Tuesday, April 22, 2008

It's too soon!! ...??

I love this quote. It's from an article in The International Herald-Tribune about the role of age in preference for Clinton or Obama. Check this out:

John Peterman, 85, a former navy engineer, said he supported Clinton because "the world is not ready for a black president." His wife, Mary, 81, agreed with him.

Holy crap, yeah! I mean, if John Peterman were only twice as old as he already is, why, he would be old enough to have owned Barack Obama! That's if Obama were also in the vicinity of 170 years old. Yes, that's right; it's been a mere 143 years since the end of slavery in the United States (a nation that was, you'll recall, only four score and seven years old in the middle of the struggle that ended it). Which means the last person who could ever have known anyone who was slave while that person was still a slave died around the time the Russians put Sputnik in orbit. Say, do you remember that? I don't. I wasn't there for it. But John Peterman, navy engineer, can still remember when the dark folks were down in the hold where they belonged, peelin' spuds. It seems to me it's not so much that the world's not ready for a black president, but that it's ready for guys like Peterman to get off already.

2 comments:

James Redekop said...

Hate to tell ya, Mr. Peterman, but the world's had plenty of black presidents. No need to go projecting your own neuroses onto the rest of us.

laura k said...

Next Mr. Peterman said, "I'm a racist idiot!"