BACK TO BLACK

GOOD-NATURED TOM-FOOLERY INVOLVING insulting politicians, something which has been the lifeblood of independent news writing even in the days when this was done with charred embers on the walls of caves, as it is still done today in some parts of the world, is starting to attract the attention of some oversensitive members of our communities who think that any criticism of a member of a minority is a criticism of the minority as a whole rather than the member as an individual. This approach has seen its most recent outings in absurd claims that calling President Barack Obama a “liar” is racist.

OBAMA, OF COURSE, TAKES THIS in his stride. Ably performing on the Letterman show, he quite honestly stated, “We must remember that I was black before I was elected.” This was met with hearty applause and laughter from an American middle-class that still hasn’t come to terms with using the word “black”; a class that hypocritically wishes to think that “equality” is achieved by pretending we are all equal, but the members of which get really, really, oh-my-gosh irritated when they have to wait behind “black” people in the supermarkets.

THEY MAY GET OVER THIS. But it will be a lot harder to get over than when the same class of Americans found out that Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon was shafting them and cheating on them, or that Bill “Trousersnake” Clinton was shafting interns and cheating on his good lady wife Hillary. For some reason, perhaps the poet in me, I am reminded of the words to a song by Amy Winehouse, one of our greatest musical exponents of these difficult times.