But I have this tic that I can’t get rid of. It’s… oohh… uhhh… STOP TALKING ABOUT FUCKING SKIP GATES!!! ohhh…. sorry…
Moving on, Obama’s own thoughts on the ridiculous media kerfuffle re. his NAACP speech, from Eugene Robinson.
“I’ve noticed that when I talk about personal responsibility in the African American community, that gets highlighted,” Obama said in an interview Friday. “But then the whole other half of the speech, where I talked about government’s responsibility . . . that somehow doesn’t make news.”
A very clear, logical point of view and a nice little piece. I particularly like this bit at the end:
“One of the ways that I think that the civil rights movement . . . weakened itself was by enforcing a single way of being black — being authentically black. And, as a consequence, there were a whole bunch of young black people — and I fell prey to this for a time when I was a teenager — who thought that if you were really ‘down’ you had to be a certain way. And oftentimes that was anti-something. You defined yourself by being against things as opposed to what you were for. And I think now young people realize, you know what, being African American can mean a whole range of things. There’s a whole bunch of possibilities out there for how you want to live your life, what values you want to express, who you choose to interact with.”
