I just don't know!

I'm watching the Colbert Report, and I noticed one of the words that appears during the opening is "freem". What is freem? Is it a noun? An adjective? I'm so confused! What might it mean? I must know! Here are some possibilities; there's even a website. The site makes about as much sense as I expected.

According to Steven's guest, Barack Obama isn't an African American, because he is an American whose father came from Kenya, a country in Africa. He is, evidently, an African African American. So this is a ratio thing; if a man is black and his family has been in America for three hundred years, he is equal parts African and American. But if he was born and raised here, and has a job (senator) that is about as American as can be, but his father was born in Africa, he is twice as African as he is American. My brother married a Korean woman; is he an Asian American American? But as a Democrat, I am contractually obligated to pray to my pagan gods that 2008 features a presidential bid by the Clinton/Obama camp. So, to recap, 300 years of residence in North America equals one part American. Politics are so confusing.

I probably shouldn't blog about this (I am the very definition of cracker-ass lily white), but I am a little offended by this line of thought. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that a man isn't an African American because he is both of those things. But then, I'm all full of rage at the moment; I saw a commercial for "Truth" that complained that tobacco kills 20 times as many people as murder. A) Good to know tobacco companies aren't murderers. B) Obviously, American public schools aren't meeting the challenge of producing more mass murderers. Think about it: that number (20) goes down as the number of murders goes up. The good people over at "Truth" are pro-murder. Of course, what would you expect from a group that is funded primarily by Philip Morris?