Chris Matthews forgot Obama was black; many forgot Obama was black

Today we find that MSNBC's Chris Matthews claim that he forgot Obama was black is raising a racism charge against Chris Matthews.    But that claim is not correct and misses Chris Matthews valuable point.

Chris Matthews is the popular political talk show host of Hardball on MSNBC. Frequent viewers of the show, like this blogger, are used to Chris Matthews paying close attention to capturing the African American point of view of a problem.

Chris Matthews has devoted entire episodes of Hardball to the black perspective on a political issue. Chris Matthews is rightly fascinated with how American politics and race relations have been impacted by President Obama.

Chris Matthews is rightly pointing to a sea-change in American Culture. Americans have been hard-wired to think of someone white when they think of a person on television talking from a position of authority.

Consider this: how many black TV pundits are there, not on public television? Answer? Zero. How many black rappers appear on TV daily? Answer: a lot.

That's the problem.

It's a still a problem for this blogger, who still gets called the "N-word" on video comments, or who has received death threats because of the existence of racist, bigoted idiots who can't stand that a black guy with a Jewish last name speaks with the same confident arrogance of his white American male friends.

Too bad.

While Chris Matthews forgot Obama was black, frankly so did I.

At first, when Obama came out and was introduced, I was praying that security protected him in the wake of the White House State Dinner Party Crashers incident and because there are nutcases (some who are black) who don't like that America's led by an African American man, but once Obama started his speech, all of those fears were jettisoned. President Obama was excellent last night, and in being Obama showed everyone that you can be anyone of any color, and be the best.