On MSNBCNews today, Melissa Harris-Perry read her open letter to Washington Post columnist George Will in response to his column from Monday. Within that article, George Will argues the reason Obama is still strong in the polls is basically because white folks feel guilty firing their first African American President. Oh, yeah. He went there.
In the WP article from last Monday, Will writes:
That Obama is African American may be important...the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.
Melissa Harris-Perry has a few words for him:
You suspect something is amiss when, even after the President’s meager performance in Wednesday’s debate, he still enjoys a 46% to 44% lead over challenger Mitt Romney. You see, George, I don’t think it’s all that much of a paradox. It could be that Democrats have effectively linked Romney with candidates, elected officials, and policies that represent the extreme anti-reproductive rights initiatives in the republican party. That big old gender gap could be because of “Transvaginal McDonald,” “Legitimate Rape Akin,” and “No Pills Santorum.” Or, George, perhaps it’s that Mr. Romney chose a running mate that advocates transforming Medicare into a voucher system. That just might have caused reliably conservative seniors to reconsider their willingness to support the President. And George, it could be that, until Wednesday night, Mitt Romney had run a breathtakingly uninspiring campaign, pockmarked with gaffes and inconsistencies and evasion. But, no, George, you took none of this into account. Instead, you wrote that the President’s lead is solid because — I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this — because the President is black.
You say the nation — which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure, thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems reluctant to give up on the first African-American president. Right! Because we all know that black men hold an unfair advantage in the labor market. You can see the evidence of it all around you. After decades of racial goodwill, shown to black workers as a result of the unfairly imposed guilt trip by radical race card-playing media types like me, black workers now have an unemployment rate of 13.4%. Right. Racial guilt, that’s it.
Well, here’s the deal, George. I hereby give you permission to set down the white man’s burden. If you don’t want to vote for the president, don’t! Plenty of other voters seem to have found actual reasons to support him.
WOW! You go girl! Here's the video: