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I’m criticized incessantly at my Factotum-type day gig—well, actually not at the gig, because I’m the HNIC there, but every month we have this thing, a Manager’s call, where bosses from sites around the country phone in and discuss topics.

I dread these things like the Black Death.

Without fail, there’s some nit to pick with my site; this despite the fact that I’m one of the painfully few managers computer literate enough to do payroll — and the fact that whenever some mass e-mail goes into circulation detailing countrywide site deficiencies — my site never makes the list.

I try not to let this piss me off but, well, you can imagine how well that’s working.

And see, the thing is, I knew that when Obama got elected there was going to be a racial backlash.

I knew that our poor white brothers and sisters who had always dreaded the idea of Black people “taking over” were now going to use Obama’s election as evidence that just such a thing had happened.

I also knew that this would spur them towards being overly critical of any Black person holding any vestige of what they believed to be “power.”

And believe it or not, it would have probably been a better thing if Obama had been an absolutely horrible president.

That would have provided people with the opportunity to say of the concept of a Black president, “We tried it, it didn’t work out,” therefore salving their conviction that they are not, in fact, racist, while allowing them to return to overt racism with hard evidence of its effectiveness.

But Obama hasn’t been that bad.

Even things that I personally thought he’d blown, like the whole Libyan fiasco, now seem to be working in his favor.

This is why the few miracles he hasn’t been able to perform, like reducing unemployment, have been made to seem as ghastly as if he’d murdered his actress girlfriend, plunged the country deeper into Vietnam, broken into his rival political party’s headquarters, fallen down the stairs of Air Force One, gotten American hostages taken in Iran, fought covert wars in Central and South America, lied about raising taxes, had an affair with a White House intern, and started two wars against non-threatening sovereign nations.

Still, despite knowing in advance that the common Black man (me) would take the backlash from people impotent to actually affect him, I’d vote for Obama again.

If he can take it, I can too.

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