Entreprenurial Racism

It looks like Nadya Suleyman's 15 minutes of fame is finally over, but the US media circus is gearing up for round 12 in the nascent Obama administration. At this rate, we should be at round 576 come 2012, but who's counting? Following the mauling of a woman by a chimpanzee here in CT last week, where the offending chimp was shortly felled by police bullets, the ever high-brow New York Post printed a cartoon showing a felled chimp with the caption 'They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill'.

Ever one to invent a racist event, the Reverend Al Sharpton has called for a boycott of the Post because he saw the depiction of the chimp as a metaphor for President Obama. I'd suggest Jimmy Orr's hilarious column in the Christian Science Monitor, along with the barrage of comments, except CSM has withdrawn the column. My reaction, except for this post, is to do something I've never done in my adult life: seek out and purchase a copy of the NY Post, if only to show my support for them, or closer to the truth, my contempt for Reverend Al. By the third stop I could declare 'mission accomplished'.

I used to love the comments section for Yahoo news stories, until they disabled the feature after the Hezbollah war in 2007...but it's nice to see news sources allow reader comments these days. CSM is one of these sources, and a one 'ssjackson', claiming to be a 32nd cousin of Jesse Jackson, provided me with the title for this entry. He (?) states 'I applaud the Post for calling out Sharpton and all other wannabees whose motives are Entreprenurial Racism, not racial understanding or equality'.

My accomplice in this mission, a fine young black man, told me his father's position on this, based on the events in Jena, TX the other year, when a noose was found hanging from a tree on the high school grounds, resulting in inter-racial fighting between students, and apparently, a disproportionate number of suspensions between the participants. It was good to see a generational perspective on these events. I was told that in previous times, the appearance of a noose, or similar epithet, would result in the offended group rising to the challenge of doing better. Instead, in this Obama-led, post-racism period, we are faced with self-appointed community activists reinforcing the attitude of victimhood, demanding compensation, apologies, and justice.

Maybe it's time to recall the Kings, Rodney and Martin, and ask 'can't we all get along?'.