Being President While Black

It's been clear for some time that major elements of the Rabid Right and the Republican's Tea Party base have been angry about Barack Obama being President of the United States while black. Racism and its twin evil of xenophobia have been at the heart of the ugliness and nastiness they embrace, now joined in that by mainstream Republicans (or half of them, by a recent poll--that's the number that question whether Obama was born in America) and their national leaders, suddenly including Mike Huckabee.

(By the way, may I point out that one of the major presidential candidates in 2008 was in fact not born in the United States. His name is John McCain.)

While out huckstering for his book and feeding speculation he might run for Prez again--just enough to keep the interest and income flowing, but not enough to tease Fox News into dumping him as an "analyst," Huckabee went on a bizarre radio rant about how Obama's boyhood "in Kenya" influenced his unAmerican worldview, especially his Mau-Mau influenced view of the British. (The British?)

When this elaborate if borderline Becktian analysis proved his excuse of having "misspoke" was a foolish lie, Huckabee still didn't hushabye but kept hammering at Obama for his non-normal American youth (even if he had to admit it wasn't in Kenya.) All this is wearily familiar, but what's noteworthy is at least some of the response.

This time around there was response that wasn't guarded, or even limited to ridicule. It didn't pretend to take his assertions seriously, or speculate on what it meant in terms of Obama's acceptability. A lot of response (such as from Joe Klein at Time) was straight-out: this is racism. This--not Obama's upbringing--is unAmerican.

Maybe it's not shocking that the MSNBC yakkers took this on, but it was their directness in identifying its cause and its shamefulness that I found interesting. Lawrence O'Donnell, for example.

But the bellwhether response may have come from Chris Matthews on Thursday. Back in the 2008 campaign and possibly after, Matthews wasn't above questioning whether Obama was "one of us." He was among those grousing about Obama being from some non-heartland edge of America called Hawaii.

But on Thursday he was forceful in his denunciation of Huckabee and his ilk, both on television and in print. His rant concluded: "And what is this right wing goon squad doing? They keep talking about his father? His grandfather? What about his grandfather that fought under Patton in World War II? What are these people looking for -- some evidence that he's black? Is that it?

They ought to be ashamed of themselves. You know what's un-American? Huckabee and Newt and the rest of this."