Obama-Day Tuesday: BET founder executes black-on-black hit for Hillary

Almost two years ago, I wrote a commentary in which I condemned Hillary Clinton for going into a black church in Harlem and faking a Southern-chitlin’ accent as she wailed to an Amen-crowd of blacks about how Republicans in Congress were treating her like a black slave.In fact, I was so incensed by her unconscionable political exploitation of this seminal black experience that I wrote the following:

As Sen. Ted Kennedy – who recently referred to a Republican black female judge as an ape – can attest, white liberals will never pay a political price for insulting blacks – who are either too stupid to realize they’re being insulted or don’t care, or both….

Then just days ago, I felt obliged to take her (and her husband) to task in another commentary for her insinuation that President Lyndon Johnson did more for black civil rights than Martin Luther King Jr. (and for Bill’s insinuation that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is nothing but a fairy tale).

But even as I prayed that Obama’s Secret Service bodyguards would redouble their efforts to protect him from a wannabe assassin, I lamented that there was nothing they could do to protect him from Bill and Hillary’s patented plan to assassinate his character.

And this brings me to their campaign to re-invent Hillary as one who has done more to further the cause of black civil rights than Obama. (And please do not miss their unwitting analogy here to Johnson and MLK.) Never mind that I have written numerous commentaries citing why it’s arguable that even President George W. Bush has done more for blacks than Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, they are now relying on black assassins to do their dirty work. And in this regard, Bob Johnson is following Andrew Young – who argued recently that Bill is blacker than Obama because “he’s been with more black women” – in taking cheap shots at Obama. But talk about the pot calling the kettle black….

After all, Johnson is the latter-day minstrel who purportedly empowered blacks (and became a billionaire no less) by promoting images of them as a bunch of drug-pushing thugs and booty-poppin’ sluts on Black Entertainment Television (BET). Yet here’s what he had the unmitigated gall to say about Obama in defense of Hillary on Sunday:

[T]o me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book ….

But I would bet every dime in my savings account that if you were to challenge Johnson to cite a single thing Hillary did to further the cause of black civil rights, you would find that he is every bit as stupid as he suggests the Obama campaign thinks he is …. (Got that?) Yet Johnson (and the Clintons) would have you believe that where Hillary spent her years as a young adult championing the cause of black civil rights, Obama spent his hanging out in the neighborhood crack den.

Whereas, in fact, Hillary was busy trying to help Barry Goldwater defeat the very President Johnson she’s now praising for doing more to further the cause of black civil rights than MLK. And this, despite knowing full well that Goldwater was one of only six Republican senators who fought tirelessly to obstruct enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for which MLK risked his life.

But, lest you think this was just the political flirtation of a misguided young girl, you should know that in her recent autobiography, Living History, Hillary described herself during those good ole days as “a Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit”. And you should also know that, after her anti-black hero lost his campaign to defeat Johnson, Hillary went on to get her law degree from Yale University, and then returned (with Bill) to Arkansas to work as a white-shoe lawyer for corporate fat cats.

Now juxtapose Hillary’s early years with the fact that in his own autobiography – Dreams from my Father, Obama acknowledges his youthful indiscretions involving drug use. But he cleaned up his act and went on to get his law degree from Harvard University and returned to Chicago to work as civil rights attorney (specializing in profiling and death-row cases in which blacks were so often the victims of unfair and unjust prosecution) and as a community organizer (trying to empower blacks politically and economically).

Now you decide which is more troubling: Hillary idolizing the racist Goldwater, or Obama doing a few lines?

What is most instructive about Bill and Hillary in this context, however, is that they sealed their tenure as governor and first lady of Arkansas by executing a retarded black man to appease white voters during their first campaign for the presidency in 1992. (Although, she would no doubt argue that her work as an advocate for children more than compensated for this one execution….)

It might also be helpful to know that in 1993, as president and first lady of the United Sates, they betrayed Lani Guinier. Guinier, of course, is their fellow Yale Law School graduate who the Clintons claimed was a close personal friend. Yet they withdrew her nomination as the top civil rights attorney at the Justice Department as soon as whites began smearing her as a “Quota Queen”.

And it is especially telling that, within months of betraying Guinier, they gave the nation’s highest civilian award — the Presidential Medal of Freedom – to William J. Fulbright — a man who spent the vast majority of his public career and life as a proud segregationist; which is rather like President Bush giving this medal to Strom Thurmond.

(Not to mention Clintons’ “end welfare as we know it” scam, which effectively took welfare checks from single black mothers and gave them to fortune 500 corporations.)

And this is only the tip of the iceberg of particulars I could marshal to expose the Clintons’ shortcomings and hypocrisy on race matters. Yet they have the nerve to lecture Obama about being all talk and no action.

What is even more disappointing, however, is that blacks like Johnson open wide and swallow their pride even when Hillary’s white liberal supporters make racist remarks about Obama: As was the case, for example, when Andrew Cuomo dismissed his campaign strategy in New Hampshire as “shucking and jiving”; and when Bob Kerry insinuated that Obama is a Muslim who was educated at a Jihadist madrassa in Indonesia even though he knew these were bold-faced lies. Not to mention, just last week, when her husband Bill dismissed the very premise of Obama’s campaign, namely his opposition to the Iraq War, as an uppity fairy tale.

Incidentally, please don’t be fooled by these political assassins – who hurl stink bombs, and then issue patently cynical statements clarifying or apologizing for their remarks. Also, in this respect, bear in mind that no two people show more indignant sincerity when lying or spinning for political expediency than Bill and Hillary Clinton. And, as between the two of them, Bill has nothing on Hillary.

Therefore, beware and be informed – especially as you watch them take center stage to exploit upcoming events commemorating MLK’s 79th birthday, which happens to be today.

Finally, the silver lining in this ironic racial fight is that it might finally cut the Lilliputian cord of obligation that has kept blacks politically tethered to a Democratic Party that has always taken them for granted. And, if Hillary wins the nomination by denigrating MLK’s legacy and assassinating Obama’s character, it would serve her right, and redound to their long-term political benefit, for blacks to support her Republican opponent in spades….

NOTE: Usually the only people who tune in to presidential debates are political wonks. But I urge all of you to watch tonight’s Democratic debate in Nevada, if only to see how Hillary and Obama deal with the racial conflict that has dominated the news for almost a week now.

* OBAMA ’08: To learn more about this extraordinary presidential candidate, and to contribute to his audacious campaign, please click here.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bob Johnson BET