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Maya Angelou: 'Barack Obama has done a remarkable job'
The Guardian ^ | 02/15/12 | Hugh Muir

Posted on 02/16/2012 1:07:44 PM PST by crosshairs

There has always been something bittersweet about the life experience of Maya Angelou. Think of the literature fashioned from a harsh and tragic upbringing in racially segregated Missouri and Arkansas: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now. Think of her triumphs articulating the struggle of African Americans through the civil rights era. Consider that each year, her birthday, 4 April, brings with it both joy and painful memories.

Who would share that anniversary with the assassination of her friend, Martin Luther King? This year, if it progresses as Angelou expects, will exacerbate the pattern, bringing a momentous high, but not before some sickening lows. Don't worry about Barack Obama, says the chronicler of black history. He'll be re-elected. He deserves to be re-elected. But between now and November, it's going to get nasty. "I think we are going to see a number of people who say: 'I have no racial prejudice in my heart, not in my conversation,'" Angelou says. "But in the next few months, as we wind up to the double campaign, I tell you we are going to see some nastiness, some vulgarity, I think. They'll pull the sheets off."

Obama has critics and doubters. Angelou, the sage of black America, now 83, has no time for them. "I think he has done a remarkable job, knowing how much he has been opposed," she says. "Every suggestion he makes, the Republicans en masse fight against him or don't vote at all." It's about him being a Democrat and being the first black president, she says. Angelou worked with King in the 1960s as northern co-ordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the pair debated the possibility of a black president.

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS: mayaangelou; obama
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To: x; bigdirty
Maybe she just agrees with him. Or maybe, like so many people, she feels comfortable with someone she thinks she has something in common with.

I know what it is.

She, like so many other (blacks/African-Americans (none of which have ever been to Africa)) wanted Obama for President to prove to the 'whites' (whatever that means) that a 'black' person is just as good as a white person, and just as smart.

Unfortunately, he isn't doing a good job. So, they MUST continue to support him, unquestioningly, or else they believe that it will prove that 'blacks' can't handle the 'job' of President. There are many prominent 'black' men who could do the job of President very well, and race would not even be brought up as an issue by them or their opponents.

The truth is that it has nothing to do with his being (part) 'black' , but with him being mostly a 'commie/socialist/Islamist' bent on ruling the world and bending EVERYONE to his will (or to Michelle and Valerie's will).

41 posted on 02/16/2012 2:25:57 PM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
US Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) (”Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

That's not fair to Robert Byrd. Towards the end of his life he mellowed and changed his views, which he proved by going on Fox News in 2001 and magnanimously pointing out that you don't have to be black to be a nigger.

One thing I never understood. How come liberals have never demanded that the racist Byrd's name be removed from every structure bearing his name in West Virginia?

42 posted on 02/16/2012 2:51:35 PM PST by Maceman (Liberals' only problem with American slavery is that the slaves were privately owned.)
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To: LucyT

I’ve been wondering just how mixed up Maya A. is in BarryO’s identity puzzle since reading several years ago about how close she was to X, their association in Africa, and her relocation to Hawaii after his assassination.

Not to mention that Stanley Ann named her daughter “Maya.”


43 posted on 02/16/2012 2:53:39 PM PST by Jedidah
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To: crosshairs

Yes. Remarkably horrendous.


44 posted on 02/16/2012 2:55:10 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj
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To: crosshairs

He has done a remarkable job destroying this country and dividing people.


45 posted on 02/16/2012 6:34:28 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: Jedidah

wiki says:

Soetoro-Ng was born Maya Soetoro to Indonesian businessman Lolo Soetoro and American cultural anthropologist Ann Dunham. Her elder half-brother is the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. She has said she was named after American poet Maya Angelou.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Soetoro-Ng

Maya Soetoro’s birth year is supposedly 1970. It sure makes one wonder, how and where did Stanley Ann and Maya Angelou meet each other?
Was it in 1964-65 when Maya was, by some accounts, ‘singing in nightclubs in Hawaii’?

And in January of 1965, Stanley Ann Dunham filed for divorce from the kenyan student, which divorce was finalized in March, and gave her custody of a child for whom we still have not been shown a birth certificate. (One that hasn’t been tampered with, that is.)


46 posted on 02/16/2012 10:43:06 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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To: crosshairs

She needs a keyboard in her lap.

And, BTW, Maya - I know why the caged bird sings too! It’s crying to get you to stop reading your crappy poetry!


47 posted on 02/16/2012 10:48:40 PM PST by Fledermaus (I can't fiddle so I'll just open a cold beer as I watch America burn.)
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To: crosshairs

If you don’t agree with obama’s politics of economic destruction, we are klansmen, Maya? What are we if we don’t like your poetry?


48 posted on 02/16/2012 11:26:38 PM PST by Yaelle (Go Santorum!)
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To: LucyT

She’s right. He has done a “remarkable” job. We all have many choice remarks about the job he’s done.


49 posted on 02/17/2012 8:28:37 AM PST by Greenperson
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To: Jedidah

correction:

the divorce filing was in January, 1964!


50 posted on 02/18/2012 2:00:25 AM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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To: Fred Nerks

IIRC, Angelou said she went to Hawaii to grieve AFTER X’s assassination and lived with her brother. That would put her there ‘65ish.

I’ll look for the reference.

Have to wonder if the relocation was for clean-up duty, perhaps getting the boy out of the country after the hit? Fits the timeline.

For that matter, so does the date of the “divorce” correspond with X’s spring, 1964, split with NOI.

You know what they say about smoke and fire and no such thing as a coincidence.


51 posted on 02/18/2012 9:18:33 AM PST by Jedidah
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To: Jedidah; Fred Nerks

Here it is:

http://books.google.com/books?id=OezrrCSWvGAC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=maya+angelou+malcolm+x++hawaii&source=bl&ots=bwrzhVFLGK&sig=MsFAJXCMN94b7OkMWtnFC_xf7kE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=H90_T_nTMePu2gXQn4SCCA&sqi=2&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sorry about the URL length.


52 posted on 02/18/2012 9:45:41 AM PST by Jedidah
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To: Jedidah

His conversion to sunni islam in April 1964 after spending some 18 weeks in the middle east (studying ‘true’ islam) indicates the real reason why there was a split with NOI.

You’re not wrong...where there’s smoke...there’s Maya Angelou.


53 posted on 02/18/2012 2:04:41 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
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