The headline was interesting: Paterson role model for black community. I mean, in most circles, a guy that just admitted to having multiple affairs would generally be shunned. But the dateline tells the story - the article was printed two days before the admission. That’s the trouble with the never ending search for public role models - you’re going to be let down.

The day after being sworn in, the new governor of New York decided to tell all. Or did he?

Paterson, a Democrat who was sworn in on Monday, admitted yesterday to having had several extramarital affairs, but contended they all ended years ago. He was informed by The Post in the morning that at least one news organization had been notified he had recently been involved with a woman from Brooklyn.

Paterson denied the claim.

He’d better be right about that because the reporters in New York are going to find the truth. And the truth might not be pretty even if he didn’t “have sex with that woman”.

Dixon, 43, said Paterson, 53, was “mostly responsible” for getting her a badly needed job earlier this month with the city Department of Education in Crown Heights’ District 17.

The job pays in the range of $48,000 to $65,000 a year, records show.

“I’m a single mom with a child. I need this job,” said Dixon, who grew up on Carroll Street in Crown Heights and won medals in the 4×400-meter relay at the 1984 games in Los Angeles and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

A lot of people need jobs. What qualifications does she have? Why did the governor leave her a message asking if she was talking to the press? Why does she have his personal phone number? Lot’s of unanswered questions. Including ones about using campaign funds to pay for his hotels while performing “constituent services“.

Moral of the story? Don’t look to politicians for your role models.

I admit that I’m one of the cynical types that Ree-C mentioned in her post on race. I doubt that Obama believes much of what J. Wright says and I doubt that he got a lot of spiritual benefits from sitting in that church because it doesn’t appear that the church focuses on spiritual things. I think that Dick Morris nailed his reason for attending that church.

Wright’s rantings are not reflective of Obama’s views on anything.  Why did he stay in the church?  Because he’s a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard.  Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected.  If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him.  But obviously, he can’t say that.  So what should he say?

Not being black enough. In Chicago politics, that would be a death blow. Using the church is nothing new for politicians; Obama was just using a time tested model.

The problem for Obama now is his credibility. After all, here is a man that is supposed to be a “different” kind of politician. He says he’s honest, truthful, above reproach. Sure he is.

What Obama needs not to do is to resort to the kind of Clintonian fudging that animated his interview with Keith Olbermann.  By saying “I wasn’t there” and “I didn’t know” and “I didn’t hear him say it,” he will invite contempt and derision.  If he were to continue in that vein, he would buy himself a controversy akin to that which drowned John Kerry in the facts and allegations of his service in Vietnam.  People will surface to say, “I sat next to him, and Wright said such and such,” and Obama will be hostage to everybody’s subjective memory.

The contempt and derision has just started. Hillary made the mistake of not doing this early on and it has most likely cost her the nomination. McCain and the Republican Party won’t make the same mistake.

Perhaps he should have called his book “The Audacity of Lying to Get Ahead”.

Working in the political “bidness” and all, I’m sometimes hesitant to offer an opinion about another campaign’s tactics, particularly when voting is still underway.

Clearing off my desk last night, however, I came across a piece of direct mail I’ve been saving, eagerly anticipating a post-primary comment.

Keep in mind, I see a lot of political mail… and I don’t think it’s any secret that one of the hot new trends on the Republican side of the battlefield is to throw the head-bangers some red-meat on immigration.

This tactic is often complimented by a not so subtle image designed to provoke the voter’s “lizard brain” into feeling threatened and scared by the hordes of raping, robbing, murdering Mexican desperadoes armed with Tejano cassette tapes in one hand and suitcase nukes in the other, pouring across our border to collect Social Security checks and force all of us to “Press One” whenever we call customer service.

The honorable Dr. Ron Paul, for instance, still seeking counsel from the merry band of warriors responsible for his bigoted 1990’s newsletters, managed to produce this gem in his race for re-election to Congress.

Now go ahead and deduct as many style-points as you want for ethnic insensitivity; the fact is that’s a damn effect piece of direct mail, with a picture destined to go straight to the lizard brain.

So what in the world were the knuckle-heads working for Harris Co. Precinct 4 candidate Louis Guthrie thinking with this thing?

Dude– there’s a freaking little girl staring me straight in the eye–smiling–in this picture.

Frail old men, fat peasant women, and a cute little smiling girl, looking me straight in the eye.

You gotta be pretty hard-core to get put on mental “Red Alert” because that image just passed through your subconscious.

(This is such a lose/lose/lose post for me to make, I have no idea why I am doing it. According to academics teaching “race relations” in universities, the very fact that I am breathing air (i.e. alive) makes me a racist. Well, here I go anyway.)

I think Obama realized one day he wanted to be a politician. Being half white and half Kenyan made this goal a bit more difficult in South Chicago. So what do you do? Go to the biggest church in South Chicago. I think the fact that it presented itself as having “African Values”, made this even a better fit for Obama.

So there he sat for 20 years. The relationship served him well. Those on the cynical side would suggest that it was purely a political relationship. I honestly believe he derived a lot of spiritual help and guidance from it.

But here’s the deal: he was willing to overlook the negatives in his Pastor’s teachings because of all the positives.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, He sat there and listened but did not “inhale”.

Unfortunately, this does not make him a “new” paradigm politician. It means same old same old. Whatever works you do it and when it becomes a liability, you disavow it.

As for his big “Race” speech, it was beautiful, as all of his speeches are. He knows how to talk and make you feel good when you are watching it. But the truth is, you will see whatever you want to “see”. It is the half-full/half-empty thing, which is emotional and impossible to “argue” with in any rational way.

So there it is, crucify me.

(P.S.: If you believe that Slavery is the “original sin” of the United States and it makes it nearly impossible for the entire nation of all races to get along with each other, then you need to make it Foreign Policy Number 1 to do away with slavery in this world. Slavery is not dead. It is alive and well. The first place to start is Darfur. Yes, that would mean confronting the Chinese.)

(Yeah, no one wants to piss off the Chinese, but they are supporting the government of Sudan in order to get their oil. Sudan utilizes slavery to control the opposition to their government. Sudan can paint all the happy faces they want in the Darfur providence, but that is where slavery is and that is where it needs to end.)

(If Obama started talking about ending modern day slavery, I would be all ears and supportive.)

Not according to podiatrists.

“You don’t have an ankle,” said Mark Hanna, a lawyer for the Texas Podiatric Medical Association, which is a party in the case with the board. “The foot actually includes the ankle. If you took the foot off the leg, there is nothing lying there that’s the ankle.”

Hold up says the orthopedist!

“If they say the ankle doesn’t exist, why do they want to operate on it?” asked Teuscher, immediate past president of the Texas Orthopaedic Association. “Everyone knows what an ankle is.”

How’s that for a comeback? Did you know this debate has been raging for years?

The ankle-foot debate has raged for years between medical doctors and podiatrists, who have both claimed the ankle as their bodily turf and fought over it in courtrooms.

Raging, I tell ya. Guess these people never heard about Dem Dry Bones.

With the toe bone connected
to the foot bone,
and the foot bone connected
to the ankle bone,
and the ankle bone connected
to the leg bone.

Sheesh.

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

 

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