I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (6 page)

The Republicans claim that our nation cannot survive another Obama term. So we can survive 9/11, two world wars, and the Great Depression, but we can’t hack another four years of this decent, well-intentioned American success story? Black dick fucks up a lot, but surely it ain’t powerful enough to fuck up a nation. This is coming from the party that alleges we are the greatest nation the world has ever seen! How strong were we to begin with, if one man can destroy us? How effective are these checks and balances, if one man can single-handedly overthrow all of them?

They treat this president as if he was a fucking affirmative action hire. Nobody marched for him to get that job. He overwhelmingly beat out an old white dude, something that had never happened before. This isn’t
Trading Places
, where you dress some homeless guy up and stick him in the White House. That really is the fucking president. He’s in charge! This ain’t a dream, motherfucker. It’s real! Americans loved the idea of voting for a black dude and endorsing him. But listening to what he has to say? Then it became, “I didn’t
sign up for
that
.” Some parts of this country hate the fact that we have a black president so much, they can’t even be honest about it to themselves. It would be a much easier conversation if they were.

For the first time in modern history, older white people took to the streets. The only thing different was that we had a black man in the White House. They didn’t march when Bush increased spending enormously, or when he took us to war. They didn’t march when Clinton tried to fix our health care system. They didn’t march under the progressivism of Jimmy Carter, the record unemployment of Ronald Reagan, or the price controls of Richard Nixon.

We are watching our president get bullied—and he’s letting it happen. I have never met Barack Obama, but I can state with absolute certainty that he was never bullied growing up. I know that this is true because of how he reacts to the way the Republicans and the Tea Party treat him. Being bullied as a kid changes your perspective forever.

In seventh grade,
I
was bullied by a half-black, half-white dude in my neighborhood named Bubba Rankin. Bubba was four years older than me, and he would pick on me all the time. He would always push me or kick me while I was walking, just all kinds of bullshit. If a group of us was hanging out, he’d slap the shit out of me. It was completely unprovoked. One second everyone is talking and having a good time, and the next this motherfucker would just feel like it and start slapping me. It got to where I couldn’t even go to the store by myself. I wasn’t bringing a motherfucker with me to the grocery so that he could help me fight. It couldn’t even get to
that
level. I was bringing a motherfucker to pull Bubba
off
me, so I could get away from the store and run home.

One time I came upon Bubba fucking with this girl at school. Maybe it was to impress her, who the hell knows, but he ran, caught me, and then he tackled me. I felt my shoulder bone hit me in the chin. “You broke my fucking shoulder!” I yelled at him.

He just shrugged and walked away. It was just dislocated and not broken, but in either case it didn’t matter to him. Bubba went back to his girl and did his thing. There was no way a small seventh grader is going to take on an eleventh grader and win, not even with some Mr. Miyagi Kung Fu Panda–type shit. I was genuinely afraid of him.

So one day my buddy Willie Brown, who I love to this day, took me aside. “We standing with you,” he told me, “but you’ve got to fight. Fuck whether you win or not, man. You’ve got to let this motherfucker know it ain’t going to be easy every time he wants to do something to you. He don’t fuck with none of
us
, man. You know why? Because it ain’t going to be easy.”

I was still afraid, but now I wasn’t going to roll over for him. The next time Bubba messed with me, I fought back. He hit me so fucking hard in the mouth that he split my lip wide open. I was drinking out of a straw all week, it was so bad. He left me a scar that is there to this day.

I kept fighting him, but I never beat him. What I
could
do was to get him to stop seeing me as an easy target, and that meant not slapping me whenever the mood struck him. That much I did accomplish. I wasn’t scared of him anymore. He just meant nothing to me. I knew that if I fought hard, after a while there would be a certain amount of respect that was afforded. After all that, I could go to the store by myself. Which, when you’re living in fear, is a big, concrete step and proof that you’re doing the right thing. I learned what Obama never had to: You need to fight even though you know
you ain’t going to win. You can’t keep letting some dude do whatever the fuck he wants to you.

Of course race is playing a part in both how Barack Obama is perceived and how he’s dealt with. But my criticism isn’t really with the Tea Party on this one. They’d oppose him if he came out for God, Mom, and apple pie. They’d tell him with a straight face that he must mean the Muslim God, that he’s arguing for single mothers and the destruction of the nuclear family, and that he wants to make us all fat. The reason Obama’s having these kind of problems is because
the people who love him aren’t forcing him to do what he needs to
. Conservatives have no problem: If you don’t do what they want, they will do something to you. It’s quid pro quo. It’s no secret and there’s no trick; they treat him harshly because he’s black. Conversely, liberals treat him with kid gloves for that very same reason.

