Obama Frees Me to Be a Total Asshole: In Your Face, Liberals!

Shaker CLD sent me the link to this stunning op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer in which its author, Tom Adkins (who's identified as "the publisher of CommonConservative.com," a site which appears to be both less sophisticated and less dynamic than a garden slug), defiantly declares: "The Era of White Guilt is over."

The piece is so absurd, so resoundingly devoid of anything resembling a fact or a complex thought, so unapologetically racist (and sexist—if black men succeed, what could possibly be left to achieve for black people?), so wildly inappropriate on every conceivable level (except, perhaps, as satire, which it unfortunately is not), that I can't quite wrap my head around how it got published anywhere outside the Free Republic.

The election of Barack Obama destroys the validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.

So today, I'm feeling a little "uppity," if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is exactly ZERO. No more Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God Damn America," Al Sharpton's Church of Perpetual Victimization, or Jesse Jackson's rainbow racism. Cornel West? You're a fraud. All those "black studies" programs must now teach kids to thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.

The saddest part about this execrable tract is that its ideas aren't even new. Racist superfuck Pat Buchanan was exhorting black Americans to express gratitude to whites in his "A Brief for Whitey" (actual title) back in March, and I'm sure he wasn't the first, either. Adkins isn't just a deluded, belligerent, resentful, self-pitying, ignorant racist loser; he's a derivative deluded, belligerent, resentful, self-pitying, ignorant racist loser. He would be pitiable were he not so profoundly loathsome.

Adkins ends his tirade—oh, pardon me: I mean his cry of freedom from the chains of white guilt—by explaining that liberals can't complain about racism anymore now that Obama's been elected.

Obama's ascension also creates another gargantuan irony. How can liberals sell American racism, class envy and unfairness when our new black president and his wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and are now moving to the White House? How unfair is that? Now, like a delicious O. Henry tale, Obama's spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by its own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama's election has validated American conservatism.

It's an interesting calculation, that. Obama's personal ascendancy to the Oval Office, during which he overcame adversity like bigotry, poverty, an absentee father, the untimely deaths of his parents, somehow renders moot Obama's promises to other Americans to alleviate the barriers through which he had to break. Truly, that is the conservative way—no female, gay, and/or brown-skinned conservative ever made the road easier for those to follow, instead basking in their exceptional, anointed specialness and crowing about their bootstraps while rebuilding whatever barriers they broke. But that's not the way liberals work, and, while I'm not remotely sure that Obama's a liberal, I don't think that's the way he works, either. So Adkins' equation just doesn't work.

In fairness, though, Adkins never claimed to be good at math. Which is, I suppose, why he also looks at this:


—and sees not 43 > 1, but 43 = 1. Everything's equal now. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

No more quotas. No more handouts. No more complaining that "the man" is keeping you down. "The man" is now black.

Uh-huh. Like magic, now that the president is black, a black applicant will never be denied a job on the basis of her/his race again by a white CEO, and a black driver will never be unfairly targeted by a white cop, and no black child will ever be given less attention than is fair by a white teacher, because all instances of institutional racism disappeared in a puff of smoke on Nov. 4.

Adkins knows the truth, of course. But that's not the point. The point is that he just doesn't want to have to feel obliged to care anymore. And Obama's as good as excuse as any, and better than most.

Wev.

Congrats on your new continued freedom from a social conscience, Mr. Adkins. The shackles of privilege still bind you.

[Patrick Moberg image via Stark.]