Trashing grandma, yet
Let us first remind ourselves of some of the sayings and activities of Barack Obama’s pastor, friend, mentor and ‘sounding board’ Rev Jeremiah Wright, which have at last attracted the attention of the American media:
He said ‘God bless America’ should be replaced by ‘God damn America’.
He said 9/11 resulted from corrupt American foreign policy.
He blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.
He is a friend and ally of the black power racist and Jew-hating demagogue Louis Farrakhan.
Under pressure, Obama in his make-or-break speech today went further than before in denouncing Wright’s comments.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy…the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Okaaay — but if he thinks Wright’s view were so appalling how come Obama was a member of a church where the pastor embodied such appalling views, and where Obama sat through such poisonous sermonising in services every week? For Wright’s comments weren’t just controversial. They were beyond the pale. There are many more of them than have been reported: the church is a black power church. How could Obama have remained in such a church unless he agreed with its basic black power philosophy? How come he was recruited into Christianity in the first place by such a man? The desperate attempts in the last few days to bat away such questions by suggesting that Obama didn’t really know about Wright’s attitudes are themselves blown away by Obama’s own comments today:
… But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.
…And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Rev. Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
Yes, Obama is a person who would trash his own grandmother to gain the American presidency!
After his declaration of love for the black power racist Pastor Wright, Obama then digs himself in deeper:
We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.So if we dismiss Wright as a crank or demagogue we are supposedly dismissing the importance of race. So Wright supposedly speaks for all those who want to defeat racial prejudice. But the whole point about Wright is that he embodies racial prejudice. Now look at how Obama turns this fact on its head:
But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow… This is the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.Ah. So Wright’s racism against white people is all the fault of — white people! Warming to his theme, Obama then tells us that white people too have the same kind of ‘anger’ that fuels Pastor Wright’s hate-filled jeremiads.
Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.So the anger of these ‘conservatives’ at the inverse racism of political correctness and the systematic defamation and bullying of white people under its banner is as valid as Pastor Wright’s racism, his defamation of America and his bullying of white people.
Wow, this is really creative twisting!!
The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country -- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.No. The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is that he is a bigot.
But hey, Obama doesn’t want us to talk about Wright’s sermons any more. He wants us to start swaying and clapping and chanting along with his hypnotic rhetoric, presumably so redolent of the cadences of Pastor Wright. Because Obama stands for change. And now we know what he wants to change. He wants to change the subject.