Subscribe
NewsOne Featured Video
CLOSE

If you don’t recognize his name yet, give it three years. Joe Wilson-read it and weep. He’s the nut that screamed out “You lie!” after President Obama explained that his healthcare plan would not insure illegal immigrants.

The genius of that scream, of course, was the fact that it sounded so impassioned. Like dude just couldn’t contain himself when in the grips of Obama’s overwhelming hypocrisy. He’s a hero of the underclass, this Joe Wilson. He’s here for the people.

Of course, Newsone readers are never suckers so I’m sure most of ya’ll recognized Wilson’s move for what it was immediately; pure politics.

See, there’s an element in this country that sees our current president as some kind of menace. They’ve gotten it into their puny minds that President Obama is also Teflon-if you ride with him, you’re a socialist; if you criticize him, you’re a racist. Therefore, they’ve been waiting for a man to emerge with the guts to (and how’s THIS for irony?) tell the truth to power.

By screaming “You lie!” at the weirdest, most inopportune moment imaginable, South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson declared himself to be just such a man.

Joe Wilson’s a man who, get this, once criticized the daughter of his hero, notorious Black-hating senator Strom Thurmond, because she had the nerve to admit that her existence was due to the fact that the great Strom had impregnated her then 15 year-old Black mother while the mother was a maid in the then 21 year-old Thurmond’s house.

Wilson considered Essie Mae Washington-Williams revelation an “unseemly” “smear”, while we’re left to imagine that he had no problem at all with his hero raping a teenager.

But let’s make no mistake; there’s currently a gaping vacuum as far as leadership goes in the Republican Party. There’s also almost no one in the party on the horizon as a potential candidate for president in 2012. By showing himself to be not at all above the old borderline race-baiting theatrics of his party’s recent forefathers, Joe Wilson has now positioned himself at the front of the pack.

The only thing that bothers me at all is that some people – Obama supporters, Democrats and even some Black people – mistakenly allowed themselves to take Joe Wilson too seriously. That’s exactly what he wants.

The proper response would have been to laugh at that clown.