Someone sent me a link to yet another piece of writing admonishing Tiger Woods and its inevitable knee jerk comparison to liberal disappointment with Obama.
Le grand sigh. I think my greatest complaint stems from the following paragraph:
Both men are of mixed race. Yet the majority of the country, including black Americans, sees them as black. That’s not a bad thing. Except when such men of intelligence and talent, men who have such influence and power, can’t help but succumb to the age old twins of greed and power. Although each has risen from ordinary beginnings to be at the top of their field but now things don’t look so good for either of them. Woods income is as tied to endorsements as it is to his talent. And Obama is so caught up in party donations and the power that those who donate have, he can’t allow himself or his party to do anything to thwart those donations. If Woods had been smart he would have kept his head down, played golf and taken care of his beautiful family instead of publicly destroying them. If Obama had enacted campaign reform as the first order of business real change could well have happened. But money and fame go to the head and any other result seems to be a fairy tale, a dream, an impossibility. Somehow money corrupts the moral compass, whether for one’s self or one’s party.
Let’s be clear: Woods is an athlete, not a world leader. And believe me, I’m no shill for Obama, but his job is a little different from an athlete who’s amazing, innate talent earned him the right to be a cog in corporate beast. The author’s presumption lumps Woods and Obama into some black monolith. Dowd did the same thing with Desiree Rogers and Woods in a vapid column last week.
Post racial America seems to lack discernment. And anyone who’s paying attention to the struggle for health care reform knows that the blame is shared, mired in the intrigues among insurance/pharmaceutical corporations, lobbyists, AND Members of Congress.
Health care reform is not the same as the Green.
UPDATE:
Actually, language and logic is what really bristles. ‘If Woods had been smart he would have kept his head down, played golf…’ The sentence seems innocuous except that in our complicated racial history, a white person suggesting that a black person self-identified or otherwise, should ‘keep their head down’ is a flash point to language from the segregation era. It’s just bad diction here. Certainly, the immediate turnoff when we compare marital transgressions to perceived failings in leadership to pass legislation begins with, ‘Both men are of mixed race…’ Yikes. And? So? I don’t presume that this author is racist, but the language and logic speak to a problem some of us are sensitive to when engaging white liberals. A blissful unawareness of the racist attitudes embedded in the language. It’s like that time when Joe Biden said Obama was ‘clean and articulate’ and the New York Times wrote an op-ed to explain to everyone why that’s a non-starter with Black America.
