Popularity Breeds Contempt

I can see it now. Air Force One decked out with "22s" and spinners. Maybe even a set of hydraulics. Watching the hip-hop president in the Oval Office with his baseball cap on backward coping a gansta lean in the big chair. Should be really pimp, don't you think? Cool man, real cool. Instead of giving away presidential cuff links to guests, as is the custom, he will offer "bling bling." -- "The Hip Hop President," Craig R. Smith, World Net Daily

It only gets worse from there.

He's the sum of all fears. It doesn't matter that Barack Obama, an Ivy League grad lawyer and polished politician with a firm grasp of the English vernacular, hasn't exhibited anything to warrant these fears.

And it doesn't matter the inherent hypocrisy as the current Commander-In-Chief regularly mangles and assaults th English language, from making up words to fumbling them to resorting to terms such as "awesome" and "cool" to describe what he likes. For example, when he told Pope Benedict his speech was "awesome." Or how he said he saw into Vladimir Putin's soul. Or just recently when he was photographed chest bumping a military academy grad.

Apparently the qualities of white anti-intellectualism are good, but the qualities of black anti-intellectualism (that Obama doesn't even represent) are a malignant evil that must be cast out.

I could understand calling Obama the "Hip Hop President" if he were aspiring politician/activist/author and self-described "Hip Hop journalist" Kevin Powell. But Powell, Obama, Kanye West, Willie Horton -- Same thing, right? We do all amazingly look alike.

But what Smith's column really represents a recurring meme of Barack Obama being a fluffy whipped chocolate confection that dances on your tongue but only fills you up in the most superficial of ways. That he is a man who is all hype and hope, but no substance. That he is a danger because he will put a stripper's pole up in the Oval Office and Barack will suddenly morph into Dave Chappelle's satire of "Black Bush." Only instead of demonstrating how crazy George W. Bush sounds to black people, it will contort into the theater of the Negro absurd -- a filming of "I Love New York" in the White House's Map Room.

After a few months on the job, he can refer to his cabinet members as his "bitches." Hey don't get angry at me. Take a listen to any hip-hop song, and that is the type of endearing language you will hear. A group of playas that have no respect for the country. The same country that affords them a lifestyle most people only dream of, and all they can do is endlessly complain about it. Barack is very good at putting America down. Just like his hipster homeboys. Remember that hip-hop is a culture, not a color. It's a mind set and a way of life – one that is chosen not inherited. It has been slowly infiltrating every class and race in America for years. A culture that has led people to believe they deserve more. That America somehow owes them something. And because they think they have been ripped off in some fashion, they are angry.

There's a certain point where you start to think Smith's column is a joke, a parody, but his paranoia is real. Popularity breeds contempt and suspicion and fear and envy, and it can come out in all forms, from inane columns like Smith's which play on the "Negrophobia" of whites or from would be assassins the authorities tells us we shouldn't worry about.

Wednesday the FBI arrested three men who were allegedly hatching a plot to assassinate the Democratic nominee.

They downplayed the incident, claiming they were "meth heads" incapable of pulling of such an attack. But really this talk of "capability" is moot. The Secret Service and the FBI both know that all it takes is one determined person, either politically motivated or mentally disturbed, to cut down a great man. The assassins of King, both Kennedys, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Benazir Bhutto and John Lennon and the would-be assassins of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were a motley crew with obscure motives and mental deficiencies. Many working alone, telling their plans to no one.

All it takes is one. One motivated individual, sitting in their room, polishing a rifle or fashioning a bomb, dreaming of infamy or obsession. John Hinckley Jr. was a depressed, mentally disturbed man comsumed with actress Jodie Foster and the film "Taxi Driver." He believed by shooting Reagan he would win her attention. If the FBI had found him before he shot Reagan they would have said Hinckley, with all his mental issues and meek demeanor, was not capable of pulling off an attack.

That's the other side of popularity, of being such a dynamic figure, a symbol, on such a large stage -- you attract everyone, for good and bad. Standing in Invesco Field, addressing 85,000 tonight could conjure up enough Negrophobia to set the opposition's hair on fire. Powerful figures able to stir that much emotion and attract so many people are feared. Obama is fashioned as crude, B-Boy Caesar, staged by Leni Riefenstahl with Richard Wager's "Flight of the Valkyries" remixed to Ludacris' "Move Bitch" playing in the background.

For a black man who is not running for the end zone or performing an elaborate song and dance routine, for a black man to address such masses as the potential leader of the United States of America, Obama's mere existence to some is a threat -- a Rubicon once crossed that we can never return from.

The Republicans and John McCain can't summon the excitement rippling through the Democratic side. So out of a mixture of envy and ambition, they attack him for being what he is -- well liked and loved. He's a celebrity. He's Paris Hilton with a tan and a brain. They have to make fun of what they fear. They have no other recourse.

These are the things you have to live with, deal with and accept. Barack Obama has crossed over from man to icon and icons have a history of being smashed. The iconoclasts are watching and waiting, singing to themselves that the higher he rises the harder he'll fall.

I don't want to see Obama denigrated personally, politically or physically. I want fairness in the system. I want him to have the same chance McCain has and not be despised simply because he plays the game better. But that's a lot to ask when even being well-liked is an indictment of your character.

Bu to them he is the Pied Piper of Hope and Change. They fear that when he opens his mouth to speak he will steal their children and their country away.