Hillary's Friends

Robert Johnson, a.k.a. W's favorite race baiter.

Robert L. Johnson came to the Bush administration's attention when it needed him most. The cause of the White House's duress was an annoyingly munificent collection of millionaires, headed by Bill Gates Sr., who had banded together to oppose President Bush's plan to abolish the estate tax. In newspaper ads and press conferences, they held forth on the obligation of the wealthy to give back to society. So effectively did they seize the moral high ground that even the most fervent opponents of the estate tax resigned themselves to it. "$(I$)t is looking increasingly doubtful," reported The Wall Street Journal a week later, "that large estates will escape federal taxation altogether."

Evidently this didn't sit well with Johnson, the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), whose family stood to gain millions if Bush succeeded. Johnson is not a man with a deep sense of social obligation. Not long ago, when an interviewer prodded him for his views on philanthropy, Johnson scoffed, "$(B$)eing a very wealthy person is not something that I wake up in the morning and say, 'Gee, I got all this money. How do I give it away?'" There is, however, an important exception to this every-man-for-himself ethos: society's duty to aid extremely wealthy African Americans. This social obligation Johnson takes very seriously.

So Johnson did what he often does when his interests are at stake: He played the race card. Johnson gathered a collection of black business leaders and demanded an end to the estate tax. Taking out newspaper ads of their own, Johnson's group attacked the tax for draining wealth from the black community. Unlike "very wealthy white Americans" who supported the tax, he declared, "We as African Americans have come to our wealth on a different path, a different road than they have." Gates and his friends, Johnson implied, were not really promoting the common good; they were trying to keep the black man down. All of a sudden, it was not so clear who held the moral high ground. Estate tax repeal had become a civil rights issue.

He's the one who said this about Obama the other day.

And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book – when they have been involved.

And, of course, since we're not stupid either, we know exactly what dog-whistle he was blowing, and it wasn't about community organizing.

Hillary's Friends