If only John Kerry would keep quiet. But he doesn't, and maybe he can't. In any case, in a characteristically soporific interview with the Bay State's SouthCoastToday, Kerry did some deep thinking about why Barack Obama appealed to him as a presidential candidate. This deep thinking was reported to the nation by ABC senior political correspondent Jake Tapper who could barely keep himself from laughing.
"It would be such an affirmation of who we say we are as a people," said Kerry, "if we could elect an African-American president, young leader, who is obviously visionary about the ability to inspire people."
More than that, Kerry opined, Obama could be our deus ex machina with the Muslim world. He would have the capacity "in some cases (to) go around their dictator leaders to the people and inspire the people in ways that we can't otherwise."
And more: "He has the ability to help us bridge the divide on religious extremism...to maybe even give power to moderate Islam to be able to stand up against this radical misinterpretation of a legion religion." Kerry shows his ignorance in this ramble: "llegitimate," "radical misinterpretation." What the f. does he know.
So Kerry was asked why Obama would have that power. "Because he is African-American. Because he's a black man. Who has come from a place of oppression and repression through the years in our own country." But this is not Obama's biography. In any case, black people don't have high status in the world of Islam and surely not in the Arab world. In fact, black people are looked down upon among the Arabs: "a black face begins a black day," said a Saudi prince to me on a street in Jeddah. And has Kerry not noticed the atrocities visited by Arab Muslims on Darfurians and Chadian who are also Muslim but, alas, black Muslims? Or the same pattern in Nigeria?