A test...

Racist or not racist?

Question: How is a Mexican like a billiard ball?

Answer: The harder you hit them, the more English you get out of them.

Racist?

Nope.

Now try this:

Question: How is a Russian like a billiard ball?

Answer: The harder you hit them, the more English you get out of them.

The whole point of this exercise is to highlight the overly sensitive, knee jerk response of the consummate racial victim. In order to even consider the above tasteless riddle as racist, you would have to know what I’m thinking. For example:

I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 2 Billion. Try and guess which one.

Wrong…

The riddle above (both) is uncouth, impolite, and rude. However, it is not racist, because the ethnicity is not important to the meaning. I bring this up now, because we are about to install a new president who used numerous opportunities to claim that those in critique of his positions were ultimately racist.

Sen. Barack Obama's chief strategist conceded that the Democratic presidential candidate was referring to his race when he said Republicans were trying to scare voters by suggesting Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

No…he’s got the biggest ears I think I’ve ever seen on a Commander and Chief (which, also, isn’t racist). In fact, even if he were descendant of the Aboriginal Tribes of Western Australia who have a well known ongoing problem with chronic suppurative otitis media, it wouldn’t be racist. It would merely be a factual observation.

How about this one?

"It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

That’s doubling down with another “race card” from our President-to-be. To an extent, the very fact that our President-elect or his supporters (and non-supporters alike) refer to his race as a "historical" first is, arguably, playing the race card in that a hypocrisy exists when those same individuals state that those with a higher degree of melanin in their skin need be treated the same as everyone else with a lesser quanity. I'm pretty sure the palour of James Buchanan's skin was different from Chester A. Arthur's to some extent. Was that an issue?

No.

On affirmative action, Obama said, "I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota, but acknowledging or taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties communities of color have experienced and continue to experience."

I am a strong supporter of the contrary, as President-elect's rise to the most powerful position in the world demonstrates. I find absolute hypocrisy in his statement, and his history of playing the racial victim (sometimes in advance of a non-existent salvo) demonstrates that he will sway in the wind to determine just how beneficial the next gust might be.

I suppose the whole basis of the above is a pleading of sorts. I'd hate to see the individual who will begin to represent us all starting January 20th apply such a shallow and vacuous approach to those difficult issues he must face. He will be representing all Americans...and his actions (and words) reflect on us all.

*so ends this public service announcement