks hit by far the hardest. By the second quarter of 2010, Black home ownership had declined [13] from its 2007 level of 48 percent to 46.2 percent, a 3.7 percent drop, and still falling – a guarantee that median Black household wealth is well below the $5,000 registered in 2007. (Median wealth for single Black women [14] at the top of their earning capacity, ages 36 to 49, was precisely $5 – five dollars! – in 2010.)

Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president. As election year 2008 began, Obama took the most pro-banker [15], laissez faire capitalist position on home foreclosures of the three major Democratic presidential candidates. John Edwards backed a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on interest rates, while Hillary Clinton supported a “voluntary” halt and $30 billion in federal aid to homeowners. But Obama opposed any moratorium, mandatory or voluntary, and balked at cash for homeowners and stricken communities. As president, his program to stem the flow of foreclosures has been pitiful, near worthless in slowing the spiral that has taken down much of what once considered itself the Black middle class.

“His program to stem the flow of foreclosures has been pitiful.”

Where previous Democratic administrations have treated Black communities with benign neglect, Obama’s policy is best described as depraved indifference.

budgetary formula [16] includes only $1 in closed corporate loopholes and higher taxes on the rich, for every $3 he slices from federal spending, most of it from education, health and other social programs. Then, like a cat scratching in kitty-litter, Obama tries to hide his actual deeds with a wonderfully crafted but totally fabulist speech: “We will all need to make sacrifices,” he said [17], without quantifying what was being sacrificed by whom. “But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in.”

Obama has already explained, to anyone that was actually listening, what kind of America he believes in. It is one in which people are tossed about to sink or swim with the tides.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [18].

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• black unemployment Black wealth Obama budget Obama foreclosures Obama rising tide Obamarama winning the future

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama%E2%80%99s-depraved-indifference

Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-unemployment
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-wealth
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obama-budget
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obama-foreclosures
[5] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obama-rising-tide
[6] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obamarama
[7] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/winning-future
[8] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/Obama Indifferent.png
[9] http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-preserves-entrenched-power-sidesteps-racial-disparities
[10] http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/great-black-hajj-2009
[11] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
[12] http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/study-shows-blacks-will-never-gain-wealth-parity-whites-under-current-system
[13] http://www.thenorthstarnews.com/Issue.aspx?ID=2010-10-12
[14] http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/median-wealth-of-single-black-women-is-5/
[15] http://www.thenation.com/article/subprime-obama
[17] http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/04/13/text-of-obama-speech-on-the-deficit/
[18] mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

By Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford | 03/30/2011

Whatever happens to Moammar Gaddafi, an independent Libya is not on the U.S. agenda. “Obama hopes to ‘stabilize’ Libya under indirect U.S. dominion through a kind of protectorate involving various ‘international’ entities, on the Haitian model.” The president’s doctrine of “humanitarian” warfare – like his rhetoric – is merely a sweetened derivative of George Bush’s more crudely presented policies. “In the final analysis, Euro-American hegemony means crushing the aspirations of all Arabs in the sand.”

“Imperialism’s refreshed Obama-face is looking more than ever like a grotesque Halloween mask, and he knows it.”

In Libya, Barack Obama now faces the central contradiction of his presidency: How to accomplish George Bush’s strategic objective, to wrest back America’s post-Soviet global supremacy – a goal Obama has always, and openly, shared – while avoiding becoming embroiled in another Bush-style “dumb war.” This was the trick that Obama promised he alone was equipped to pull off by adorning the U.S. empire with a new, engaging, articulate, colored “face.”

Obama strains to maintain that prefabricated face in the midst of an explosive and wholly unexpected political earthquake in the Arab world. The United States, as we wrote on March 23 [8], “wants desperately to position itself on the ‘right’ side” of the unfolding Arab Reawakening and, if possible, to “appropriate to itself a section of the ‘Arab revolt.’” Having found – and helped create – that opportunity in Libya, the Americans and their European co-conspirators rushed in with a reenactment of George Bush’s “Shock and Awe” – a “full spectrum dominance” assault involving hundreds of cruise missiles that reminded even Moammar Gaddafi’s worst enemies that, in the final analysis, Euro-American hegemony means crushing the aspirations of all Arabs in the sand.

