Obama Tells Rosa Parks to Sit in the Middle of the Bus

ALABAMA, 1950s: Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, boards a public bus and sits at the front, defying segregation laws that state she must sit in the back of the bus. The bus driver, a white male, confronts her.

BUS DRIVER: Hey--you're a colored woman--get your fat ass to the back of the bus where it belongs!

ROSA PARKS: Well, I really think you're position is wrong, but since you're a racist bigot conservative asshole, I will try and be a good citizen and see things from your point of view.

BUS DRIVER: I said get your colored ass back to the bus now, or I'll have the cops beat you and waterhose you!!!

ROSA PARKS: I do see your point. I know--in the name of democracy, why don't we comprise . . . I want to sit in the front, you want me to sit in the back, so I'll sit in the middle of the bus! How's that? Let me count the rows here . . .

Apparently, this revisionist exchange between Rosa Parks and the Confederate bus driver is Barack Obama's political utopia. This weekend at commencement ceremonies at the University of Michigan, the President once again rehashed his banal, uninspiring mantra about how we all need to listen to each other, understand one another's point of view, and work toward comprise. Of course this rigid, oversimplified agnostic logic means that bigoted and hateful positions on social issues must be treated with the same respect and consideration as enlightened and civilized positions. That is where Obama's words betray his shallowness and his cavalier attitude toward leadership. He insists that just because a position is a position that it must be given some credibility. Especially at this point in American history, he is totally off base. After more than thirty years of Republican arch-conservatism, one has to ask: how many more things have to go completely wrong before we stop listening to the people who want us to keep doing the same things? Endless war and suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy in the pits. Massive environmental damage off the coast of Louisiana--meaning even more people are now out of work. Meanwhile the rich continue to rake it in and the CEO's of investment banks are making record bonuses. Where would Obama himself be if his predecessors in generations past had "listened to the other side and worked toward compromise?" When Martin Luther King declared, "Free at last!" he was not talking about compromise, he was talking about freedom! Why am I or anyone else obliged to comprise with people who want to dominate and control me? When it comes to civil rights and freedom, where is the "middle ground" around which one can compromise? Politics is about who gets their way and who doesn't, and Obama's sugar-coated fairytale of democracy does as much to fight back against tyranny as his reticence toward Arizona's racist and discriminatory immigration laws. I'm 40 years old with a PhD and I don't need Obama to give me a Ronald Reagan-style dummed-down set of instructions on how to participate in my non-existent democracy. First of all, no one should listen to any point of view that lacks credibility. And credibility is as much about values as it is "facts." Any political position based on hatred, punishment, and persecution has no place in a democracy. The fact that millions of people hold dearly to such positions just means there are lots of people who thrive on hatred, punishment, and persecution; it does not validate the vapidness and venom of those views or make them any less incompatible with civilized behavior muchless institutionalized democracy. How pathetic and cowardly is it of America's first (50%) black man in effect to tell the rest of us we must hold bigoted and discriminatory views that degrade and subjugate us on par with our personal dignity? If Obama is right, and what we need is a more civil public discourse, then why would I or anyone else listen to a mob of hate-mongering tyrants in the name of democracy?