There
is no greater fan of Bill Maher than I am, and I love the term
“politically incorrect.”
For those of you who
don’t know what the term means, it is “someone or something which does
not meet a standard of political correctness. And if this definition
seems vague, it is, because it was obviously written by someone who was
trying to be politically correct, by someone who honors rules and parses
statement, enjoys syntax, and lives by that golden book, Modern English
Usage. There probably isn’t a politically incorrect bone in the body of
the writer.
When defining a person
who practices the political incorrect, the word irreverent comes to
mind, as does honest, forthcoming, a tell-it-like-it-is, take no
prisoners approach to truth. Satire can be involved, straight wit, and
surely no one is better at engaging in that meme of political
incorrectness than Maher himself.
There are others who have
picked up Maher’s mantle, satirists with a progressive proclivity, and
even those on the right can play with truth. But Maher, well, no one
does it quite the way he does. Like a poet he weaves truth into stunning
iconoclasm often leaving those less able to get past the bullsh*t with
their mouths hanging wide and their eyes bulging horror, if not feigned
insult or, for that matter real.
ABC is the perfect
example of feigned horror at truth; it is the network that cancelled one
of the few decent offerings on network television when Mahers’ show
Politically Incorrect became just too much truth for the uptight
executives of a mainstream network to handle.
Truth is often offensive,
isn’t it?
So, here we are in 2008,
deep in the grit of a political campaign when rules we all knew and many
hated while some love are being broken with an African-American man
running for president against a female opponent, and look how far we
have NOT come while America remains hostage to the politically correct.
The truth is that
everyone is being so polite – politically correct – that the bogey man
of race, and the bogey woman of gender politics that hang a gauntlet
over the American electorate, is a dark shadow of discomfort that even
the politically incorrect have been loathe to address.
Until now; following
Obama’s Pennsylvania trouncing by Hillary Clinton. Now Barack Obama’s
black magic (yes, it is politically incorrect to use the term black
magic in the same sentence as Barack Obama) suddenly isn’t looking so
magical anymore, and even the politically correct are having to address
the fact that the color of Obama’s skin seems to be making a difference
in the vote tallies, a problem that if Obama is the nominee, may cost
the Democratic Party the election in the fall contest.
Two days following the
Pennsylvania Primary, when the issue of race so glaringly played into
Obama’s loss, the papers and their pundits who had not dared to wade
into the issue of race before, are knee-deep in its discussion.
Of course the Clinton
Campaign had identified Obama’s problem long ago and had tried to warn
the party in closed door discussions of its existence, but no one wanted
to listen, and some still don’t.
The Democrats, have
essentially crowned their candidate before he earned his coronation and
now they risk a party civil war. Why? Because in the parties’ political
correctness and in fairness, naivďte if not myopia, it did not address
the reality that Obama’s candidacy was showing its vulnerabilities due
to the race issue at least as far back as South Carolina.
Now it’s interesting to
watch how the different factions of the party establishment deal with
the truth when it starts to hit them square in the black -face. House
Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and DNC Chairman,
Howard Dean, are addressing the reality of their candidate’s race
problem by circumventing any real conversation about it. They’re letting
it be known that they intend to bring the contest to a halt as soon as
it’s politically correctly possible and Obama will be the party’s
nominee, even if it means political suicide.
The Clinton camp, with
surrogates such as Lanny Davis, Governor Ed Rendall, and Indiana
Governor Evan Bayh are asking the party to wait to see how “things” play
out. But they know that Obama hasn’t been able to carry the blue-collar
voters (code for white vote) in the major battleground states they must
win in the fall, of which Hillary has won all except Wisconsin, Utah,
Vermont and Obama’s home state of Illinois.
So, label me racist, call
me whatever, but if the Democratic Party nominates Barack Obama for
their candidate they may be doing the politically correct thing to do,
but they will have proven themselves to be politically incorrect.
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