The Re-Niggering of Barack Obama:
Watching Chris "Behold My Lipless Shit-Eating Grin" Matthews and John "I'm Not On Your Side" McCain, who happen to be white, discuss the dust-up between McCain and freshman Senator Barack Obama, who happens to be black, on My Balls Are Hard last night was uncomfortable, in one of those "oh-shit-I-just-saw-my-sister-naked-and-she's-hot" kind of ways. The two pasty-faced assholes chuckled and chortled about the letter that McCain sent to Obama, essentially treating a fellow Senator like a syphilitic Saigon whore. You can read the letters on Obama's Senate website; he's posted them without comment, which is the subtle way of saying of McCain, "God, what a wad of fuck."

Beyond the issue itself, that of how to proceed (not even on what to do, but what steps to take to get to doing something) on "ethics reform," which will be gutted and fileted like a mercury-ridden trout by the House before it's over, the whole kerfuffle seems to be over McCain misreading Obama. It's all about McCain's posturing, a little dance he can do, a happy, if gimpy, jig before the GOP faithful, where he can sway and say, "Look how I can take out the uppity negro."

The racial politics are impossible to avoid on this. Would McCain have done the same with Joe Biden? With Hillary Clinton (who, let us remember, is also still in her first term in the Senate)? Of course not. He'd've taken them aside, clarified, tried to put aside any bitterness. But Obama's the star, man, charismatic, more fuckable than any other big ass sittin' in that chamber (sorry, Rick Santorum), the very real contender for the vice-presidency now, and he's a real moderate, too. It's fuckin' scary for the GOP. So it must be demonstrated that he is just another nigger, the "boy," if you will, and that he must be put in his place. He's a selfish Sambo, McCain is saying by the end of his letter (which was written in response to a "thank you" note from Obama), questioning Obama's motives for even being in the Senate: "I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us."

Obama's reaction letter to McCain's spittle-ridden bit of enragement (the penning of which surely caused the Arizona Senator's first full erection since his last syphilitic Saigon whore) is so classy, so mutedly firm and resolute, that if any in the media, like, say, Chris Matthews, brought it up, it'd take the glow off McCain's red, shiny head. It'd also put the ethics scandal clearly back in the Republicans' court, despite the GOP's best efforts to bob and weave and deceive.

The Re-Empowering of Coretta Scott King:
Here's some quotes from Coretta Scott King from the last couple of years:
On Martin Luther King Day, 2003 (from the Washington Post):
"We commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. as a great champion of peace who warned us that war was a poor chisel for carving out a peaceful tomorrow...May his challenge and his example guide and inspire us to seek peaceful alternatives to a war with Iraq and military conflict in the Middle East."

On March 12, 2003, speaking in Bellevue, Washington, praising the then-large peace movement (from the Seattle Times):
"People from all walks of life are coming out from the shadows, rising up in ever-growing numbers in cities and towns across America, and indeed around the world. With one voice they are saying that: No, war is not the answer.

"Surely, we can do a better job of reaching out to our adversaries and offer them incentives to end their hostility to the U.S. Despite the horrors of Sept. 11 and all of the violence associated with that terrible day, I look to the future with hope, because I know that human beings of all races, religions and nations have an amazing capacity for kindness, decency and love. Unconditional love is the most powerful healing force on earth."

On August 24, 2003, speaking in Washington, D.C. on the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington (from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution):
Regarding poverty: "My husband said we refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vault of opportunity in this nation. And so we've come to cash a check."

Regarding the war in Iraq: "Nonviolence must become the foundation of America's foreign policy. If we want to disarm the world, we must disarm our hearts."

Finally, on January 21, 2005, in a speech in Denver, Colorado (from the Denver Post):
"I think we can do a better job of exploring alternatives to military conflict from now on. We can solve conflicts without terrorism and war. This is the only way to lasting peace and security."

In death, the Right, especially, so needs to neuter people who disagreed with them, taking away their real meaning for something more nebulous, "universal," and utterly meaningless. Like, for instance, what President Bush said yesterday at Coretta Scott King's funeral: "Having loved a leader, she became a leader. And when she spoke, America listened closely, because her voice carried the wisdom and goodness of a life well lived." Bush, who did not listen at all to what King had to say, offered more generic platitudes.

So the mini-uproar over what Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery said at the funeral is laughable. Talking about peace and economic justice at Coretta Scott King's funeral is as natural as talking about, say, Catholicism at the Pope's.

Deaths have meanings because of the particulars of a life, not because they can be reduced to fortune cookie messages. Lowery, Carter and others stated, to the President's obvious, slouching discomfort, that the woman's life work continues, and if that makes some people unhappy, well, they weren't too happy with the work or the life to begin with.