Duck Season couldn’t last forever, now it is Wabbit Season. We are on the hunt following the scent of money. Of course if we really COULD sniff out greenbacks we wouldn’t have to be out hunting but we are, searching for, as the plaintiff chants have it, our cars, our homes, our money, our jobs. They have been stolen. Well, if they haven’t been stolen at least they are not where we left them. Or where we want them. Good enough. If there has been a theft there must be a thief. The roving two-headed momba troll, Cornell Smiley is turfing over the land looking for someone to cuff up. Now, they can’t say what crime might have been committed and if they are asked just who did the committing, again, they cannot respond with a name or two but just a vague description of C. Montgomery Byrnes. It so happens that their tormentor does have at least one particular fellow in the stocks but Tavis and West are having none of that. Their response is instant and unequivocal…. Now, why you wanna hassle a brother?

The fellow chased down the street by the devil’s own flunky is one Stan O’Neal, not a famous name in most circles but still a man of great wealth and accomplishment who happened to be the biggest bundler of mortgage backed credit default swaps in that lurid business. His prominence in his game got him a solid mid-field position among the most culpable blokes, just after W. Who comes right after Clinton. But we can’t mention that, can we? No. Why? Because he is black.

I know that is not a very black name, Stan O’Neal, but he claims two black parents and a slave grandfather. Reportedly he took diction lessons to correct his southern accent which distinguishes him from our President, who takes lessons to contrive one. By any measure (except the name) Stan is at least as Black as Barack so if any gripes aimed at Obama are racist then clearly Stan enjoys the same assumption. And it’s working out well, for Stan at any rate. Merrill Lynch saw him off with the customary golden parachute and although he oversaw massive losses for Merrill and inseparably infected their balance sheet with some seriously troubled assets, he sits today on some $200m in dirty, dirty. Well gee, I’m not the one calling for scapegoats but if you were looking for one, old Stan sure fits the bill. Except of course for the casting. Not only was Stan an ordinary high corporate flier of the type Forbes likes to have on its cover, he was also a walking, talking human interest story. On a much smaller scale he was, much like Obama, proof for those who sought it that America is NOT the racist, repressive stinkhole that so many of our citizens seem to believe it is. No doubt this was at times an unfair and unwanted burden on Mr. O’Neal but it has also confered benefits that, if they are unwanted, are still exploited.

It is the rare and lucky fellow indeed who can walk away wordlessly from a harrying reporter. For most public figures that is the one sure way to turn that single crow into a swirling murder. That has not happened to Mr. O’Neal. It seems no one wants to peer too closely at what was yesterday’s parable of racial uplift. In addition to his legal and possibly proper golden parachute he deploys a chocolate parachute which is certainly legal but still wrong, wrong, wrong.

Mr. O’Neal is not the only beneficiary of the chocolate parachute. Herman Cain has been dangling from one for many a year. He also was and sometimes still is an example of improved racial circumstances due to his rise to the highest levels of business, society and politics. Even some sour Republicans have gotten the swoon of electing either our Third Black President or our First All-Black President, depending on how you count, but that is a foolish indulgence. If the nation at large elected one fellow to prove the nation is not racist, and that has not been availing, is it then wise for a party to IMMEDIATELY elect a certain fellow to prove their PARTY is not racist? It’s tempting but shallow if not hostile to the principles we claim to promote. Still Mr. Cain is held from the muddy earth by his chocolate parachute. What other candidate has been so hash-mouthed as Cain? Who else could nationally denounce the hysteria behind “global warnin’!” and not be hooted back to their car? Who else could assert that his opponents are “brainwashed” and double down without saying it was metaphorical, a figure of speach or a hasty overstatement? He can hector away questions or confusions like Aunt Esther denouncing Fred Sanford as a fish-eyed foo’ and no one dares say, what the hell?

And the chocolate parachute is not simply an aid to safety; it is also a weapon of entanglement and diversion. Poor Rick Perry finds himself trapped in the silky brown folds. He should never have gone to Crackerhead Shoals. Or if he did he should have burned the cabin to the ground like Jermiah Johnson. Of course that would still leave the offending rock. Well, leave it to that heir of one of the inventors of the chocolate parachute to help out Governor Scarecrow. Jesse Jackson Junior, the senior of many juniors, introduced instructions for Perry as a Bill in the House. All he needs is a time machine, a means to destroy 400 pounds of gneiss and someone impartial to document the deed. The resolution further states that Perry should “condemn the use of this word as being totally offensive and inappropriate at anytime and anyplace in United States history,” which Jackson surely does whenever he hobnobs with Jay-Z, Chris Rock or Whoopi. But that is the chocolate parachute for you, it only works when open, and not for everyone.

The skies are filled with chocolate parachutes. Another prominent paratrooper is Franklin Raines. He was not the only malefactor there, perhaps not even the chief one but the other plausible candidate has deployed a pink parachute, modeled on the chocolate one and it is holding up so far. Raines is a pretty good prospect for burning at the stake though, if you are building a pyre on your public square. If only he were the right color. Locally we have an expert chocolate parachutist in the person of one Beverly Hall. The Georgia schools cheating scandal may not have bruised your little ears but you can bet it is emblematic of what is going on in many a school district in the land, and if it isn’t yet it will be because the person most responsible WHILE the decades of cheating were going on has been wildly rewarded with accumulated bonuses near $600k. It was a shock to black talk show hosts Frank and Wanda that their callers defended Ms Hall in the bitterest terms and denounced bonafide sister, Monica Kaufman for tracking Hall to Hawaii to answer some questions!

So there is some unequal coverage beneath the chocolate parachute. Trusted newsy Monica gets some of the black slapped off of her when she is messing with a sister’s loot. Even though the issue; the crimes really, were against thousands and thousands of children. Children. Mostly black. Yeah, like the golden parachutes on which their design is based, the chocolate parachute is a fickle and uncertain shelter. It is somewhat less useful in intra-race disputes like this one. It provided some coverage but got entangled when Barack Obama and Maxine Waters butted heads over just who was wearing bedroom slippers and who marching boots. But a favorable breeze puffed the canopy back up when people wondered, where shall we march? and the answer came, anywhere but the White House. Who could forget Jesse Jackson Classic’s threat to castrate the President on a national open mic? Anyone without a chocolate parachute would have hit the dirt hard from that one. Prof West and Mr Smiley seem to rend at the fabric of the chocolate parachute when they denounce that the Justice Department has not investigated the crimes of the financial meltdown but we see that they are just slapfighting when we recall the identity (and hue) of both the Attorney General and the President.

Besides, who are they going to find? If they pass on O’Neal and Raines anyone else that could be strung up is going to point back at those hucksters, claim unjust prosecution and be dead-bang right so the protection of the chocolate parachute devolves to the protection of everyone under the fellows under the fluttering silk. Even the damned Republicans! There are only two solutions; one is parachutes for everyone, not practical. The other is parachutes for none. Follow the facts where they lead and let the chips fall where they may, to neither harry nor protect anyone based on the color of their skin; their personal biography or who they are sleeping with. Is this possible? Because if it is not, those who pack and rely on chocolate parachutes will see ivory parachutes in answer and if you think that has already happened, well friends, just you wait.

And here, a bonus video that cropped up in my research.

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