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.