Articulate, Indeed!

Certainly that isn’t something anyone would accuse Senator Bloviator of being. Hopefully, this is the shortest Presidential Campaign ever!

From the NYT’s today:

SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN’S characterization of his fellow Democratic presidential contender Senator Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” was so painfully clumsy that it nearly warranted pity.

Well pitiful, maybe. That said, here is a little story from back in the day that took place in that most “Liberal” of Commonwealths: Massachusetts. My girlfriend Margo was looking for an apartment. So, she culled the newspaper ads for a few suitable prospects on the Westside of town near where I was living at the time. She made the requisite phone calls and setup the appointments to see the apartments and meet the landlords.

She asked me to go with her as I was, in her mind anyway, an expert on the neighborhood. Also, she I and shared the same taste, in so many things, and we trusted the insights and judgment of each other without question (we would often show-up at each other’s homes in the exact same outfit). And of course there was our taste in men, but that is a story for another day. Our friends often referred to us as the twins.

So, off we went to look at one apartment right up the street from mine. It was a beautiful street and the building was a very nice triple-decker. It was definitely a step up from my subterranean barracks down the street. We knocked on the door and an elderly white couple answered. Margo explained that we were there to see the apartment. They looked at me and started to tell me about the apartment. When I told them that I wasn’t Margo, they looked at her and blurted, “But, you didn’t sound black.”

That is the long and the short of it folks. Margo was an accomplished fashion designer who owned her own boutique. These were facts these folks knew before she even got there. And that was their reaction, “But, you didn’t sound black.” They just assumed that I, the white girl, was the prospective tenant.

Now, most thinking people wouldn’t say that today, because times have “changed.” But they would use the word “articulate.” And they would be just as clueless as that elderly white couple in “Liberal” Massachusetts back in the day.

So, thank you Senator Hair-plug. You have opened a dialogue. And in the article today in the NYT’s it is summed up perfectly:

The comedian and actor D. L. Hughley, a frequent guest on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” says that every time he appears on the show, where he riffs on the political and social issues of the day, people walk up to him afterward and tell him how “smart and articulate” his comments were.

“Everyone was up in arms about Michael Richards using the N-word, but subtle words like this are more insidious,” Mr. Hughley said. “It’s like weight loss. The last few pounds are the hardest to get rid of. It’s the last vestiges of racism that are hard to get rid of.”

Read the whole article, you may learn something. I did.