Election 2008 | Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" Speech
Barack Obama's Speech (full version) A More Perfect Union - March 18, 2008 Philadelphia - 37 minutes
31 comments:
Anonymous
said...
e black racial hatred in Obama's speech isn't like anything we have heard for a long time; but it is not unique. We can go back to Elijah Mohammed and Mohammed X for a full explacation of this kind of racial justification and hatred. The Black Muslim movement was not a bunch of black guys who were Muslim. It was an entire movement who preached hate of whitey and considered itself a church. It's current representative is Mr. Louis Farrakam (spelling?).
How promoting the beliefs of Mohammed X is a statement of racial unity beats the snot out of me!
Whatever happened to quoting Martin Luther King on equal rights. Have we have now fallen all the back to calls for the Black man to arm himself for war with whitey?
I am getting so tired of Obama's Holier than Thou attitude. You can't say anything about him, or it's racist. The more he talks, the more his speeches have the cadance of Jesse Jackson and the rest of his ilk. Can't stand Jackson either-what a hypocrite. Obama is following in his footprints. Obama preaches, he doesn't talk.
Maybe you should review the text of Martin Luther King's speechs and sermons, as well as those of Rev. Wright's. There are entire passages of what would be considered, by most, to be inflamatory. However, you look at the rest of it, and their other actions, and you realize you can't judge the person based on just those sound bites currently in rotation on the news shows.
I'm not excusing the comments made, but I'm not going to judge a Presidental candidate's suitablity based on what his pastor has said.
I thought his speech showed just what kind of 'thinking man' we actually have the opportunity to elect as our leader.
His speeches sound nothing like Jesse Jackson. The only reason you make that comparison is because he's another black male leader that is in the media.
You better judge a presidential candidate's suitiblity based on what his pastor has said. If he picks that kind of a racist to be his spiritual advisor, what kind of people would he pick to be on his cabinet, supreme court justice or any other position. His judgment here is in serious question.
8:48-Who is Mohammed X? Do you perhaps mean Malcom X? If you want your opinion to be considered seriously at least make some minimal effort to sound like you know what you're talking about. And it only takes two seconds to look up how to spell Louis Farrakhan's name.
To judge a candidate by comments made by the pastor of their church is just silly. I would be suspect of anyone who blindly agreed with everything anyone, including a pastor, told them. An intellegent person can think for themself and form their own opinions.
I agree, 9:53, Barack is NOT another Jesse Jackson.
Sen. Barack Obama called for the firing of talk radio host Don Imus. Obama told ABC News, a year ago, quote, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group." He also said he did not want his daughters to hear that kind of hateful language Imus said but he has no problem taking his kids to listen to hateful racist church sermons.
Imus made comments that were vulgar, low and sexist. A pastor getting into a rant about the failings of a society and its government aren't quite the same thing.
I'm not excusing Wright's rhetoric, as it is inflammatory. But its basis is in a much larger, more serious arena than Don Imus doing his middle-aged man giggle about "Ho's".
I'd also like to point out that if you look at some of what Wright as accomplished, it's not such a simple judgement call. He's a veteran, and has enough compassion in him to reach out to the homeless, drug addicts and other societal outcasts.
What kind of pastor preaches hatred towards the government. He makes inflammatory unfounded statements that the government injected black pilots during WWII with aids. He damns America and honors Farrakhan. I always thought when you go to church, the man of the cloth should be preaching forgiveness, repentance, faith and love. It's men like Wright that keeps the racial divide alive and Obama dismisses it. Obama's lack of judgement and experience is apparently showing. This isn't the president I want leading our country nor should he be yours.
How could Obama sit in a church for 20 years and, so he says, remain unaware of Wright's radical racism and unpatriotism?
In fact, either on purpose or by osmosis, Obama appears to have been negatively impacted by Wright's teaching. All the pieces fit: Obama's refusal to place hand over heart during the National Anthem, his decision not to wear a patriotic pin, and his wife's "first time I'm proud of my country" line. We are to believe these actions were in no way connected to Wright?
