#65. Barack-Etology (Barack Obama's Fascination with the NCAA Basketball Tournament and his Bracket)

It is said Nero fiddled while Rome Burned. Whether veracious or merely an apocryphal tale, the phrase has come to symbolize a leaders decision to pursue trivial matters and engage in gross inattentiveness to important issues.

Barack Hussein Obama. Mein Obama, the anointed-deity who could walk upon water was the beneficiary of a Nobel Peace Prize for his ability to create the illusion of tranquility.

“Kneeling before Zod-Obama” was an act of general obedience from the media, Disingenuous White Liberals and even Republicans while he ran for the White House and it was expected to continue once he assumed the role as President of the United States of America.

Black people supported Mein Obama nearly unanimously, with 96 percent of votes cast by Black people in his favor. To this day, Black approval for him hovers around 91 percent, while support for Obama slides precipitously among every other racial group.

Rallying around one of their one is a hallmark of Black solidarity, an admirable in-group cohesive trait that even protected Michael Jackson upon his death. However, Barack Obama is treading in frightening territory with his ineffectual ability to generate any hope for the beleaguered Black community and little hope of rectifying his Administrations inability to help Black people remains.

Consider, Black people currently have an unemployment rate double the national average:

The unemployment rate among African Americans improved slightly in February, shrinking from 16.5% to 15.8% for the month, according to Labor Department statistics released Friday. In contrast, the overall jobless rate remained steady at 9.7%.

Despite the contraction of the African American jobless rate, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis says there is still much work to be done.

“There is an extremely high number of unemployment in the African American community,” she said. “We want to work with Congress to make sure that more money is available to programs such as Pathways Out of Poverty, which targets high unemployment areas through unique job training opportunities such as retrofitting or weatherizing.”

The Washington Post reported worse figures in late 2009:

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.

Perhaps worse, the government under George Bush made a push to augment the number of Black people who owned their own homes and to accomplish this feat banks were pressured to give loans that yielded precious little hope of being paid back (in fact, the sub prime mortgage fiasco triggered the Recession we are currently in and that disproportionately affects Black people). Thankfully, those redistributionists polices to help long suffering Black people own their own homes through judicious lending can be written off mere predatory lending or ghetto lending by the Obama Administration.

However, Obama still has the problem of Black unemployment to deal with and the prospect of filling the payrolls of Federal Agencies (Black people are overrepresented in almost every Federal Agency) any further with Black bodies doesn’t bode well for a government already projecting massive deficits and having a budget that continues to pile up ungodly debt.

Indeed, The Siren Song of Diversity appears to be nearing as the prospect of helping eradicate the gap in unemployment between the races with government jobs isn’t a viable option:

Statistics on this “blackening” of the government workforce confirm what many know from their humdrum encounters with the government. EEOC figures show that between 1980 and 2005, the number of blacks in city and state government rose from 619,000 to 1.1 million, an increase of 481,000 (U.S. Statistical Abstract 2009, Table 446). A recent detailed study of black employment at federal agencies found almost universal massive over-representation. This is especially true where job requirements are modest.

So, for example, in the U.S. Court Services and Offender Services, blacks compared to their general population numbers were over-represented by 808 percent. Remarkably, over-representation also existed in more “technical” agencies: NASA (49.4 percent), National Science Foundation (318.2 percent), Security and Exchange Commission (112.6 percent) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (68.3 percent). To be sure, many of these “black” positions in technically-oriented agencies may be menial, for example, custodial work or clerking. Even so, the pattern is unmistakable—government to the rescue.

The State of Black America appears to be in virtual disrepair, and Obama is powerless to bring about legislation or change that could provide a momentary remedy to the problem (passing health care legislation would undoubtedly create thousands of jobs for the needed bureaucracy that Black people could fill since paying for health care is included in SBPDL).

The Black Caucus isn’t happy about the lack of attentiveness or care Obama shows to his fellow Black people who continue to Kneel before Zod while all others stand in defiance:

As Congress focused almost exclusively on health care late last year, the Congressional Black Caucus loudly complained that rising unemployment among African Americans was not getting enough attention. To express that frustration, one bloc in the 43-member group briefly withheld its votes for a key bill that Democrats were trying to pass. The caucus released a list of demands to include in the legislation that would create jobs in low-income areas.

