A lot of liberals say they’re not supporting Barack Obama in the
primaries because a black can’t carry the South in
the General Election
— which is a liberal’s clever way of saying that he won’t vote for a
black person. But, it seems, they’re wrong. Because while Iowa and New
Hampshire aren’t technically in the South, they are full of hicks,
which is what rich liberals actually mean when they refer to “the
South.” You have to live among rich liberals to understand what they’re
saying. You’ll never believe what they mean by “middle class.” They
mean themselves.America is ready for a black
president because we’ve
seen them before. Black
presidents, in fact, have been our awesomest
presidents ever: Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact” and Dennis Haysbert in
“24.” And their approval ratings — box office grosses and Nielsen
ratings, the only approval that matters in the US — have been huge. The
Freeman and Haysbert administrations, which endured Carter-level
challenges such as a comet headed toward Earth and working with Kiefer
Sutherland, have specifically prepared us for Obama. Like him, they
confront without being confrontational. They’re calm, earnest, utterly
decent and way, way cooler than white presidents — which is what I’m
sure Joe Biden was trying to say when he called Obama “articulate” and
“clean.” If only I had translated for him sooner.If there is a choice
between winning a culture war or a political war, take the cultural
one. Sure, the blunt force of the law can make something happen quickly
— unless the law equivocates to make only three-fifths of something
happen, or to just not ask and not tell — but culture affects how
people think, which is how real change occurs.You can only send the
101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Ark., so many times, but Norman
Lear can make people see the absurdity of racism every week. “Will
& Grace” did as much for gay rights as Stonewall, although less
amusingly.Obama is strikingly similar to Haysbert’s character,
President David Palmer: Both were senators, both campaigned in their
mid-40s and both deliver JFK-style speeches in a cool, jazz baritone.
“I think we both have a similar approach to who and what we believe the
president is. Barack doesn’t get angry. He’s pretty level. That’s how I
portrayed President Palmer: as a man with control over his emotions and
great intelligence,” Haysbert says.Freeman, another Obama campaign
contributor, was born in 1937 and grew up in Mississippi, never
thinking we could possibly have a black president. But after 1998’s
“Deep Impact,” Freeman says, white people told him, too, that they
wished he were really president.