Oh No She Didn't! Now I'm Hotter Than Fish Grease!

"I think they have decided to run a relentlessly negative campaign, and I don’t think anybody who’s watching would deny that . . . . I gather that she’s determined that instead of trying to sell herself on why she would be the best president, she’s trying to convince folks that I wouldn’t be a good one.”


Sen. Barack Obama, N.Y. Times, January 14, 2008

And so it goes -- against my wise counsel (see my January 11 post), Hillary has decided to go negative on Barack Obama. Again. Based on events that happened in the past -- who was most responsible for the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. And she's even got the chief peddler of Black Cultural Porn, former BET President Robert Johnson, joining in the chorus, with a less-than-oblique reference to Obama's drug-using past.

And now, as my friend Sheila in Denver says, I'm hotter than fish grease. (Note: For those of you who lack Southern roots, black Southerners fry catfish in large quantities of peanut oil heated to extremely high temperatures. In fact, peanut oil is the oil of choice for frying fish because it is one of the few oils that can withstand being heated to extremely high temperatures without bursting into flames. Hence the term, "hotter than fish grease." Sheila's family is from Virginia.) What this Democratic primary is turning into is what I perceive to be a generational divide between the older Civil Rights Generation of blacks versus my generation and younger, and, IMHO, Hillary is trying to go negative on Obama to shore up her Civil Rights Generation support. At the risk of speaking out of turn, I know that as far as I'm concerned, enough is enough. I'm tired of the negative campaigning from the Hillary campaign. This little tiff seems to be much ado about nothing, yet another war of words to distract us from the record Hillary ought to be running on -- her own.

And I don't think I'm alone. I'm tired of the whole "politics as Washington bloodsport" approach to political campaigning. I don't care who said what about things in the past -- what I want to know is why each candidate should be President of the United States. Make your own damn case for your own damn candidacy. This time around, you don't get to win by default by trying to detract from and destroy all the other candidates. Not this time around. IMHO, this is a different kind of primary, primarily because of Obama.

Despite the fact that my political jinx status is still in play, now I'm hotter than fish grease and might just have to get involved. I just might have to make another donation to the Obama campaign. And buy an Obama lawn sign. And walk precincts, like I did for Gore and Kerry. I might just have to go all out because I'm tired of the negativity and the lack of fair gamesmanship (gameswomanship?). Enough is enough. I'm hotter than fish grease, and I'm not going to take it anymore.