Obama is hip to the bone!
During his first 100 days as president of the United States, Barack
Obama revealed how different he is from all the white men who preceded
him in the Oval Office, and the differences run deeper — in substance
and style — than the color of his skin.
Barack Hussein Obama is the nation’s first hip president.
This, of course, is subject to debate. But watch him walk. Listen to
him talk. See the body language, the expressions, the clothes. He’s
got attitude, rhythm, a sense of humor, contemporary tastes.
This much is clear: Whether dealing with the Wall Street mess,
shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan or fumbling to fill his
Cabinet, Obama leans heavily on personal panache to push political
policies. Truth be told, his style is rooted in something elusive and
hard to define. Pure and simple, it’s hip.
“Being hip is being able to navigate your environment and others’
environments,” like the way Obama traverses racial boundaries, said
John Leland, author of the definitive book “Hip: The History.”
“Obama has this awareness that other presidents haven’t had. He’s
white, and he’s black. He’s an elitist, and he’s regular folk. He’s
not pinned down to a perspective.”
Young is to hip as old is to fogey — an essential characteristic.
Obama has modern instincts and attitudes that appeal to younger
people, and more than any other president in recent memory, that makes
him a role model. He is green, open, athletic, tech-savvy, healthy.
And his hip image certainly isn’t hurt by his wife, who is so
obviously cool — setting trends (Sleeveless! Tending her own garden!),
confidently mingling with superstars, gracing magazine covers coast to
coast.
Consider how, during the campaign, Obama used his personality — the
smile, the jaunty stride and the hip-hop verbiage — to disarm critics,
charm supporters and persuade fence sitters to elect him president. In
an against-the-odds campaign, Obama never lost his poise as he forged
a rapport with a new generation of voters while keeping old heads on
his team. He could go professorial on the need for health care reform
or describe the minutiae of Middle East politics. Still, he begged to
bring his BlackBerry into the Oval Office, a signal that he intends to
remain in touch with the 21st century. Very hip!
Once he settled into the White House, the hip parade didn’t subside.
Early guests included pop artists Stevie Wonder (a campaign
supporter), Alicia Keys, Will.i.am and Sheryl Crow — but also Sweet
Honey in the Rock, a group of socially and politically active a
capella singers with an indie, underground vibe.
Obama strutted onto Jay Leno’s stage and plopped down on the couch,
making him the first sitting president to do that. He unveiled his
March Madness basketball bracket from the Oval Office. And speaking of
basketball, who missed the sight of POTUS dressed in all black,
sitting courtside at a Bulls-Wizards game with a cup of beer and
high-fiving a trash-talking fan? How hip was that?!
It’s so hip that school kids in Albany, N.Y., coined a term for it:
“Baracking.” And it doesn’t stop there. Those in the know at Albany
High greet each other by saying: “What’s up, my Obama?” and they
respond to a sneeze with “Barack you.” Misbehavior is peer-corrected
with the admonition, “Barack’s in the White House,” which translates,
“Show some respect.”
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University,
said it was “just really stunning” that kids were co-opting the
president’s name as a term of endearment and identification.
“This is the most emblematic, positive thing that kids could say,” she
said. “It’s connecting them to him, saying that there’s something
special in the connection between them.”
John F. Kennedy understood the nexus of Hollywood glam and Washington
power, but he wasn’t a hipster. Bill Clinton looked good in Ray-Bans
and did a nice turn with the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” but
in his heart of hearts, Ol’ Bubba was a country boy from the Ozarks
with a need-filled, wonky core — not hip.

