Changing the color of the hand holding the whip. By [GregPalast]  I can't take it anymore. All week, I've watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose.

It's more nauseating than hypocrisy and ignorance. The Mandela Barbie tells us in a squeaky little doll voice, not his own, that apartheid is now "defeated" - to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times.

Poor Mandela. When he's not a doll, he's a statue. He joins Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to serve a new version of racism, Apartheid 2.0, worsening both in South Africa - and in the USA.

The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home. For example, just six months ago, the US Supreme Court overturned the key parts of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. King's greatest accomplishment, on the specious claim that, "Blatantly discriminatory evasions are rare," and Jim Crow voting practices are now "eradicated." 

"Eradicated?" On what planet? The latest move by Florida Republicans to purge 181,000 voters of color - like the stench from the shantytowns of Cape Town - makes clear that neither Jim Crow nor Apartheid have been defeated. They're just in temporary retreat.

Nevertheless, our betters in the USA and Europe have declared that King slew segregation, Mandela defeated apartheid; and therefore, the new victims of racial injustice should just shut the f$#! up and stop whining. 

The Man Who Walked Beside Mandela

To replace the plastic and metal Mandelas with flesh and blood, I spoke to Danny Schechter. Schechter knew Mandela personally, and more deeply, than any other American journalist. One of the great reporters of our generation, Schechter produced South Africa Now, a weekly program seen on PBS, from 1988-91, bringing Mandela's case to Americans dumbed and numbed by Ronald Reagan's red-baiting. 

Schechter notes that George W. Bush kept Mandela on the Terrorist Watch List — no kidding — even after Mandela was elected President.