Microsoft "Whites Out" Black Model

Software giant Microsoft Corp. is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.

A photo on the Seattle-based company's U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

I don't consider myself a racist. I think everyone in our society should be given an equal opportunity to accomplish all they can accomplish in life.

Having said that, I think Microsoft is bowing to the pressure of political correctness. The changed photo was on a web site intended for the nation of Poland. (No polish jokes, please). The Polish population is a homogenous caucasian population. I also would not be offended if they took out white faces and replaced them with asian faces in a web site intended for the Pacific Rim nations, or if they replaced all the faces with black faces in a web site intended for the nation of Kenya or Nigeria.

Some folks need to get a life. It's not about you and your race. The reason you are a victim is because you are making yourself a victim. Time to move on.

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The Deck Is Stacked .. With Race Cards

What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn’t invited?

The question comes to mind as cries of racism grow ever louder among Obama’s supporters.

No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism. Indeed, somewhat to their credit, fighting racism — alas, even where it doesn’t exist — is one of the reasons they became liberal Democrats in the first place.

And that’s the great irony of the Obama presidency. It was Obama’s supporters who hinted, teased, promised, and prophesied that Obama would help America “transcend race.” But now, it is they who shrink from their own promised land.

After all, it was not Obama’s detractors who immediately fell into the comfortable groove of racial grievance and familiar “narratives” when Henry Louis Gates insisted that a police instructor in racial sensitivity had to be a racist. That was Obama and his choir of heralds.

From Day 1, Obama’s supporters have tirelessly cultivated the idea that anything inconvenient for the first black president just might be terribly, terribly racist.

This was always the nasty side of Obama’s implied hope for unity. Obama gave oxygen to the idea that disagreement with him amounted to obstructing his mission to “transcend race.” During the campaign, that meant anyone who got in his way was wittingly or unwittingly abetting racism (just ask Bill Clinton). A writer for Slate insisted journalists must not call attention to the fact that Obama is “skinny.” Such observations fuel racism by highlighting his physical appearance, and that in turn might suddenly alert racist American voters to the fact that Obama is . . . wait for it . . . black.

Now that he’s president, if you question his tax policies, energy plans, or health-care ambitions, you are “hoping he will fail” — and that, with the help of roundabout reasoning, is tantamount to hoping we cannot transcend race.

Loading the deck in such a way is a gift of Obama’s. Time and again, he pre-empts dissent by claiming he’s open-minded, pragmatic, and non-ideological, and therefore if you disagree with him, you must be some sort of zealot.

His shock troops make the same argument about race, sometimes with sophistication, sometimes with the kind of lucid clarity only profound stupidity can provide. For instance, actress Janeane Garofalo summed up the tea parties thusly: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

A more sophisticated version comes from Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, who finds racism in complaints that socialized medicine would result in fewer Americans “taking responsibility” for their own health care. “What we know over the past 25 years,” she told NPR, “is that language of personal responsibility is often a code language used against poor and minority communities.” In an ABC News story about how racist white militias are somehow connected to town-hall protests, Mark Potok of the dismayingly left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center insists Obama has “triggered fears among fairly large numbers of white people in this country that they are somehow losing their country.”

Two weeks ago, town hallers were supposed to be members of the Brooks Brothers brigade, Astroturf division. Now they’re well-armed anti-government militias. At this rate, they’ll soon be android ninjas with laser vision. Wait, strike that. They’ll be really racist android ninjas with laser vision.

Suddenly, if conservatives want to transcend race, we have to agree to massive increases in the size of government and socialized medicine.

That’s not transcending race, it’s using Obama’s race to bully the opposition into acquiescence. Actually transcending race would require treating Obama like any other president. Which is pretty much exactly what conservatives have been doing. Seriously, if Hillary Clinton were president, would conservatives really be rolling over for the same health-care plan because she’s white?

Sure, racists don’t like Obama. (In less shocking news, bears continue to use our national forests as toilets.) But that doesn’t mean everyone who dislikes Obama is therefore a racist.

What’s dismaying is how the press and Democrats are so desperate to obscure this point. The only notable political violence at a town hall was against a black man, roughed up by pro-Obama toughs. The assault weapon lawfully carried to a demonstration was carried by a black man. That supposedly racist poster depicting Obama as the Joker? (An LA Weekly writer fumed, “The only thing missing is a noose.”) That was created by a Palestinian-American supporter of left-wing garden gnome Dennis Kucinich. Whoops!

Never mind. They’ll keep trying until they find a scapegoat that works, because that is what they do.

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Who Is the Racist in the Gates Case?

Suppose two men wearing backpacks are seen forcing themselves into a home which has been empty of late, regardless of whether they were black, white or purple. If you were a neighbor, would you call the police? And if you were the responding officer, would you approach the situation with caution? After all, how many police officers are gunned down each year responding to similar scenarios?

Let's look at the situation from a different perspective:

Suppose you were in Gates' shoes. Only, suppose you were white. You locked yourself out of your house, and after being away for a while, you were breaking in. A neighbor sees you, and not recognize you as the owner, calls the police. The police respond, find you in the house and ask you some questions. Would you assume you are being profiled because of your race? Would you say, "What's your problem, haven't you seen a white man before?" And if you had become belligerent, and created a hostile situation, do you think the police officer is at fault?

