Obama Hoisted On His Own Sensitivity Petard

As a low level government functionary, the Beast is constantly reminded of his “responsibility” to remain ethical and transparent. One would wish that the folks at the top of the ladder felt similarly, but having worked in both the public and private sectors it’s pretty clear there are two standards. The same corporation that defines an hourly worker coming back from an (unpaid) half hour lunch a minute late as tantamount to theft seems to have no issues with the CEO throwing a birthday party for his second wife on the Island of Sardinia to the tune of two million - all funded through the employee stock purchase (slush) fund and written off as a business expense.

In any event, about once every two months or so the Beast is dragged from his cubicle and forced to watch some videotape or power point presentation about “respect in the workplace”. The general tenor of these videos seems to be aimed at teaching the white guys “How Not To Piss Off The Chicks And Minorities In Your Office”. The minorities seem to find this funny as hell and the chicks don’t care - they know that sometimes it’s impossible NOT to piss them off - and most kind of like to be hit on, as long as it’s from men they like. The only people who take this stuff seriously are the white guys who know they have the most to lose.

The point that gets drilled into us the most - and you may recognize this - is that “offense” is defined by law not as the intent of the speaker, but by the reaction of the listener. You can say something in all innocence and offend a person inadvertently, but that’s no defense! The standard is not what you meant to say but how what you said is received by the thin skinned loonie who gets his/her panties all a-twist.

And conservatives did not set this system up. Libs did this in the 80’s to make Sexual Harassment cases easier to win. remember Clarence Thomas anybody? Lefties swarmed the Networks to make the point that even if Thomas didn’t mean to harass Anita Hill he should still fry because she felt harassed.

A few years later panty chaser Clinton lurched into office towing a trawl of harassment cases and suddenly the “Always Guilty” crowd got a big case of laryngitis. The silence was deafening.

So what does this have to do with Obama?

He has been hinting for months that Republicans will play on racial fear to defeat him. Whether it’s how different he looks “from the other presidents on dollar bills” (Hint - there’s only one President on the dollar bill, but it may have been a while since he looked at such a low denomination) or “did I mention he’s black?” (as if we hadn’t noticed), Obama has been implicitly tarring the GOP with the racial brush.

And if we hold him to his own standard, the issue is not W.O.R.M. (What Obama Really Meant), but how his words are received by his targets. By LAW offense is in the eye of the beholder, and what he really meant is immaterial.

So whether he meant to call the entire GOP racists doesn’t matter. We feel that he has. We take offense - so by the standards put in place by his own party we are right. The ideology that pioneered the concept of “Racial Code” seems to discover nuance (”Obama was referring to the fact that earlier presidents were older and wore wigs, not that they were all white males…) only when it’s their own nuts in the wringer.

Now the only question is what kind of reparation does he owe us?

UPDATE

The Party Of Perennial Offense is now complain that McCain is being too sensitive!

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said McCain’s campaign was “misinterpreting” both the “tenor and the meaning” of Obama’s words.

“I think they should probably be a little less paranoid about parsing every word we say and a little more focused on actually addressing the challenges that Americans expect the president of the United States to take on,” he said.

Sensitivity for me but not for thee. How droll.