The Peace and Freedom Party is still alive today. I have my Dick Gregory for President button sitting on my dresser at home.

"Yo girl, fix me some more of that Dick Gregory!"

The vastly underrated original House Party, with the VERY underrated (and late) Robin Harris, also as Sweet Dick Willie in Do the Right Thing (second mention tonight!)

Can there be anyone else better suited to giving Bill Clinton what he deserves for making that pompous, self ingratiating comment?

In fairness to Bill Clinton--a phrase I never dreamed I would write--it was not he who claimed to be the first black president, but the Nobel Prize-winning African American author Toni Morrison who gave him that label in a New Yorker essay, writing:

"Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President's body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke?"

In 2001, the Congressional Black Caucus formally recognized former-President Clinton as the first black president.

That's why Dick Gregory says black folks should be tricked Bill Clinton into thinking he was really the first black president. For all the reasons Gregory so humorously but accurately pointed out and more, the assertion was not only false but frankly more than a little insulting to black America.

That's why Dick Gregory says black folks should be tricked Bill Clinton into thinking he was really the first black president. For all the reasons Gregory so humorously but accurately pointed out and more, the assertion was not only false but frankly more than a little insulting to black America.

Parts of that paragraph don't exactly make sense ("should be tricked"?) but I think you've misunderstood Gregory's point, Jack. He's not saying that it was wrong for Clinton to be designated as the first black president. He's saying that it was wrong for Clinton to make more of that than it was. That's what he meant by the story of the boy pretending to live in the toy house and using it as his address.

Every now and then you can find me at Crooks and Liars too.

And that's real. Thank you.

Kari, please edit the clunky link to C&L in TA's post.

Darrelplant, you're right my first sentence was garbled. I meant to say "That's why Dick Gregory says black folks tricked Bill Clinton into thinking he was really the first black president." After all, it was members of the black community that first started this canard. But, you're right, Dick Gregory went on to explain that what was intended as a metaphor was taken too literally by Bill Clinton.

What is so fascinating about the Obama phenomenon in the black community is that it is led by the rank-and-file, not by the elites. If anything, the leaders are following the masses rather than the other way around.

clunky link fixed. speed typing, not always a good thing.