This is admirable, but certain to make conservative head’s explode. Even the title will enrage them, as everyone knows that “brother” means “thug.”
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
What’s the over/under on how far into his program tomorrow it’ll take Rush Limbaugh to utter the word “reparations”?
five minutes.
If Obama had only entitled the plan “Your brother’s owner”, just think how happy Dreher and Douthat would have been.
That just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Perhaps as Obama gets closer to the end of his time in office, he’ll have more and more freedom to essentially give the wingers the middle finger. They’re going to call him every name in the book no matter what, so he might as well trigger the crap out of them.
I don’t think he’d do anything specifically for that reason. But I do think he gains freedom to do what he sees as right and best without regard to their reaction.
I suspect that Obama rather enjoys poking the sore spots on the almost dead white elephant’s hide. Remember how he ripped Donald Trump a new one? He’s always good value for money when it comes to self-deprecating humor that also knows just how to rile up the teabaggers by mocking their craziest fantasies. He had a wonderful line: “I’m not the strapping young Muslim Socialist I used to be” at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2013. I think he might just get a chuckle out of making the lunatics holler.
Yet more evil from the radical Kenyan usurper.
School ready-to-learn means breakfast, safe an quiet places to study, and mentors who don’t treat kids as the enemy.
Reducing the negative interactions with the law enforcement system must mean an end to racialized stop-and-frisk and an end to authoritarian and militarized policing. And police impunity. That’s not likely to happen without major shakeups in DOJ and DHS. And a change in the political culture so that the strategy is no longer “lock ’em up and throw away the key.” It also means a change in how people are treated in prison and when they are released from prison. The school-to-prison pipeline today does everything it can to ensure that men of color go to prison early and often. And the three strikes and you’re out laws ensure that they are there for life.
The President is going to try to do this solely with business and foundation support, given the collapse of Congress. That means that he must tell those sympathetic business executives and foundation executives that the days in which there was an idea pipeline in which foundations created and tested innovative pilot programs that the federal government picked up and applied widely are over. If businesses and foundations can’t figure out how to replicate their successful programs nationwide, it is not going to happen. At least until there is a change in the Congress.
And all the while the disinvestment in the communities that lots of these kids come from continues and the adults on whom they might ordinarily rely continue to be savaged by insane economic policies.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the President is trapped in the “individual responsibility can conquer all” mindset of his own biography.
I agree with pretty much everything except this:
It’s part of his biography but it isn’t as large a part of his rhetoric. He talks about collective action far more than personal responsibility.
AAAIIIIEEEEE!!! It’s reverse racism! I mean, where are all the opportunities for white…um, white…uh, non-black and non-Latino…aw, never mind.
The first 3 comments I read at the end of the article basically said exactly that.
He could always change “brother” to “brah” in honor of Mardi Gras and have even more fun with it.