In A Funny Country, Some Things Are Just Not Discussed.

This is a funny country.

I don’t mean funny “ha-ha,” I mean funny “paradoxical,” funny “peculiar,” funny “outdated,” funny “unfair,” and, sometimes, just funny “curious.”

One of the funny things about this country is the long list of items that have been allowed to become “cherished beliefs,” but that are, nevertheless, absolutely untrue.

One such “belief,” of course, is that we now live in an open society wherein segregation, discrimination and race-based economic exclusion are no longer prevalent among the majority of black people in this country.
Another such “cherished belief" and equally untrue, is that our highest elected officials actually become candidates because they are, somehow, more “qualified” to hold office than the average citizen.

The fact is that in our culture, there are some things that are just not politically or socially acceptable to discuss, no matter how much they deserve to be debated, and these two things are a case in point.
For example, even though there is absolutely no evidence that school desegregation has been eliminated in the U.S., that economic opportunity has been made equally available to blacks and whites and that the criminal justice system now operates fairly and without regard to race-based bias, black people are accused of “playing the race card” or focusing unnecessarily on the “negative,” if we happen to bring up these ugly truths. The existence of statistical evidence of racial disparity is absolutely ignored and the culture encourages us to pretend, especially in light of the recent presidential election, that everything is now alright.

It reminds me of something that the great African-American philosopher, historian, economic advocate, religious leader, and ex-offender Malcolm X used to say: That someone has taught black people to “suffer peacefully…don’t stop suffering, just suffer peacefully.”

It’s a funny country.

Let's get back, now, to the other issue that has so clearly marked this as a strange place to live, the myth of the existence of candidate qualifications for the highest elected offices in the country.

I really began to think seriously about all of this over the past several weeks as we’ve been subjected to the media’s unstinting efforts to help establish Caroline Kennedy’s “qualifications” to be the next U.S. Senator from the state of New York.

It is clearly very difficult to be insensitive in any way to the memory of John F. Kennedy, a person who was assassinated while serving as president of the U.S. There is simply no question about that.

At the same time, I can’t help thinking that it is very peculiar that we, and the national media have placed the entire Kennedy family on such a high pedestal, identifying them with all that is good and noble in the history of American politics. We even refer to the time of the Kennedy presidency as “Camelot,” a reference to King Arthur and the noble Knights of the Roundtable. Indeed, we bestow our highest praise on any male politician, especially one who aspires to the presidency, when we say he reminds us of John Kennedy.

Hey, as if the adulation of the Kennedy family wasn’t grand enough in the mainstream culture, many black households even took it a step further. After President Kennedy’s assassination, many African-American families actually placed pictures of John Kennedy, right next to those of Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ, on their dining room walls. Candidates, whom we have respected, have been compared to “Jack,” himself; their wives, if we like them, have been compared to Mrs. Kennedy, the stylish, iconic, all-perfect “Jackie.”

When the media began to compare Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, to the Kennedy’s, deep down inside, John McCain knew it was over.

This is a funny country.

As I’ve said, I wouldn’t have been thinking about any of this at all had we not been recently inundated with photos, stories, web videos, and scores of adoring pundits, all trying to assure me, all of you, and most importantly, New York’s African-American Governor David Paterson that Caroline is “qualified” to be a U.S. Senator.

Again, that raises two questions: If the massively inexperienced Caroline’s biggest political asset is the Kennedy name, itself, then who were the Kennedy’s, really? And, second, what exactly are the minimum requirements to be a U.S. Senator?

If you get a minute, check out the piece in the December 29 issue of the New York Post, the one with the photo of Caroline Kennedy super-imposed against the image of the $50 million, 366-acre, Martha’s Vineyard estate where she lives. I bring that up to respond to the “haters” out there who had been complaining about the Obama family vacationing at a $9 million beach-front home in Oahu, Hawaii: I have absolutely nothing against people who can afford a really nice, multi-million dollar home. In this case, however, there is a substantial question about where the family’s money came from.

In the Post article, the writer took respectful pains to mention that Ms. Kennedy is the “beneficiary of a massive trust fund (estimated at $100 million) established by clan patriarch Joseph Kennedy.”

Joseph Kennedy, a clan patriarch?

It's funny that Joseph Kennedy-- John, Teddy, and Robert’s father, Jackie’s father-in-law, and Caroline’s grandfather-- has been, somehow, allowed to "morph," by the media, from what he actually was, a Prohibition-era “rum runner” and a "business partner" to Lucky Luciano, Meier Lansky and Frank Costello, to become a “respected” family patriarch.

It’s funny that no one seems to want to mention any of Mr. Kennedy’s crime-related relationships, apparently the primary source of Caroline's "massive trust fund."

The other issue, of course, is that the actual minimum requirements for the job of U.S. Senator are virtually non-existent. In this day and age, when you can’t get an entry-level management job in any respectable corporation without a college degree, when you have to have a law degree to be an attorney, when you have to develop a skill set and, sometimes, serve an apprenticeship, to be a construction worker, you don’t need any of those things to be a U.S. Senator and to be able to vote on complex issues such as the $700 billion bailout package, the demise of the domestic economy and the prospect of global war.

To be a U.S. Senator, a candidate simply has to be at least 30 years of age, be a U.S. citizen for at least nine years, and be a resident of the state in which they intend to run, at the time of the election.

Oh, and, of course, even though this one is not "written down," you also have to have enough money to finance a hugely expensive political campaign. In fact, a 2004 study projected that the winners in the 2006 senate races would spend on average about $10.5 million and that the losers would spend, on average, about $3.9 million. Even worse, in the 2004 senate races, challengers who beat incumbents spent, on average, about $15.8 million.

Other than having, or being able to raise, obscene amounts of money, therefore, there are no additional qualifications to be a U.S. Senator, and it seems, therefore, that Caroline Kennedy is extremely well-qualified for the job. In my opinion, however, that is no longer enough to have her seriously considered as a U.S. Senate candidate.

Sorry, Caroline, but with so much currently at risk for our country --domestically and internationally—shouldn’t we be taking steps now toward having more substantive qualifications for being a U.S. Senator and not simply leaving the control of the most powerful legislative seats in our government to the country’s wealthiest people?

Then again, this is a funny country, and you never know how people will react to such a suggestion..


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