Pee Wee Moment Mitigates Militant Anger

The mainstream media seem to be obsessed with re-creating this archetypal moment in the late '40s when Jackie Robinson integrated baseball as a way of making palatable the still-dicey Democratic nomination of Barack Obama for president. Witness this high-up quote from "post-racial" Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. that Obama needed a "Pee Wee Reese moment." While it is true that sometimes contemporary America seems like a howling mob of racist baseball fans, Pee Wee had less baggage than the Clintons in terms of sharing power. 

            Last night Chris Matthews and his liberal sidekick Keith Olbermann offered lavish praise to Michelle's somewhat halting, if generally pleasing speech. Despite being an ex-ESPN talking head, Olberman carefully avoided the Jackie Robinson trope, while Matthews gushed that this was a "Bill Cosby family." They did everything America asked them to do, work hard, study, teach their kids right from wrong. Would have lived in a Brooklyn brownstone (constructed on a set at Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens) and daughter would have gone out with Lenny Kravitz. "These people" had what it took to convince the most skeptical non-racist Middle Americans (people that say "why do they need affirmative action?" "why do they have welfare?"). "They have done everything that every conservative white guy has ever said everybody should do in this country." 

               Of course Juan Williams, uncowed by white guilt, felt it necessary to inform Fox News viewers that Michelle was prone to using a "kind of militant anger" to express her views. Well, I don't know about you, but her brother's admission that she'd memorized every episode of The Brady Bunch had a kind of brutal feel to it. It's as if she were saying, "take that, whitey."