Chris Matthews has a long history of giving spontaneous voice to the Village attitude that black people are icky and not "normal" like white folks. It just bubbles up, like vomit. Yesterday, he did it again. "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour," Chris Matthews said of Barack Obama's SOTU speech.
This implies that Matthews spent the other 23 hours of that and every other day in unbearable awareness Obama's blackness. To Matthews, the black in the White House is an inescapable taint, a voodoo curse that has slithered into his lizard brain to discomfit him whenever forced to cast eyes upon it. It should not be there. It is deeply wrong for reasons that he can't rationally explain, even to himself. But he understands a white Congressman yelling "You lie" in the hallowed Chamber while The Dark Usurper dared to speak to his betters. It's Obama's own fault for forcing his blackness upon those who have no desire to see it.
For one hour, Matthews forgot that this half white, Ivy League educated lawyer was black. For one solid hour, he was able to see past the twisted gut reactions that that damned accursed skin evokes in him. He and his ilk know that for Obama to succeed as President, he must recapture the magic of that wondrous hour. He must make white Washington (and by association, white America) forget that he is black.
Ideas on how Obama might make Matthews forget:
- Hit him on the head with a ball peen hammer. Then hit him again.
(Oh... you get the idea)
Obama must also abandon any idea that stinks of liberalism. It reminds "normal Americans" of black people. Screw health care. Damn mass transit. Black people use those. That's why they're "socialist." Obama must make America forget how deep and subtle the hatred is. He succeeded for one hour. He can make Matthews and his ilk forget their fear and their loathing only when he stops assaulting them by shamelessly brandishing that hideous skin, and only then will they deem his administration a success.