Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Mike Flugennock passed along a pointer to a weigh-in by literary Bigfoot Alice Walker:

http://www.theroot.com/id/45469/output/print

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time....

He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for.... I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love.... I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians....

These are the things Alice Walker "wants". But she acknowledges she won't be getting 'em from Obie. So why, Alice...?

Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door..... as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

Three black women in the White House -- well, that sounds pretty good, even to pale old me, and of course it sounds a lot better to Walker, understandably and rightly. It's actually the only reason I find intelligible why anybody might care whether Obama wins.

If your skin has a high melanin quotient -- with everything that has entailed, and still entails, in America -- the idea that a brother might inherit the nuclear launch codes must be pretty exciting. Seriously. Solidarity with people like oneself is deeply human and, in the case of people who aren't running the show, entirely praiseworthy.

I've got no use for Obama myself. But -- though nobody needs any permission from me, nor should they -- black folks would be above or below humanity if they didn't feel an awfully strong interest in Obie's prospects.

But jeez, Alice, you coulda spared us the pagan deities and the Hopi elders. This sort of dribble is one the reasons why most ordinary Americans think intellectuals are idiots.

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Stats box:

Words in Walker's essay: 2214
Various forms of the first-person singular pronoun:

-- 'I': 54
--'my': 28
-- 'me': 13
-- 'mine': 1

Total: 96 (4.3%)