Circulating on the Internet is a cartoon
featuring Dr. Martin L. King and Barack Obama sitting
across each other at a table. King, serious, leans forward.
King: �So, that�s my dream. What�s your dream?� Obama:
�To not piss off rich people - That�s really about it�
and he laughs (Mr. Fish, �My Dream,� http://www.blackcommentator.com/410/410_cartoon_my_dream_fish.php).
The caption could read: All power to the
corporations! Or, Look, here�s one useful Negro - finally!
We could never cultivate a sustainable tradition of
Negro overseers - until now! And now, our most powerful
production will come speedily off the production lines.
We have the young asking - Dr. King, who? Obama is
the man!
He
certainly has fulfilled his dream - hailed by some
as a �Black� success story. The audacity to hope for a
better future landed him and his family in the White House,
surrounded by big shakers and movers from Wall Street.
His was a dream deeply rooted, to use King�s
phrase, in the American Dream. Only I think King meant
dream to mean that idea of democracy and equality. I doubt
King would have advocated for the dreams of JP Morgan
Chase, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, or Halliburton. I think
he meant that the dreams of Blacks were deeply rooted
in the fulfillment of freedom from tyranny.
Obama does not share this dream.
Already, the Obama administration plans
to raise 1 billion dollars for their man�s re-election.
When you pack the White House with �former� executives
from JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup and other
mega-corporations, it should not be too hard to collect
a billion from corporations here and hand it over to private
professional propagandists and the corporate media image-makers.
You need only worry about the tide possibly
turning from a �Black� corporate �yes man� to another
corporate-minded suit, say Scott Brown in Massachusetts, who surprised everyone by capturing liberal Ted Kennedy�s
senate seat last fall. Someone like Brown could be Obama
without the color factor, a �regular� American whose birth
certificate and other qualifying papers would prove him
to be the genuine thing - a direct product of Right
minded people.
In the meantime, Obama selects William
Daley (half brother of Chicago�s Mayor
Richard Daley Jr.) to be his Chief of Staff, replacing
Rahm Emanuel who headed off to Chicago
to replace his old buddy Daley Junior.
Rahm: Will? You think Will?
Obama: Uh, yeah, Will! It�s his turn. What continuity!
Simple - as simple as me saying to you
Marian Wright Eldeman for Secretary of Education, and
you would say, uh, yeah, Wright!
We would know what is left unsaid, what
is not necessary to say because we have worked for the
day we could see, for example, a Marian Wright Eldeman,
of course, as Secretary of Education.
So Rahm and Obama know, too, sitting in
front of a warm fire this past fall that finally the time
has come to pull the old Daley Machine in, the stead-fast,
reliable Machine. Since the days of the Kennedy Era (when
Old Man Kennedy, like most financial moguls, made millions
even during the Great Depression) and when, on the ground,
in my hometown, Chicago, foot soldiers saw to it that
the dead voted and the living voted often on election
day, the numbers came in for Kennedy and all cameras turned
to the wide face of Old Daley: Got any problems with
that?
Ever grateful to the Machine, the corporate
world scooped up William Daley just as it would scoop
up Obama years later - when the latter toiled as a community
activist.
Daley�s
community activism consists of the following transformative
activities: Vice Chairman of Amalgamated Bank in Chicago
(1989-90), on the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae, Boeing,
Merck and Co., and Loyola University Chicago, Pres of
SBC Communications, Advisory Board of the Obama-Biden
Transition Project, and Trustee of Northwestern University.
Oh, yes, William Daley is loved by everyone in high places!
Even Karl Rove loves William Daley and
approves of Obama�s selection of him as does Former House
Speaker, Newt Gingrich:
Daley �will be an enormous asset�He�s a
solid, and confident guy, who understands the business
community� (January 18, 2011, Newsmax.com).
Good boy, Obama! Among the powerful and wealthy, consensus
is growing! Change is great!
In �the great Chicago tradition, [Daley],� Gingrich continues,
�understands getting things done.�
And Obama himself says of Daley: �He�s
led major corporations. He possesses a deep understanding
of how jobs are created . . . And, needless to say, Bill
also has a smidgen of awareness of how our system of government
and politics works. You might say it is a genetic trait�
(PoliticsDaily.com.).
Yes, you might say that! �Bill� knows how
OUR (and Obama does not mean �our� as in �your government
of and for the people�) - but THEIR �system of government
and politics works� - for them - the rich!
William Daley is the man now welcoming
the honored guest. On January 19, 2011, Daley was in action!
Two hundred very important Americans invited to the White
House dinner to greet and conduct business with China�s
president Hu Jintao included CEOs Steve Ballmer, MicroSoft,
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs, Jeffrey Immelt, GE, Jim
McNerney, Boeing and Co., David Rubenstein, Carlyle Group.
CEOs from Dow Chemical, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Sybase, and
other corporations were represented.
Only the pigs were invited, so, no, again,
no one like Dr. Martin L. King sat at that table.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate
in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click
here
to contact Dr. Daniels.