THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

I am always a bit taken aback when people ask me about Obama. I answer "He's black."

I am even more perplexed when people can't understand what I just said. There is absolutely nothing you can say that is specific to Obama. He is the mouthpiece of the old New England crowd that is in power now. He is the embodiment of the coat and tie well-spoken "Negro" of 1960s movies.

Take his reaction to the latest terrorist airplane incident. His response was that no one would be allowed to go to the toilet on any airplane within an hour of landing. That is like the response to mass shootings for decades, which was to demand gun control. Every mouthpiece said that.

And now the theme is that Obama has shown his Leadership by banning anyone from "pointing fingers." On September 11 I stated flatly that not only would no one get fired for that screw-up, I predicted no one would get CRITICIZED. It was a far-out prediction at that point, but everybody has forgotten that.

In fact, if you read my articles on 9/11 and 9/12, you will see that I predicted that not only would no one be fired, I said that everyone in charge on 9/11 would get PROMOTED.

They have.

The doctrine of the Experts when they let a disaster happen is "No finger pointing," No "blame game."

For any group of experts, letting a disaster happen is the key to promotion. Sociologists had a tiny field going when they first said criminals were the only REAL victims. Since they dominated the campuses at our willing expense, the crime rate has gone out of sight.

How many sociologists have been fired?

None.

Criminology is a branch of sociology, so hundreds of thousands of sociology majors have been hired to deal with the crime crisis. No sociologist has ever been fired or even criticized for what he said before. Conservatives go out of their way to WORSHIP Intellectuals.

9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to the industry that caused it.

A disaster is the best thing experts can produce if there is No Finger Pointing. So Obama recites their mantra, like any other mouthpiece, and his only solution is, as always, to make rules that restrict citizens even more.

As I have so often pointed out, the only people who prevented that last airline bombing were the ordinary citizens who have to wear their pants around their hips and be barefoot.

None of this is new. Train wrecks killed larger percentage of Americans in 1868 than car crashes do now, and there is no comparison between the percentage who die today and the proportion that took trains back then. In Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain explained why the French death rate per mile on railroads was almost zero while the French trains were as safe as airline travel today.

In France, if trains crashed, a person was ALWAYS responsible. It was all finger-pointing. In America, Twain pointed out, the railway owners always settled for calling it a pure accident, no finger pointing.

In France rail employees were TERRIFIED of crashes. In America they had nothing to worry about. So there were a lot of crashes in America and almost none in France.

During World War II, too many parachutes were improperly packed, which meant death to the troops using them. Then a rule was passed that those who packed the chutes had to JUMP with a randomly selected chute they had packed on a regular basis.

The percentage of improperly packed chutes fell like a rock.

Or like the guy who packed it badly.

So don't give me the bullshit about how security personnel really are about it so there is no need for finger pointing. Those parachute packers were pumped up with loyalty to the War Effort and were as worried about the welfare of the people who depended on their chutes as security people are, especially the Ivy League crowd that runs Intelligence and the Obama Administration.

But finger pointing, making them jump with their own chutes, got RESULTS that a group that avoids finger pointing cannot get.

Finger pointing works. And Obama's only message is that he is black.