Cynthia McKinney deserves an award. Alas, the Darwin Award would not suffice. That award is for people who do utterly stupid things, as when a person tests a gun by pointing it at his face and then firing it. McKinney makes those who qualify for the Darwin Award seem amazingly intelligent. She deserves the Dinosaur-Ostrich Award. This is the award that goes to a person whose ass is too big to fit in the door and whose brain is too small to grasp what a door is.
There is no need to rehearse the story by now; for at this point it is all but impossible for anyone even remotely aware of events not to have heard of the story. But it pains me to no end that McKinney even dared to suggest racism might have been a factor. I wonder how long will blacks go on playing the race card when it is so manifestly clear that nothing of the sort is true. And I further wonder how long will white liberals continue to be so plagued by “white guilty” that they lack the courage to call the charge of racism just so much nonsense when, alas, that is the case. If ever the charge was out of order, it was in this case. Ms. McKinney was not wearing the lapel-pin that members of Congress aware for admittance to the building. And a guard rightly asked her for identification.
Getting racism out of this is rather like me calling an agent of Continental Airlines (who is checking me in for an international flight) racist because she or he asked to see my passport after if we had just spent the last 10 minutes in marvelous conversation because in fact we know one another. Indeed, I know many of the agents who work the flights between Newark and Paris, because I have regularly flown Continental Airlines back and forth for more than a dozen years.
Yet, far from thinking that it is inappropriate for an agent who knows me to ask see my passport, the fact such an agent does so indicates to me that she or he is acting responsibly on the job. And that I like.
Of course, I am no member of Congress. So it is perhaps a mistake for me to think that my case is even remotely analogous to Ms. McKinney’s case.
But clearly only someone with an awfully inflated sense of self-importance would think it inappropriate that those protecting the building of Congress should ask for proper identification. This is the ass of a dinosaur. But to suppose that this constitutes racism when every single person is also being asked to show the appropriate identification or the individual is wearing the lapel-pin requires a brain the size of an ostrich.
I suppose that we all make up stories from time to time. But even a lie is a good lie only if it has an air of plausibility to it. Thus, there is no point in my telling people that I am a woman. And I look like an utter fool if I say such a thing in the hopes that anyone might believe me. Again: That would be the ostrich factor.
But owing to the dinosaur ass factor that is characteristic of egos, the utter stupidity of a claim is no barrier at all to people asserting it.
Alas, what pains me more than anything is the example that she has set for young blacks growing up. What we have is a member of Congress making a claim so incredulous that one has to wonder whether one has heard her correctly. After all, a bluff works only if it initially has some semblance of plausibility to it.
So the lesson that Ms. McKinney has taught young blacks is that it is alright to make the charge of racism the charge has no plausibility to it at all. And to make matters worse, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte support her in the name of black unity. Together, they yield about as much brainpower as a herd of ostriches, though there is not enough space in the galaxy to contain their egos.
And the fact that so many liberals fail to denounce McKinney lest they be called racists is so very problematic. The makes the charge of racism sound like some sort of (un)priestly blessing. If something racist, then it ought to be the case that just about anyone can see that it is. Similarly, if something is not racist, then ought to be the case that just about anyone can say that it is not.
If there is racism, it is not something whose existence or lack thereof turns only upon the utterance of blacks.
I want white friends who are very clear about whether their acts are racist or not, and so whose beliefs about their behavior in this regard does not turn upon my assessment. I could think that something is racist when it is not. Or, by contrast, I could think that something is not racist when it is. And in either case a white person could help me to get clear (or clearer) about this.
Now, Ms. McKinney I want you to know that in the absences of a multitude of witnesses I would turn down any and every offer to be in the same room with you. Here is why:
If you can so boldly accuse people of racism when the very charge reeks with utter incredulity, then you can also accuse men of vicious sexist behavior when there is no truth to that claim at all.
Paraphrasing Bernard Shaw, you have already proven yourself to be a person lacking in character owing to your inflated ego. So we know that destroying a person’s reputation is irrelevant to you when it is matter of satisfying your edacious sense of self-importance.
But as I have already indicated, the sad part is not so much that you made a fool out of yourself and that way too many whites followed suit, but that you have further contributed to a most despicable moral tone in our society, where the charge of racism is invoked to excuse manifest displays of irresponsibility. So long as black youth have you as a role model, they don’t need the KKK. For you are doing enough to hold black youth back from the excellence of redemption that would so elevate their souls.