Obama’s hipness reinforces that he’s different, yet he’s comfortingly
familiar to Americans who want to revere their presidents as pedestal
material while demanding that they be approachable as the guy next
door.
So what’s hipness got to do with public policy? For Obama, everything.
His personal charisma is a nonverbal form of communication, sending
seemingly conflicting messages: the need for radical and sacrificial
change, yet the reassurance to Americans that he’s as sane and stable
as the guy in the next barber’s chair, said Roger Wilkins, who
recently retired as a history professor at George Mason University.
“Hipness is a way of presenting to the world that you know what’s
going on and that you’ve got things under control,” said Wilkins, who
served in the Johnson administration and has had up-close dealings
with every president since Kennedy.
“For Obama, his hipness exudes power. He just keeps on moving, no
matter what comes his way, and he doesn’t lose it. That’s being hip —
and I don’t see any contemporary public figures whom I would think of
as hip.”
True, Obama uses his hipster personality as a weapon. His enormous
popularity is a bludgeon that demands political respect, if not
support. For example, almost immediately after settling into the White
House, Obama left Washington to campaign in Ohio, Michigan and other
hard-hit states to sell his economic stimulus plan. It was an
effective effort at charm-school diplomacy, garnering
outside-the-Beltway support and applying pressure on Washington
insiders to get on board the Obama train.
The implication was that if you were not on board, you were not hip —
you were square. And who wants to be so uncool as to be on the wrong
side of the hip president, other than a few vocal anti-cools, such as
radio yakker Rush Limbaugh, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and
former Vice President Dick Cheney?
There have been a few other nationally recognized hip politicians: the
late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York; former California Gov.
Jerry Brown, who is currently the state’s attorney general; and former
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown come to mind. For a brief period in
the 1970s and 1980s, one might argue that Washington’s eternal pol
Marion Barry was hip; that was before drugs, booze and women brought
him low.
To be sure, the track record for hip politicians isn’t promising.
History suggests that the power of personality has limitations in
politics. It sours under public scrutiny.
So can it last? Can Obama’s hipness survive the weight and
responsibility of the office? Maybe there’s a reason presidents aren’t
hip. War-making, secrecy, aging, unpopularity, sternness and sobriety
— these are decidedly unhip. And all that could come in the next 100
days, because hipness is a trendy thing, subject to popular whim.
For now, with approval ratings over 60 percent, Obama is hip. But he
will have to find a balance between being hip and being powerful while
sitting in the world’s most watched fishbowl.
“Hipness is what it is! And sometimes hipness is what it ain’t,” goes
the famous song by Tower of Power. “There’s one thing you should know.
What’s hip today might become passé.”

A Majority of Blacks do not support the radical homosexual agenda. Why is that?

Why did 70% of California African-Americans vote against homosexual marriage on November 4th, 2008?

While a narrow majority of white voters opposed Proposition 8 (which defined marriage as "valid and recognized" only between a man and a woman), and a small majority of Latinos supported it, the Black community overwhelmingly said "no" to the top "civil rights" priority of homosexual activists.

Liberals explain this surprising result with insulting (and occasionally racist) claims that Black voters didn't understand the real nature of the fight, and suggestions that they were misled by TV advertisements or their impassioned pastors.

Conservatives, on the other hand, hail the tally as a sign of powerful, sturdy Black support for traditional marriage --- an odd conclusion for a community with disproportionately high rates of out-of-wedlock birth and single parent households.

In fact, conversations with several leaders and thinkers in the African-American community lead to another explanation for the one-sided rejection by Black voters of the homosexual agenda.

At least in part, the support for Proposition 8 reflected deep resentment for the homosexual community's appropriation of the rhetoric and symbolism of the Black civil rights struggle, along with understandable anger at the offensive analogy between African-American identity and homosexual sexual orientation.

For three reasons, the comparison of the homosexual struggle with the Black struggle insults the memory of Black heroes of the past and trivializes the problems of the African-American community of the present.

