by Bankole Thompson
For New Pittsburgh Courier

DETROIT (Real Times News Service)--Chicago Tribune columnist and Washington political journalist Robert Novak, whose recent book “The Prince of Darkness” chronicled five decades of covering politics in Washington, wrote a column in March of 2007 exposing the fallacy that the Clinton machine has a hold on Blacks.

Hillary Clinton talked about admiring Martin Luther King Jr. during her high school days and his vision during the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., last year where all the candidates tried to display their civil rights credentials.

At the first Baptist Church in Selma, Clinton said, “As a young girl (at age 16), I had the great privilege of hearing Dr. King speak in Chicago. The year was 1963. My youth minister from our church took a few of us down on a cold January night to hear King. And he called on us, he challenged us that evening to stay awake during the great revolution that the civil rights pioneers were waging on behalf of a more perfect union.”

But Novak, in his syndicated column, questioned the wisdom of Sen. Clinton’s ideological affinity with King if she declared herself a “Goldwater girl” in the failed 1964 presidential run of segregationist Barry M. Goldwater, a five term U.S. senator from Arizona. Goldwater vehemently opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“The incompatibility of those two positions of 40 years ago was noted to me by Democratic old-timers who were shocked by Sen. Clinton’s temerity in pursuing her presidential candidacy. Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 voting rights bill (Civil Rights Act) was not incidental to his run for the White House, but an integral element of conscious departure from Republican tradition that contributed to his disastrous performance,” Novak wrote. “Of course, no political candidate should have to explain inconsistencies of her high school days. What Hillary Clinton said at Selma is significant because it betrays her campaign’s panicky reaction to the unexpected rise of Sen. Obama as a serious competitor for the Democratic nomination.”

Novak wrote that Hillary Clinton answered King’s challenge “the next year as the 17-year-old class president at Maine East High School in the Chicago suburbs. She described herself in her memoirs as an ‘active Young Republican’ and ‘Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit.’ As a politically attuned honor student, she must have known that Goldwater was one of only six Republican senators who joined Southern Democratic segregationists,” against the 1964 Civil Rights Act that was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement.

Novak further noted that Clinton headed the Young Republicans at Wellesley College as a freshman before joining the Democrats.

“But when in 1969 at age 22 she was the first Wellesley student to deliver the commencement address, she did not place civil rights first. She talked about a demonstration in Founder’s parking lot at the college that ‘protested against the rigid academic distribution requirement’ and supported ‘a pass-fail system’ and ‘a say’ in ‘academic decision making.’ That was not quite Martin Luther King’s agenda.”

Novak seemed to have described the troubles of Sen. Clinton when he concluded with these words:

“Hillary Clinton’s road to the White House is not going as planned. Instead of a steady procession to coronation at the Denver convention, she is involved in a real struggle against credible opponents led by Obama. No wonder she and her handlers were tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teenager in Chicago’s suburbs who never really existed.”

This makes you wonder how come the so-called Black leaders like Andrew Young, BET founder Bob Johnson and others never made this an issue. But they demonstrated the temerity to question Barack Obama’s childhood drug use.

What did Tavis Smiley really want?

Hillary Clinton was at Smiley’s State of the Black Union symposium last week to show how much she loves Black people. Smiley, upset about Obama’s unavailability to speak at his conference, rejected the Illinois senator’s offer to have his eloquent wife, Michelle, speak at the event.

Did Smiley realize what is at stake with the Obama campaign and the need for him to win Ohio and Texas? Obama graciously turned down Smiley’s invitation, explaining his intense campaign would not allow him the opportunity to do so. Obama, like any other presumptive nominee at this critical juncture of the presidential race, should not join an annual panel of conceptual and philosophical exuberance that amounts to intellectual aggrandizement, but little or no transformation in the Black community. I am looking for statistical evidence that shows improvement of the living conditions of Black people as a result of such rhetorical fiestas held annually. I’m waiting for someone to tell me that as a result of such fiestas 50,000 jobs have been created, 100,000 ex-felons have been rehabilitated and given jobs. These are some of the real issues facing Black America. Basking in intellectual glory would not solve them. People need food on their table, employment, etc.

An event that turns out to be an intellectual battleground and competition for the best Black scholars and political activists does not change the life of a Black woman who has put thirty years of service in a company and has just been told that she will lose her job. It does not make life better for a woman whose husband has just been stricken with cancer and neither one has health insurance. These bread and butter issues are not tackled with ivory tower conferences. They are resolved with hands- on solutions.

Wouldn’t it be better to have a job creation plan sponsored by those major corporations sponsoring the Smiley event? We need to hold each other accountable in the Black community. Self-appointed Black leadership has not helped the Black community.

Dr. King led a Poor People’s Campaign. When was the last time we had such television leaders and scholars use their enormous resources and contacts in mainstream America to lead campaigns in urban cities where public education, health care and unemployment are challenging the very existence of many of our people?

It is nice to sit on well furnished and beautifully made settees on national television and talk about problems of the Black community as opposed to rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty with the groups trying to make life better.

Bankole Thompson is senior editor and editorial page writer of the Michigan Chronicle directing the position of the paper on local, national and international issues. Thompson’s latest book, “A Matter of Black Transformation,” deals with Blacks, China and globalization.