Barack Obama - An Unimportant Issue

Ok, I don't know much about Barack Obama. To be honest, I think it is too early to do research for an election more than a year away. But a fellow liberal creampuff that I work with, Jim, pointed something out to me a few days ago. Everyone, on all sides, is calling him an African American. That is, a Black African American, since white people can come from Africa (see Dave Matthews). Now, for me, this is really a non-issue. Why should race come into play? But that is beside the point.
Race is a big issue to a lot of people, and sometimes maybe for good reason. I don't really know why, but I am sure there are good reasons, right? I don't know.
Anyway, that isn't the point. The point I want to make is that Barack Obama is only half black. His mother is white, and he grew up with her. Why is this important? Well, its not really--but isn't it strange about how much his race has been played up? It seems to me like if we follow through on our reasoning here the whole notion of races falls apart, which it probably should. Obama is 50% black, whatever 'black' means; but he is in the history books as being the 5th black senator in the United States. Now we don't want to call him white, even though he is 50% white, but we also don't want to just call him nothing, do we? Sure, we, as human beings don't want to. He is black to us, and that is that.
But isn't that a fucked up way of classifying everything too simply into categories? At risk of being offensive and making a crude analogy (God, I am sorry, I don't have this sensitivity thing down yet), isn't this somewhat like calling a bisexual person homosexual? They are just completely different. And as I have noted in my earlier post "Two Definitions of Racism", which no one was willing to touch with a 10 foot pole, I am not sure anyone even has a clear conception of what is means to be black. Is there a certain percentage of 'black' genes you have to have? And what the hell are 'black' genes? Maybe this is where the shift to "African American" comes from. But as I stated earlier, this conception is just as vague. Tons of 'white' people live in South Africa, and what would we call them if they moved to the United States and gained citizenship?
Or are we going for ancestral routes? In that case everyone is African-American. SO unless we are going to make "African American" mean something like "10 generations ago your family was living in Africa", African American collapses into 'black', and 'black' collapses into nothing.

Ok, wait, I got off track there for a second. So here is my point--unless someone can show me how these thoughts are way off, and make me look racist (its not easy for a white male to talk about race, believe me, its uncomfortable)--what I would like to see is the destruction of race talk. We are all human beings.


Side note: Is it stupid of me to talk about things like this on a blog? I mean, I guess they say future employers will Google me and maybe posts like this could get me in trouble? I'm not sure. So I guess at a later date I will delete this...no one quote me...anywhere...ever...about anything.

Grad School/ Aqua Teen

So, I know I said this wasn't a place for me to personally vent or celebrate. But I thought I would brag about this since I just found out:
I GOT ACCEPTED TO MY FIRST GRAD SCHOOL!!!
yep. I know its early, but I guess they are quick at the University of Nebraska. That is a pretty good school. Definetely not one of the ones I thought I would get into. So that is awesome. We will see what happens in the coming weeks. But now I'm just interested. I am in at least one program, so now its just a picking my favorite kind of thing.

Secondly. Listen, I don't know if anyone has heard about this whole Boston Harbor terrorist scare?
If you haven't, read the article. Go research it. Now, this is really strange, because before I heard about the Aqua Teen connection, I remember watching MSNBC as the 'story' was breaking--The mayor came out and said something like "Its a hoax, and its not funny." --I remember seeing this on the screen, but not really knowing much else about the story (we were eating at Buffalo Wild Wings), and saying to Emily something about how things are always funny when someone says "its not funny". Because obviously if it wasn't funny you wouldn't have to point it out. Anyway, this is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. These guys are going to probably get thrown in jail for their lives because as of September 12, 2001, we are a society of fear. You see these little creatures (mooninites) on flashing signs flipping people off, and you think "Oh, those are bombs"?! I mean, what kind of paranoid mindset are you in when you think any flashing sign that you don't recognize is some kind of terrorist plot? They SHUT DOWN Boston Harbor!?
The irony of all of it is that if one of the homeland security officials would have brought their teenage son or daughter along in some sort of 'take your child to work' day ceremony, none of this would have happened. The kid would have said "Mom/Dad, thats just Ignignok. Its on Adult Swim. Their just postmodern cartoonists with postmodern marketing ideas." On second thought, no, I'm sure the parent would have just said "Shut up, this is important business. You can't trust anyone or anything in the world we live in."
I mean, I don't know. Am I insane about this? I understand there were a lot of misunderstandings. I understand that these guys who did it are, for some reason, not worried about their future. (I would be scared shitless! They are probably fucked for the rest of their lives.) But now that all of this information is out...they were just marketing in a creative, if bizarre, way...they were just FLASHING SIGNS...etc etc. Why can't they just be like 'whoops! Sorry about that everyone, we just wanted to play it safe.' ? No. Instead they have to arrest these guys on felony charges. Instead you hear things from the Massuchusets (sp?) homeland security demanding that Turner Broadcasting pay for all the costs of the investigation. I heard some government worker say something like "This was just tasteless marketing, and Turner Broadcasting should be held accountable for everything that happened."
Am I out of my mind or is this just funny? Not the prank, not the marketing, that was just what it was, and it is truly unfortunate that people were scared about terrorism and stuff. But isn't it funny that in retrospect we can't just laugh and say, 'alright guys, you had your fun, now go home. sorry about the mix up.' No, we have to continue taking it so fucking serious. I don't know. Am I nuts?