Shelby Steele "regrets" the subtitle of his book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win.Because, in Steele's estimation, he now can:
HANNITY: All right, so he can't win?
STEELE: He can win. I regret that subtitle.
HANNITY: OK.
STEELE: It was an afterthought. And I don't argue that in the book. He can definitely win.
Well, if Shelby Steele says it, it must be true, right?
Well...witness one of Steele's theses, made clear and concise by a review of the book (my emphasis added):
Why we are excited: Obama is a talented, charismatic politician and living proof that whites have welcomed blacks into the mainstream. Why he can't win: He's still mired in an ideology of racial victimhood and separatism that Steele (White Guilt), a Hoover Institution fellow and, like Obama, the son of a black father and white mother, deplores in this stimulating, conservative critique. Obama's conflict over his mixed parentage and abandonment by his father, the author argues, engenders a need to prove his racial authenticity by accommodating a black identity politics that, while it energizes his African-American base, risks alienating white voters. Worse, as president Obama might reflexively support affirmative action and government initiatives to help African-Americans, instead of emphasizing the self-reliance, individual responsibility and avid assimilation that Steele contends are the only remedies for the black community's problems. The author's tendency to psychologize Obama's policy agenda sometimes overreaches.
Don't get it twisted; I believe Steele only "regrets" the title of his book for two reasons. First, the fact that Obama's now the nominee and is a favorite to win in November outs him as the hater that he has historically been, and makes him look rather silly. Second, he's actually gotten to know the guy he wrote a book about. I've been following Obama since his run for the U.S. Senate - I never heard him whisper a word about affirmative action or the African-American communities across this nation that implied he was somehow opposed to our self-reliance and individual responsibility. (I question the "avid assimilation" point solely on the basis of Obama being biracial growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, thereby having no damned choice in the matter. Steele being biracial himself, I hoped that he might have taken that into account.) Obama's done nothing but promote that since he's been in the race, and has never portrayed himself as a victim - even when he could have justifiably done so.
So, in Shelby's eyes, now that he has a clue about who Obama is and realizes that making assumptions based on party affiliations is stoopid, he now "regrets" the book title.
Hey, I guess I should just be glad Steele's not making assumptions about all Blacks, eh? Whew.
(Oh, wait.)
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