In a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace several years ago, black actor Morgan Freeman displayed unusual wisdom for Hollywood when he said that the way to end racism in America is to “stop talking about it.” Not long thereafter, (half-) black candidate Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House confirmed that race is no barrier to success in America (apparently neither is incompetence). But instead of ushering in a post-racial era as many hoped, Obama’s presidency has ramped up racial tensions and driven his black Hollywood supporters to talk about racism more than ever before –among them, sadly, Morgan Freeman.
Obama’s administration has been anything but post-racial. From Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to prosecute Black Panther thugs, to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s charge that Tea Partiers are the new KKK, to the President’s own insult of the police officers who properly arrested his academic buddy Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it’s been payback time for those blacks who wear their racialism on their sleeve and yet hypocritically dismiss their critics as racist.
Including some blacks in Hollywood. Even the once-wise actor Freeman ignored his own earlier advice and claimed recently that the Tea Party is “a racist thing” representing “the weak, dark underside of America”:
Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? “Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we can to get this black man outta here.”
This conveniently ignores the fact that it is Obama who is doing whatever he can to screw the country, and the Tea Party is justifiably as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore. Freeman’s assumption seems to be that if the President were white, his critics would be just fine with his destructive policies, and all opposition would fade away.
Fellow black actor Samuel L. Jackson echoed Freeman’s unjust assessment of the Tea Party:
It’s pretty obvious what they are. The division of the country is not about the government having too much power… It’s not politics. It is not economics. It all boils down pretty much to race. It is a shame.
Yes, it is a shame. It’s a shame that fame gives Obama apologists like Jackson a platform to spout racist ignorance. In an interview for Ebony magazine, Jackson revealed who the real racist is:
I voted for Barack because he was black. ‘Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them … That’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama's] message didn’t mean [expletive] to me.
Pause for a moment to consider the media outrage if Jon Voight or another of the few openly conservative white actors in Hollywood had said, “I voted for John McCain in the last election because he’s white. His policies were completely irrelevant. That’s the American way.” His publicist would rush him into the obligatory public apology tour and racial sensitivity re-education camp, and that actor’s career would still be over. But a black actor admits to the mirror opposite of that and it barely registers a blip on the media radar.
Like Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson is an unquestionably talented and well-known actor with a whopping number of acting credits on his résumé, including Pulp Fiction, A Time to Kill, multiple appearances in the Star Wars series, and the upcoming The Avengers. He arguably should have won the Best Actor Oscar that went to his costar John Travolta for Pulp Fiction. Even Jackson’s voiceover work is outstanding, as evidenced by his family-friendly turn in The Incredibles as superhero Frozone, or his hilarious, family-unfriendly reading of the popular “children’s” book, Go the F*** to Sleep.
Pages: 1 2
