America has a love affair with the angry black man.

They expect black men to be loud, threatening and dangerous at all times. Maybe he's packing heat in his waistband or ready to pimp-slap anybody who gets in his way at a moment's notice.

The president of the United States is black, and even though that behavior would be especially inappropriate coming from him, that's what some people seem to expect. The BP oil spill catastrophe seems to have brought out some people's desire to see Obama get angry like a "real" black man would when faced with difficult circumstances. After all, we know that when most black men get angry, bullets fly.

First, talk show host Bill Maher said Obama should go into the meetings with BP executives and lift his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband. If that doesn't help, Maher said Obama should shoot someone in the foot.

"I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president," Maher said.

Now, Spike Lee is joining the angry black man bandwagon. Lee said Obama should "go off" on BP about the oil spill.




"One time, go off!" Lee said on CNN's 'AC 360°.' "If there's any one time to go off, this is it, because this is a disaster."

Maybe Obama should get in BP's face like Buggin' Out from Lee's movie 'Do the Right Thing,' when he demanded to know why Sal didn't have any pictures of black leaders on his wall. The veins are popping on Giancarlo Esposito's neck, when he gets into it with Sal and his sons.

Just because Obama isn't going around shooting people in the foot, publicly yelling at BP executives or smashing pizza shop windows doesn't mean he isn't working hard to get the leak plugged. A couple of government agency heads have already been fired over the leak, and I'm sure a few more heads will roll before this disaster is over with.

Unlike former President George W. Bush with Hurricane Katrina, Obama has already been to the area a couple of times and is headed back on Friday. That's not to say that anyone should be pleased with the government's response.

One of the issues at hand is that if Obama started screaming and yelling, he would need to look in the mirror first. Part of the reason this tragedy occurred is because the U.S. government is woefully unprepared to handle such a disaster.

According to McClatchy Newspapers:

Still, BP isn't alone in the blame, say environmentalists who've been working since the April 20 explosion to shed light on regulatory failures. As soon as they began looking into the environmental reviews that were done in the Gulf of Mexico, "we realized that there weren't any environmental reviews being done," said Rebecca Noblin, the Center for Biological Diversity's Alaska director.

Many of the promises from both the government and the industry about the safety of offshore drilling were proven untrue by what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, Noblin said. "BP, and the oil industry in general, has managed to get away with a lot," she said. "But the reason I go back to the government is oil companies' jobs - their focus is to make money. If they're allowed to take shortcuts, of course they will. And it's the government's job to make sure that they're not allowed to do that. Bottom line, our government shouldn't let the oil companies do what they're doing."

The regulation of these offshore drilling operations is lax, and the responders to a leak, such as the Coast Guard, are not at full readiness. The scary part is that there are close to 4,000 of these rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an interview with Larry King on CNN, Obama said he was "furious at this entire situation" and that BP has "felt his anger."

Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs said yelling is not going to get anything done:

"If jumping up and down and screaming would have fixed a hole in the ocean floor, we would've done that six weeks ago," Gibbs said at a press briefing. "I'll leave the emotional psychiatry to others."

Americans like to be lied to. Obama could come out and scream on somebody publicly and maybe the country would feel better. I, however, believe the proof is in the pudding.

I'd rather have Obama remain calm and have the oil leak sealed, the Gulf of Mexico cleaned, fisherman reimbursed, the oil industry properly regulated, BP fined and prosecuted as appropriate, and our systems for handling such a disaster repaired.

That's how I'm going to judge Obama's handling of the event.

If Obama yells until he's blue in the face and then nothing changes, then all I got was to see was the president yelling.

The government is already behind the eight ball, because they were slow to respond. I don't care how the leak is sealed and cleaned, it just needs to get done. The government needs to do the right thing.