No, this incident wasn't about race, until Gates, who "teaches" race relations, made it about race.

And that's really what this comes down to. "Professor" Gates pulled race into the issue and created a situation out of nothing. He has a stereotype of white policemen. He thinks they are all "out to get" black people.

Now, isn't that what defines racism?

It seems to me that Professor Gates (and Obama) have set race relations back many years. But as a professor of race relations, you would think Gates should know this.

Maybe he did.

After all, it's difficult to continually preach how the white man is keeping the black man down following an election in which "white America" elected a black president, while living in a state with a black governor and a town with a black mayor.

Which gives us something else to consider: Could Gates have staged the entire event? Would he have provoked the officer in order to gain publicity and to advance his stature as a victimized black man?

If so, I wouldn't be surprised if Gates writes a book on race relations and his "victimization" before this issue is off the front pages of the blogs.

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The Racially Biased Media

We all sort of knew that this would be coming. While watching television interviews of African American celebrities who discussed the passing of Michael, I noticed a certain …..ummm…defensiveness whenever they were asked about Michael’s use of prescription drugs, the allegations of pedophilia that were brought against him, or his ever lightening skin complexion.

There is no doubt that Michael Jackson was a very talented artist and like most artists: Van Gogh, Elvis Presley, Picasso, Woody Allen, Mr. Jackson led a very colorful or colorless life depending on how you look at him. Michael had some issues (you know he did) and I see nothing wrong with the media bringing up those controversial issues during interviews. There is nothing racist about it. Michael’s iconic status is not only about his musical gifts and tremendous dancing ability, it also encompasses our memories of him as a person- a human being who was indisputably talented but like all of us, not without sin or mistakes.

During the BET Awards....

(side note: BET means Black Entertainment Television. My TV doesn't get a "White Entertainment Television Station. Doesn't that say something?)

... Sean P Diddy Puff Daddy Combs and Jamie Foxx railed at the media charging that coverage of Jackson is racially biased against him and his legacy. Fox News commentator Dr. Lamont Hill charged monday on the O'Reilly Factor that white deceased entertainers are treated differently and with more respect than black entertainers.

Excuse me?

I guess the media has never mentioned that Elvis was an over eating, self indulgent drug abuser prior to his premature death in 1977.

Nobody every mentioned that Anna Nicole Smith was a gold digging, drug abusing whore. That slipped right past the media pundits who painted her as Mother Theresa.

You'd have to dig really deep to find that Jerry Garcia complicated his uncontrolled diabetes with a heroin addiction which ultimately cost him his life.

We live in the age of the first black POTUS. The memo says we are officially living in post-racial America. Yet I have seen more phony racism / faux discrimination claims on the part of the black .... er, I mean, the African American community than ever before. Everyone is a racist now. If you are against affirmative action, because you feel that reverse discrimination is wrong (or just plain discrimination, really), you are a racist. If you mention child molestation charges that Michael Jackson faced, you are being a racist. (Don't forget, Jackson admitted to having children share a bed with him).

And by the way, according to Jamie Foxx, Michael Jackson belongs to black people, anyway.

What is going on should actually alarm people who really care about race relations. Phony charges of racism and phony racist outrage, such as what is going on surrounding the Jackson coverage, dilutes efforts to combat real racism.

Ideally, this should be a watershed year in race relations; an opportunity for healthy and balanced discussion. Instead we get faux outrage and gratuitous accusations.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruling on the Ricci case sent liberals scurrying and whining that our civil rights are being eroded because the court ruled (5 to 4) that white fire fighters were treated unjustly because the city of New Haven threw out test results simply because the results did not FAVOR minorities.

We live in a day when black ...er... African Americans can lift their heads with pride. When people of any race can say to their children that they can grow up to become anything they want to be, including the President of the United States. It's well past time for the African American community to grow up and take responsibility for their own problems and issues.

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More Media Hypocrisy

Here is the lastest example of Media bias and hypocricy:

(CNN) -- Republican Party reaction is divided over the decision of a candidate for party chairman to distribute a CD that features the parody tune "Barack the Magic Negro," with the majority of Chip Saltsman's political rivals criticizing the move.

While the MainStreamMedia can't wait to expose and highlight any reference made by a Republican regarding the race of the President-Elect, they simply sat back and avoided pointing out the unfair and blatant sexism toward Sarah Palin during the campaign.  Sarah Palin was criticized for everything from the clothes she wore to the way she raised her family.  Nothing was off limits, including insulting Palin's handicapped child, an ancient DUI from her husband, and her expectant daughter.

But, heaven forbid, someone mention that Barack Obama is ... how do I say this in a politically correct manner?  ... not caucasian.  I noticed during the campaign that everyone with an "R" beside his or her name danced around even mentioning that any Democrat had a tan during the entire year of 2008.   Now, let one Republican say something that might be "over the line" in the way of political satire, and he gets jumped all over for it. 

It seems nobody on the left has a sense of humor.  Satire, when it comes to Republicans satirizing Dems, is off limits.

I wonder if this had come from Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live if the reaction would have been different.

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