Obama is an intelligent man. He had to have known Wright's preoccupation. Or he was blind. And either case is equally damning!
AMERICANS WAKE UP OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT A LIER, HE HAS HIS OWN LAW LIKE THE PASTOR, WHEN YOU HAVE MENTOR FOR 20 YRS YOU WILL BE EXACT DUPLICATE OF HIM THAT IS THE FACT WHAT HE IS PUTTING FULL OF ACT HE IS GOOD AND HE HAS LEARN HOW TO SPEAK FOR SURE IN 20 YRS. HE IS HALF BLACK AND HALF MUSLIM THAT IS THE FACT, I FEEL SORRY FOR HIS GRANDMOTHER WHO BROUGHT HIM UP IN A BEST SCHOOL, BEST EDUCATION HE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT POOR SUFFERS AND HE COMPARE HIS GRANDMOTHER TO HIS PASTER PLEASE, THE WOMAN WOULD HAVE WORKED DAY AND NIGHT FOR HIM AND HERE COMES PATER WHO HAS BRAINWASHED HIM AND HE HAS DONE GOOD JOB, AND TAUGHT HOW TO FOOL DUMP WHITE AMERICANS BY HIS SPEECH AND ALSO HE FOOLED THE BLACKS BEING BLACK SO HE CAN GET BOTH VOTES. LISTEN TO HIM CAREFULLY HE DOES NOT GO IN DETAILS HE IS ALWAYS HIGH LEVEL SPEECH, BUT HE IS A GOOD PREECHER MAY HE SHOULD GO AS PATER IN THE CHURCH.AMERICAN PLEASE WAKE UP SEE WHAT IS INFRONT OF YOU THE TRUE COLOR HE IS RACIST BUT HE IS ACTING VERY WELL. WE ARE ALL ARE FOOL. HIS WIFE FOOLED US AS WELL COMMENT SAYING SHE LOVES USA NOW MY COUNTRY BECASUE BLACK NOMINEE WAS ELECTED. THE TRUTH IS WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT RACIST ATLEAST THE MAJORITY BUT MOST BLACK RACIST, IF THEY GET ANY RACIAL REMARK AL SHARPTON WILL BE ALL OVER ....I AM BLACK PERSON I AM SHAME TODAY TO SEE A FOUL LIKE OBAMA FOOLING THE BLACKS, WHAT HAS HE DONE FOR BLACK HE JUST WANT THE VOTES, HE USED IS HALF WHITE AND MUSLIM BULLSHI TO FOOL OTHERS. WAKE AMERICA DONT BE GOD DAM AMERICA....LETS SAY GOD BLESS AMERICA THATS WHAT THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA SHOULD SAY AND SUPPORT, IT STARTS FROM US, HOW DO GAIN RESPECT FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD OTHER PART OF THE WORLD IS LAUGHING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HOW STUPID AMERICANS ARE.
I don't remember this type of denunciation regarding Pat Robertson saying that 9/11 was God's punishment for our wickedness. McCain still cozies up to him.
"I'm not going to judge a Presidental candidate's suitablity based on what his pastor has said."
Rest assured, Mr. Obama will be judged. Every candidate in this presidential campaign has been vetted by the media for their religious beliefs and associations. What gives Mr. Obama the right to a free pass? Because he's an impressive public speaker? I was certainly impressed by how he threw his white grandmother under the bus in his recent speech by comparing her to that racist crackpot Rev. Wright.
Hopefully the liberal media will now start to examine, in more detail, just who Mr. Obama is and what he's all about.
Obama merely said he could not disown Rev. Wright no more than he could disown his black community or grandmother. He in no way made a comparison between the Rev. Wright and his grandmother nor did he throw her under the bus. I just love how people read more into it than what's there. You must write for Openwhine.
look this up on the internet, obamas wife wrote a paper in college that is on file with the school,it is officialy banned from access until nov 5th , why because it is a nasty hate filled anti white racist rant and if it were to be released before the election it would sink her husbands campaign like the titanic. No other papers from her school are blocked-just hers. I am positive that one of you computer savy folks can find it and post it here it would be a great scoop!
