Frank Batavick, author of such vital columns as "McCarthyism all over again" and "Tattoos are no passing fad", has bent his pen to the task of taking on the scourge of slavery.
And by "slavery", he means people who don't like Obama. (Also by McCarthyism, he means people who don't like Obama.) Ever watchful of anyone criticizing Obama, Frank, to his horror, discovered criticism of Obama in the men's locker room at the Y in the form of Freedom Center pamphlets.
Like a good citizen, Frank Batavick #7492001 rushed to his local paper to write an immediate denunciation of these anti-Obama thoughtcrimes.
He (and I'm pretty sure it's a he) has been depositing hateful pamphlets in the men's locker room. One was titled "Subversive Mosques: Why Barack Obama Won't Declare War on Radical Islam." The latest is dubbed "Racial Agitator in the White House." As you can easily discern from the titles, the pamphlets are full of over-the-top, apocalyptic bombast crafted in such a way as to frame the president as the worst person ever to inhabit the office.
A claim in no way supported by the general despair, economic malaise, racism and international security threats caused by his administration.
The 40-page "Racial Agitator" pamphlet claims that Obama is at the heart of this country's racial divisiveness; that it "was his lever for transforming America and staying in power"; that he turns political disagreements into racial conflicts; and that, "faced with political setbacks," he has "given up on being the president of the United States of America to become the president of Black America, Latino America and other divided and conquered Americas."
Frank Batavick, who can turn a trip to the fridge into a racial conflict, disagrees. But first, the trip to Frank's fridge.
Today Chipotle is giving Wendy's and McDonald's a run for their money, and it is not unusual for people to announce that this past weekend they ate Thai, Afghan or Indian. In our own kitchens, we might reach for the Sriracha hot sauce or make a snack for the kids of hummus and pita chips. In supermarkets it seems that yogurt selections now comprise one-fifth of the dairy department. Who knew that Greek, Danish and Aussie-style yogurt were so good for you?
The point of all this is not merely to catalogue the history of food, but to establish that radical change in America is possible.
What does this have to do with racism? Let a man so obsessed with racism that he wears SPLC pajamas to bed at night explain.
Why have we not taken a quantum leap in race relations since 1955? Sure, we have a black family in the White House, but we also have a fraternity in Oklahoma singing a song about lynching and the "N" word, a pattern of racist behavior on city police forces, and some states using retooled Jim Crow tactics to suppress the minority vote.
I believe in American exceptionalism, and we've proven we can change dramatically when it comes to our dining habits. Now it's time to address some more important issues, even gun control and the so-called entitlement programs. When will voters step up to make this happen?
When Frank Batavick stops race-baiting Greek yogurt? But back in Frank's locker room, he's reading the Freedom Center pamphlets with outrage.
As I read the pamphlet's purple prose that grew more strident with every page, I was reminded of how Obama's election was supposed to be a harbinger of our living in a post-racial society. But then began an avalanche of white vs. black incidents, from Trayvon Martin's murder to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for breaking into his own home, and from the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to the fatal injuries of Freddie Gray, followed by the Baltimore protests and the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, the nation and our state appear as divided as ever...
On the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, black writer James Baldwin wrote to his nephew, "You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon." For some African-Americans, including our president, it may even be 150 years too soon. Sure blacks enjoy the same freedoms as we do, but some bigots are still enslaving them with poisonous prose meant only to sow prejudice and hate. When will that chain be broken?
Freedom Center pamphlets... they're the new slavery. Criticizing Obama is also the new slavery. When it's not the new McCarthyism. When will someone break the chains of left-wing hackery?
But you can understand Frank Batavick's bitter resentment for he too has felt the bitter sting of prejudice. No really. Someone once mistook him for a Jew.
Its gets personal for me. Perhaps that's because at various times in my life I have felt the sting of prejudice and even anti-Semitism. Though of Croatian/Slovak/German/Irish stock, the Croatian genes are dominant, gifting me with Adriatic features topped with thick black hair... I also have a last name that is tough for some to categorize ethnically.
If you criticize Frank Batavick, it's probably because you're a bigot. I mean his name is tough to categorize ethnically.