I have said that I would put all the competitive rancor vis a viz Obama v. Clinton behind me, and after their conciliatory statements of the past few days regarding the race flare up, I am even more strongly committed to playing nice, as Obama would like me to do.
However, I still feel that it is incumbent upon us to point out the complete BS spewing forth from the mouth of one Robert L. Johnson. Let's put aside the fact that it seems a bit unusual for the feminist-oriented "Let's Make History" Hillary crowd to be embracing the founder of BET, an network that has probably done more than any of its competitors to denigrate and objectify women. What is dead wrong with this situation is that in Johnson's
"apology", he claims that when he said "when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book," (see the video
here) what he was referring to was Obama's time spent community organizing. In the
brilliant words of Noam Scheiber on TNR's The Plank, "Riiiiight."
I've been trying to get my head around what, exactly, Johnson was trying to say, granting that he is telling the complete truth about what he meant. I had intended to merely insert his explanation into the quotation above, but when I looked at and re-transcribed Johnson's comments, it immediately became apparent that the whole rambling monologue was completely incoherent. Therefore, I have made a slight editorial change (enclosed in brackets) to his statement, so as to generate a grammatically correct sentence. My edited transcription of his remarks appear below as the first quote. The second quote is my attempt to insert his explanation of what he meant into his statement (said insertion is also enclosed in brackets). However, I invite one and all to come up with their own insertions, mad-libs style, in these key points.
So: According to Robert Johnson, when he said:
As an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues, [are racist,] [or: are denigragting Dr. King's role in the civil rights movement,] [or: your mad-lib here,] - when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book.
What he
meant to say was:
As an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues, [are racist,] - when Barack Obama was [community organizing] in the neighborhood.
Doesn't it all make sense now?
But the real problem is not that Bob Johnson is a liar (or dissembler, or what have you). The real problem is not that such an incredibly inarticulate and
sleazy individual became the world's first black billionaire. No, the real problem is Hillary Clinton's reaction to Johnson's comments.
Michael Crowley points out the contradictions inherent in the statements about Johnson's comments that Hillary made during last night's debate. Key takeaway:
[A]fter a Hillary gave an answer downplaying the relevance of surrogate comments ("what somebody [people] never heard of said"), Russert followed up on Johnson: "Were his comments out of bounds"? This time, Hillary offered an entirely different spin: "Yes they were. And he has said that."
So, to recap, Hillary's positions were:
1) Bob Johnson denies that he did anything wrong and I accept that.
2) Bob Johnson admits that he did something wrong and I agree.
By the way, I have read most of Obama's
Dreams from my Father (I'm in the midst of reading it now, but I'm way past the youthful indiscretions section), and I suspect that Johnson has not. If he had, he would know that the "neighborhood" was a prestigious prep school in Hawaii and then
Occidental College, which is located north of L.A., near Pasadena (and about as far as one can get from South Central and Compton while still living near L.A.). Obama went to "Oxy" for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York City. He did indeed live in or near the "neighborhood" of Harlem while at Columbia, but by that point he had completely sworn off drugs and alcohol, and basically went through something like a period of purification, accompanied by a withdrawal from society.
When Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, his efforts were centered almost entirely on improving the lot of the most impoverished African-Americans on Chicago's notorious south side. His focus was always on getting real results on small issues that mattered to the people he was trying to help. For example, he led an effort to successfully lobby the Chicago Housing Authority to secure loose asbestos in an isolated housing project. Another effort resulted in the establishment of a new employment center on the far south side. In the process, he brought together a diverse cadre of community activists to work together for change, and he touched the lives of dozens of individuals with whom he had close personal relationships.
If this is the experience that Johnson meant to refer to when he was trying to denigrate Obama, I can't even fathom what his point would have been. Then again, perhaps expecting a coherent and rational argument from this guy is more than just a little bit naive...
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