So if this so called paper Obama's wife wrote has not been published or released, how do you supposedly know of its hateful, anti-white content. Sounds fishy to me.
the critics are looking for an excuse to blast obama? the mans spirtual leader is a hate monging racist, are you f'n kidding me you cant see this? if thats true then for the sake of all of us please dont vote!
Sen. Barack Obama not only confronted race in his speech Tuesday, he transcended it, and no honest American ear could ever be immune to the pitch, tone and quality of his words; not yours, not mine.
So much of what he said was undeniable and true and honestly spoken, in the calm and clear voice of a reasonable man explaining America's most unreasonable and hateful topic.
"We've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that's it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase reconciliation on the cheap," said the senator from Illinois.
"On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
As he spoke, I saw him as the next president of the United States and thought of voters feeling the same. A few moments afterward, one of the wire service headlines said: "Obama Speech Confronts Racial Division," a view certain to continue, reinforced by the media at every opportunity, that Obama faced the dragon and emerged from Philadelphia as triumphant as
St. George. All of this is quite nice indeed. But confronting race wasn't the task at hand.
Obama's obligation Tuesday was not to talk about race. We talk and talk about race in America. We use it to measure everything, from public contracts to college and graduate school admission standards and, sometimes, it seems we talk of nothing else.
No, Obama's job was to address and condemn and isolate his candidacy and his nation from the ugly, anti-American rhetoric espoused by his pastor, Rev. Wright.
In talking to Tribune reporters about this Friday, and in other comments made over the weekend, Obama offered the view that Wright's passions were set in the Jim Crow '50s and '60s, and you can hear the anger in Wright's comments as a relic of our ugly, racist, American past.
Yet anyone remotely interested in the truth of the Wright/Obama story knows this one isn't really about race in the conventional sense.
It is about the fact that Wright cursed the United States and blasphemed from the pulpit. It is about the fact that videos of Wright's comments are circulated endlessly on the Internet, no doubt to the delight of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It is about the fact that on the Sunday following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rev. Wright offered this particularly hateful bit of homily that sounds ghost-written by Louis Farrakhan:
"America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Does Obama believe or countenance such ugly nonsense? Of course not. His is truly an American story, impossible anywhere but here.
Yet when we confront race in America, shouldn't we not only confront white racism, but another type, mostly unmentioned and rhetorically dangerous, in which black leaders of Wright's generation sometimes say ridiculous and hateful things and are shielded?
In America's unofficial white liberal catechism that frames so much of the discussion, whites often pretend they don't hear such black hate speech, because to hear it would compel them to challenge it, and a challenge offers the prospect of being denounced by black leadership as racist.
There is nothing more terrified than a white political reporter about to be called a racist. Unless, of course, it is a "transcendent" black presidential candidate of great promise, harangued by political thugs as not being black enough, perhaps concerned he'd be denounced as a traitor if he condemned not only Wright's words, but Wright himself.
Obama must have heard such hate speech from that pulpit for years and said nothing of it, even though the white grandmother who loved him and helped raise him would have certainly cringed before Wright's anger.
Yet Obama did invoke his grandmother Tuesday in his speech. He said she loved him even though he'd heard her admit some racial prejudice that "made me cringe." He treated Wright as a complicated man, yet he reduced his grandmother to a two-dimensional rhetorical device, to protect her grandson from criticism that he didn't go far enough to condemn Wright's foolishness.
He was saying: I love Wright, who is black. I love my grandmother, who is white. Would you have me damn my own beloved grandmother by damning Wright, as he damned the United States?
It hurt me to watch it. And, I hope for his sake, that it hurt him to say it.
Obama joined Wright's church for a reason, just as he knew there was a reason the political fixer Tony Rezko was trying to seduce him. Obama is no fool. He gets to the edge of things.
