In case you thought racism was dead ...

Exactly, Tony.

Fifty years since the majestic "content of character" speech and five years of a (cough) "post-racial" administration, yet tribal politics is flourishing like never before. My own small protest is to never, ever check any of the demographic boxes on surveys, forms or other paperwork because, why the hell should that matter anymore?

But if some throw in the towel on dividing along racial/gender/ethnic/sexual preference lines, they lose their reason to exist.

 

Fixed.

Left has to cling to the notion that Obama's heritage/racial makeup is the source of criticism. Ninety-seven percent of the Americans I know who are unhappy with his Presidency would feel exactly the same way if he were "Bob O'Brien from Shaker Heights, Ohio," if his values, tactics, behavior and results were the same.

Guy never gets elected (twice) in a racist country; right wouldn't have voted for Dem if he were the aforementioned Bob. And there are idiots/bigots on the fringes on both sides.

Five years in, it's as much a straw man to pound on race as the source of Obama criticism as it is to blame Bush for everything else.

 

Kool-Aid.

 

More than half the criticism of Obama comes from the left, many of whom think he's not liberal enough.

What he actually is: a decent, hamstrung, center-right president. If I had to rank him at this point (which is asinine because his signature accomplishment's success or failure won't be known for at least a decade), I'd put him in the in the 18-22 range.

 

Jesus, you guys, it was a throwaway line. Of course racism is not dead.

 

Tell your dealer you need better stuff. Your hallucinations are getting really weird.

 

As long as there exists more than one race, there will be racism. It's just a fact of life. There's racism in every single corner of the world. Racism is not mutually exclusive to America, nor did this country invent racism.

 

Nor is it a one-way street. People of all races need to knock it the hell off. No matter what charlatans it puts out of work.

 

20 acres of Manhattan real estate left vacant, in order to keep Puerto Rican and other low income families out of the neighborhood:

They Kept a Lower East Side Lot Vacant for 47 Years

nyti.ms/1exejEy

 

A request to to the Times for a correction is dropped:

 

Said for the 45,694th time: I thank all the deities that the internet didn't exist when I was 16.

 

People have always said stupid stuff. The difference now is everyone all over the world can read them, thanks to Twitter.