Happy Independence Day

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This is also Mahablog’s 8th birthday.

From the “none are so blind as those who will not see” department — Kathleen Parker wrote one of her usually inane Washington Post columns the other day in which she called Barack Obama “the first female president.” Apparently in Parker’s World a “real man” must be a swaggering, angry, shoot ’em all and let God sort ’em out type, not cool and cerebral. By Parker’s reasoning probably Thomas Jefferson was the first female president, and Abraham Lincoln would have been right up there also, but let’s go on.

Some of Parker’s comments offended African-American readers, who wrote to tell her that

One, a black man cannot show anger in public lest he be considered an Angry Black Man.

Two, to suggest that a black man has any feminine characteristics, even when framed as an “evolutionary achievement,” is to emasculate and reduce him to a figure from Jim Crow days.

That first one, about not showing anger, is a point I’m sure I’ve written about before. I wrote in July 2008

If there is one thing Obama has been very cautious about, it’s bringing race into the campaign. As I’ve written before, he goes out of his way not to be the “black candidate.” He and his surrogates have brought up race occasionally, when they had to, but they drop it quickly.

Obama has also worked very hard not to display anger throughout his campaign; the cool demeanor may or may not be the “real” Obama, but he is incredibly disciplined about keeping his cool. And that’s because he understands that there are whites who can like a nice black man, but who will run screaming from an angry black man, even if the black man has plenty to be angry about.

I think anyone with his eyes open, watching race relations in America, ought to have noticed this. But then there’s Kathleen Parker, who wrote in a column today

Do I think people are too sensitive? Yes. Do I think I may have overstepped the line? No. It’s a column, not a dissertation. And my thesis, bouncing off the notion that Bill Clinton was the first black president, is serious only insofar as you really think Clinton is black.

But I also recognize that my life experience is different from that of most African Americans. And that experience allows me both the luxury of seeing people without the lens of race, but also (sometimes) to fail to imagine how people of other backgrounds might interpret my words.

“Without the lens of race” my ass. Being utterly oblivious to the realities of racism is not being “without the lens of race.” It means she’s left the lens cap on.

Apparently someone actually had to explain to her that black men are held to a different standard in the anger department than white men. But then Parker says she can’t be prejudiced to Barack Obama, because she and the president are 8th cousins once removed. Seriously.

But then she goes back to saying that “many people” want their president to be an “action figure in the hyper-masculine mode.” Again, no Jeffersons or Lincolns. Really, the idea that presidents are supposed to channel the nation’s emotions seems to be relatively new. Calvin Coolidge (still beloved by wingnuts) was famously unemotional. I don’t remember Eisenhower or Kennedy appearing enraged in public, although I was very young then and maybe I missed it. Reagan, on the other hand, was the Great Emoter.

I blame television; government is becoming just another reality show.