So on Tuesday, he stepped lightly, expertly shifting the debate about Wright to a wider debate on solid ground, about race and American hopes and American guilt.
Can anyone confirm for me that Barack Obama will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a lapel pin of the United States flag on his suit jacket. I have heard reference to this made a couple of times, and I can't believe that if it were true it wouldn't be reported in the press? Thank you so much!
Went there did that and guess what IT IS RESTRICTED til Nov 5 2008. Wonderful people we are dealing with huh? Shades of Clintons? IS this top secret or what. MAybe its just embarissing to the Obamas!
Wright is wrong. Obama would not distance himself from this demagog, ergo Obama is as wrong as Wright. Obama's obvious super sized ego has him lecturing the rest of us on race relations when his own wife can't stand Amerika, and he has never publicly refuted or confronted his pastor of two decades about his blatant demagogery.
Obviously Mr. Obama's preferences and prejudices should be scrutinized. He wants to be president, but he has shown very poor judgment in his long time association with political strongman and slumlord Tony Rezko, and he permits his impressionable daughters to be assaulted by Wright's highly charged anti-white, anti-American bigoted rantings. For that matter he has never taken to task Jesse, Al or Louie Farrakan either. And yet he expects Americans to turn the corner on race when he himself has not walked the walk.
Let's be very frank. Everyone knows the REAL reason for the speech, and that was to offset a crisis in his campaign brought on by his relationship with the irreverent Revered. Obama is all smoke and mirrors and zero, zilch, nada substance.
31 comments:
e black racial hatred in Obama's speech isn't like anything we have heard for a long time; but it is not unique. We can go back to Elijah Mohammed and Mohammed X for a full explacation of this kind of racial justification and hatred. The Black Muslim movement was not a bunch of black guys who were Muslim. It was an entire movement who preached hate of whitey and considered itself a church. It's current representative is Mr. Louis Farrakam (spelling?).
How promoting the beliefs of Mohammed X is a statement of racial unity beats the snot out of me!
Whatever happened to quoting Martin Luther King on equal rights. Have we have now fallen all the back to calls for the Black man to arm himself for war with whitey?
I am getting so tired of Obama's Holier than Thou attitude.
You can't say anything about him, or it's racist.
The more he talks, the more his speeches have the cadance of Jesse Jackson and the rest of his ilk. Can't stand Jackson either-what a hypocrite. Obama is following in his footprints.
Obama preaches, he doesn't talk.
DO NOT WANT HIM FOR PRESIDENT!
Maybe you should review the text of Martin Luther King's speechs and sermons, as well as those of Rev. Wright's. There are entire passages of what would be considered, by most, to be inflamatory. However, you look at the rest of it, and their other actions, and you realize you can't judge the person based on just those sound bites currently in rotation on the news shows.
I'm not excusing the comments made, but I'm not going to judge a Presidental candidate's suitablity based on what his pastor has said.
I thought his speech showed just what kind of 'thinking man' we actually have the opportunity to elect as our leader.
His speeches sound nothing like Jesse Jackson. The only reason you make that comparison is because he's another black male leader that is in the media.
Barack Obama is certainly NOT Jesse Jackson.
9:51am
You better judge a presidential candidate's suitiblity based on what his pastor has said. If he picks that kind of a racist to be his spiritual advisor, what kind of people would he pick to be on his cabinet, supreme court justice or any other position.
His judgment here is in serious question.
8:48-Who is Mohammed X? Do you perhaps mean Malcom X? If you want your opinion to be considered seriously at least make some minimal effort to sound like you know what you're talking about. And it only takes two seconds to look up how to spell Louis Farrakhan's name.
To judge a candidate by comments made by the pastor of their church is just silly. I would be suspect of anyone who blindly agreed with everything anyone, including a pastor, told them. An intellegent person can think for themself and form their own opinions.
I agree, 9:53, Barack is NOT another Jesse Jackson.
