Whitehead's Satire Pops.

Award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead wrote a tongue-in-cheek op-ed piece for The New York Times today. In it he laments the woes of The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black. Taking jabs at Obama critics who’ve labeled the candidate elitist, Geraldine Ferraro who doubly insisted that Obama has only managed a contending spot in the race for the presidential nomination because he’s black, and deriders of affirmative action, Whitehead manages a tall stack of zingers like this:

People think I have it easy, but it’s surprisingly difficult being The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black, what with the whole having to be everywhere in the country at once thing. One second I’m nodding enthusiastically in a sales conference in Boise, Idaho, and the next I’m separating conjoined triplets at the Institute For Terribly Complicated Surgery in Buchanan, N.Y., and then I have to rush out to Muncie, Ind., to put my little “Inspector 12” tag in a bag of Fruit of the Loom.

It’s exhausting, all that travel. Decent, hard-working folks out there have their religion and their xenophobia to cling to. All I have is a fistful of upgrades to first class and free headphones. Headphones That Should Have Gone to a More Deserving Passenger.

Awesome.