Miranda Devine, racism, Obama, and the American dream to play hooky and leave their room in a mess

(Above and below: images supplied by people who aren't racist, just stupid and uncivil, unlike them and their ilk, who by needing downtrodden blacks, are in fact encouraging racism because they need a Trojan horse to attack old systems of power, because children can play hooky and not tidy their room. Yep, that's the truth of it, even if we're still trying to make sense of it).

You have to hand it to Miranda the Devine. For sheer chortle power, she's top of the pops.

In an analysis of the role that race plays in America, which is as shallow as it is superficial, under the header Race robots on the rampage, she offers up this as a guide to conduct when uncivility in a discussion looms:

If, for instance, every time your child didn't tidy her room, you remonstrated with her for playing truant from school, she could hardly be expected to modify her behaviour. The message is that not tidying her room is unimportant, but she had better make sure she doesn't play hooky, which she doesn't do anyway, so she shrugs her shoulders, ignores your ranting and leaves her room a mess.

Say what? Enough with the triple negatives already. God help the poor child having to deal with computing this message, and god help the society that sees tidying a room and not playing truant as a way of dealing with the forty odd million who have a hard time accessing any kind of medical treatment in the United States (let alone an unsuspecting visitor who might front a hospital without a credit card or travel insurance. Forget it Jake, it's death or bankruptcy for you).

The logic gets even more convoluted, and dare I say it, petulant and teenage, as the Devine heads towards the end of her rant.

The people who have cried racism over the past week are the ones who can't stand the fact the American people elected an African-American to be president.

They don't want America to move beyond race because they've made careers exploiting division and turning white men, particularly, poor, working class, and rural men, into the Antichrist. Obama's election puts the lie to their old-fashioned race-mongering.

Uh huh. That be the chardonnay sipping latte elite. Or what passes for it in America, since you can't get a decent chardonnay or a latte.

So the election of Obama put an end to race-mongering, except on the part of those who want race mongering to continue, so they can keep monstering poor working class rural men (who by the way never get much in the way of medical treatment), and thereby stop America moving beyond race?

Well that'll come as a real shock to the dudes at Stormfront or such prestigious media heavies as Glenn Beck, who cheerfully accused Obama of flat out racism towards whites.

But no, it's not him and his ilk. It's them and their ilk:

If anyone is perpetuating racism and discord it's them and their ilk all over the Western world. Downtrodden "niggers" suit them because it gives them a Trojan horse to attack old systems of power.

Which is as bizarre and topsy turvy and Humpty Dumpty a view of the world as anyone can surely manage.

Well I guess the next time I see a demonstration in the United States involving racist overtones - let alone explicit racist imagery - I'll understand that's really a way for the people to empower Obama, while the people who criticize these people are in fact the people who are really being racist, because they don't want him to succeed.

Because, please bear with me, it's incredibly tricky, this is a way of showing the protestors that their racist demonstrations aren't successful, because they empower Obama, and that way them and their ilk will have a Trojan horse to attack old systems of power, except Obama has got the gig at the top of the old system of power, and so some people are hurling racist abuse at him, but it's not the ones hurling the racist abuse who are to blame, but the ones not hurling the abuse.

Them and their ilk, like Jimmy Carter, who somehow ends up in the mix because he was a peanut farmer, just like Joh Bjelke-Petersen (so remember to hate Harry S. Truman because he was a haberdasher).

Oh dear, my head hurts. I'll have to take a nap shortly.

But not just yet, because then the Devine reaches for a metaphor which stops the clock, rocks the boat, and gets the Jaffas rolling in the aisles:

But what to do when an African-American becomes the most powerful man in the world? They can't change the script. It's locked in, like a broken record. So they sound more and more like demented robots, arms flailing, rivets popping, steam spewing, nonsense emanating. ''It does not compute. It does not compute.''

I guess she hasn't caught up with the news that Obama is in fact an illegal president who's illegally seized power, as an Islamic born in Kenya rather than an Islamic born on a remote island which isn't really part of America anyway. And that as a result quite a few Americans have been doing a Dalek imitation - "exterminate, exterminate".

The standard tweak on all this of course is to whinge and brood about the suffering of George Bush:

Where were these defenders of decorum when the former president George Bush was being called a chimpanzee, Hitler and worse. When a video game came out, Virtual Jihadi, in which players had to assassinate Bush, the New York Civil Liberties Union even went to court on behalf of the freedom of expression of the video "artist".

Much has been made of the fact protesters rallying against Obama's health reforms have been brandishing placards in which Obama is depicted as Hitler. But Bush was the original BusHitler, with the S in his name frequently turned into a swastika. It was stupid and counterproductive then, and it's stupid now. But somehow, because Obama is black, the stupidity is elevated to racism.

Well it was stupid then, and it's stupid now, but it's not so simple to elide over a new racist component, simply because it's also stupid. As my momma used to say, racism is as racism does, and life is surely not a box of chocolates.

George Bush got hammered regularly, and now Obama gets hammered, and sometimes the stupidity is racist.

Nothing remarkable in that - racism has always been deeply embedded in the American psyche, as it is in pretty well every community that confronts the other (try Japan for profoundly embedded racism).

But to deny the obvious, and waste a lot of energy suggesting that racism doesn't exist in relation to Obama, as the Devine strenuously attempts, is just another kind of stupidity. In a way, it's almost a match for the ongoing tea party birther hysteria, which would be comical in its stupidity, if it weren't taken so seriously by the people playing the game.

America - and its Republican rump - are in a very strange place at the moment, as jungle fever overcomes any desire for a consensus, which might help the country to recover from assorted predicaments, for which George W. Bush and his team can take the credit for more than a few.

But in her desire to separate racism from Republicans (as if Democrats in the south never had much to do with preserving the race divide for many long years) Devine gets even more illogical in her logic:

People are uncivil on both sides. Calling it racism excuses the uncivil behaviour and makes it part of some amorphous thought crime no one can ever stop.

But what if the uncivility is racist? So now if uncivil behaviour is racist, forget about calling it racist? We should call it simply uncivil, because some how that becomes a lack of decorum that someone can stop? As opposed to racism, which is somehow an amorphous thought crime no one can ever stop? Well good luck with stopping anti-semitism then, and other thought crimes perhaps we should make at least a feeble attempt to stop.

On and on it goes, a classic rant by the Devine, and by the end of it I had the urge to shout, that's enough of that, go to your room and clean it up, and start playing hooky from the Herald, because I'd really like to ignore your ranting, and anyway I've heard your room is a mess!

But let's not end totally confused and at a loss, like sulking uneducated teenagers in a messy room. How about a totally weak joke involving Harry S. Truman?

"A story of mistaken identity concerns a national shirt manufacturer who used to sell shirts to Harry S Truman when he was a haberdasher. The manufacturer once visited the White House while Truman was president and, moving in line, shook the president's hand, saying, 'I made your shirts.' 'Major Schurtz,' Truman replied, 'I'm glad to meet you!'"

Not as funny as the Devine, I know, but surely civil discourse. And if you think this was a weird read, try reading the inspiration for it!