The Voice of Treason

“Words matter. Words mean something.”

– Rush Limbaugh

“Actions speak louder than words.”

– Author disputed

“Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

– John 3:17,18

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”

– Mark Twain

Ah, all The Great Debates revisited. Church v. State. Words v. Actions. God v. Man. Old Testament v. New Testament. Right v. Left. The Big Question: Is God – if he exists – a political animal? I think many people believe, as I do, that God is just this seasoned, hardworking conservative guy who produced a good-natured, long-haired, sandal-wearing hippie son. They might not see eye-to-eye on everything, and certainly they employ different methods, but their relationship still works.

I’m reminded of growing up in Chicago in the 1960s with my lapsed Roman Catholic Italian-American mother and my sister, the Conflicted Conservative. A misanthrope, who often made Florence King look like Mother Teresa, she was also the most generous, kind-hearted, least racist person I’d known. But what she said sometimes didn’t always jive with what she did or how she conducted herself. Uh, perhaps she was nuanced.

A “for instance.” I’ve mentioned we lived in Rogers Park – a “safe” neighborhood. I imagine, looking back now, that this was code for a neighborhood that was white. In truth, it was mixed, diverse even by today’s standards, yet predominantly Jewish. Mixed, yes, but not mixed with blacks. This was Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago, remember, where whites lived on the North Side and blacks lived on the South Side. An undisputed fact of life. That was Rogers Park in the mid-1960s. Times have changed and so has the neighborhood.

Shortly before we left Chicago for Prescott, Arizona, my mother flirted with the idea of moving us into one of those new apartment buildings the city was putting up for lower income families. Read: The Projects. I clearly remember her enthusiasm. My older sisters were married, my brother was off to an Air Force base in Texas, and it was just me, my sister, my mother, two cats and a raccoon. She had paperwork and glossy brochures.

“We could live on the 20th floor! Or the 22nd! Or the 24th! How exciting would that be?”

My sister, about fifteen at the time and always the voice of reason where my mother was concerned, looked at me – I was almost nine – then at my mother.

“You want her raped in the elevator?”

Again, the most generous, kind-hearted, least racist person I’d known until I met T. He was eighteen, wore heavy metal T-shirts and ringlets down to his waist, and he and his brother had been raised by their single mother on the Berkeley campus. Polar opposites? Not really. I observed him at work and thought to myself: This boy is conservative and doesn’t even know it. And the first person I’d known who truly evaluated each person he met on the content of his or her character and not skin color, economic status, or nationality. Eighteen years later, that hasn’t changed.

And so it was interesting to hear his assessment of Michelle Obama after a CNN profile that likened her to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: “She’s ghetto.”

This statement had little to do with the color of her skin. I’ve been watching Mrs. Obama for some time and every time I see or hear her I’m reminded of one of the more colorful expressions my mother learned from my father: “Her shit don’t stink, but her farts give her away.”

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was born in 1964 and raised on the South Side of Chicago. I was born a few years earlier and raised on the North Side. On the surface, one might think Michelle could have been envious of me. I was a white girl with straight honey-colored hair and (then) blue eyes and I lived in an apartment on a tree-lined block just steps from Lake Michigan. On the surface, however, I believe I probably would have been more envious of her. She had what I didn’t have: two parents with dual incomes, fewer siblings, and – frankly – probably less competition in school. At my school, I was up against some real super-geniuses – not only the Jewish kids, but also the Asian kids and a lot of the European immigrants. The most super of the super-geniuses, in fact, was a quirky, high-strung Scots-Irish girl named Karen. That kid was Bill Buckley in Mary Janes.

My parents had been separated as long as I’d known them. Michelle’s parents were not. My mother waited tables to support us. Michelle’s dad had a good job with the city and her mom worked for Spiegel. (I just loved the Spiegel catalog when I was a kid.) And Michelle only had to share her parents’ affection with one sibling – a brother who was very close to her age. Gosh, her life sounded so normal. So different from what I had and so close to what I’d always wished for.

