“Here Comes the Story of the Hurricane”: Barack Obama, Bob Dylan and the man the authorities came to blame

When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Paterson that’s just the way things go.
If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street
less you wanna draw the heat.

President Obama called it a “teachable moment.” Noted African American scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pointed to his arrest for disturbing the peace in his own home as an example of “what it’s like to be a black man in America.”

And while Gates’ indignation was intended to be self referential, President Obama’s equally indignant comment that the Cambridge police had ‘acted stupidly’ in their treatment of Gates may very well have provided the first glimpse into what it’s like to be a black president in America.

During the campaign, Obama went out of his way to avoid the issue of race. And to his credit, relegating race to the back burner allowed more pressing issues like heath care, the economy, and the war in Iraq to take precedent. In fact, it was only in the midst of the infamous Jeremiah Wright incident, when the issue of race threatened to boil over, that Obama was forced to chime in on the topic. By all accounts (including those of Professor Gates), Obama didn’t just tackle the issue of racism in American, he transcended it.

But the cool, ethereal detachment Obama displayed during the campaign was decidedly absent last week as the president allowed himself to be drawn in.

And while Obama appeared to have acted impetuously when he broke from his seemingly perpetual tranquil state, the truth is that racial profiling—what many have placed at the epicenter of the Gates’ controversy—is an issue to which the president has given considerable thought.

While in the Illinois legislature Obama was the chief sponsor of a bill, which eventually became law, that requires police to record the race, age and gender of all drivers stopped for traffic violations. The data collected is then analyzed with the intent of deterring racial profiling.

And while Obama’s authoring of the racial profiling bill may explain his ‘stupid’ response to the arrest of Professor Gates, it did little to transform the incident into the “teachable moment” the president had hoped it would become. Unless, of course, the lesson was how to exploit a tenuous situation for the political and professional gain… in which case President Obama and Professor Gates both passed with flying colors.

For Obama, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was a striking example of racial discrimination that he had hoped he could point to from a distance without have to become embroiled in the politically decisive issue. Of course, no one expected Obama to actually show his true colors on the topic. Judging from the amount of language 'recalibration' Obama has done over the last week, that assessment extends to the president himself.

For Henry Louis Gates, the front porch skirmish, which would have said volumes about the status of race relations in this country without Gates having to ever even have said a word, has been reduced to little more than the impetus for his next project—a PBS documentary on, you guessed it… racial profiling. And so, in both instances, what could have been a real moment of clarity was instead sadly and selfishly squandered.

Of course, the exploitation of race for personal gain is not just limited to politicians and Ivy League professors. It turns out pop stars are prone to it, too.

Certainly, Bob Dylan fell prey to the polarizing issue of racial profiling in the fall of 1975 when he championed the cause of a middleweight boxer by the name of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. The song, which maintained Carter had been wrongfully charged and sentenced on three counts of murder, played the race card in ways that would have made OJ’s defense team cringe.

And while many of Dylan’s claims, including the assertion that Carter could have at one time “been champion of the world” were clearly self-congratulatory exaggerations employed to bolster a case for injustice, in the end it hardly mattered.

The mere fact Dylan had put pen to paper in defense of the beleaguered boxer elevated Carter’s plight to mythical proportion. It did marvels for Dylan's career, too. The song would go on to become one of his most popular; Desire, the album on which it appeared, one of his biggest sellers.

The issue of race in America may very be the most morally debasing issue our country has had to confront over our 200-plus year history. And even though Obama and Gates missed an opportunity last week to educate and enlighten on that issue much in the same way Dylan missed his own ‘teachable moment’ 35 years ago, there’s no question we’ve come a long way when it comes to our attitude on race in America.

And while those in power may occasionally play loose and free with the facts to advance the side they’re on, it’s refreshing to see the side they're on is the right one…

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fools hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.

Post Election America: Positively post-racial or a dead end street?

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Barack Obama’s victory last November was more than just a 'defining moment' in American politics. It redefined America. And while race was never an ‘issue’ per se, it was always there. A powerful undercurrent that, had it not been handled so deftly by the Obama campaign, could have run not just the election but the entire country aground.

Of course, Barack Obama had something more powerful than confidence, competence and a good dose of canniness going for him. He had at his disposal the power to transform a nation’s perspective. By electing Barack Obama, we would finally have the opportunity to stand in someone else’s shoes.

The election of the first black president was supposed to have ushered in a new, post-racial era in American politics. Ironically, the exact opposite has happened. Instead of quelling America’s need to incessantly talk about race, all the talked about for the two months is race.

A cartoon likening the author of the stimulus bill to a rabid chimpanzee? America called out as a ‘nation of cowards’ by the first African-American attorney general? The distribution of a bawdy burlesque of a popular children’s song by the leading contender for the Republican pary that cast Barack Obama as ‘Puff the Magic Negro’?

If this is what it’s like to be standing in the shoes of black America, America may need a new cobbler—

Forget the fact that the image of a monkey has long been associated with blacks in a way that is derogatory and degrading. This monkey doesn’t have anything to do with a certain black man who also happens to have put his name on the recent stimulus package. No, the crazed primate referenced here is a raging, out of control tax-and-spend Congress.

And don’t get too caught up on the words Eric Holder used to categorize America’s attitude on race. Sure, he called us a ‘nation of cowards,’ but what he was really trying to say was that we need to muster the courage within us all if we’re ever to find strength to truly get along.

