The Gantt Report
By: Lucius Gantt
No one seeks to be criticized. I detest criticism but it comes with the job of being a newspaper columnist.
The people that enjoy criticizing me criticize me repeatedly so they are easy for me to recognize.
Criticism is all they do. They never have any praise, never any appreciation, never any thanks or good will.
The most criticism I’ve gotten recently is when I wrote about historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). If you say no school is perfect, even though the statement is true, the haters will have a field day on you.
But if you write about Barack Obama and question anything he does, you’ll be attacked left and right.
Well, get ready to attack me! Again!
Change is something you hear in every election cycle but the word “change” was heard more in the last election than ever before. I know it’s early in the Presidency, but does it seem to anybody that President Obama is changing from his election vision and is starting to become more like his predecessors?
What was once vanilla in the nation’s capitol, now seems to only be dipped in chocolate!
Some of us feel Obama must step up! The President’s desire to be “non-partisan” and cooperative with his political enemies is not working out. The endless and multiple concessions that he has given Republicans in the proposed health care legislation has gotten the President nowhere! The GOP gets every amendment to the health care bills that they want and still vote against the legislation. The war machine in America is not subsiding, it is increasing and more troops are being sent to foreign lands.
I think the President must push for his ideas as hard as he can and if he has to go down, go down fighting!
Let me explain, if my memory serves me correctly, I thought many people voted for Barack Obama in hopes that he would end the war in Iraq and bring American soldiers home from other countries. I thought he would fight for universal health care that would cover all Americans and not be persuaded by greedy insurance companies to abandon his public option ideas to curb health care costs. I thought Barack Obama would oppose bankers and mortgage companies that prey on the poor and practice neighborhood red-lining and predatory lending.
I thought our new President would stand up for citizens that have been victimized by housing discrimination. I thought Obama wanted to improve race relations and reduce profiling and police misconduct.
Well, maybe he is doing a lot of good things but from my view, I’m seeing more waffling in Washington than I see Waffle House and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles!
I want my President to stand up and speak out for things that are best for all Americans and not just parrot the governmental lobbyists or rubber stamp whatever big business tells him to.
Many Black voters prayed for God to send us another Moses, a modern day Joshua or a contemporary David that could slay the gigantic and devilish beast that wants the rich richer and the poor in America poorer.
If Barack Obama fights for the things we need, I and others will defend the President with our lives. If Obama wants to be nice and compromising and cooperative with America’s and the world’s political satans, I can’t be with that.
