Avoiding the Elephant in the Room.

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Obama has chiseled away at Hillary’s lead in some national polls, but Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico said he’s done so while steering clear of any explicit references to the very real possibility that he’d be America’s first black president.

“You may not hear him use it is a rallying cry,” said Candice Tolliver, Obama’s communications adviser to the African American media. “It is something the country can be proud of. It is a measure of our progress. We like to talk about what he can do for the country.”

While Obama may not make nakedly racial appeals, Politico says that he doesn’t mind making nakedly religious ones.

  • Are these cats trying to look guilty? (Pt. 1) Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. is a central figure in the furor surrounding the destruction of the videotapes that documented the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects by the C.I.A. Says professional flamethrower Christopher Hitchens:
    And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason.”

  • Are these cats trying to look guilty? (Pt. 2) Last week, Creflo Dollar and Eddie Long, two of the most prominent preachers of the Prosperity Gospel, refused to turn over documents about their churches finances as part of the continuing probe of non-profit groups by Senator Charles Grassley. (Last month, Dollar reported that his church raked in $69 million in 2006.) Dollar’s attorney responded to Grassley with a letter that said that the probe violates their right to worship without government interference. But what do inquiries related to their tax-exempt status as churches have to do with government interference with their doctrine?
  • Dennis Kucinich: vegan, underdog, race-baiter. Esquire wrote a glowing profile in its December issue of Democratic Congressman and longshot presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. But it turns out the popular narrative of Kucinich as the unpopular runt who stands up for the right thing overlooks the shrewd way he played with racial animus harbored by Cleveland’s white ethnics toward African-Americans when he was a councilman and mayor.
  • The strange death of Edward Okeny. Edward Okeny, a Sudanese immigrant who lived in Portland, Me., died three weeks after being found lying in the street with a fractured skull and an empty wallet. The Portland Press Herald, the local paper, didn’t print a single word about the incident while Okeny lay comatose in a hospital, until they were inundated with complaints from the Sudanese community. The local police didn’t seem too pressed to figure out what happened, either.”“I called (columnist) Bill Nemitz and I said that I’m surprised that this guy could die on Friday, and here it was Tuesday and there had been nothing in the paper,” says Bill Slavick, local activist and recent independent candidate for the US Senate. “Portland isn’t Boston or New York. If someone has their head beat in on the streets, that’s news.” (from The Phoenix)
  • The Chicano/a Clarence Thomas? Our friend Cindy at Loteria Chicana flipped a question I’d posed — asking whether there was a living black person more despised by black people than Clarence Thomas — and wondered aloud who that person would be among Chicanos. The winner? Much-maligned former A.G. Alberto Gonzalez.
G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
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