Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends Perfectly Explained Why We Reluctantly Tuned President Obama Out — When He Spoke on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge — and Why Tragedy Stings

© 2015 Peter Free

 

13 March 2015

 

 

Go nowhere yak-et-ry

 

Some folks have called President Obama’s 50th anniversary commemorative speech on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge his best ever. However, I got a few minutes into it and opted out.

 

Marsha Coeman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends experienced identical irritation:

 

 

The Obama Administration and its Black mis-leadership class orchestrated elaborate kabuki theatre in the city of Selma, Alabama, this weekend.

 

Fifty years ago on the Edmund Pettus Bridge the state of Alabama unleashed a reign of military terror against 500 unarmed African-Americans who were marching to demand the right to vote.

 

That stunning display of courage by common people was reduced to theatrics by the present day well-educated, well-heeled, politically connected Black mis-leadership class that owes its very existence to martyrs . . . .

 

Today’s political cowards—who have done nothing and risked nothing as the continual murders of blacks by police proliferate nationwide—dared to walk in the same space as heroes, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who risked, and gave, everything.

 

[P]resent day politicians have the authority to press charges against police who occupy, harass, humiliate, suffocate, denigrate and murder black youth. The challenge of police brutality requires true leadership, not imitation. True courage. True moral character.

 

Instead, Black Misleadership's roosters strutted their egos across Edmund Pettus Bridge and crowed about their accomplishments.

 

Never mind the 60% majority of blacks in 2015 Selma whose conditions haven't changed in the last 50 years—and whose continued plight never made it into the soaring rhetoric or into the live streaming of the pomp and bombast.

 

Somehow the President, while basking in the glow of his moment on Pettus Bridge failed to recount the shooting just one day earlier of Tony Terrell Robinson, Jr., an unarmed 19 year old from Madison, Wisconsin . . . .

 

Robinson’s "inconvenient" murder, one day before . . . did not fit well with the choreography of the moment. Robinson’s death, like so many others, was ignored.

 

© 2015 Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends, Political Cowardice in Selma: Obama Crosses the Edmund Pettus Bridge, TruthOut (12 March 2015) (extracts)

 

Even if Coleman-Adebayo and Berends’ wish for anti-bigotry action from the President was a political bridge too far . . .

 

On and on speeches like the President’s Selma oration lack the concision necessary to inspire aimed progress. Comprehensible brevity, characteristically so alien to the Commander in Chief, provides an easily remembered and actionable line for listeners to follow.

 

The President, apparently, could not manage even that much in Selma. Perhaps because, as Coleman-Adebayo and Berends imply, he does not care to upset the apple cart that feeds him.

 

Obama's "feel good" Selma speech furthered the under carpet racism that Jenée Desmond-Harris accurately described in:

 

Jenée Desmond-Harris, Reaction to the Oklahoma frat scandal shows just how poorly Americans understand racism, Vox (13 March 2015)

 

 

The moral? — To be a great national leader, one has to act firmly against Complacence’s Tide of Ignorance and Wrongdoing

 

President Obama and Attorney General Holder have undertaken little — during their tenures in office — that has not been ultimately to the benefit of the good ole boy (mainly white) plutocratic class that owns all three branches of American government. That has been true in all spheres of action, not just the racial one.

 

Even the recent Justice Department chastisement of the Ferguson (Missouri) police department is (in the main) a “pretend to act” token.

 

Abraham Lincoln might once have been Barack Obama’s elocutionary inspiration, but our current Commander in Chief has arguably been his predecessor’s opposite in action-focused heart.

 

This distinguishing characteristic — given the two men’s extraordinary talents and their different implementations of them — may have been the predictable result of the soul-crushing bigotry that still deeply marks the United States. The President, now at the pinnacle of American accomplishment, may have decided to enjoy the quasi-personal fruits of his efforts. Without having to invite more backlash by attempting to right obvious social wrongs.

 

Though I understand the source of my disenchantment with President Obama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge too “feel good” speech, I also see that the actions we wished from him were probably never in the cards. In this instance, the moral shortfall may go more to the nation than the man.

 

Tragedy stings because it carries the illusion of avoidability.