Roger L. Simon: 'BARACK, I DIDN’T DO IT FOR THIS':
AN HOMAGE TO ANDREW GOODMAN
March 18, 2008 8:23 AM
Barack Obama’s speech today moved Roger L. Simon to poetry for the first time since high school. He apologizes for the inadequacies.
by Roger L. Simon
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Barack, I was a civil rights worker… South Carolina, 1966… 22 yrs old … helping old folks register to vote, teaching kids to read and write, directing Raisin in the Sun…
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Barack, I dream of my kindergarten best friend Andy from Walden School, Manhattan, born one day after me, shot dead in Mississippi 1964.
Barack, I idolized Stokley Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Barack, I lost the full use of my left hand for life in South Carolina.
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Barack, I gave hundreds to the Black Panthers for their children’s breakfast program when I was 25 and a young screenwriter in Echo Park, Los Angeles, even though I knew Huey was crazy and was worried my money might have been going for guns, even though I had my own children in the house when the Panthers came over, their jackets bulging.
Barack, I made excuses for the Black Power Movement even though I knew it was turning racist.
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Barack, your speech was bullshit.
Barack, this isn’t about generations.
Barack, this isn’t about the black church.
Barack, this is about a pathological minister whose uncontrolled anger wounds his own people and keeps them down.
Barack, this is about a man who ignored that rage for his own political gain and even now won’t admit a huge mistake and looks for nuance and excuses.
Barack, this about a woman who went on scholarship to Princeton and Harvard and still hates America.
Barack, you say you want Black-Jewish reconciliation but you hung with an anti-Semite.
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger, and the CEO of Pajamas Media.
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