Barack's balancing act

And so the, ahem, race begins in earnest.

/snip/
Already, that balancing act is causing some strains. Some of Obama's longtime black supporters in Illinois are grumbling about the largely white crowd of advisers who now surround Obama as he gears up his national campaign. "Who does he represent? That is what people are worried about," said Lorenzo Martin, publisher of the Chicago Standard newspapers, a chain of black-oriented weeklies that circulate in the southern suburbs. "When you look and see who is surrounding him, you are not going to see too many brothers. What you see is the liberal left."

What it comes down to in the end is less race than money. Barack Obama can play to any audience he wants, can promise all kinds of "new politics" for a new age - but he's gonna have to raise a boatload of cash to win the Democratic nomination, to say nothing of moving through the general election. At that level, the party affiliation matters less than cash affiliation.

Black, white, whatever... the green is gonna call the shots.

I like Dan Froomkin

It irks me to no end to hear talk about failure and success absent the reality that we failed from the git-go.

At a book-signing/reading years ago at the now-defunct SisterSpace Books, Nikki Giovanni said, "You have to know what a fool looks like." Here are a few.

via MLK, Jr.

Just heard on the iPod Shuffle... an excerpt from a speech by MLK, Jr. where he quoted William Jennings Bryan

"The truth, crushed to the earth, will rise again."

I, too, shall rise. From being self-crushed.