Fiend Movement

Once Again, Sharpton Gets It Wrong

Earlier this week I posted a video clip from MSNBC’s “Black Agenda” special on Sunday afternoon. In the video Rev Al Sharpton and Dr Cornel West shelled out almost apoplectic verbal lambastes of each other and their opposing ideas on Obama’s presidency thus far. I decided to re-follow both Rev Sharpton and Dr West on Twitter in the wake of this video to see what drama and politically-intertwined subtweets would ensue. 

Rev Sharpton took to his Twitter account and posted a link written by The Root.com entitled Why Sharpton Was Right in which they wrote for two pages about how Obama spent up his political reserves passing Healthcare reform and dealing with the financial crisis at hand. We were told to accept that Medicare will not help anyone under 30 although we all pay into the system, forget about the jobs bill that Obama promised and feel bad because his approval rating in the Black community has slipped to a new low of 85%. Somehow all of those things magically made Rev Sharpton the man in the right on Obama and his reign of net-neutrality and inefficiency. 

I simply cannot agree with this. The man I voted for in 2008 was a man of valor, heart, and backbone. The financial collapse that he walked into was what he signed up for. Futhermore, if history has taught us anything it’s that Presidents who weather financial crisis and wars have HIGHER approval ratings than those who don’t. Gallup polls show Obama’s approval rating at 47%. By comparison, during his presidency, FDR boasted an 84% approval rating. Therefore, turmoil is not an death sentence for your approval rating, ineffectively handling key situations is.

The Rev.’s point was that Obama is doing the best that he can given the situation in which he now finds himself. Although I feel for his lack of political power at the moment, that does not absolve him of the ramifications of his own decisions. Against all senses of logic, Obama decided to expend all of his political reserves on his tunnel-visioned political spearhead campaign to pass a healthcare bill that we still don’t completely understand more than a year later. He had no problem cutting education, but Planned Parenthood almost caused a government shutdown? Even now, we are awaiting a budget that will more than likely usher in an era of societal dead weight loss unseen since the worst days of the depression. While trying to guide a nation through the worst recession since the stock market crashed in 1929, you cannot ignore poverty. Obama’s last State Of The Union address was the first time since 1948 that a President has not addressed poverty in this nation. I’m sorry, but I cannot allow myself to sit back and idly support Obama simply because we share enhanced supplies of melonin. 

Our silence is not helping him make vital decisions. The rocks will not cry out for us and our complacency is the fabric of our failure. If you want to blindly support our President…by all means go for it, but I want to see the man I elected. So in the meantime, please take away this “mascot of the Wall Street oligarchs and political plutocrats” and give me the change I thought I signed up for.