It used to be that the main advantage of being a president is that nobody can tell you to shut up. Well, that has been discarded. We now have to add this caveat – not if you are a black president.

Of course, it is not about race. You must have heard it many times. It has nothing to do with the fact that a black man is in the White House shaking things up. It is about defending the Constitution. It is about saving our children and our children’s children from debt. It is about big government intruding into our lives. It is about ACRON.

Whenever I hear that, I pause to let them finish. “Are you done?” I will ask. When did you suddenly become concerned about the constitution? After George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have flushed it into the toilet? When did you begin to care about your children’s children? After they were left behind in a globalized world of yesterday? Where were you when your phone records were handed over to Dick Cheney?

Give me a break! I was not born yesterday.

When they cannot say that the president is a dummy, they say he is a Marxist. When they cannot say that he is handsome, they say he is a foreigner. When they cannot say that the president is transformational, they say he is a fascist. When they cannot say he is arrogant they say he is naïve.

I once heard that the first sign that a genius has appeared is for a congregation of fools to come out in opposition. It is what it should be. Really. The truth is that so many people still cannot believe what happened in November of 2008. They did not vote for that president therefore have no hope of voting him out in 2012 … unless they paint him black.

Nobody thought it would be easy. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and a host of others did not make it any easier for a black president. It came too quickly. Many were so unprepared to have the pictures of the president in their offices changed into that of a black man.

When Sammy Davis Jr. joined the Rat Pack, he was the envy of all black entertainers. In an interview he confessed that the Rat Pack gave him the chance to go where no black man had ever been and be insulted the way no black man had ever been insulted.

The trouble that those disrespecting President Obama is having is that nothing in Obama’s life prepared him for this kind of insult. What it means is that Obama is not going to react the way a typical African-American will react. That will definitely disappoint many of the people now reeling to beat him up.

My only concern is that there will be trouble in America come 2012. When these disgruntled people fail to vote Obama out, they may not be able to accept the long known fact that today’s America has left them behind.