Help Preceeded Him

It was a grand show and I’m sure everybody got all they needed.  For almost two years this Inauguration has been coming and now it is over; the last ball is behind us; everybody has gone home with their memories; it was the greatest Inauguration in history and the reason was largely due to the fact that President Barack Obama is an African-American.

He did not get to hold the highest office in the United States by default. In no small part, he was responsible for what he has become.  But an Icon does not attain status by dropping out of the ceiling when someone says the magic word like Groucho Marx’s duck.  He had plenty of help in the past.  However I am not going to re-iterate the Civil Rights Movement championed by its nobility: Dr. Martin Luther King Junior or the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The people I want to mention are not aligned with Civil Rights, at least not publically.  Some dabble but that has not been their calling, they have achieved their greatness and proven their race worthy in areas of expertise which may pass many of us by.  The list is so long it would not fit within this piece but I write with all sincerity when I state that many of those who smoothed the road for Barack Obama to reach the height of his profession are from other disciplines.

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There are the luminaries of the entertainment world.  If you like their style, their work, their genre — or you do not — they have succeeded, so most of America and much of the world has known or does know of their talent.  Ray Charles and Otis Redding, Billie Holiday  and Aretha Franklin … the great movement of soul music has been with us for years and the work of these artists is found in millions of music collections in millions of homes and they are some of the greatest performers who ever sang a note. The Blues gave us BB King, John Lee Hooker, Dinah Washington and years ago the great Bessie Smith.  Later: Chuck Berry, Jimmi Hendrix, Parliament, Puff Daddy, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, multiple genre favorites from rock, funk, rap, hip hop and diva status. 

Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino and Little Richard: the greats of the boomer years.  The Coasters, the Platters, The Temptations and The Supremes – all with gold records hanging in their homes and on the walls of their recording studios.  What they sang was adored by their multitudes of fans that filled concert halls and waited in long lines for tickets to their shows.  Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Ornette Coleman, Nat ‘King’ Cole and the great Louis Armstrong presented and perfected what is an American idiom known as Jazz.

Box-office draws such as Will Smith and Denzel Washington are the top actors in Hollywood along with Forest Whitaker, Samuel L. Jackson and Morgan Freeman.  People flock to the theaters to see Whoopi Goldberg and Thandie Newton.  Angela Bassett and Queen Latifa have flirted with Oscar and Halle Berry has won “him”.  Beginning in the past few years we have been met with a host of talented, attractive male and female black actors. 

Comedian Eddie Murphy shares the stage with Robin Williams as the best known comic of our era.  Has not Bill Cosby drawn millions to his performances and was he not the star of his eponymous top-rated television show for many years.  How about Flip Wilson, Chris Rock, and Arsenio Hall — Martin Lawrence, Sheryl Underwood and the late Moms Mabley.

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In the World of Sports Black is King.  The NBA’s Michael Jordan created a move never seen before called Air Jordan.  Wilt Chamberlain, Karim-Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnston were later paced by Koby Bryant, LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal.  In fact there would be no NBA without black players.

In Baseball one can’t deny the fan adoration of such men as the Yankees Derek Jeter and the Red Sox David Ortiz.  Barry Bonds an idol in Chicago was the Franchise player for the Cubs.  Athletes such as Ken Griffey Junior, Manny Ramirez, and the great Dominican star, Alexander Rodriguez or A-Rod thrill fans.  These guys are the result of what Jackie Robinson did on April 15, 1947 when, as the first African–American, played on a major league baseball team:  the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Football: anther game where without black players it would well … suck, as they say today.  Greats of the past include Franco Harris of Pittsburgh, Walter Payton of the Bears, The Miami Dolphins running back Mercury Morris and the man from Tampa who beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII, Doug Williams.  San Francisco’s quarterback Joe Montana says he won Super Bowls due to his great wide receiver Jerry Rice.

