President Barack Obama's reference to Cousin Pookie during a couple of recent campaign stops is very disturbing, Dr. Alveda King tells Newsmax.
"We are dealing with such serious issues in our nation and to relegate that to a Cousin Pookie — we get the reference, we understand what that means, but we have educated, intelligent people in our nation who are concerned about the moral bankruptcy" of the country, King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Tuesday.
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Obama made the reference twice — at a rally for Maryland gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown and in Chicago at a rally for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn,
The Washington Post reported.
"You've got to grab your friends, you've go to grab your workers, you know, don't just get the folks who you know, don't just get the folks who you know are gonna vote. You've go to find Cousin Pookie. He's sitting on the couch right now watching football, hasn't voted in the last five elections, you've got to grab him, and tell him to go vote," Obama said at the Quinn rally Sunday night, which is almost identical to what he said at the Brown rally in Maryland.
Cousin Pookie was first invoked by Obama in 2007 in Selma, Alabama. It's a reference he tends to make when speaking before black crowds. When he brought it up during the 2008 primary, the crowd would respond in laughter and seemed to recognize the reference, according to the Post.
There was a character named Pookie in the movie "New Jack City" played by Chris Rock in 1991, who was a crack-addicted petty criminal. The Urban Dictionary describes "pookie" as "a term of endearment and affection."
"To bring up Cousin Pookie, as if that could give us solutions to these terrible problems, I'm very disturbed about that reference," King said.
King also talked on the Restoring the Dream effort.
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Niger Innis, the spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), told Newsmax that Obama's "very behavior has been insulting to African-Americans — the desperate concerns of African-Americans."
"The fact that one-out-of-three young black Americans are without a job — the poverty rate has gone up by 25 percent during the Obama years," he explained.
"So it's clear that when the president doesn't have a record of accomplishment to run on, he goes to the lowest common denominator and tries to grab onto the entertainment rung and talk about Cousin Pookie when people are really suffering out there," he added.