How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays(27)
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October 29, 2012, 2:15 a.m.
I’d like to thank President Obama and Governor Romney for giving us twenty minutes in this last/lost debate of 2012. Thanks to both of you for agreeing to release this transcript after November 6. If I ask a question you don’t want to answer, you can say, “That’s that shit I don’t like,” courtesy of Chief Keef, and I will do my best to move on to another question. You have two “That’s that shit I don’t likes” at your disposal. Instead of a coin toss, whoever best answers our first question will have the option of going first or second.
Our first question comes from a young woman in Brooklyn: “How would you describe the color of Donald Trump’s face?”
ROMNEY: I’d have to say he’s just tan. Maybe I’m missing something but I’d call it a supple kind of pink.
OBAMA: Listen, I’ve gotta go with the color of watered-down Tang.
Damn. That’s good, man. Really good. Would you like to go first or second, President Obama?
OBAMA: First.
President Obama, you signed the Fair Sentencing Act, a historic piece of legislation that narrows the crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity from 100:1 to 18:1, and for the first time eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine. While this was long overdue, wouldn’t a real Fair Sentencing Act also ensure that elite American colleges, universities, and gated communities are policed for drug use, drug abuse, and drug distribution as much as urban areas currently are policed—especially since most incarcerated Americans are poor black and brown nonviolent drug offenders?
OBAMA: While I agree that we need to think about how we police particular groups of Americans more than others, I’m not sure it’s the role of the president to tinker with policing practices, especially ones that substantially impact the prison-industrial complex. We wanted to make the sentencing guidelines fair and we did.
Is 18:1 fair?
OBAMA: It’s fairer than it was.
True, but is it fair that not one drug user, abuser, or seller at the college where I teach has gone to prison in the ten years I’ve been there, yet I personally know at least twenty brothers in Poughkeepsie from the same neighborhood who have been incarcerated in that same time?
ROMNEY: I don’t understand the question. Those black and brown nonviolent drug offenders would have a better chance at the American dream if there were fathers in their houses. If I am elected president, I plan on creating civic organizations that go door to door in urban neighborhoods with binders of eligible, hardworking, clean black and Latino men. Prison reform and fair sentencing starts with the family, and the new American family starts with reforming fathers and families, not the government.
Daddy binders, bruh?
OBAMA: Governor Romney loves him some binders, doesn’t he?
You ain’t lying about that. President Obama, we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world. Why?
OBAMA: See, that’s that shit I don’t like. How can I answer that question? While we need to look at our incarceration practices, we also need to look at the communities we are trying to protect when we incarcerate these brothers and sisters. We’ve got to think of the victims, too.
President Obama: You are a black man. There are more black men in prison than any other group in the nation, and black women are the fastest-growing group of incarcerated folks in the United States. Why?
OBAMA: I think I’ve answered the question. I told you that was that shit I don’t like.
Word? Okay then.
OBAMA: Does that count as my second “That’s that shit I don’t like?”
It does not. Governor Romney, how is it that the Republican Party, the self-proclaimed party of personal responsibility, never, ever, ever, ever takes any responsibility for the state of the nation or of the world?
ROMNEY: I don’t understand the question.
Are you and your party responsible for any of the problems in the United States?
ROMNEY: I don’t understand the question. That’s that shit I don’t like.
This is a two-part question from a woman in Forest, Mississippi. Governor Romney, “How can the people with the most stuff in the nation complain so much about other people who have so little wanting more stuff?”
ROMNEY: That’s that shit I don’t like.
Cool. That’s your last “That’s that shit I don’t like.” Governor Romney, would President Obama, the first standing president to have his citizenship questioned, have been granted the same generosity afforded George W. Bush if his failure led to the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans?
ROMNEY: I think I’ve answered this question. The president has the responsibility to call terrorism what it is and to do everything in his power to stop it before it starts.
OBAMA: Listen, no sitting president wants to be in the position where President Bush found himself on the morning of 9/11. Americans are by and large a forgiving people and I have done everything in my power to keep this exceptional country, the best country on the face of the earth, safe from terrorism. I take responsibilities for mistakes made along the way, but our record is strong in the area of defense, especially compared to my predecessor.
President Obama, you’ve talked extensively in previous debates about the incredible work of the soldiers who have lost their lives fighting for the freedom of others around the globe. It’s obvious that this tragedy hurts you. Does it also hurt when you received reports of drones murdering civilians around the world?