When Ralph Nader talks about Mr. Obama, he is holding back nothing, and, if history serves us well, it is best to remember that Mr.Nader has been fighting for consumer rights and consumer issues for about as long as Obama has been alive. When Obama was born, Hawaii had just become a US State, and Ralph Nader was beginning to launch his legal career as a consumer advocate. When Obama was knee-high, and about to take his first road trip to the United States mainland, Nader was addressing the problems for consumer’s who were inadequately protected in their automobiles. In the mid-60’s, GM’s “Corvair”, was “inherrently dangerous” at any speed, was a consumer nightmare, and Ralph Nader told the public the absolute truth while the government and GM, an enormous corporation then and now, kept a low profile and denied that it sold unsafe vehicles. No doubt Obama, living either in Hawaii, Indonesia, or the USA, depending upon whose telling the story, was a child in short britches, and, like all children who road in the GM “Corvair,” he too benefitted from Ralph Nader’s crusade to get the car off the road. While the automobile industry fought Nader’s lifelong attempt to make automobile’s “safer”, create less hazardous auto emmissions, improve the overall safety of travel by car, Obama was squaring off his young days – most likely getting a world view of international issues by traveling here and there by any means. Since Nader first began his crusade, which now is extensive and broadly includes medicine, healthcare, law, corporate mendacity, and is absolutely outside the “government” role of corporate protection, it is safe to drive even the most simple automobile. During the 1960’s and 70’s, Nader’s role as a consumer advocate, and the results he has created in favor of the consumer, (that’s “the people” including a variety of colors, nationalities, ethnicity, and financial well-being or poverty) are countless. Our lives, with the unambiguous direction of Nader’s acts, have been completely changed. It is now not simply the act of one man who wore the same suit and skinny tie for years, but is an extensive organization to combat “corporate crime”, eliminate wasteful spending, give 100 million poor Americans at least the opportunity they deserve, and live to serve the public – and keep his word. Not surprising, people such as Al Gore, who mutter that Nader caused him to “lose” his Presidential bid to Bush, are finding the same cannonical missive in Nader’s present run for the White House. Most of the impressions that Americans, and the world, devise are directly related to the “anchor” mentality as processed on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and various sub-affiliates. No longer does a generation think for itself. The impression of politics, the reality of social issues – these are opined by pundits, the modern “spokesman” for corporate America. Usually, the “anchor” is 30’s-40’s, cute, animated, and more often as not, brain-dead. Fox has a particularly fine group of brain-dead youthful anchorage talent, and I wasn’t surprised to hear the hooting and howls from Fox when Nader went on record in Denver as calling Obama’s followers filled with “white guilt”. What? Is that politically correct? Of course. It didn’t say Obama was playing a race card, but it said the voters for Obama, his supporters, were endowed with “white guilt”. It was a shot over the bow of Obama’s creme de la creme “intellectuals”, but it put the notion of how far we’ve become “politically correct”, a place that is unconditionally off page, off point, off the beaten path. It is where the vast majority of the United States plants a moral foundation. It is all right to be white, but if you’re using “white speak”, it’s a controversial issue for the press media to chomp on. And that’s what Nader accused Obama of – putting on one part white, one part mixed, and ending up black. Nader said it right. Obama is about as “black” in thought and representation as he looks (the former Mayor of New Orleans likes to call everyone “chocolate”, which is probably pretty much the case), but the problem, as Nader puts it, is that Obama isn’t like Jessie Jackson, who IS black, who DID battle racial change and has made a life of “making a difference”, but Obama is about as “white” an ideologist as the entire genetic pool of the Roosevelt family, quite political, quite vast, from 1870 -1950. But Nader doesn’t pull his punches. Don’t whine, Al Gore. You did have a number of issues. You would have (impossible to miss that point now) made a wonderful President, but your failure to become President isn’t based on Ralph Nader’s votes. Yes, you made tobacco an issue, but you didn’t stop growing it until your sister died of lung cancer – then you took up the consumer issue. It’s all personalized. So Nader’s voice will imperil the life of the Obama camp quite likely. In fact, it’s more the opposite. I can’t imagine how the Obamaian community can adequately respond to the truth, or that which Nader views as the truth. In one fell swoop, Ralph Nader opens up a whole new field of “politically incorrect” vision – so how does Obma smoke his way out of that tight spot? Most likely, with a Marlboro. Incidentally, as a youth icon, does anyone out there know Obama’s “brand”? It’s important. If he uses (and that’s what tobacco addicts are – users) a “health conscience” brand, maybe there’s hope for universal health care, but if he uses a “target-market youth” brand, what do you suppose all the fuss was about in the Medicaid “Global Settlement”? To encourage “star-endorsement” of tobacco use? It is safe to say that – or is it? I have to think. Am I so awful as to be “politically incorrect” (translate for Rev. Ralph Abernathy who single-handedly fired shock-joke host Don Imus for ONE purportedly “racist” remark; it wasn’t), and have to endure the back-lash of attacks, defend the position of not – well, for god’s sake, what is it that ISN’T “politically incorrect” IF, as Ralph Nader puts it, we’re dealing with “white guilt” for Obama? What is it that CAN be said, and CAN’t be condemned as anti-American? I don’t remember any grief given to Condi Rice during her career at the White House….So, is “white” speak so awful when it’s used by a partially darker Hawaiian? I hope not. It might put the signal up for “reverse discrimination” again. Why on earth is their a Black Caucus and it is absolutely forbidden to have a White Caucus or an Hispanic Caucus? My guess – in about 20 years – there’ll be only two racial caucus arenas – guess which of the above would not be included.