But as the "jobs bill" winds its way through Congress, civil rights groups say the various versions of the legislation are not directly addressing the problems the caucus wanted to fix. When the House passed its $154 billion version in December, it did not include a request from black lawmakers that 10 percent of the money in each of its provisions go to communities where at least 20 percent of the people are low-income.

Black leaders are discouraged by Obama’s lack of a Black agenda and his failure to help his community. The Audacity of Hope is meeting the Actuality of Hopelessness, but Black leaders remain defiant to the bitter end.

Tavis Smiley wants Black people to talk about how Obama has failed. All Barack Obama wants to talk about is how his 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket will do:

In perhaps the most critical week of his presidency, with health care reform legislation on the line, President Obama, like millions of Americans, took a little time out for March Madness.

At the White House Tuesday, Obama filled out his NCAA men's and women's basketball tournament brackets with ESPN's Andy Katz and Doris Burke.

Despite his well-known love and deep knowledge of college basketball, Obama did not completely leave politics at the door as he explained his tournament picks.

The hoopster-in-chief picked the top-ranked Kansas Jayhawks to win the men's tournament -- a somewhat safe pick from a president who ran on a campaign promising change.

View President Obama's NCAA bracket

Barack-Etology as it is called is merely Obama’s picks for the March Madness that is a problem for millions across the country. Obama loves basketball and millions of his fellow citizens also love the 65-team tournament to crown college basketball’s champion.

At a time when Black people face a crisis of incredible proportions, Obama is having fun with ESPN and putting out a bracket that is dissected with efficacy by basketball enthusiasts:

First Fan Barack Obama has revealed his bracket prediction for the 2010 NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. He expects Kansas, Kansas State, Villanova and Kentucky to make the Final Four, with the Kansas Jayhawks winning overall. (Watch Obama fill out his bracket on ESPN.) What do the president's selections reveal about him? The commentators weigh in:

1. He plays it safe
"Barack Obama is a front-running, risk-averse elitist," says Josh Levin in Slate. "Just like in 2008 and 2009, when Obama proved unwilling to make any outré selections, he's gone this year with conventional first-round upsets: Siena over Purdue, Murray State over Vanderbilt, and Cornell over Temple." But if he "wants to win his office pool," he's going to have to pick more upsets.

2. His sports imitate his politics
Remember that the president correctly picked the winning team in his 2009 bracket, says Dan Shanoff in Newsweek. Using that experience as a guide, "Obama's bracket success" seems to closely mimic his political successes: He starts out slow — "stumbling" in the early rounds — "then closes fast and decisively." If it plays out like this, expect "championship moments ahead for Kansas."

3. He has faith in the power of a good leader
"The most revealing aspect of Obama's picks was his reasoning," says Johanna Neuman in the Los Angeles Times. When deciding between Michigan State and Maryland, Obama chose Michigan for its superior coaching. The choice "is an apt metaphor for a president trying to win a historic legislative achievement."

4. He consciously makes smart — not politically motivated — choices
"The president’s selections were rooted in basketball knowledge," says Jeff Zeleny in The New York Times, "rather than trying to curry favor with key political states." Need evidence? "Only one team in the Final Four – Villanova, from Pennsylvania – is from a typical battleground state."

5. His subconscious, however, is totally biased
After some number crunching, says Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight, it appears Obama has a "bias towards schools from swing states." Obama didn't "pick very many upsets. But "just about every time he did it tended to favor the team from the swingier state." In short, the president "does appear to have been mixing his hoops with his politics. Will the nation ever recover?"

Obama did a bracket in 2009 and became known as the “Baller-in-Chief”. In basketball, the fear of turnovers is grave and Obama is on the threshold of forever turning over his magic powers of persuasion and likability that keeps Black people in his back pocket.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Barack-Etology, for Obama’s fascination with sports and basketball appear – to Black people – merely fiddling while the Black community in America burns. The Baller-in-Chief needs to call time-out and rethink his policy for Black people, before they decide to cast their lot behind a more appropriate leader. Like Nero, he appears to be fiddling.