mercoledì 3 febbraio 2010

 

Chris Matthews is one of the most prominent cable-television news anchors in the United Status. He has a daily opinion program in the MSNBC cable network. (In recent years, MSNBC has become the “voice of the left” in the world of cable TV news.) I met Chris at the wedding of a mutual friend, a highly respected journalist, Jewish, a Democratic Party liberal intellectual. Chris was surprised to find in such circles a Catholic Monsignor who was totally and happily at ease with the teachings of the Church’s magisterium on faith and morals, and said he wanted to meet with me, I guess to examine better where such a specimen like me comes from. Unfortunately, we have not been able to meet yet because of the increasing demands of putting together such a daily program in a political situation as agitated as it has become since the campaign for the presidential election of 2008, especially with the emergence of the “Barak Obama factor.”

 

Last week, commenting on President Obama’s first official “State of the Union” report to both houses of Congress, Chris made a comment in his show that, in my opinion, helps us understand better the ultimate nature of the current political conflict in the United States today, leaving aside the ideological, religious, and economic issues that have been part of American politics since the foundation of the nation.

 

Chris said that “for over one hour (the length of Obama’s speech) I forgot he was an African-American President.”

 

In terms of the context of contemporary American politics this would be considered a “racist” or at least a racially insensitive and even offensive statement. However, the fact is that no sane observer could ever accuse Chris of overt or hidden racism, and indeed although the question was publicly raised, the discussion went nowhere since one would have to be totally dominated by the ideology of political correctness in order to even suggest that Chris Matthews is knowingly or unknowingly a hidden racist.

 

In my opinion, Chris’ spontaneous remark shows the very opposite. It shows, I suggest, that the deepest reason for the nation’s reaction to Barak Obama is not a matter of race. What makes people fascinated and at times almost obsessed by President Obama is not his race, but the fact that he exists at the borderline of the nation’s past and a radically different future. No one knows how to classify how Obama thinks. Maybe he cannot do it himself, as he made clear when he kept insisting (in a never before seen meeting with his Republican Party political opponents) that his political views are not radical at all, and that in many cases, they come close to those of Republicans.

 

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