Soapbox

~Bleeeep!~

    I heard a great poem last night at the Grand Slam called "What (the N-word) Sounds like". The point it made was- it sounds like "birth certificate".

    Really. That puts it all in perspective. And should you find that just a bit too harsh- oh come on, they're not necessarily all racists!  I offer this.
     The release yesterday of Barack Obama's actual long-form birth certificate satisfied the concerns of approximately eleven people on the political right. The rest of them immediately moved on to more fertile conspiracy territory: it must be fake!
    This is just a photograph of the certificate, after all: unless we can hold the original in our hands we won't believe that it isn't a forgery.
Uh huh. And unless I get to actually stand on the moon I refuse to believe that it isn't made of green cheese! Do not be fooled America!
     But the clearest proof of what that word "birth certificate" really means in the minds of the doubters comes from the megalomaniac in chief himself- Donald Trump. What is Trump's latest "trumped-up" controversy that must be looked into- his latest reason why we cannot trust this man who is president?

  Barack Obama got into Harvard.

     You see, Trump knows lots of smart rich kids who didn't get into Harvard THEREFOR there must be something sinister and un-American about an obviously talentless kid like Obama making the grade. And that sinister force is: Affirmative Action.
     So sinister, in fact, that the latest Republican "Jobs? We don't need no stinkin' jobs!" bill, on the schedule for voting in several states, is to OUTLAW Affirmative Action. 
  How dare those kids that we relegate to crappy inner city schools with overcrowded classrooms, outdated books and no lunch- those kids who sometimes get shot at on the way to school but manage to get good grades anyway and dream as big as "regular folk" – how dare they get a nod and a chance when it comes to college admission?

    Hell. Affirmative Action- that's not even a code word. We have always known what that means! It's white oppression, baby!  It means giving college admission spots, and then- gasp!- jobs, to brown people instead of white ones! It's a direct assault on Caucasian Exceptionalism, which for many people is the founding principle of this nation.

To Trump and to the lowest common denominator he panders to,  there is something fundamentally untrustworthy about our president. It's not  where Obama was born, or where he went to school, or who he played basketball with or what college he attended. (Harvard turned Trump down, by the way. I'm just pointing that out)  He's just… different. Alien. His skin is brown, and Trump doesn't trust anyone who's skin isn't orange, like his.

    Today in America, the N-word  sounds just like "Birth Certificate". It sounds like "Affirmative Action" too. We need to start bleeping both of those words on TV now, if you ask me.