Today there’s Jacksonville’s Reggie Williams, the Colt’s Marshall Falk, LeDanian Tomlinson (LD) of the Chargers; the Eagles QB Donovan McNabb; the Falcon’s QB Michael Vick; 1000 yard rusher Derek Ward of the New York Giants … all super-stars.

The Williams sisters have changed Tennis forever; Tiger Woods is possibly the greatest Golfer to ever have played the game. 

These are some of the people who have paved the way for Barack Obama’s acceptance as another great American — but in a different arena, that of politics, where we have seen so many great players.  It’s just that we have been inundated with so many words accredited to black politicians over the past two years; I need not mention their names here.

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President Obama is himself athletic if not truly an athlete.  (He’s just not very good at bowling).  But he is a fan of music and sports and the arts.  And I am sure that his acceptance by white America is built to no small extent on the names I have mentioned above, people who have not gone un-noticed in the president’s thoughts and maybe in his prayers.

All those people excelled at their choice of endeavor.  It has been said that black Americans must try just that much harder because they are black and their heritage is slavery.  That may have been true once, even a short time ago but it has faded.  Black America has proven in so many ways, many more than I have mentioned that its icons can be the best in their field.  So it will be a relief if all Americans, including the media will face that fact — accept “Yes We Did” — forget the color and get with the times.    

A Personal Address

 

This week instead of me doing the talking, I am sending out a link which I suggest you click on … or copy it into your address line.  The message is one hour long so plan ahead. 

  http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx

 

2008 – Curiosity and Calamity

The year that slid by a few days ago was the most memorable since 1968.  ‘68 was a conglomeration of collapse.  Vietnam saw the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre; RFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated; the Democratic Convention in Chicago with Mayor Richard Daley yelling the “F” word on TV while his cops battered un-armed protestors outside.

It was the year of Dubcek’s “Prague Spring” — political liberation — until the Soviets led an invasion of Czechoslovakia crushing the movement.  Lyndon Johnson said no to another term; Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace and, in the end, himself.  1968 was an Olympic year: Winter in Grenoble — Summer in Mexico City following a blood bath on the city’s streets as military and police killed 300 protestors nearly cancelling the event.

On the brighter side: NASA’s Apollo 8 and its three astronauts circled the moon. Nudity on Broadway: Hair opened.  Movie of the year: Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey;  top song of the year was “Hey Jude”; the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl ll and Man U won the European Cup.  It was the third year of the Counter Culture – Disco would kill “blues – based” music two years later.   

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Oh yes, 1968 was a hummer.  But 2008, forty years on, had the advantage of better communication — CNN and other Cable News outlets and, of course, the Internet and YouTube — private citizens through blogging often came closer to the truth than the pundits.   But all the modern tech aside we have just been through a year which will have to go down in history as almost unimaginably extraordinary.  The entire world was involved like no other year in history.    

The big story of the year … well, the one that got the most headlines was the US election campaign.  Both the primaries and the presidential; four people were front and centre, President-elect Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Sarah Palin.  In that order.

Obama was a shoe-in but nobody knew it till Election Day.  Hillary was Hillary, brash and clinging to hope; McCain was, after all is said and done: boring.  Palin was the spice, a sweetheart then a weight around the campaign’s neck plainly stamped GOP — a fox caught in a cage of criticism.

When Barack Obama finally won, the world went nuts and Americans had their eyes opened to what they had accomplished.  He was greeted as a Messiah and his presidency will be sorely pressed.  Does anybody really believe this man can take care of the year’s second biggest story?

In early September the world became aware of what had been heating just under the boil for months.  Then the lid blew off.  In less than three months, President Bush confirmed the US was in a recession as the public became besieged with words like equity, mutual funds, hedge funds, sub-prime, liquidity, leverage and quantitative analysis.

Stumbling out of Virginia, Freddie Mac an imaginative acronym for the Government controlled Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation while in Washington Freddie’s sister, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) both had to be taken over by the government at a cost of billions.  Before long the bulge bracket Investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted to traditional banking institutions.  Earlier Bear Stearns had collapsed; Meryl Lynch followed suit, Lehman Bros. barely survived after a Fed loan.  Next it was Insurance Giant AIG needing 85 billion tied to a boatload of conditions to survive. 

