Black Republican Takes on Obama and Janeane Garofalo

May 23rd, 2009 11:37 AM

For many years a common media meme has been that black people have to be Democrats and that African-Americans whose political views are even slightly right of center must either be addle-minded or crazy.

Janeane Garofalo in her disgusting interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last month said anybody at April's Tea Parties that wasn't white had to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. 

On Friday, Barbara Howard, a black, Republican media and government relations consultant from Florida, took on this absurd stereotype -- "I dare say that Miss Garofalo knows little or nothing about black folk and definitely not black Republicans" -- while claiming President Obama "thinks he knows more than everybody, including all 43 presidents before him."

In a South Florida Times op-ed marvelously titled "The Politics of Blackness: A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing," Howard discussed how Obama's healthcare proposal would have negatively impacted her recent stay in the hospital:

Then, after all your records are computerized and accessed by the federal government, the new Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research will review your doctors’ recommendations for treatment and medications, and decide if they are “appropriate and cost-effective.’’ [...]

This council, made up of bureaucrats, could have easily decided that I was too old to have all the medical attention the hospital gave me, and there would have been nothing I could do about it. And, if I didn’t agree, I would be called all kinds of names, including the one comedienne Janeane Garofalo called those of us who are black and Republican – “pathological and suffering from Stockholm syndrome.” 

In case you don’t know what Stockholm syndrome means, it’s when kidnap victims become sympathetic to their captors.  And in this case, those “captors” are “racists” who “hate that a black guy is in the White House,” according to Miss Garofalo in her interview with MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. [...]

I dare say that Miss Garofalo knows little or nothing about black folk and definitely not black Republicans. But she speaks as if she does, which is a dangerous thing.

That’s what happens when someone has a little knowledge, but thinks they have a lot. 

Yes, one could certainly say that about Garofalo. But, according to Howard, she's not the only liberal in America possessing such arrogance:

Like Garofalo, Obama knows little or nothing about how to “fix” the best health care system in the world.

If it were not the best, then people from all over the world would not be coming here for treatment.  And Jackson Memorial Hospital (along with the Jackson hospital system) is known for having some of the best health experts in the world.  My experience there proves its reputation to be true.

But our new president, “the one we’ve been waiting for,” thinks he knows more than everybody, including all 43 presidents before him.  Yet he has not run any type of organization – ever.  Not a city, not a county, not a state, not a small company, not a large corporation, not an educational institution, not a non-profit organization, not even a governmental agency.

But our lives are in his hands. And if he doesn’t change his philosophy of big government running all our businesses, including our healthcare system, we will all be in big trouble.

Nicely said. Of course, Howard is quite right: if folks in the media read her words, she'd be called all kinds of harsh names for having the gall to not fit their racial stereotype.