http://newbostonpost.com/2017/01/19/buyers-and-sellers-of-bitter-butter/
Sometimes you have to mercilessly edit essays due to space. Editors also are realists about attention spans.
The above links to what the New Boston Post published and below my full article which this blog allows me to print in full.
Buyers
and Sellers of Bitter Butter 2017
By Chris Noonan Funnell
The Bitter Butter Award of 2017 goes to...drum roll please… Georgia
Representative John Lewis for refusing
to attend the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United Sates
and using his platform as a civil Rights icon to stir up dissent and
delegitimize the election and Trump’s presidency setting a poor example for his
party and younger generations who need to see democracy work.
Betty bought some
bitter butter, but the bitter butter was too bitter for the better batter, so
she bought some better butter for the bitter batter and made the bitter batter
better!
Spoken quickly this tongue twister was useful to impress
small children with my verbal skills. Teaching art for nearly a decade gave me
a front row seat on the state of the American child and family. I have seen the
frustration of a child who could not find a crayon to match her skin color and
made a point of ordering the multi-cultural art supplies that are now available;
in January our art lessons included making posters about MLK. Children are more
malleable and accepting of differences but they also pick up neighborhood tensions
and attitudes like sponges. When adults
set a good example of fair play children follow. When teachers and authority
figures cry foul everyone takes sides and division occurs.
It happened after the presidential election in 2000, and
unfortunately it is happening again, as Democrats contest the election results
and threaten to boycott the Inauguration of the President-Elect Donald Trump.
Snowflakes, youths unable to accept the election results,
fuss and whine and plot to disrupt the Inaugural festivities. The adults and
senior members in the losing party instead of setting a good example add to the
hostile climate lead by civil rights icon and long time Representative from
Georgia, John Lewis. Lewis’s glory days
were in the violent racial struggles in the South of the 1960’s when as a young
man he marched with Martin Luther King. Perhaps Lewis imagines he must lead a
march today against Donald Trump, who in his view is the illegitimate winner
causing some to chant “Not my president!”.
What has happened to the peaceful transition of power which
America has modeled for the world since its beginning? We did not see this when
Obama was elected in 2008 nor 2012 despite the bitter disappointment on the
right. That is why I felt the need to call out Rep. Lewis for his bad example
and confer upon him the Bitter Butter Award of 2017.
Back on Jan. 20, 2001 when George W. Bush began his first
term there had been an extended battle for the presidency and ballots were
being hand-counted in Florida as the nation looked on. It came down to a
Supreme Court decision in favor of Bush who (like Trump) had won the electoral
vote. Al Gore won the popular vote though some have disputed those results as
well. A few sore losers have never gotten over that court ruling and never gave
Bush a chance. Instead, partisan (and racial) bitterness has continued to
plague politics even though in 2008 America elected its first black President,
Barak Obama, and re-elected him in 2012.
In the aftermath of the Bush election I yearned for the kind
of eloquence Dr. King was noted for to soothe and inspire those adults who took
offense during the extended and contentious ballot re-count in 2000. I took some time out to jot down some thoughts
under the influence on my drug of choice, caffeine, at a bookstore coffee shop.
While waiting for something profound to percolate up with consolation and
healing for my irate, disconsolate African-American compatriots, my eyes fell
on a poetry display. If only I could soothe angry, frayed emotions with a poem
or an essay as persuasive as the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.;
a soft answer to turn away wrath…a bridge over troubled waters.
But what did I behold sitting in suburbia without a person
of color in sight but the cover of a poetry book by Nikki Giovanni. I
remembered her writings from college; her poems sometimes called for revolution
and promoted black liberation. She has accumulated over 20 honorary degrees for
her poetry which expresses hate such as "We would also suggest blinding or
the removal of at least two eyes from one of the heads of all albino
freaks". As I began to read one, two, then a third poem, I suddenly felt I
was in the wrong aisle. Ms. Giovanni was not into bridge building, but was
actually calling for violence, vengeance and reverse racism…bitter butter!
I put the book back on the shelf and the bridge collapsed
into a sea of negativity. Instead of soothing words I got my Irish up. How many
Bettys are buying this bitter butter? How many spread it on their toast each
morning and serve it to their kids like they did during “the Troubles” in
Ireland? The recipe for peace and progress calls for better ingredients like those
MLK called for: wisdom, justice, hope and non-violence.
Sad to say, The First Black President, Barack Obama did not follow
MLK’s recipe for a melting pot and the beacon of liberty to the world. A recipe
that blended humanity rather than divided and inflamed passions and created an
anti-establishment movement in which police are characterized as racist and assassinated
. Perhaps as a student Obama was all too familiar with Ms. Giovanni’s Bitter
Butter.
The Justice which MLK was calling for in his “How Long?”
speech of 1965 is neither valued nor aimed for by the BLM movement. They have
built up a false narrative that incites class warfare and lawlessness.
President Obama used
his January 13, 2011 Tucson speech to lecture the nation about goodness. “… Let
us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully,” This from the same person
who proclaimed in his determination to foist the Health Care monstrosity on the
nation…"if they bring a knife to this fight, we'll bring a gun."
In 2016 we saw racism flare-ups as the "Black Lives
Matter" mantra was continually repeated since 2013 when George Zimmerman was
acquitted in the death of a black youth and later, in Ferguson MO when a black
youth died at the hands of police. President Obama never failed to use these
tragedies to call for more gun control even though the greatest gun violence
occurs in cities like Chicago, NYC and Detroit where gun laws are strictest.
How long will these harangues go on? Not long…thanks to the peaceful transition
of power this week.
So the 2017 Bitter Butter Award goes to Rep. John Lewis for
stirring up strife and smearing not only Trump and his presidency but the
legitimacy of the votes of more than 60 million Americans who elected Trump. Although Rep. Lewis has had a long and
arguably distinguished career on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement
he does not win the Lifetime Achievement Bitter Butter Award; that distinction
goes to Barack Obama for his consistency and dedication, causing a racial melt
down in our nation.
As we go forward with a new President and cabinet let’s hope
there is less taste for the bitter butter of racism coming from all sides,
particularly from the media.
Chris Noonan Funnell
Freelance writer/ Columnist Jan. 18, 2017