Even as his approval ratings dropped, America kept up a personal affinity for Obama. It’s hard to say you dislike him. The man has integrity. He seems forthright and honest and earnest and loves his family. He does
all
these things. A racist can like a black person who knows his place. But when it comes to having a black man being in charge of this country? People can’t take it.

The national unemployment rate for black people during this recession was as high as 17 percent. In some cities, it reached 40 to 50 percent. If a white president had these kind of numbers, black people would be up in fucking arms—and they’d be blaming everything on the president! If it were a white president, he would feel guilty or shamed enough to do something about it (or at least give a speech to acknowledge it, even if there was no follow-up). Look at what the first President Bush did after Rodney King. Even his
son spent more time touring the destruction in post-Katrina New Orleans than Barack Obama has spent in the slums of Detroit, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

It took
three years
for the Congressional Black Caucus to start speaking out against Obama. After a while, it starts to hurt so much, you’ve
got
to yell uncle. Obama has not been forced to deal with black people. The Democratic Party typically takes black people for granted—and President Obama is no different. Imagine a man making all these promises to a woman (particularly a black woman!): “I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do that, and I’m going to change everything, and it’s all going to be great.” If by
three years
into a relationship none of that has happened, that woman would be out the door.

Greatness is not coddled. It’s
snatched
. When someone’s a great athlete, there was a guy along the way who he thought hated him. It is only years later, after the athlete reaps the benefits, that he sees what the guy did. That guy drove him—or
her
—crazy. Look at the Williams sisters. They were trained since they were walking, and now they dominate their sport like no one dominated it before. Obama has got way too many cheerleaders and not enough coaches. It’s easy to pooh-pooh people who don’t like you, because you can never please them. To get
great
, the people who love you are going to have to be hard on you.

But the Democrats refuse to do it.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world.
He can take the criticism
. Because of stereotypes, people expected a certain thing from President Obama. The right were afraid they were going to get a nigger, and the left hoped they were going to get one: That angry, I-don’t-give-a-fuck, I’m-going-to-set-shit-to-right attitude. But all they got is
Carlton Banks. Obama needs to
fight
. His political struggles would go a lot better if he just acknowledged that race played a huge part in the Tea Party and in the acrimony that he receives. I think that would be kind of a relief for everybody, to get the elephant (no pun intended) out of the room.

Obama doesn’t have the luxury of being genteel about the situation. America needs him to step up for the sake of our country. We are not what we were from a manufacturing standpoint; we’re not what we were from a banking standpoint.
But we can kick ass
. You can leave all the learning to India and China. But when you want some asses whupped, that’s us. There has to be a guy who embodies that, in the same way that the queen is supposed to embody England. We are still cleaning up the mess that Reagan left us, but, boy, did America ever feel good about itself when he was in charge.

It’s
not
the economy, stupid. We’ve had recessions before. Even during the Great Depression, we knew FDR was going to carry us through. What America is primarily suffering from is a
lack of confidence
. We don’t have our swagger. Obama doesn’t have it. Look at the other side of the aisle. Rick Perry has swagger. He’s a fucking
idiot
, but he has swagger. What makes men have swagger is knowing their strengths—and not being afraid to use them. People have to be afraid of you. Republicans were
terrified
of Bill Clinton. They knew that politically, there would be repercussions. People may not have been afraid of George Bush, but they were definitely afraid of Dick Cheney. Now the Republicans fear the Tea Party more than they fear the president—again,
the most powerful man in the world
.

To some degree, President Obama allows this to happen. This dude is being disrespected
constantly
. That served him well in the electoral process, but it doesn’t serve him in the governing process. When you’re governing a country, you have to look like you’re the
leader. When you know that somebody’s called you a liar and a thief the night before,
somebody
has to respond. Every president has hatchet men to do his dirty work for him. Dick Cheney did it for W; Clinton had James Carville and Paul Begala; Reagan had Nancy. Obama has many, many people who want to go on the attack, but he’s the one telling them to shut the fuck up. He’s
got
to be, or else they’d be going nuts.

Jimmy Hoffa Jr. begged the president publicly and explicitly for permission to take off the kid gloves. His exact words were, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Everybody here’s got a vote. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” What happened is that Fox News and their allies made Hoffa out to be a terrorist calling for assassinations, and President Obama said nothing. It’s
irritating
as all hell.