1. The expression of homosexual identity is a matter of choice, while only individuals with complicated mixed backgrounds (like Tiger Woods) get any element of choice in determining their racial identity. Even if you accept the politically correct argument that homosexuality is no more controllable or correctable than left-handedness, an individual still chooses how he wants to act on his inclinations, or the extent to which he wants to identify with a movement based on sexual orientation. My finest teacher in high school (a brilliant, challenging, completely dedicated English instructor and an inspiration to his students) was, I now suspect, homosexual. Of course, no one in the 1960's ever knew or ever asked (and I still don't know anything about his personal life with any certainty). In other words, Mr. S---- never experienced discrimination or hostility of any sort because he never chose to discuss or reveal his sexual identity. The Black teachers in our school (or in any school) obviously enjoyed no such luxury ---everyone knew within moments of meeting them that they were African-American, and reacted accordingly, for better or worse. No one would argue that homophobia doesn't exist, or deny that many innocent people suffer from external reactions to their actual or perceived homosexuality. But a comparison of the inconvenience and unpleasantness of hostile reactions to homosexual identity (which homosexuals can avoid in many if not most facets of their lives), and the omnipresent, crippling ravages of racism in America's past (and, alas, present) is dishonest and appalling.

2. The best evidence that racism plays a far more destructive role in our national life than homophobia involves the relative success of members of the homosexual community, especially when compared to the continued economic struggles of African-Americans. Despite spectacular and altogether admirable progress in the last generation, Black people remain handicapped by their history and identity, trailing their white counterparts in income, accumulated wealth, education, and other familiar measures of success. Homosexuals, on the other hand, according to figures from "The Advocate" and elsewhere, exceed the national average in education, income and professional success. Comparing the homosexual struggle to the Black struggle is ridiculous on the face of it, due to the fact that homosexuals already enjoy at least the same standard of living and opportunity as their straight fellow-citizens, while African-Americans continue to lag behind whites (and Asians, for that matter). When homosexual activists insist that they only seek their "basic human rights," the claim sounds like self-pity and whining for a community that's already privileged in educational and economic terms.

3. An interracial marriage isn't profoundly or fundamentally different from a single race marriage, but a same sex couple is irreducibly distinct from any mixed sex union. Comparing a right to homosexual marriage with the right to interracial marriage therefore highlights the distinction between a racial influence on identity (which is relatively minor) and a gender influence on identity (which is huge and unavoidable). The Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967) found that a marriage between a white man and a Black woman differed in no substantive way from a marriage between two whites or a marriage between two Blacks: the identity of the spouse you chose didn't change the essential nature of the union you entered. This argument of course bears no application to the case for same sex relationships. There, the choice of a partner of the same sex (as opposed to a partner of opposite sex) fundamentally and profoundly alters the terms of the union – for instance (and most obviously) eliminating the chance that the two partners will produce a child together. It's important to understand that the essence of this difference between male-female and single sex couples is based on gender, not sexual orientation. For instance, most sane and objective observers would concede that it's important for a child (particularly in its early years) to benefit from the care of a mother. There's very good reason, then to give preference in adopting an infant to a male-female couple, or even a female-female couple, above a male-male couple. The key distinction involves gender, (which is profoundly important) rather than race or sexual orientation (which are far less significant). That's why legal distinctions based on gender (women don't register for the draft, and they get obvious preferential treatment in custody cases in divorce court) persists where discrimination based on race, national origin or even sexual orientation would look far more questionable.

In short, the analogy between the Homosexual struggle and the Black struggle for equal rights, as well as the comparison between a right of inter-racial marriage and a right of same sex marriage (precisely the comparison on which the California Supreme Court based its now infamous – and overturned- prior decision) make no sense and win no arguments.

Those analogies also no doubt contribute to the overwhelming rejection of the radical homosexual agenda by members of the African-American community. The invidious comparisons should produce the same indignant and outraged reaction from all Americans of good will, regardless of race.

Presidential Pardon For Jack Johnson, First Black Heavyweight Champion Is Sought.
WASHINGTON – A Presidential Pardon For, Jack Johnson, the First Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world has been sought by Sen. John McCain. Jack Johnson became the nation's first Black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first Black president.

McCain feels Johnson was wronged by a 1913 conviction of violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

"I've been a very big fight fan, I was a mediocre boxer myself," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview. "I had admired Jack Johnson's prowess in the ring. And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done."

