Obama's Race Speech

[Gvlax]

Racism exists everywhere whether its overt or covert. Its naive to think that it does not.

Not true. According to our resident scholar on the "nuances of race relations," racism is not everywhere. It solely exists among those card-carrying members of "the group in power."

And how do you prove this?

yes he went to this church but for you people that feel this is horrible of Obama i want to know what you think this will affect if he is in office? Is he going to have all white people wrangled up and shipped off somewhere because he hid his true thoughts of racism?

[Jac Coyne]

Racism exists everywhere whether its overt or covert. Its naive to think that it does not.

Not true. According to our resident scholar on the "nuances of race relations," racism is not everywhere. It solely exists among those card-carrying members of "the group in power."

And how do you prove this?

I'm not trying to prove it. I was sarcastically trying to illustrate the vagaries of Steno's absolutist assertions.

yes he went to this church but for you people that feel this is horrible of Obama i want to know what you think this will affect if he is in office? Is he going to have all white people wrangled up and shipped off somewhere because he hid his true thoughts of racism?

I'm not voting for Obama because of the many planks in his platform (universal healthcare, 'immediate' withdrawal from Iraq, etc.) that I disagree with, not because of his association with a goofy pastor.

However, I would guess that many who have not made up their mind at this point would view BO's waffling about Wright as a flaw. I doubt undecided voters are worried Obama will morph into some Black Panther-esque Manchurian candidate if he becomes president, but rather they are concerned that if he is unwilling to stand up to his pastor, how will he handle many of the other tough confrontations he will face as president.

The liberals on this board will try to muddy the argument by reflexively bringing Bush into this discussion, and that's fine. They will also try to make this a religious issue, which it is not. It's one of simple association. If Obama believes what Wright is preaching, he should stand by him. If he doesn't, he should comletely disassociate himself. Right now, he is trying to toe the line between rejecting the words, but accepting the man, which smacks of indecisiveness -- never a good trait in an election.

Fortunately for BO, this issue has surfaced in March, giving him plenty of time to mitigate his stance before the convention and general election.

[StrykerFSU]

Not all swoon to Sen. Obama's oratory:

This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

This piece, written by Charles Krauthammer in today's Washington Post, also points out the inappropriate comparison of Rev. Wright to the Senator's grandmother. Krauthammer also suggests the real target of the speech was white guilt.

As he points out in his opening,

The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032003017.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[Sonny]

It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance.

Wow. good line.

Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

Because it was politically convenient?

[Dan Wishengrad]

While you guys make some good points, perhaps you didn't actually listen to the speech? Consider Eugene Robinson's most recent column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... =emailpage

Robinson makes some terrific points specifically about what Obama actually said:

And that may have been the most significant aspect of the speech: the fact that Obama proposed a conversation, not a monologue. He not only laid out the reasons some African Americans might feel alienated or resentful but also the reasons some white Americans might feel the same way.

"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race," Obama said in the speech. "Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. . . . So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college . . . when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

Maybe some of you didn't hear that? Or didn't hear:

These resentments have "helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation," Obama told his audience. "And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

Obama called on African Americans to embrace "the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past," and to take "full responsibility for our own lives." And he's absolutely right.

Give credit where credit is due, folks. The specific reason why the majority of us were so moved by Senator Obama's speech is captured in Robinson's summation:

This amounts to a new set of talking points for a discussion about race: Don't be paralyzed by history but acknowledge its effects. Recognize that whites have legitimate grievances that are not racist. Don't cling to victimhood as an all-purpose excuse. Accept personal responsibility.

PS Charles Krauthammer is an excellent writer and an important voice on the right. He is also consistently wrong about the facts. Read his recent column about how wrong Democrats are about the war, and about how the surge is unquestioningly working and how it means we are "winning" the war in Iraq. Somehow Mr. K misses the whole point, that our military -- certainly the greatest in the world -- of course is reducing violence in cities and areas where it has gone into in force. But the more important question -- which he missed -- is whether this amounts to real progress at all, and whether this reduction in violence will last even five minutes after we have to withdraw from these Iraqi cities.

