Liberal Forum

I am working from memory to respond to this article, but that won't be hard. The article's problems are pretty basic. I am responding to it as a soured Obama voter. Most of the complaints against Obama's detractors do not apply to me. My reasons for disliking Obama have nothing to do with what Sedaris brought up. But then, neither do the those of MOST of the folks he slanders, since his pretense is that only obama's skin color caused them to dislike him - yet these same people defended a SCOTUS nominee against leftist racism and begged Colin Powell to run in their name, putting the lie in just those two actions to Sedaris' facile "If you don't like Barry, you're a racist" libel.

Sedaris never mentions the Reverend Wright business which, though it had no effect on me, understandably reactivated many in the republican base. He dashes right past the joe the plumber episode which, though it did not bother me, reactivated many in the republican base. He ignores the fact that the republican base was exposed to a plethora of photos of a young obama in muslim attire at veritable confirmation ceremonies that made him appear a disingenuous secret muslim - which AGAIN, did not bother me, but reactivated many in the republican base.

Sedaris fails to mention that Obama was a professional rabble rouser (a term I use advisedly) before his "official" political career, and that he was the first one-term senator ever to run for the WH, the common bona fides for a run being a governorship or many, many years of service. Being a junior senator from a notoriously shady and deep blue machine with a fast mouth was not the stuff of a presidential campaign before Obama. In fact, it was unthinkable before Obama. There was plenty about Obama to reactivate the workaday republican which had absolutely nothing to do with his race, and there was ample fodder for the more studious and more complex-thinking republican, as well. There was his promise to remake and repair the country, for example. Many folks are nervous about people who promise to be reactionary. 

Trotting out each and every thing - many outright untrue or glam-shotted - that the republican base SHOULD have approved of, while ignoring each and every thing that set their teeth on edge, and then wrapping it up in a neat racist bow has all of the integrity of the Kyle Peterson lynching or the George Zimmerman lynching or the lionization of george floyd and the blithe indifference to the chaz seditionists. 

The Sedaris hit piece was a lynching - a rather cheap and facile one at that. At the end of all the blather, he could simply have written, "If you do not like Obama, you are a racist" - and saved us the duplicitous histrionics.

@maineman