Sen. Barack Obama called for the firing of talk radio host Don Imus. Obama told ABC News, a year ago, quote, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group." He also said he did not want his daughters to hear that kind of hateful language Imus said but he has no problem taking his kids to listen to hateful racist church sermons.
What a hypocrit.
Imus made comments that were vulgar, low and sexist. A pastor getting into a rant about the failings of a society and its government aren't quite the same thing.
I'm not excusing Wright's rhetoric, as it is inflammatory. But its basis is in a much larger, more serious arena than Don Imus doing his middle-aged man giggle about "Ho's".
I'd also like to point out that if you look at some of what Wright as accomplished, it's not such a simple judgement call. He's a veteran, and has enough compassion in him to reach out to the homeless, drug addicts and other societal outcasts.
What kind of pastor preaches hatred towards the government. He makes inflammatory unfounded statements that the government injected black pilots during WWII with aids. He damns America and honors Farrakhan.
I always thought when you go to church, the man of the cloth should be preaching forgiveness, repentance, faith and love. It's men like Wright that keeps the racial divide alive and Obama dismisses it. Obama's lack of judgement and experience is apparently showing. This isn't the president I want leading our country nor should he be yours.
How could Obama sit in a church for 20 years and, so he says, remain unaware of Wright's radical racism and unpatriotism?
In fact, either on purpose or by osmosis, Obama appears to have been negatively impacted by Wright's teaching. All the pieces fit: Obama's refusal to place hand over heart during the National Anthem, his decision not to wear a patriotic pin, and his wife's "first time I'm proud of my country" line. We are to believe these actions were in no way connected to Wright?
Obama is an intelligent man. He had to have known Wright's preoccupation. Or he was blind. And either case is equally damning!
12:47
You said it!
Plus would he salute the troops as Commander?
AMERICANS WAKE UP OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT A LIER, HE HAS HIS OWN LAW LIKE THE PASTOR, WHEN YOU HAVE MENTOR FOR 20 YRS YOU WILL BE EXACT DUPLICATE OF HIM THAT IS THE FACT WHAT HE IS PUTTING FULL OF ACT HE IS GOOD AND HE HAS LEARN HOW TO SPEAK FOR SURE IN 20 YRS. HE IS HALF BLACK AND HALF MUSLIM THAT IS THE FACT, I FEEL SORRY FOR HIS GRANDMOTHER WHO BROUGHT HIM UP IN A BEST SCHOOL, BEST EDUCATION HE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT POOR SUFFERS AND HE COMPARE HIS GRANDMOTHER TO HIS PASTER PLEASE, THE WOMAN WOULD HAVE WORKED DAY AND NIGHT FOR HIM AND HERE COMES PATER WHO HAS BRAINWASHED HIM AND HE HAS DONE GOOD JOB, AND TAUGHT HOW TO FOOL DUMP WHITE AMERICANS BY HIS SPEECH AND ALSO HE FOOLED THE BLACKS BEING BLACK SO HE CAN GET BOTH VOTES. LISTEN TO HIM CAREFULLY HE DOES NOT GO IN DETAILS HE IS ALWAYS HIGH LEVEL SPEECH, BUT HE IS A GOOD PREECHER MAY HE SHOULD GO AS PATER IN THE CHURCH.AMERICAN PLEASE WAKE UP SEE WHAT IS INFRONT OF YOU THE TRUE COLOR HE IS RACIST BUT HE IS ACTING VERY WELL. WE ARE ALL ARE FOOL. HIS WIFE FOOLED US AS WELL COMMENT SAYING SHE LOVES USA NOW MY COUNTRY BECASUE BLACK NOMINEE WAS ELECTED. THE TRUTH IS WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT RACIST ATLEAST THE MAJORITY BUT MOST BLACK RACIST, IF THEY GET ANY RACIAL REMARK AL SHARPTON WILL BE ALL OVER ....I AM BLACK PERSON I AM SHAME TODAY TO SEE A FOUL LIKE OBAMA FOOLING THE BLACKS, WHAT HAS HE DONE FOR BLACK HE JUST WANT THE VOTES, HE USED IS HALF WHITE AND MUSLIM BULLSHI TO FOOL OTHERS. WAKE AMERICA DONT BE GOD DAM AMERICA....LETS SAY GOD BLESS AMERICA THATS WHAT THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA SHOULD SAY AND SUPPORT, IT STARTS FROM US, HOW DO GAIN RESPECT FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD OTHER PART OF THE WORLD IS LAUGHING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HOW STUPID AMERICANS ARE.
