An embarrassing story has erupted around the President who now, more than any President in memory, must conduct himself as a candidate if he wishes at all for another term, or perhaps even to fulfill the balance of one. Indeed, he declares himself the underdog and the outsider, an astonishing gambit for an incumbent three-fourths through his mandate. It implies that not only did Mr Obama “inherit” nothing but disaster, he also has not yet gotten the dustpan out. Through no fault of his own. That strategy may thrive or perish on its own merits but a sticky bit of a distant past threatens to stain the Executive Threads. By now everyone has heard the story. Obama’s grandparents, the Dunhams, for many years rented a remote patch of land off of Lake Verret, Louisianna, just north of New Orleans. Here they retired many autumns to camp, fish and sometimes shoot fowl as a family. The name of this vacant place on the map, as you have all heard, is Cr@#&$%head Shoals.

The poll-dancers explain that this is a dreadful time for such a thing to come to light. As the President struggles to hold on to the African-American vote and the explicitly Liberal vote at the same time, even more is he losing support from the White demographic. Fairly or not, the Cr@#&$%head controversy feeds previously held suspicion that perhaps the First Half-White President was, after all, not that into them. The details of the story seem exculpatory though. For decades this flat patch by a fresh stream had been marked with a large wooden sign. Cr@#&$%head Shoals, it said in blaring letters. It seems at one point the young Barack, perhaps encouraged in his habit of race-blindness by his studies at Columbia, asked if the sign could not be gotten rid of. Grandpa Dunham compromised, painting over the offensive characters but that old paint proved stubborn as it wore through over a couple seasons. So the close reader or forensic examiner could still make out Cr@#&$%head. In any case no alternate name was ever decided on. Years later still the sign blew down on its own, face up. The President says that when he saw this, he turned it face down. No corroboration has been found but fair Americans will probably take him at his word.

Actually there is ONE corroborating fact to the President’s story. The sign was indeed found to be face down and to have been so for years. We know because the Washington Post detailed a crew to go out to Cr@#&$%head Shoals to investigate. They found the sign, painted over and face down but were able to discern the word Cr@#&$%head, probably because the original racist used oil based paint with lead. Tough stuff. We take all this from the reportage though since photos were deemed, like Osama’s last pics, to be too inflammatory for public consumption. Even a faint and ruined spelling of Cr@#&$%head is far too much for our sensibilities.

Simply brushing the story and its implications off has not proven practical though the President’s press allies have tried their best. Cr@#&$%headgate lives almost solely on Fox and other purveyors of anti-Obamunism. The bigs like the big city papers and the alphabet networks have not covered it but there is only so much not covering one can do. And the alternative topics of Fast and Furious or Solyndra or Israel and the Middle East or the economy or nearly anything but sports; these are also detrimental to the President’s image so the benefit is muted. It has likewise proven inadequate to say, first, that neither the President nor his family had anything to do with naming the place. Any local could tell you that Cr@#&$%head Shoals was named quite simply; where the cow ranchers came to sell their herds was this intersection of trails by the lake, this was the Head. Once sold to transporters the cows were driven off with whips by fellows known as whipcr@#&$%s as commonly as the western herd riders were known as cowboys. The Shoals were above this place where the lake was good for watering livestock at a place where it was good for catching fish. Simple facts though are no defense when the game is Race Card, as the President is sadly learning.

Whatever the origin of the name, it is still Cr@#&$%head. And anyone alive in the modern world knows this is a low, racial slur. The question is, why was it that a young man who is now President thought so little of this casual racism as to let it go on for years without complaint? Only he did complain. The papers reflect that. What he failed to do, evidently, is organize a candle-light vigil and boycott against his grandfather, or perhaps their landlord. Some civil disobedience might have been called for but somehow it seems unlikely that the Rainbow/PUSH coalition of 1988 would have been up for that struggle. Local Rotary Clubs and 4-Hs likewise would have been deaf to Obama’s righteous outrage, though he is, as everyone admits, substantially white. None of that occurred or was even attempted. Instead there were decades of malign indifference wherein the Dunham clan descended on Cr@#&$%head Shoals several times a year, devouring all the fish they could catch and no doubt repeating the location of their frontier cabin in sly tones of innuendo.

That is how the President’s opponents frame things, certainly. And that is their prerogative. This seems to be a stunning event for the President and his people, however. These pros and cons have enjoyed an amazing power among the press and the population to dispose of race, crime and competence scandals by the bucketload which has only just failed. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers might as well have been fictional characters for all that their odium has tainted the President. Black Panthers in full regalia whapping batons into their hands at the very entrance to the polls, this was also of no matter though the President embraced them warmly once. Or twice. ACORN, which the Obama of yesteryear declared was his very political soul, also has been dis-embraced and no mark of their convictions for vote fraud or exposure as pimp-doctors is anywhere on the White House carpet. Now a worm-eaten bit of plywood from the silent movie era is the flea that chokes the elephant. Or donkey in this case. It is a baffling state of affairs but in politics the breach is exploited no matter why it appears. None know this better than former President Bill Clinton. No doubt the most painful element of this for Obama is Bill’s opportunistic lip biting denunciation; “No, I don’t believe that the President is racist. Not at all, although he did play the race card on me in South Carolina. But this sort of insensitivity is harmful to the office, harmful to our party and harmful to the nation. I really wish he would take that sign down. He took it down? Okay, well I wish he had done it sooner and further wish that he had publicized the event as a ‘teachable moment’ on race. Because that is really what we need, more moments and more teaching and less racism.”

At this point Team O is in a hunker. No other course seems wise. Perhaps this will blow over, driven from the news by a global debt explosion, war out east or down south or the collapse of our domestic currency. You never know. But in the meantime the controversy swells and the buzzards circle. Republican frontrunner and Texas Governor Rick Perry says of Cr@#&$%headgate, “It’s a dang disgrace.”

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