Bob Johnson & Hillary Clinton make an odd couple

The fact that Bob Johnson is supporting Senator Clinton for president does not come as a surprise to me, nor does it offend me as a black man supporting Senator Obama. The fact that all African-Americans are not supporting the Senator in the upcoming election doesn’t bother me. As I have said before, I was not a supporter of Senator Obama until I read his most recent book and then took time to find out more information about the issues that he is most concerned with. Anybody who thinks that all black people think the same way and share the same political views has their head (or ass) in the sand. Black people in America come from many different backgrounds and have different views on religion, family, education, crime prevention, AND politics, among other things. So in light of this, I’m not mad at Mr. BET for supporting Senator Clinton. That is his right as a citizen—who hasn’t been convicted of a felony—to support whomever he chooses.

However, what I find offensive is the fact that he would defend comments, made by Senator Clinton, that are a direct slap to the face of Martin Luther King Jr., his message, and the civil rights movement.

What makes it worse, is Mr. Johnson’s ambiguous reference to either Senator Obama’s days as a high school student who experimented with drugs or to his days on Chicago’s Southside as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer. Mr. Johnson put his foot down his throat (again) when he later attempted to clean up his comments by saying that he was not referencing the drug experimentation. I don’t know why he thought his later statement would make things sound better. Maybe he was motivated to “clarify” after the backlash he received and the fact that the Clinton’s planned to use Mr. Johnson to help win South Carolina, which they did not.

Attacking a man in his forties for things he did in his teenage years is ridiculous. A black man attacking another black man for his work in civil rights and the community is inexcusable, to say the least. The comments that Mr. Johnson made turned out (in my mind) to be worse than the comments made by Senator Clinton (Saying that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have seen his dream come through if it were not for Lyndon B. Johnson.) I have news for Senator Clinton, Dr. King’s dream has not been realized. Bob Johnson is proof of that.

Case-in-point, we are talking about Mr. BET here. The same man that brought us BET Uncut. This show served as an introduction to black strip clubs for those who have never been. He’s also the same man that was presiding over the only black-owned cable channel (at the time) when they fired Tavis Smiley and canceled BET News. Those were two platforms that could have been used to uplift black people and show the world that we are not all as we are portrayed in mainstream media. The fact that Bob Johnson made those comments should not come as a surprise to anybody. His comments were really disappointing and I hope that the black voters in South Carolina were not buying into his message.