On Wednesday Apri 1st, McCain will join Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., filmmaker Ken Burns and Johnson's great niece, Linda Haywood, at a Capitol Hill news conference to unveil a resolution urging a presidential pardon for Johnson. Similar legislation offered in 2004 and last year failed to pass both chambers of Congress.

King, a recreational boxer, said a pardon would "remove a cloud that's been over the American sporting scene ever since (Johnson) was convicted on these trumped-up charges." (It appears that Cadet Webster Smith was not the first Black American to be convicted on trumped-up charges involving a white woman.)

"I think the moment is now," King said.

Presidential pardons for the dead are rare.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton pardoned Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the Army's first Black commissioned officer, who was drummed out of the military in 1882 after white officers accused him of embezzling $3,800 in commissary funds. Last year, President George W. Bush pardoned Charles Winters, who was convicted of violating the Neutrality Act when he conspired in 1948 to export aircraft to a foreign country in aid of Israel.

The Justice Department and the White House declined to comment on this latest Johnson pardon effort.

However, the idea has a passionate supporter in McCain, who has repeatedly said he was wrong in 1983 when he voted against a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

"It's just one of those things that you don't want to quit until you see justice," McCain said of Johnson's case. "We won't quit until we win. And I believe that enough members, if you show them the merits of this issue, that we'll get the kind of support we need."

Johnson won the world heavyweight title on Dec. 26, 1908, after police in Australia stopped his 14-round match against the severely battered Canadian world champion, Tommy Burns. That led to a search for a "Great White Hope" who could beat Johnson. Two years later, the American world titleholder Johnson had tried for years to fight, Jim Jeffries, came out of retirement but lost in a match called "The Battle of the Century," resulting in deadly riots.

Johnson lost the heavyweight title to Jess Willard in 1915.

In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which outlawed transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. The law has since been heavily amended, but has not been repealed.

Authorities first targeted Johnson's relationship with a white woman who later became his wife, then found another white woman to testify against him. (CMDR Sean Gill did the same thing against Cadet Webster Smith) Johnson fled the country after his conviction, but agreed years later to return and serve a 10-month jail sentence. (Cadet Webster Smith only served a 6 month jail sentence.) He tried to renew his boxing career after leaving prison, but failed to regain his title. He died in a car crash in 1946 at age 68.

"When we couldn't beat him in the ring, the white power establishment decided to beat him in the courts," Burns told the AP in a telephone interview. Burns' 2005 documentary, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," examined Johnson's case and the sentencing judge's admitted desire to "send a message" to Black men about relationships with white women. (The Runaway Jury in the Webster Smith case wanted to send a message to all the Black cadets and the Black Coast Guard officers in the fleet.)

Both McCain and King said a pardon, particularly one from Obama, would carry important symbolism.

"It would be indicative of the distance we've come, and also indicative of the distance we still have to go," McCain said.

Burns, however, sees a pardon more as "just a question of justice, which is not only blind, but color blind," adding, "And I think it absolutely does not have anything to do with the symbolism of an African-American president pardoning an African-American unjustly accused."

Burns helped form the Committee to Pardon Jack Johnson, which filed a petition with the Justice Department in 2004 that was never acted on. Burns said he spoke about the petition a couple of times with Bush, who as governor of Johnson's home state of Texas proclaimed Johnson's birthday as "Jack Johnson Day" for five straight years. (Cadet Webster Smith is also from Texas. If Jack Johnson had lived long enough, he and Webster Smith would both be unjustly registered in the State of Texas as sex offenders because they got involved with white women in America. Racism is a peculiarly American sickness; and, it is a sickness unto death.)

Bush gave Burns a phone number which led to adviser Karl Rove, Burns said, but Rove told him a pardon "ain't gonna fly."

Rove doesn't recall any such conversation with Burns, his spokeswoman Sheena Tahilramani said, and "if he had been approached, he wouldn't have offered an opinion." Such is the state of white compassion among the compassionate conservatives in America.