My thoughts on Hillary Clinton's Concession speech and party unity..(Vibe.com)

Laying on my couch, anxiously awaiting Hillary Clinton's well publicized "Concession Speech", there were two pieces of bitter Irony that I found myself wrestling with early that afternoon. Sure, I've spent the better part of a year criticizing both Hillary Clinton and her campaign, some of the tactics that the former first lady resorted to often made a career deviant like myself want to take a scolding hot shower. The mere fact that I anticipated anything she had to say outside of a campaign ending gaffe automatically made me feel as if I was in some sort of alternate universe. The other irony, that I was resting on a couch that I've had many a pre-ejaculating sexual experience on top of, a black light over one solitary cushion would make the most seasoned forensic expert literally dry heave for days - the funny thing is that I'm a huge germaphobe, go figure. That being said, as I patiently waited for Senator Clinton to address the packed house at the National Building Museum while listening to nonsensical punditry of the "I wonder what she'll say" variety, I had to laugh - because anything short of a full throated endorsement of Barack Obama would have been political suicide for her, period. But then again, if she refused to endorse Obama it wouldn't be the first time that Hillary Clinton shocked me during this extremely long primary season - I suddenly had the jaw dropping vision in my head of her reaching the podium, telling her supporters that she had no plans of dropping out of the race, and very defiantly raising one fist in the air while uttering two words that would be on millions of T-shirts and bumper stickers for the next two months: "Denver Bitches!!"

But as I watched the speech, my fears of Democratic implosion were dashed as Mrs. Clinton proceeded to give Barack Obama that aforementioned full throated endorsement, along with a message of female empowerment and calls for party unity that eventually beat back the boos heard whenever she mentioned the name of the Junior Senator from Illinois. To me, simply the words "Supreme Court" being uttered in her speech was a way of telling her angry female supporters to resist the urge to cut off their collective noses to spite the face of the democratic party. Depending on how hard she campaigns for Obama in the next five months will signal whether her speech was sincere or not, but she took the first baby-step in trying to get all of her extremely pissed off supporters inside her political U-Haul truck en route to camp Obama.

That said, with all the constant cable news jabbering about Obama's need to woo working class white women, and all the painstaking work ahead of him in terms of convincing bitter Hillary supporters that he is the right man for the job - I pose the following question, has anyone ever asked Obama supporters how we feel about this politically expedient arranged marriage? Do we need a large percentage of the people who voted for her in the primaries to beat the epitome of George Bush's third term that is John McCain? You bet your sweet ass. But there's something downright unseemly about welcoming a group of people with open arms who not only dismissively characterized our support for our candidate as "Jim Jones" cult-like, but it also leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I think about all those online Hillary supporters who tried to undermine Obama's candidacy by shamelessly participating in actions uncharacteristic to most sane Democrats. Everything from people gleefully linking to Republic Pollster Frank Luntz to prove their case against Obama, the constant quoting of Joe Scarborough, people clumsily linking to Sean Hannity episodes, waxing poetic about the "Lou Dobbs Show", the constant Keith Olbermann bashing, embracing the hateful words of Pat Buchanan for Christs sake, even the sheer audacity of pushing the Tony Rezko storyline despite some of Mrs. Clinton's own associations with shady characters. It makes me want find every one of these irate "Democratic" women who say that they will vote for McCain come November and scream "If anyone should be mad here, it should be me god dammit!" in their misguided direction.

For the sheer sake of Barack Obama residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I realize that I'm going to eventually have to let bygones be bygones and stand unified with the same extremely dizzy bunch who now claim that the nomination was somehow stolen from their respective candidate - I'm well aware that holding grudges will get John McCain elected come November. But for some reason, this whole episode seems strangely familiar to me. Not for nothing, but the extreme cautiousness I'm exhibiting while being forced to now embrace Hillary Clinton feels as if I'm taking back an ex-girlfriend who once ripped the beating heart out of my chest. The same way I took back every ex-girlfriend who broke my heart despite serious reservations, I find myself asking Hillary Clinton the exact same questions I asked the women who I decided to give a second chance to:

"Before I take you back, can you tell me what was up with you flirting with the dude across town who you know I have beef with?
Were you referencing my bedroom shortcomings when you were telling anyone who would listen that I was all talk? When that viscous rumor was going around about me, you could have strongly shut that shit down because you knew the truth - why didn't you? Did you really need to smear me by telling people that I was associated with known criminals? Come on, I barely fucking know homeboy. Not only that, what in the world was up with every single one of your friends talking shit about me? What in the world were you telling them anyways?