[Beta]

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[OAKS]

To lighten the mood:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bl ... for_change

[Hugh Nunn]

What does this have to do with McCain's pastor? Has McCain been going to a church for the last 20 years where this anti-American/socialist nonsense has gone on and on and on?

McCain sought out the endorsement of his guy, one equally as wacky as Wright. I guess dueling religious nutjobs makes for good media fodder. If you accuse Obama of poor judgement for his continued relationship with his Pastor, McCan should at least face the same criticism for his seeking out a religious figure seemingly cut from the sam cloth.

As for these statements defining his character for POTUS and the political expediency of being a member of this church, sure. I think it would have been smarter for Obama to find a church that was more mainstream with a pastor not in need of anti-psychotic drugs. I also think he could have done a better job coaching his wife on how to better frame her comments "for the first time, I'm proud of my country"...nice work.

But I think we are arguing about slightly different things. I was commenting that accusing someone of being a racist simply because they disagreed with questionable (at best) rhetoric is analagous to what the Bush administration and FOX news has done to those who questioned the adminitration's policies and handling of the Iraq War...called them unpatriotic or accused them of not supporting the troops.

Obama deserves all he gets for being a member of a church where this garbage is spewed. My point is, that calling someone a racist who holds these idiots accountable is just as wrong and evil as say, Carl "The Archtect" Rove for doing the same on behalf of the Bush administration.

[Jac Coyne]

Give credit where credit is due, folks. The specific reason why the majority of us were so moved by Senator Obama's speech is captured in Robinson's summation:

This amounts to a new set of talking points for a discussion about race: Don't be paralyzed by history but acknowledge its effects. Recognize that whites have legitimate grievances that are not racist. Don't cling to victimhood as an all-purpose excuse. Accept personal responsibility.

PS Charles Krauthammer is an excellent writer and an important voice on the right. He is also consistently wrong about the facts. Read his recent column about how wrong Democrats are about the war, and about how the surge is unquestioningly working and how it means we are "winning" the war in Iraq. Somehow Mr. K misses the whole point, that our military -- certainly the greatest in the world -- of course is reducing violence in cities and areas where it has gone into in force. But the more important question -- which he missed -- is whether this amounts to real progress at all, and whether this reduction in violence will last even five minutes after we have to withdraw from these Iraqi cities.

Dan's missives encompass why liberal 'theory' is widely rejected. He takes one opinion (his own) and bases it as fact, and then adopts a contrarian opinion and tries to establish it as factually "wrong." It's this type of selective objectivity that diminishes the liberal model. Liberal ideology is completely reactionary, and is unable to stand alone without a foil (in most cases, Bush). This is why the fringe groupthink produces an indifferent shrug of the shoulders from most of America (see: election, 2004).

Speeches are the opiate of the liberal mind. All that conservatives are left with are facts.

[CPLaxGM]

Speeches are the opiate of the liberal mind. All that conservatives are left with are facts.

Ah yes, conservatives love the facts much more than liberals. Like WMD's in Iraq. The link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Iran's nuclear capability. The rescuing of Private Lynch. War on the cheap.

You can dismiss criticism of this administration as eight years of misguided animosity toward GW, but that's a specious argument. There are copious examples of this administration's twisting (and that's a generous term) of the truth to benefit their particular predetermined end goal. So spare us the conservatives are left with the facts BS. In the Orwellian state of the current administration, which has been buttressed by the "conservative" press like Kristol and Krauthammer, the facts are whatever they tell us they should be regardless of the actual evidence available for examination.

The facts may exist, but most have been summarily dismissed or outright ignored any time they didn't neatly fit into the box of what the conservatives had already decided was the correct course of action.

[Jac Coyne]

There are copious examples of this administration's twisting (and that's a generous term) of the truth to benefit their particular predetermined end goal.

