What is it about Barack Obama’s race that makes some people act crazy, if not downright vicious? The latest sign of unchecked insanity turned up in the recent anti-Obama diatribe of Princeton professor Cornel West. The president of the United States, said West, is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” Now isn’t that a tad bit nasty and delusional?
But such rantings are not limited to West. Nor do they start with him.
Diane Fedele, a California local Republican leader, displayed her own meanness in 2008 when she included in her party’s newsletter a picture that showed the face of Obama surrounded by watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken. The photo, which was shaped as a currency note, had the inscription “Obama Bucks” under his picture.
Associating black people with poverty programs is a shopworn tactic of bigots. The same year Fedele produced her pictorial, a joke circulated on the Internet that listed American presidents and the currency denominations that bore their faces. It read: “Washington, $1 dollar bill,” “Jefferson, $2 dollar bill,” “Lincoln, $5 dollar bill,” “Hamilton, $10 dollar bill,” “Jackson, $20 dollar bill.” Then it said, “Obama, Food Stamps.”
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Washington Post