Posts Tagged ‘Chicago slang
Chicago Vocabulary Lesson of the Day: What's an "Obama-hater"?
You might find this interesting. We just ran into our friend Emily, someone who we met after the election and who we’ve never talked politics with. She was a bartender at an event one of us produced a few months ago, and we assumed she was a liberal O-bot (because of how she dresses, the neighborhood she lives in, and everything else that typically screams LIBERAL in this town).
Well, we were talking today and she told us that she was bartending at a restaurant she works at and she carded two young black guys who came in, and who started trouble from the moment they walked through the door. Emily could tell they were underaged, so she pressed for the ID and one of them said, “Oh, you dumb white bitch, you’re just hasseling us ’cause you’re an Obama-hater.”
Emily told them that, no, she was hasseling them because they were jerks, appeared underaged, and that it was City, State, and Federal law to hassel minors in bars.
They left in a huff and puff, with more shouts of “white bitch” and something about it being “the Black House now, bitch”.
We’d never heard the term “Obama-hater” before, but apparently it’s working its way through the slang process here in Chicago. It’s race-baiting, essentially, where a year or two ago the teens would have said, “You just won’t serve us because we’re black”, but now they invoke Dr. Utopia’s name as shorthand.
We could analyze this for paragraphs, but won’t, though it is interesting on a lot of levels: is it an attempt to legitimize their race-baiting, Henry Gates style, by using the POTUS’ name…is it an attempt to try to bully someone, because they act like they have the might of the White (or Black) House behind them…just how much damage will this nonsense do to Dr. Utopia, in the long run, as more and more people hear the “Obama-hater” bit and start to get sick of all the race-baiting done by Dr. Utopia’s most ardent supporters and friends in this the post-racial Golden Age of Hope, Change, and Rainbow Singing Unicorns?
Emily has a Master’s degree in public policy and, until about 8 months ago, used to have a high-paying job at a consulting firm. She hasn’t been able to find work despite looking, applying, and interviewing every day. Back to bartending (for the first time since grad school), just to be able to pay her rent and keep a roof over her head, Emily told us “I’m still waiting for all the things Obama promised us. I didn’t vote, because I didn’t like Obama and I would never vote Republican, but I wanted Hillary Clinton to be president because she keeps her word and doesn’t promise things she can’t deliver. But, if you ask where all the promises are, where is all the hope and why things haven’t gotten better, you get called a racist for trying to hold this man to everything he lied about on the campaign trail”.
When we don’t seek out stories like this…when people just out of the blue say this stuff to us…we realize the White House is in bigger trouble than any of us can probably imagine. ESPECIALLY if young black thugs and their emulators take this “Obama-hater” crap nationwide, and Middle America catches wind of it.
The Henry Gates/stupid police business got people to wakeup, and to remember the antics of another close friend of the Utopias, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dr. Utopia needs to be careful there aren’t any more of these episodes…because a backlash could certainly come.
Emily said, “You know, people like that make me think I might actually vote Republican next time if it’s not someone too terrible just to teach those punks a lesson and kick Obama out of the White House”.
Hope for that change!
