The Jackie Robinson Theory of the Obama Presidency

Ever since Obama has become president there has been a hyperracialization of every issue of mere politics.  The climax came for me when I went to the Tea Party protest down at the Capital.  I’ll post more on it later, but when I got home I started hearing claims of some kind of racial incident.  You can recognize intellectually that politicians are liars, but to hear them lying about you is another matter, a real baptism.  And it made me try to understand where this was all coming from.

Now some of it is pure hucksterism.  There is no two ways about it.

But there is also an honest, albeit mistaken, belief that this is a racial issue.  And I think I figured out why so many liberals have been seeing it that way.  I call it the Jackie Robinson Theory of the Obama presidency.

Racial Coding at NBC?

Time to do some petard hoisting.  Apparently at NBC they decided to set up a menu to “In Honor of Black History Month.”  And what, pray tell, was on the menu?

Fried chicken, Collard Greens, white rice and black eyed pees.

Yes, really.

Expressio Unius: Chris Matthews and Racial Awareness

That’s a bit of law latin, short for expressio unius est exclusio alterius.  It translates to “the expression of one is the exclusion of all others.”  If you get this concept you will understand how lawyers think and look at the world to a degree you have never achieved before.  Whether or not that would be a good thing or not is a tougher call.

Like let me give you an example in practice.  There is a story I was told about New Haven when I was just beginning law school there that I love to recite:

“New Haven’s town center are these massive grassy flat spaces, they call the greens.  Originally they were actually graveyards.  These fire and brimstone christians who built New Haven wanted us to remember that death was part of life, so they built a graveyard in the center of town.  But after a while they discovered that was not very sanitary, with the fish markets nearby and all that.  So, they moved the tombstones.”