The condescension of my reaction caught even me by surprise: "Oh honey, why set yourself up for this fall? Do you think our country is ever going to let Obama's family be the First Family?" Then I named my greatest fear when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama. I won't name it here. Why speak the horror that's counterpoint to a song Obama inspires in the heart of America? You know the fear I'm talking about. It's the kind that goes unnamed until it reaches perverse consummation in black, point-blank headlines and mournful anchors' faces.
We've known others who swept America off her feet with youthful looks, charisma and idealism. How well you know their fate. So let's leave it at this: When I look at Obama's family, I can't bring myself to believe America will allow these sweet, attractive people of color to occupy the White House.
I consider the Swift-boating of John Kerry. Big Media's joyful complicity in spreading lies about Al Gore. The push-poll campaign to make South Carolina voters believe, in 2000, that John McCain had fathered a black
child out of wedlock.
And I consider all the bad jokes, pop songs that mention "towel-heads" and the understandable, if reflexive, reactions to that word, "Hussein." In this context, Obama's very name becomes bad baggage. The seven
syllables of Barack Hussein Obama add up to a dark strata Republicans are sure to mine next summer and fall, should he win the nomination.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. I was accused of as much when I asked, rhetorically, "Can you vote for a black man?" in a column prior to Harold Ford's race for the seat now held by Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. Ford, a polished, handsome, moderate candidate lost by a substantial margin, following TV spots with racist overtones, in a year when Democrats nationwide took control of Congress. In the general election, the privacy of the voting booth could prove pivotal in bringing out America's repressed racism. Could that account for the eye-widening disparity in the polling versus the vote tallies in New Hampshire?
To me, it sounded too good to be true. Color is sure to be a pole around which many will rally as way leads to way, and our lost nation either finds the road out of a dark wilderness or wanders forty more years until this
generation---and maybe everything else---passes away.