And it was never Chip Saltzman’s intention to characterized Obama as an archetypal cinematic "Magic Negro" — a black man who assuages white guilt, ala the character played by Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It was a joke, people.

Of course, the problem with all of these defenses (aside from the fact that they’re patently pathetic) is that they couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Our elected officials just shot the future of God knows how many future generations full of holes, and the New York Post wants to pin this triple murder on a monkey that gave its owner a fistful of claws when she went to pet it?

And what about that little etymological end run Eric Holder tried to execute? Holder is a lawyer—America’s top lawyer no less—and as the attorney general should be using his words to codify a new approach to race relations in this country, not using them to coddle us into singing “We Shall Overcome.”

And Saltsman's stumble—made less than a month after the complete routing of the Republican party—came at a time when the Republican Party is struggling to define the role of loyal opposition to the nation's first African-American president. But if the Republicans think a ‘joke’ means taking jabs with antiquated, offensive racial stereotypes, the only thing going up in a puff of smoke is the number of Republicans in Congress in 2010.

When Bob Dylan delivered “Positively 4th Street” from his precarious perch atop the pop charts in 1965, everyone just assumed he’d set out to ridicule the ‘folkies’ who had criticized him for leaving the movement to ‘go electric.’ Of course, he hadn’t left anyone. Instead, Dylan had just come into his own. And whatever ‘post-folk’ period he was accused of skewering was, in hindsight, an unavoidable phenomenon anyway.

Forty-five years later, America is at a similar place of self-discovery. The cartoon by political satirist, Signe Wilkinson, which appeared last week in newspapers across the country in reaction this so-called 'post-racial' America, summed up the dialogue that’s been sweeping across this country perfectly.


The image depicts a group of would-be travelers patiently taking their turn walking through a metal detector at an airport. A large, hand-drawn sign reads: “Welcome to our conversation on race.” But the real punchline is found on the disclaimer: “No cartoons, no jokes, no controversial books, films, sermons, etc.”

The reason the cartoon resonates is that it rings true. We have indeed entered a new era of race relations in America.

We bought the ticket when we elected Obama. Now, we get to take the ride. But before we do, we’re all going to have to take off our shoes, empty our pockets and check that baggage we’ve been carrying around for generations.

Of course in this process of new found self-examination, there’s always the chance that we actually do end up in someone else’s shoes.

But before we spout off at the mouth the first thing that comes to mind, perhaps we should click our heels together and heed the advice of an equally fitting cliché: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Our wounds are deep, America. It's going to take time for them to heal. There's no need to rip off the bandages all at once…

You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, "How are you?" "Good luck"
But you don't mean it

Ring Them Them Bells: Change has come

Ring them bells, ye heathen,
From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries,
Cross the valleys and streams.

It’s hard to be disgruntled when everyone around you is so happy. And November 4 was unquestionably a day that brought immense joy to millions of Americas.

Whether you were among the 64,058,826 people who voted for Barack Obama, or one of the 56,500,053 who voted for John McCain, at exactly 11:01 West Coast time the mood of a country changed. For a brief, fleeting moment, we were neither Republicans nor Democrats. Conservative nor Liberal. Right nor Left. Ideology evaporated, labels disappeared, color was washed away.

The whole world was watching. And what they saw was something uniquely American. The singular, defining quality that distinguishes America from every other country in the world: ‘redemption’.

The election of Barack Obama as the first African American president didn’t eradicate the racial injustices embedded in our nation’s DNA some 240 years ago. But it did emancipate us by from the past in some communal, collective way. And African Americans weren't the only ones who felt the lifting of the shackles. We all felt the weight lift. We all experienced that moment together.

Traditionally, these moments of collective consciousness are reserved to see us through the dark times that have befallen our nation—Dallas, Memphis, New Orleans, 9/11.

This was different. This was a moment in which we were bound together by hope and optimism, rather than brought together by horror and despair.

The closest thing this nation has come to the transformational moment we experienced Tuesday night was the defeat of the Nazis in World World II. But even that wasn’t really the same.

Yes, the chimes of freedom rang around the world, but the freedom America fought for was a deferred freedom. It would take another 60 years, and another generation, before the true tenets of freedom were extended to every American.

The headlines told the tale. And the tale didn’t need elaboration. Like all pivotal moments in history, the story could be reduced to three simple words:

To see over 700 front pages from November 5, 2008, click here.

The elevation of a black man to the presidency in this year, on this date, at this moment in our nation’s history could not have happened at any other time. Barack Obama was simply born at the right time. Born into a broken world desperately in need of being fixed.

For the last eight years, decisive, destructive partisanship has torn at the fabric of this country. On November 3, 2008, we were a nation of broken idols, broken treaties, broken vows, broken laws, broken words that should never have been spoken. On November 4, we were something else.

And while the man charged with picking up those pieces will inevitably be labeled by his detractors as a ‘empty vessel,’ a ‘blank slate,’ a ‘complete unknown,’ perhaps we can take solace in this simple fact: what better place to put all these broken pieces than in a vessel large enough to hold the limitless hope for a future that, for the first time in our nation’s history, truly feels like it can benefit every American.

Oh the lines are long,
And the fighting is strong,
And they're breaking down the distance,
Between right and wrong.