Which brings us to the current issue of the Obamas and Trinity United Church of Christ.

“Racism is so deeply ingrained in this country that he (Barack Obama) could be flawless in terms of his policies. But he’s still a black man in this country which has a sorry history in terms of how it sees African-American males. That’s my 65-year-old, jaded perception of where this country is.”

– Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., March 2007

Relatively tame stuff compared to the videos from the pulpit. My, the response to those sermons! Shocking? No, disheartening. Obviously the people who are so wide-eyed over this never listened to Ray Taliaferro during the Reagan-Bush years. This is old hat, folks. And disheartening because it’s a clear sign that a large segment of the black community has not progressed. Yes, there is racism. But racism is changing. The country has been changing. Hearts and minds have been changed. Well, some, anyway.

What caught my ear when listening to Reverend Wright was the part where he chastised blacks for killing other blacks. What should be asked is this: If blacks shouldn’t be killing blacks because blacks aren’t “the enemy,” then who exactly is “the enemy” and who should blacks be killing? The Obamas have been attending that church for twenty years; perhaps they have the answer.

This “controversy” reminds me of when I was in class with a middle-aged woman who suddenly snotted up in the middle of the session and confided that her life had been turned upside down because the pastor of her church where she’d been a member for most of her life said something about homosexuals that she just didn’t agree with. With tears in her eyes, she asked me what she should do. Torn to bits, she felt that the right thing was to leave her church, but she had a history there, had made dear friends, and loved and respected many of the parishioners. These people were family. But then this something was said, and it challenged her beliefs. Clearly a problem for this woman because it made her question her religion, herself, and everything she had believed about her world.

I never belonged to a church or a particular religion, I told her, so I probably wasn’t the person who should advise her. I belong to a political party and I don’t agree with everything every member of it says, but that’s politics and not religion. If what your pastor said is so offensive to you, perhaps you should find a pastor who believes what you believe. You chose your doctor, your dentist, your hairdresser, and your bank. You can choose another church and still maintain the relationships with those people you consider family. If they truly are your family, they’ll understand and accept your decision. And if they don’t, then maybe you’ll learn something. But what do I know? I subscribe to a political party and not a church. Politics isn’t religion, right?

One would think. As for Reverend Wright, the more I listen to him the less he sounds inspirational and the more he sounds like a run-of-the-mill politician. Coincidentally, the same can be said of his longtime parishioner, Senator Obama.

It was the weekend that wouldn’t end. Oprah and Obama were everywhere – there was no escape. I finally did catch the Iowa rally on C-SPAN – with sound this time – and decided I preferred what Oprah and Obama had to say when I couldn’t hear them. Were these rallies or revivals? Welcome to the Church of Obama! If this was to prove that the Senator is a Christian, that’s fine; after all, polls show that Americans would vote for a Mormon over a Muslim, but the whole “Second Coming” feel of these events was a tad unsettling.

It was just a little too weird to watch Obama addressing the crowds with the girl fan backdrop. Michelle, his wife, looking up at him from one side, and Oprah, his… I’m really not sure… beaming at him from the other. For those of you who have peculiar ménage à trois fantasies…

I’m serious: Does Oprah have a crush on Obama? Or is she simply kicking herself for wasting time and not hooking up with a promising young Senator a little earlier in her career so she would one day have a shot at First Lady? Hmmm. Shades of Jackie… O.

There was just too much Oprah and, to make matters worse, on Sunday night I actually watched that movie she’d produced. Don’t ask. Just know that I can never get those two hours back. Worse, I couldn’t even get away from the O-fest by burying myself in the newspaper. The cooing couple was there, too, but the absolute worst item was the article about what the former U.S. Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and mayor of Atlanta said about Obama in front of a Newsmakers audience.

Andrew Young – who, at age 75, isn’t – had the audacity to suggest that Barack Obama is “too young.” Well, it’s nice to see that ageism is so easily tolerated in the black community. But even more distasteful and offensive were his remarks about a former president. Bill Clinton, said Young, is “every bit as black as Barack.” Not waiting for that to sink in, he immediately followed up with:

“He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

Can we have a show of hands, please, from those who weren’t offended? Young is just one more reason why the United Nations is such a travesty. First, do we really need to be reminded that Bill Clinton is a ho? And, frankly, I know I’m not the only one who shuddered when Oprah mentioned Obama’s tongue. (I commented on this in a previous post.) Look. I just don’t want to have to think about a president’s body parts ever again. If her comment was engineered to bring back memories of a Clinton White House, then fine. It worked. But I never want to hear about Obama’s tongue again. Ever. It’s one reason John Edwards turns my stomach. I don’t want to see my president’s tongue, I don’t want to know what it’s doing, and I don’t want it distracting me during important addresses. A darting tongue is charming on a reptile, but repulsive on a candidate.

So, after all that, can anyone remember a damned thing Obama said over the weekend? Unfortunately, I do. First, his unflattering comment about being related to Dick Cheney and, second, his promise to raise the minimum wage every year of his presidency. There are times that Obama’s advisors should suggest he bite that tongue. This was one of them.

I know I’m not the only person who watched this spectacle and felt that I was being sold a bill of goods. Oprah is famous for hawking products and all she has to do is include something she likes on her list of favorite things and – Katy bar the door! – sales skyrocket. I know she likes Obama and I know she likes a particular face cream from Philosophy. So all I could think when I was watching her sell me Obama over the weekend was: The Audacity of Hope In a Jar.

Let me begin by saying that I am a woman of “a certain age,” probably perimenopausal, and I do not watch Oprah. I’ll repeat that: I don’t watch Oprah. It’s not that I dislike the woman, it’s just that she’s on at the same time Brit Hume’s on FOX. If I’m near a set at 4:00, I’m watching Brit. Anyway, today I sat down with a cup of tea and surfed around, then landed on FNC – the Obama rally in Iowa was about to begin. Michelle Obama, looking like she was on her way to a funeral, dressed in black from head to toe, introduced Oprah Winfrey to the expectant crowd.

Oprah took the podium and began to speak. A few moments later I came to an important realization: Oprah’s black. In fact, she was speaking black to a predominantly white audience. How odd, I thought. That is not her usual manner of speaking, yet she is suddenly using a heavy dialect and is dangerously close to lapsing into Ebonics.

Worse than how she was saying it was what she was saying. She described Obama as a politician who “has an ear for eloquence and a tongue dipped in the unvarnished truth.” Plainly someone hasn’t that ear for eloquence, and as for the tongue… well, better that, I guess, than a tongue dipped in an intern.

Say what you will about FNC, at least they weren’t having technical difficulties. I’d switched over to C-SPAN to catch what Obama had to say and I only caught every eighth word. I simply couldn’t get what he was saying because the sound quality was sh*t, but from what I could make out, Barack had brought his black voice, too. Again, an odd choice. You’re all up there talking about change – change we can believe in – and it appears nothing has. You say you’re not going to be a politician that says what he thinks people want to hear. You say you’re honest. You say you’re different.

Fine, then drop the phony dialect and just be yourself. Same goes for your friend, Oprah. Critics of George Bush cringe when they hear that drawl and they know he’s perfectly capable of speaking with barely a twang. It’s like Hillary and her Arkansas voice, back in the day. And worse, her “I don’t feel no ways tired” voice.

The human voice is a most important instrument. It is the essence of a person. To change one’s voice in order to communicate to a different audience is, frankly, a consternation. Sure, one might speak differently to an infant, a small child, or a dog, but if one is authentic, one should be able to communicate in the same voice to all people, no matter their age, their gender, their ethnicity, or their religion. In fact, one should even be able to speak – without altering one’s vocal quality – to another species. I mean, I don’t change my voice when I’m speaking to my dog. Why would I want her to think that I think she’s not as intelligent as she is?

Please. Just leave the dialects to the actors, dahlings.