Uncle Taj?

I'm trying to remember the last time, if ever, I disagreed with Jimi Izrael's tone. It's something I cannot remember because not matter how gritty he gets on the front end, there's generally a fairly good sized mental engine plus socially aware gears working in the background. But his latest piece on Bobby Jindal lurches like his foot slipped off the clutch and seriously ground up the transmission. It happens occasionally, but when you've got a big engine, it sounds especially ugly. Beep beep. Call AAMCO, bruh 'cuz overdrive is shot.

The problems with saying that Bobby Jindal is going to be the GOP's Barack Obama are multifarious. The phrase to keep in mind is this: Our Negroes are authentic, your Negroes are tokens. That being all that's said is an insult to any and everybody who tends to think of people in terms of their individual character and quality. Not to say that at some emotional tectonic level American politics doesn't cash in on the face value of such reprobate assessments, but damn. I thought we were supposed at least do people the favor of saying Ivy Leauge Uncle Tom, after all Jindal is a Rhodes Scholar, which is the Ivy League of the Ivy League, not like your run of the mill Wall Street MBA. 

But even beyond that, nobody wants to be anybody's Barack Obama, least of all folks from the GOP. Over on this side of the aisle we are convinced that our candidates are qualified by their values, not by their charisma. Why else would we deploy zombie candidates like John McCain and Bill Frist?  We try diligently never ever to become a party akin to a cult of personality, and we mock the Democrats for doing exactly that. What have we been calling people who attack the persons of George W. Bush? Deranged. Exactly. It's not Bush's War, it's America's War. What disgusts us is only seeing the person and not the policy, which is why we grumble over the revisionist hagiography of FDR as we speak. Obama is like Lincoln, Obama is like FDR? Whatever to all that. Are his ideas right or wrong? Believe me, the person who wants to be Barack Obama is Rush Limbaugh, and we conservatives don't elect Rush for a good reason. His ego is bigger than his butt. There's a time and a place for mouthing off to the faithful, but it's not when one is charged with responsibilities of office to all of America.

We know liberals all love to talk about how they love people as if we don't, and we know they want to put emotions associated with race, gender and God knows what else front and center in their worldview. And they are so enamored of this practice that they actually believe that the world operates like that - a typical bourgie liberal sentiment. Well, we don't. We have all the Barack Obama we can stand, and we are not asking for any more in any form.

Now more seriously lies the presumption that the GOP is looking for additional representation from minorities, as if a single face can effect a sea change. I will admit that there's a bucketful of truth in that swimming pool. Symbolically, it's absolutely true. And the GOP is quite enough dazed and confused at this moment in time such that that much truth could override deeper truths we hold-self evident. But what nobody seems to recognize with any consistency is that quite enough people with diversity qualifications, whatever they may be, come to the Republicans. Perhaps not enough to win every election, but enough to win those we do. It's not as if anyone is desparate enough to get some third party wins here in the home of the brave. Yeah we do have a Green Party, but do we need a Brown Party? What the GOP needs are not symbolic victories, but real ones. It is a real victory when the world can see how many sorts of outwardly different looking men and women can be attracted to the core values of Conservatism, and that is more of the victory Republicans seek. Of course we want it to translate to winning seats and influencing people, shamelessly so. But that doesn't imply that we have a racial agenda. We defy a racial agenda and we claim the moral high ground for saying so and doing so. Except when we don't, which is a shame we should be called on. Just like everybody else.

Me personally, I have known a good number of ethnic Indians without ethnic names. Look at me, I'm from California - how could I not? And I know the kind of crap a lot of Asians of all sorts take for not representing what people stereotypically think they should represent. Like being Christian for one thing. So I'll bring that up. Every liberal who talks about Sunday being the most segregated hour, raise your hand if you've ever been to a Chinese or Korean language Christian Church. Yeah I didn't think so. Like they're all devotees of the Year of the Snake or their cookie fortunes weren't printed in a factory like everything else. Bobby Jindal is Catholic. Now think about that.  Bobby Jindal is the Republican Governor of Louisiana, and you know what else? One of Jindal's biggest supporters is man whose political courage I admire, Ray Nagin. If those facts mess with your mind, it's a sad testimony to the quality of your mind.

It only takes two minutes of thought to get beneath the simple-minded prejudices surrounding ethnic Americans who don't have their own sitcoms on TV or Congressional Caucus. (Hmmm, whatever happened to Dat Phan? Exactly.) I just didn't think I'd have to smack up my boy for grinding those gears.