Might as well lie back and ”think of England…”

“The Obama presidency presents us with both an opportunity and a challenge,” said the Rev. David K. Brawley, of St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn. [J.B. Reed for The New York Times]

It’s from November 15th, but still timely… a friend had emailed me that night to not miss the photo on the FP of the NYT… and I would say it is special.  In the sense that specials, my father used to say, are on the sale table at Macy’s (and now the whole nation is on the Sale!  Reduced!  Mark Downs Intermittent and Otherwise have been taken!  tables).

As he walked into his office in Brooklyn nearly every day this fall, the Rev. David K. Brawley noticed a photograph on his assistant’s desk.

It showed Senator Barack Obama, head bowed, as a circle of black ministers gathered around him, touching their hands to his shoulders and uttering prayers.

Without even knowing the precise circumstances of the picture — it had been taken in July during the quadrennial conference of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination — Mr. Brawley understood the broader context. The hands and the prayers offered to Mr. Obama were an act, in the lexicon of black Christianity, of impartation.

What was being imparted at the most obvious level was a blessing on a black candidate’s pursuit of the presidency. Now, with Mr. Obama’s election, the image has taken on a double meaning. The presence in the White House of an African-American, and specifically one from the post-civil rights, multicultural era, will almost certainly impart influence and prominence on his contemporaries in the black ministry.

What a con.  The ultimate boxing in of Martin Luther King… as well as the ultimate projection of that narrowed, bitten off, truncated ”reality” the government allows.  Just a damned reverend, conning the people.  Quite convenient for the PTB, because they can control the reverends and the ministers and the priests…. thru cash and gratuities..  Deals… and whatever else.  Up for sale.  So many of them always taking the flock to market.

Ain’t it a shame.  And around our necks for years…

As if the church of Ratz or Rick Warren or  Dobson or the Elders of the LDS or TD Jakes — or the one pictured above (don’t miss the cute little wimmens ministry! …you too can be re-named after a precious, precious jewel!) meant anything, at all, to me.  I’d love to be a citoyenne in a secular state.

But we are stuck with them.  And a wanna-be, imo, in the WH.

Fucking hell.

*****

I’ve had this, title picture and text, tucked away for sometime, never found a good day to use it… but as of a few mins ago, I’ve hunted for days for something for New Year’s Eve… celebrations, NewYear’s as it hit the rising cities of China, S Asia, Australia… ships trying to fish in contested waters, fresh new babies, fresh new piglets (Good Luck for the year, so they say in Germany) all sorts of faces and moments, wild stags on tundra like landscapes… you name it, I looked at it… but hell, He sold himself as the ultimate New Year’s Baby… so, over to you Obama.

aemd from the previous thread:

One more time, Ioz, Belief You Can Change In.

“Israel is destroying Gaza, we’re still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan is moving troops to its Indian border, the card-house global economy finally went a floor too high, and no one can do anything about it, least of all His Youthfulness.”

Good luck.  And have at it…

(Disclaimer:  I realise this does not reek of Hope… nor does it indicate I have a personal belief in the healing power of the Obama DNA)