The surest indicator that something is seriously wrong in this country is when the black spokesperson is trotted out. When you see the brother man taking center stage in an emergency situation, you know the feces is about to hit the fan big time. Think back to when the bottom fell out of the auto industry and Congress had to provide billions of dollars in bailout funds. Out came the black dude with the bad news. The same thing happened when the airline industry got into trouble — a man of color was made the face of the failure and had to publicly fall on his sword, in spite of the fact he had no power in the decision-making process that created the problem in the first place.
Soon it’s the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ turn to take the heat if the coronavirus pandemic continues to spin out of control. As long as there’s light at the end of the tunnel and the virus can be contained without doing too much damage, tRump is going to stay front and center, using the outbreak as a chance to try to convince voters that he should be given a second term in office. But if the number of victims of the outbreak continues to climb you’ll see less and less of his ugly visage and more and more of the telegenic and talented Adams.
Indeed, the last person you probably see on the TV screen — if, as Lincoln famously said during the darkest days of the Civil War, “the bottom has fallen out of the tub” — will be the U.S. Surgeon General, who, up to this point, had been kept far in the background. But now, as the plot thickens and tRump’s incompetence is starting to show through, Adams has suddenly emerged.
He was publicly given the kiss of death when tRump said at a White House press conference on March 14, “We’ve created a number of new stars, including the gentleman right behind me. I watched him the other day. It was such a fantastic job you did, and I really appreciate it.”
First the roses, and then the blow — as once again the American tradition of the last few decades of “Let’s blame it on a black man,” is once again played out. Just watch.
