'The Choice Is Yours': Nicki Minaj and Barack Obama Walk Into A Cheesecake Factory

It's midterm season, so here's a midterm edition of "Snips & Snobs!"

On Monday, for URL Media, I wrote about two very different Midterm rallies in Michigan.

One featured the comedy stylings of former President Barack Obama, cracking wise about the graft, grift, and grossness of the Trump Administration.

The other featured the current occupant of the White House celebrating Nicki Minaj's ass.

“By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before: Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss. Stand up. That’s hard to miss,” the president said, according to TMZ. He added: “I hope Nicki wasn’t insulted, but we love Nicki. She’s been with us for a long time.”

It's probably needless to say, but it's getting weird. (Nene Leakes voice.)

The remarks were whiplash-inducing. Consider the contrast: Former President Barack Obama had his own Michigan rally a day before, in support of U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit. 

During that rally, along with discussing issues at stake in the election, Obama joked that Trump had turned the White House into a “Cheesecake Factory” if it were designed by a gold-loving, former Iraqi dictator. 

“What’s up with the gold?” Obama said. “I mean, he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. It’s just gold everywhere. He is clearly not focused on lowering prices for you.”

Never has there been a starker choice during an election. But somewhere, someone is screaming, "Both sides are terrible!" Ignoring that one side is just kind of feckless and incompetent, while the other side is actively trying to kill us.

'We The Many'

For the past month, I've been writing URL Media's We The Many newsletter for people of color about the U.S. Midterm elections. And while I hope all the posts are informative, some are more banging than others.

For example, I really enjoyed breaking down the politics of my old stomping ground of Bakersfield in California's Central Valley. Or digging a little deeper into how racial tensions between the Black and Arab communities may shape the Michigan race.

And I greatly enjoyed talking to the ACLU about how they've planned for more than 25 nightmare scenarios that could impact the election.

But I just didn't see Obama's Cheesecake Factory diss, or Nicki Minaj's ass, entering the political discourse.

Where did that come from?

It’s been a strange time in politics since Trump threw out tradition, precedent and decorum and replaced them with him doing a version of Al Pacino’s “she’s got a great ass” schtick from the Michael Mann classic film “Heat.”

And Minaj is not even his first time getting fixed on a butt. In fact, it’s not even the first time he’s done it this month. He previously complimented GOP Sen. John Husted’s rear at a rally.

Nobody asked for these ass appraisals, and, seemingly, nobody wants them. And yet here we are with a president whose public persona these days is more Andrew Dice Clay than an erudite, dignified leader of the free world. 

Subscribe to We The Many.

Where Democracy is optional, voting is necessary

The first election I ever voted in was in 1996. I was a college freshman and had just turned 18 the month before. I was excited to vote, as my mother had been preparing me for this day my entire young life.

She'd raised me on stories of our struggle for the right to vote, from slavery all the way through the Civil Rights movement. It wasn't simply an act of civic duty; it was a necessary tribute to these hard-won gains.

John Lewis didn't do all that marching and getting his head bashed in so I could stay home.

She also taught me how important it was for Black people to have their say about who governs them, because, surely enough, everyone else is having theirs. She always bristled at pessimists within our community who saw voting as pointless. She would say how you rarely heard white people tell other white people to stay home and not exercise their rights. Yet, it was a constant murmur in the background among Black people.

But I understood the bleak outlook even if I disagreed with the tactic of checking out—change often comes slowly for our communities.

If at all.

But you can divorce yourself from politics as much as you want as a Black person; politics never divorces itself from you. It still affects your life, whether you choose to have a say in it or not.

'This or that'

One of the weirdest conversations I had this summer was with a Black man who was working for the city government and proudly said he did not vote.

Because he didn't see the point.

Because "both sides are bad."

I tried to point out that everything from the quality of the roads we drive on to the water we drink is determined by the government, while my friend, Nicole Moore of theHotness and BCKBON Zine, tried to appeal to his conscience—our neighbors are losing their homes due to high costs, unemployment is high, immigrants are being rounded up.

He didn't care.

He said he only cared about "his" community. As she probed him further about what that meant, he clarified that he meant his immediate family.

I had to suppress an eye roll. Here was an individual whose whole livelihood depended on who was mayor and whether the city of New York had enough funds to pay him, but he "doesn't do politics."

Well, man, politics is doing you.

But I didn't want to waste my time, because the willfully ignorant rarely admit they're just selfish. They don't understand that if they're not willing to stand up for their neighbors, there will be no one to stand up for them when it's eventually their turn.

Democracy's weakness versus our strength

Our Democracy has always been weak. Throughout much of America's history, it was a Democracy for some, and an autocracy for the rest. Only since the Civil Rights era have safeguards been put in place to ensure everyone can exercise their right to vote. Only since the Civil Rights movement did we experience a boom: the Black middle class grew, their children had more options than those before them, and we had more representation in Congress.

That all happened because Black people's voting rights were finally protected and enforced.

Today, our current leadership is destroying those gains in a bid to stop a multiracial, multiethnic society from ruling itself, wanting to impose some kind of apartheid state in America again. And this side has made it clear—if they can't control America, no one can. It doesn't matter that the most competent modern president we've had was a Black biracial man from Hawaii. Diversity is "bad" if it means the end of white political dominance in the United States.

We are facing an existential threat to everything we have come to know and love about this country, including the end of our almost 60-year-old multiracial, kind-of Democracy.

And this election is our chance to turn the tide.

So I voted this weekend and ask everyone who is eligible to do the same. Change doesn't come by doing nothing. Change doesn't come from disengagement. And closed mouths don't get fed.

Yes, our two-party system is a mess. And our options are often quite bad. But our political annihilation is on the ballot, and no one can afford to sit this one out.

Make a plan to vote today. Check your registration. Check the rules around voting in your state. Find your polling place. Early vote if you can. And if you can't, make a plan for Election Day on Nov. 3rd. If you're worried about intimidation, don't go alone. And if someone tries to interfere with your legal right, document everything, alert your state election officials, and call 866-OUR-VOTE.

Make your choice while the choice is still yours.