Wonder what part is "white" he sure pushes being black.
Are Grandparents alive?
How about his Mother?
We know his Dad left him years ago.
I don't remember this type of denunciation regarding Pat Robertson saying that 9/11 was God's punishment for our wickedness. McCain still cozies up to him.
I don’t remember where/when McCain attended Robertson’s church—for 20 years—either.
"I'm not going to judge a Presidental candidate's suitablity based on what his pastor has said."
Rest assured, Mr. Obama will be judged. Every candidate in this presidential campaign has been vetted by the media for their religious beliefs and associations. What gives Mr. Obama the right to a free pass? Because he's an impressive public speaker? I was certainly impressed by how he threw his white grandmother under the bus in his recent speech by comparing her to that racist crackpot Rev. Wright.
Hopefully the liberal media will now start to examine, in more detail, just who Mr. Obama is and what he's all about.
Obama merely said he could not disown Rev. Wright no more than he could disown his black community or grandmother. He in no way made a comparison between the Rev. Wright and his grandmother nor did he throw her under the bus.
I just love how people read more into it than what's there. You must write for Openwhine.
look this up on the internet, obamas wife wrote a paper in college that is on file with the school,it is officialy banned from access until nov 5th , why because it is a nasty hate filled anti white racist rant and if it were to be released before the election it would sink her husbands campaign like the titanic. No other papers from her school are blocked-just hers. I am positive that one of you computer savy folks can find it and post it here it would be a great scoop!
Are you talking about Michelle LaVaughn Robinson/Obama's thesis at Princeton?
7:19pm
So if this so called paper Obama's wife wrote has not been published or released, how do you supposedly know of its hateful, anti-white content. Sounds fishy to me.
I liked the speech. I think the critics are looking for an excuse to blast Obama.
the address for the paper is http://libweb5.princeton.edu/theses/thesesid.asp?id=98 enjoy!
the critics are looking for an excuse to blast obama? the mans spirtual leader is a hate monging racist, are you f'n kidding me you cant see this? if thats true then for the sake of all of us please dont vote!
Sen. Barack Obama not only confronted race in his speech Tuesday, he transcended it, and no honest American ear could ever be immune to the pitch, tone and quality of his words; not yours, not mine.
So much of what he said was undeniable and true and honestly spoken, in the calm and clear voice of a reasonable man explaining America's most unreasonable and hateful topic.
"We've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that's it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase reconciliation on the cheap," said the senator from Illinois.
"On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
As he spoke, I saw him as the next president of the United States and thought of voters feeling the same. A few moments afterward, one of the wire service headlines said: "Obama Speech Confronts Racial Division," a view certain to continue, reinforced by the media at every opportunity, that Obama faced the dragon and emerged from Philadelphia as triumphant as
St. George. All of this is quite nice indeed. But confronting race wasn't the task at hand.
Obama's obligation Tuesday was not to talk about race. We talk and talk about race in America. We use it to measure everything, from public contracts to college and graduate school admission standards and, sometimes, it seems we talk of nothing else.
No, Obama's job was to address and condemn and isolate his candidacy and his nation from the ugly, anti-American rhetoric espoused by his pastor, Rev. Wright.
In talking to Tribune reporters about this Friday, and in other comments made over the weekend, Obama offered the view that Wright's passions were set in the Jim Crow '50s and '60s, and you can hear the anger in Wright's comments as a relic of our ugly, racist, American past.
