<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Courtesy of today's (September 24, 2012) Spokesman-Review.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">-------------------------------------</span></div><div><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><h1 style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both; "><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">One Nation, Two Dreams</span></font></h1><p></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Leonard Pitts, Jr.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is for Vanessa in South Florida.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She emailed me a few days ago after spotting a bumper sticker that read: 2012 Don’t Re-Nig. “Honestly,” she wrote, “I don’t know how to process my outrage, so I’m handing it off to you. I know that President Obama’s race has always been an issue to many people, and perhaps I live a relatively sheltered life in Democratic-leaning Broward County, but I’m still stunned by the sentiment. I’m even more stunned, naive though that may be, by the fact that some people believe it’s appropriate to flaunt that sentiment – and that it’s not a source of shame.”</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Vanessa, I’m afraid I’m not nearly as shocked as you. After all, the sentiment that bumper sticker expresses has been part of the Obama narrative since before he took office.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some of us grapple with a sense of racial and cultural dislocation, the jolting sensation in a changing nation, that their prerogatives as white people, assumptions so ingrained as to have never previously required the slightest thought, are now in question. They want “their” country back. As the great satirist Randy Newman sings in a new ballad:</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’m dreaming of a white president</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Just like the ones we’ve always had</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“A real live white man who knows the score</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“How to handle money or start a war.”</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But for others of us, it’s not anything so nuanced as a sense of dislocation – just the same old hate as always.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Either way, the world has changed enough that one cannot openly express such things. So instead, it gets hidden in oblique language, false controversies and putative “jokes.”</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But Vanessa – when one in four Americans thinks there’s some mystery over the president’s birthplace, while Mitt Romney (son of a man born in Mexico) and John McCain (born in the Panama Canal Zone) face no such scrutiny; when tea party followers denounce health care reform as “reparations”; when Rep. Lynn Westmoreland calls Obama “uppity,” then-Rep. Geoff Davis calls him “boy” and Rep. Joe Wilson yells out, “You lie!” during a presidential speech; when Rush Limbaugh says Obama’s election means it’s open season on white kids; when Obama is called a terrorist, a “food stamp president” and a “Chicago thug” – why should “Don’t Re-Nig” come as a surprise? It’s just the next logical step.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">One cannot openly express one’s hate – right up till the day one can. Though even then, one may have to delude oneself.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When he was asked about that bumper sticker, Billy Smith, of Ludowici, Ga., who manufactured it with his wife, Paula, told a reporter: “We didn’t mean it in a racist way.” The driver of that car would likely have said the same. But they do not lie for our benefit. They lie to conscience – and to self.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So this is the paradigm of our age – self-delusion on the one hand, a guy trying to govern on the other, while hemmed in by race, defined in crude, stereotypical imagery, yet unable to fight it, talk about it, or even admit he sees it, for fear of compromising his effectiveness, being dismissed as, God forbid – “an angry black man.”</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet we hope our way forward anyhow.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There hangs in the White House this photo of the president bowing to allow a little black boy to touch his head. The 5-year-old, his brother and his parents were in the Oval Office with Obama and the boy had a question. “I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he said, so softly Obama had to ask him to repeat himself. He did, and Obama invited him to see for himself. The boy hesitated.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Touch it dude!” the president said.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The boy did. “So, what do you think?” asked Obama.</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Yes,” said the boy, “it does feel the same.”</span></p><p style="overflow: visible !important; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That child’s name is Jacob. And Vanessa, while some of us are dreaming of a white president, well .?.?. it’s likely Jacob has some new dreams of his own.</span></p></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">-------------------------------------<br><br>"I'm Dreaming" </span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Randy Newman</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvLeQbwuKys">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvLeQbwuKys</a></span></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"George Washington was a white man</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Adams and Jefferson too</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Abe Lincoln was a white man, probably</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And William McKinley the whitest of them all</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Was shot down by an immigrant in Buffalo</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And a star fell out of heaven</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m dreaming of a white President</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Just like the ones we’ve always had</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A real live white man</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Who knows the score</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How to handle money or start a war</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Wouldn’t even have to tell me what we were fighting for</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He’d be the right man</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If he were a</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m dreaming of a white President</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Someone whom we can understand</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Someone who knows where we’re coming from</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And that the law of the jungle is not the law of this land</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In deepest darkest Africa nineteen three</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A little boy says, “Daddy, I just discovered relativity.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A big eclipse is coming</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And I’ll prove it. Wait and see!”</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You better eclipse yourself outta here, son</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And find yourself a tree</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There’s a lion in the front yard</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And he knows he won’t catch me.”</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How many little Albert Einsteins</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cut down in their prime?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How many little Ronald Reagans</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gobbled up before their time?</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I don’t believe in evolution</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But it does occur to me,</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What if little William Howard Taft had to face a lion</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Or God forbid, climb a tree?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Where would this country be?</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m dreaming of a white President</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Buh buh buh buh</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">‘Cause things have never been this bad</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So he won’t run the hundred in ten seconds flat</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So he won’t have a pretty jump shot</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Or be an Olympic acrobat</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So he won’t know much about global warming</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Is that really where you’re at?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He won’t be the brightest, perhaps</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But he’ll be the whitest</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And I’ll vote for that</span></div><p></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "></p><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whiter than this?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whiter than this?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whiter than this?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whiter than this?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes"</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">---------------</span></div><p></p></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .</span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares"</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div></div></div></body></html>