Newsweek.com
Uh, this is the least of our problems. Duh.
Fiddling while the American empire burns
Future first lady Michelle Obama took heat from jingoist Amerifascists (a.k.a. Repugnicans) for having stated in February that she finally was proud of her nation.
I envy her; I’m still waiting for the day when I can be proud of my nation.
Where to begin?
First there has been the New Yorker magazine cover flap. The political cartoon of Michelle and Barack Obama that graces the cover of the July 21 issue created a tempest in a teacup.
My fellow Americans are obsessed with such things as the presence or absence of U.S. flag lapel pins, but they routinely shit and piss all over the First Amendment.
The First Amendment, you see, is way too sacrosanct to ever actually be exercised. We must keep it hermetically sealed behind glass, protected by armed guards. Maybe, just maybe, we can let members of the public glimpse it now and then. Maybe.
The New Yorker cartoon was nothing. If there is anything wrong with the cartoon, it’s that it’s not all that funny. Or fresh – the xenophobic, fear-mongering “B. Hussein Obama is a Muslim” myth, propagated by wingnuts and the wingnut propaganda machine, has been circulating among mouth-breathing red-staters (“red-stater,” by the way, to me is more of a state of mind than one’s geographical location) for some time now. Yawn.
Leftist editorialist and political cartoonist Ted Rall’s Obama-related ’toons are much fresher and funnier. Here are a couple of them:
Anyway, to hear even left-wingers slam The New Yorker as though the First Amendment doesn't cover something that someone somewhere might find offensive (we Americans must not be offended!) is disturbing. Of all people, lefties should value free speech.
And rather than ask why The New Yorker ran the gasp!-politically-incorrect ’toon on its cover, we should ask why it’s apparently so damned horrible to be a Muslim in the United States anyway. We are, after all, supposed to be the “melting pot,” the Land o’ Tolerance where there is both freedom of religion and separation of church and state, which means that not only is someone free to be a Muslim (remember FreedomTM?), but that we’re not supposed to care all that much what our political candidates believe in, as long as they don’t intend to govern as theocrats.
By slamming The New Yorker for its July 21 cover aren’t we saying, indirectly, that yes, there is something wrong with being a Muslim? (Even Barack Obama, by distancing himself from the myth that he's a Muslim, contributes to the widespread belief among Americans that there's something wrong with being a Muslim. Can't he say, "No, I'm not a Muslim -- not that there's anything wrong with that!"?)
And then, even though the North Pole is melting, we're on the verge of another great depression, and the Vietraq War rages on, we make a big to-do over the fact that Jesse Jackson not only said that he'd like to cut Barack Obama's balls off (someone already did, Jesse, someone already did), but that Jackson also uttered the word “nigger.” Horrors!
Here’s the deal: Jesse Jackson is black. If he wishes to use the word “nigger” -- especially when it's pretty fucking clear that he doesn't hate black people -- he may do so. (Similarly, as a gay man, if I wish to use "faggot" or "queer," I may do so.) There’s a big fucking difference between a skinhead with a baseball bat using the term “nigger” and someone like Jesse Jackson using the word “nigger.” So let’s please not act as though context doesn’t matter. Let’s please not be that fucking stupid. Thank you.
Not only is Jesse Jackson black, but it’s his First Amendment right to use the word “nigger” if he wishes to do so. Just as it is mine. (I refuse to write “the n-word.” And I’m white.)
With global warming, with a record federal budget deficit and a national economy in ruins, with baby boomers poised to suck up every last resource and to leave nothing for mine and future generations of Americans, with Middle Easterners having good reason to hate the United States for generations to come, and with an overall very bleak future for the United States of America, I think that we have a lot bigger fish to fry than The New Yorker's "offensive" cartoon or Jesse Jackson’s use of a politically incorrect racial epithet.
“I … pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people," Jackson said in the aftermath of N-word-gate.
Keep praying, Jesse, keep praying. I’m praying with you.
P.S. This 'toon of Ted Rall's has little to nothing to do with this topic, but I think it's one of his funniest in a long time:
8:16:24 PM 
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