The most oft heard phrase was Bail-Out especially when the Big Three US auto companies began to develop rusty assembly lines.  We know what happened: the wrong cars at the wrong time with the wrong management; the latter forced to fly to Washington to plead for cash in their corporate jets.  Wrong again.  As the year closed they waited to see if the government would dip into the 800 billion dollar bank assistance fund.

And it wasn’t just the US — Japan, China, the UK, The EU, Russia and Brazil all felt the wave. The recession dominated news for weeks and only gave up the headlines around election time … and not for long.  The Dow, the DAX, the CAC, the FTSE, the Hang Seng and the Nikkei all slid like greased rats leaving a ship.

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2008 saw China tackle Tibet – which nearly threw a scut into the Beijing Olympics – before recovering from a gargantuan ‘quake which devastated much of Sichuan Province leaving 90,000 missing or dead, untold injuries and millions homeless.   Burma suffered a crushing cyclone and its illegal garbage-government killed more than it saved by keeping the borders closed to assistance.  Bangladesh also suffered its common floods and loss of life. 

On November 26 a rag-tag group of armed terrorists from Pakistan attacked several localized areas in Mumbai, the Financial Capital of India.  Two days later Indian military had secured all but one location; the Taj Mahal Hotel where the terrorists indiscriminately shot tourists, hotel staff and bombed several of the luxury hotels rooms.  For days this room to room, floor to floor battle went on — flaring occasionally — until the only living terrorist out of ten was caught.

 It was a bad year for Asia.

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Just before Christmas, the worst battle since 1967’s Six Day War descended on the Gaza strip.  On December 23^rd the terrorist group Hamas, which controlled much of Gaza, began propelling cheap but deadly rockets at southern Israeli towns such as Ashkelon and Sderot claiming the Israeli’s had broken a tenuous truce.

Hamas had been warned by the Israeli triumvirate of Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not to attack Israel but the advice might as well have been foam. 

What came next was Israeli retaliation.  A mounting number of Gaza Palestinians were killed  by Israeli F-16’s, drones and Helicopter Gunships – about 1 in four, a private citizen including women and children.  Israel would not negotiate with Hamas.  Israel went on record saying that as long as rockets continued to hit Israeli targets the air war will continue, indeed escalate. The year ended with the Gaza death toll climbing past 200 and over a thousand injured.

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The war that began in 2003 in Iraq has all but gone … only a need to remain and train the Iraqis and within one or two years, (Obama says 16 months), the United States and its few allies will be able to leave.  2008 saw some suicide bombers and small uprisings but mainly the heated battle of earlier this decade had become a comparative puff.

Pakistan and Afghanistan remain unknowns, as does Iran; the latter said to be getting closer to perfecting a nuclear device.  These countries created news during the last year but the events already detailed made them mostly intermittent stories.  Rogue nations  such as Africa’s dying Zimbabwe, are trapped.  Robert Mugabe, a fearsome loser, denies his countries cholera epidemic while refusing to loosen his hold on power as a weakened South Africa watches its north-east border for the spread of disease.

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The advent of Barack Obama is anticipated by the entire world, not just his own country which fell to new lows under the leadership of a man who will likely be labeled the worst president the US has ever elected.  Obama ran a tidy campaign and for his part, a sensible transition. Even an appalling governor trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat was unable to impair the president-elect’s popularity.    

However it is doubtful this man can muster antidotes for troubles at home and abroad, despite a worthy cabinet headed by a tenacious foreign affairs representative in Hillary Clinton and a seasoned Defense minister in Robert Gates during his first months in office.  People expect too much of him.  But how can you blame Americans who have lost over a trillion in fumbled finances and much prestige under the leadership of a fool?  Take heart, it can’t get much worse, can it … huh?