Yet anyone remotely interested in the truth of the Wright/Obama story knows this one isn't really about race in the conventional sense.
It is about the fact that Wright cursed the United States and blasphemed from the pulpit. It is about the fact that videos of Wright's comments are circulated endlessly on the Internet, no doubt to the delight of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It is about the fact that on the Sunday following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rev. Wright offered this particularly hateful bit of homily that sounds ghost-written by Louis Farrakhan:
"America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Does Obama believe or countenance such ugly nonsense? Of course not. His is truly an American story, impossible anywhere but here.
Yet when we confront race in America, shouldn't we not only confront white racism, but another type, mostly unmentioned and rhetorically dangerous, in which black leaders of Wright's generation sometimes say ridiculous and hateful things and are shielded?
In America's unofficial white liberal catechism that frames so much of the discussion, whites often pretend they don't hear such black hate speech, because to hear it would compel them to challenge it, and a challenge offers the prospect of being denounced by black leadership as racist.
There is nothing more terrified than a white political reporter about to be called a racist. Unless, of course, it is a "transcendent" black presidential candidate of great promise, harangued by political thugs as not being black enough, perhaps concerned he'd be denounced as a traitor if he condemned not only Wright's words, but Wright himself.
Obama must have heard such hate speech from that pulpit for years and said nothing of it, even though the white grandmother who loved him and helped raise him would have certainly cringed before Wright's anger.
Yet Obama did invoke his grandmother Tuesday in his speech. He said she loved him even though he'd heard her admit some racial prejudice that "made me cringe." He treated Wright as a complicated man, yet he reduced his grandmother to a two-dimensional rhetorical device, to protect her grandson from criticism that he didn't go far enough to condemn Wright's foolishness.
He was saying: I love Wright, who is black. I love my grandmother, who is white. Would you have me damn my own beloved grandmother by damning Wright, as he damned the United States?
It hurt me to watch it. And, I hope for his sake, that it hurt him to say it.
Obama joined Wright's church for a reason, just as he knew there was a reason the political fixer Tony Rezko was trying to seduce him. Obama is no fool. He gets to the edge of things.
So on Tuesday, he stepped lightly, expertly shifting the debate about Wright to a wider debate on solid ground, about race and American hopes and American guilt.
hey obama stay off this blog!
Hey Kass,
How about a story on Obama's 130+ "present" votes in the Senate for tomorrow’s Trib?
Remember, the President can't sit on the sidelines; they have to make tough calls.
Can anyone confirm for me that Barack Obama will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a lapel pin of the United States flag on his suit jacket. I have heard reference to this made a couple of times, and I can't believe that if it were true it wouldn't be reported in the press? Thank you so much!
3-19-18 11:19 pm
It was in the papers and news about the Pledge, the pin and him turning his back to the flag.
Went there did that and guess what IT IS RESTRICTED til Nov 5 2008. Wonderful people we are dealing with huh? Shades of Clintons? IS this top secret or what. MAybe its just embarissing to the Obamas!
It was in the 'papers' that it wasn't true.
Wright is wrong. Obama would not distance himself from this demagog, ergo Obama is as wrong as Wright. Obama's obvious super sized ego has him lecturing the rest of us on race relations when his own wife can't stand Amerika, and he has never publicly refuted or confronted his pastor of two decades about his blatant demagogery.
Obviously Mr. Obama's preferences and prejudices should be scrutinized. He wants to be president, but he has shown very poor judgment in his long time association with political strongman and slumlord Tony Rezko, and he permits his impressionable daughters to be assaulted by Wright's highly charged anti-white, anti-American bigoted rantings. For that matter he has never taken to task Jesse, Al or Louie Farrakan either. And yet he expects Americans to turn the corner on race when he himself has not walked the walk.
Let's be very frank. Everyone knows the REAL reason for the speech, and that was to offset a crisis in his campaign brought on by his relationship with the irreverent Revered. Obama is all smoke and mirrors and zero, zilch, nada substance.
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