<waiting>

[CPLaxGM]

There are copious examples of this administration's twisting (and that's a generous term) of the truth to benefit their particular predetermined end goal.

<waiting>

Are you really that purposefully ignorant of the reality of this war? If you actually believe that this administration strives for the truth, and aims to follow the facts regardless of how that may contradict from their current policy course, than I can't help you.

You are the proverbial horse standing at the watering hole dying of thirst. I might as well as argue with a person that believes contrails are a government plot to poison us.

[Zeuslax]

Dan's missives encompass why liberal 'theory' is widely rejected. He takes one opinion (his own) and bases it as fact, and then adopts a contrarian opinion and tries to establish it as factually "wrong." It's this type of selective objectivity that diminishes the liberal model. Liberal ideology is completely reactionary, and is unable to stand alone without a foil (in most cases, Bush). This is why the fringe groupthink produces an indifferent shrug of the shoulders from most of America (see: election, 2004).

Speeches are the opiate of the liberal mind. All that conservatives are left with are facts.

Jac, you must be on the RNC's email distribution list for their talking points .

<waiting>

The ridiculous part is creating a bulleted list is way too easy to do and takes too much time. That's the part that breaks my heart.

The apologists are so blindly loyal to the detriment of this country, that they refuse to even whisper or mutter the truth. They conjure further deception and complicated arguments to "prove" that they're right. If that doesn't work, then you're unamerican or history will prove their position correct. That approach and line of thinking is fatally (litterly) flawed. Never admitting you've been wrong is not a strength. It's a weakness beyond recognition.

Lastly, my dad says more radical things than Obama's preacher sometimes. Do I distance myself and disown him? I have friends that are alchoholics and heroin addicts. Do I pretend like I've never known them? My grandmother is a bigot. Does my grandfather divorce her and the rest of the family stop going to visit her? Two of the guys I work with are racists, do I refuse to sit in on the meetings they run?

[StrykerFSU]

Lastly, my dad says more radical things than Obama's preacher sometimes. Do I distance myself and disown him? I have friends that are alchoholics and heroin addicts. Do I pretend like I've never known them? My grandmother is a bigot. Does my grandfather divorce her and the rest of the family stop going to visit her? Two of the guys I work with are racists, do I refuse to sit in on the meetings they run?

None of these examples are equivalent to Sen. Obama's situation concerning Rev. Wright.

[Jac Coyne]

Jac, you must be on the RNC's email distribution list for their talking points .

Ann Coulter's, actually. Her swimsuit calendar should be arriving shortly...

The apologists are so blindly loyal to the detriment of this country, that they refuse to even whisper or mutter the truth. They conjure further deception and complicated arguments to "prove" that they're right. If that doesn't work, then you're unamerican or history will prove their position correct. That approach and line of thinking is fatally (litterly) flawed. Never admitting you've been wrong is not a strength. It's a weakness beyond recognition.

Most of the above I have trouble following, but let be clear on one aspect. While I disagree with many on this board, I find none to be "UnAmerican." I used Dan's word as an example, but I don't believe him to be unpatriotic or have any lesser love for his country. My disagreement with his beliefs does not translate into any personal animosity (although DW does believe me to be "angry").

Lastly, my dad says more radical things than Obama's preacher sometimes. Do I distance myself and disown him? I have friends that are alchoholics and heroin addicts. Do I pretend like I've never known them? My grandmother is a bigot. Does my grandfather divorce her and the rest of the family stop going to visit her? Two of the guys I work with are racists, do I refuse to sit in on the meetings they run?

Shouldn't be a problem until you run for president. On a side note, is it mandatory for grandmothers to be intolerant? I know my grandmother (RIP) was.

You are the proverbial horse standing at the watering hole dying of thirst. I might as well as argue with a person that believes contrails are a government plot to poison us.

No. I'm the literal person sitting at his computer waiting for an answer to a (relatively) simple question. You might as well continue arguing with the dining room wall because it won't question your assumptions - something you are clearly used to.