Vexed Bermoothes

The heat is on President Obama as he tries to balance the financial stimulus with political projects.  Last night he said during a prime-time news conference:

QUESTION:  Could I ask you about race?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You may.

QUESTION: Yours is a rather historic presidency, and I’m just wondering whether in any of the policy debates that you’ve had within the White House, the issue of race has come up, or whether it has in the way you feel you’ve been perceived by other leaders or by the American people. Or have the last 64 days been a relatively color- blind time?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I — I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we’re going to fix the economy, and that’s — affects black, brown and white. And you know, obviously, at the Inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country, but that lasted about a day. And you know, right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged, and that is, are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe? And that’s what I’ve been spending my time thinking about.

Note that the conference included only 10 minutes of speech, followed by 40 minutes fielding 13 questions from journalists.  Even the most popular American president in recent history must make his case.

What about Bermuda?   Ten years later, are we still supposed to suppress all criticisms of poor performance because of race?  Do all questions continue to merit the “plantation slapdown”?

Sorry, that’s not healthy.