Why I'm Putting the President High on My Gratitude List

When giving thanks, I'm putting the president high on the list --- and not for anything he's achieved.

As I watched him deliver low-energy banalities after the grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, I thought: Bullshit. He knew since day one how this was going to end. He knew the cops botched the investigation, that the District Attorney was throwing the case, that the governor was spineless -- and that Michael Brown would be reduced to a big black animal.

But because he's also, for so many, a big black animal, he knew he had to suppress everything he felt and be "'presidential."

I thought about the unceasing vitriol -- the flat-out racism -- directed at Obama, and I thought: Anyone who's not completely numb -- you know, anyone who can still locate a human emotion -- might feel a smidgen of empathy for him.

So what that he's the president. It sucks to be Barack Obama.