Same Bus, New Driver

Perhaps because he wanted to distract from the media frenzy attached to his admission of eating dog meat and other sordid things, Barack Obama finally decided to make a bold, decisive move to set America back on the path to prosperity and harmony.

Specifically, he flew Air Force One to Detroit in order to be photographed sitting pensively in the bus made famous by Rosa Parks (and, oh yeah, as long as he was in town, attend another fundraiser) knowing that the inspiring image would cause all Americans to ask themselves the same troubling question etched into the president's somber face: "I wonder why this bus isn't going anywhere?"

Because our economic bus isn't going anywhere...and the longer Obama is driving, the farther back African-Americans are being told to sit.

This situation is captured perfectly in a now-infamous recent photo of Obama's reelection headquarters in Chicago, which shows a room crammed with computers, tables, and seemingly hundreds of enthusiastic young campaign workers. All except one of whom are white. And the one who isn't white is Asian... presumably because the campaign needed at least one worker who could do math.

Supporters of the president say that he's forced to overcompensate for his own alleged blackness by not having too many black people around him or his organization (although they're still apparently fine crowded around him at photo-ops as if they were Japanese subway riders during rush hour).

And similarly, he's overcompensating for his own blackness by doing virtually nothing to help the plight of Blacks in America. So bad is his record that the Congressional Black Caucus has said they'd be demonstrating in front of the Whitehouse now...if Obama was a white man. But if the first black president fails to do anything for the African-American community, they don't want to risk criticizing him as being heartless, manipulative, and ineffectual - no matter how truthful that assessment is.

In response to the embarrassment of having a campaign headquarters that looks whiter than a gathering of the KKK, Obama's people are now making an "urgent push" to hire more minorities - especially black ones. Although last time we looked, it was a serious crime to hire someone based solely on their race...or even to consider it as a condition of employment.

Maybe this is why Barack Obama felt the sudden desperate need to be photographed sitting in Rosa Parks' bus. And we hope he enjoyed the experience while it lasted.

Because he's got to get off at the next stop.

Barack Obama shares a ride with all the Black Americans he's helped.
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(Note to readers: the first link in today's commentary is actually a bit of
Hope n' Change Friday mischief. Feel free to share it with your friends!)

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