As the U.S. discovered in 2003, “Shock and Awe” repels as much as it impresses. Like the Bush Middle East/Western Asia offensive that initially targeted over 30 governments for overthrow (including Libya) but got bogged down in Iraq, Obama and the French and British are in danger of having “reached too far.” Imperialism’s refreshed Obama-face is looking more than ever like a grotesque Halloween mask, and he knows it.

“The Americans and their European co-conspirators rushed in with a reenactment of George Bush’s ‘Shock and Awe.’”

The president’s Monday press conference was an effort to reposition the United States, and to readjust his own face to the Arab world. The lull that followed in “coalition” air strikes on Gaddafi forces, which allowed battered Libyan units to retake ground briefly held by the highly disorganized and foreign-dependent rebels, could serve as a means for the U.S. to squeeze the bravado out of the Benghazi-based fighters – a kind of discipline by denial. Despite the West’s boundless praise for these purportedly democratic “freedom fighters,” the imperial plan does not include allowing them – whoever they are – to form a regime with authority over the country. More cautious elements within the Obama administration may have arrived at an accommodation with NATO member Turkey, whose own interests in the region are incompatible with those of the British and French – and, ultimately, the United States.

Obama acknowledged that the all-out assault on Libya too overtly resembles Bush-style regime change: “To be blunt,” he said, “we went down that road in Iraq…. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.” Yet, regime change is a defining privilege of imperialism and, therefore, Obama reiterated that the American position is that Gaddafi must go.

The contradiction, which causes Obama grief in Manifest Destiny America, is exponentially more acute in the midst of the Arab Re-Awakening. The president’s carefully crafted language indicates that Obama hopes to “stabilize” Libya under indirect U.S. dominion through a kind of protectorate involving various “international” entities, on the Haitian model. The key paragraph is:

“Gaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous. Moreover, even after Gaddafi does leave power, forty years of tyranny has left Libya fractured and without strong civil institutions. The transition to a legitimate government that is responsive to the Libyan people will be a difficult task. And while the United States will do our part to help, it will be a task for the international community, and – more importantly – a task for the Libyan people themselves.”

“Obama hopes to draw an illusory line between his and Bush’s worldviews, that will be palatable to a new an emboldened Arab audience.”

This is not a formula for rule by the Benghazi crowd, whose Islamist elements are indigestible, if not anathema, to U.S. policymakers and image-spinners. It is a rationale for a long, Haiti-like occupation under a compliant United Nations or improvised multi-national façade. Arab nationalism cannot be allowed free rein anywhere, since imperial rule abhors all nationalisms but its own.

Since the campaign days, Obama has struggled to infuse his deceptive rhetoric – which is really all that separates him from Bush – with the language of “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P [3]. Cloaked in the cynical camouflage of “humanitarian” objectives, Obama hopes to draw an illusory line between his and Bush’s worldviews, that will be palatable to a new an emboldened Arab audience. It is a doomed mission, not only because of the inherent contradictions between Arab aspirations and imperial dominance, but because American rulers are incapable of speaking to a warlike U.S. nationalism and addressing Arab aspirations at the same time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the top U.S. diplomat, cannot even maintain the discipline of a consistent lie. She admitted that widespread bloodletting by Gaddafi’s forces was a fantasy and invention:

“I know that the nightly news cannot cover a humanitarian crisis that thankfully did not happen, but it is important to remember that many, many Libyans are safer today because the international community took action.”

There was no humanitarian crisis, and it will become increasingly impossible to frame the Euro-American assault in North Africa as anything other than an imperial offensive, designed to keep the Arab world in its place and to usurp African sovereignty over the continent’s resources.

Obama’s “face” is melting.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [9].

[10]

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama%E2%80%99s-north-african-war-face
Links:

[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/africom
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/oil-and-resource-wars
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/r2p
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/us-war-libya
[5] http://blackagendareport.com/category/africa/libya
[6] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/obamarama
[7] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/obama_war_face.jpg
[8] http://blackagendareport.com/content/update-american-dilemma-libya-bomb-invade-partition-or-all-above-0
[9] mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com