Selling the Audacity of Audacity
As I re-read Barack Obama’s celebrated defense of Jeremiah Wright’s indefensible pathology, I am reminded of astronauts from three nations who meet to promote their national space programs:
“Next year,” said the American, “we’re going back to the Moon.”
“That’s nothing,” scoffed the Russian, “Next year we’re going to Mars!”
Unimpressed, the Polish astronaut laughed at both. “That’s nothing,” he boasts, “We’re going to the sun!”
When the skeptical astronauts asked how he planned to overcome the sun’s heat and gravity, the astronaut replies, “We’ll go at night!”
To those with a fundamental understanding of astronomy and physics, the story is a joke. But to those who are too young, mentally impaired or gullible, the joke becomes an inspirational story of a superior space program.
Without a basic understanding of history, Americans aren’t likely to grasp the absurdity of an affluent half-white affirmative action beneficiary who exploits a Jonestown-like congregation and their whacky minister to gain black authenticity among frustrated Democrats who’ve been retarded and exploited by decades of indoctrination by Democrat-controlled dropout factories, the mainstream media, and the race-baiters who promote the political party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation, while turning an anti-slavery icon into a present-day pejorative.
Like our sun-bound hero, the difference between this joke and inspiration relies not with Barack Obama’s ability to “transcend racism in America,” but with the profound gullibility of his audience.
March 20th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I know the press and the bobbing heads at PBS and on Jim Lehrer’s Report are all just pleased as punch about Obama’s speech, but come on! It was just another well delivered fluff piece, albeit well delivered and desined to make us all as giddy as his adoring disciples in the media. The guy IS without a doubt a terrific speaker.
And Liem, Im sorry to say I dont think he distanced himself at all. What he did do was justify it, and perhaps expiate his own guilt for knowing about and tolerating Wrights racial peppered homilies by placing them in the context of his own memories as the child of mixed parents, Jim Crow laws, and segregation era memories of his parents and white grandma.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
What’s the best way to weaken Obama and his momentum? Put him in front of a microphone for some-odd 40 minutes and watch him destroy himself.
“I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”
He doesn’t disown the people who have been important in his past just because they’ve said something controversial. He’s being straightforward with what Wright said and is putting it into his own personal context, instead of simply permitting assumptions to take place about race. I don’t see how Obama did not distance himself with Wright’s speech, so could you explain that to me?
“Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. 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.”
A lot of white people have become so sensitive when it comes to race that they have knee-jerk, belligerent reactions. Obama is not blaming whitey; he is asking for understanding.
And for good measure:
http://www.sj-r.com/Opinion/stories/27075.asp
March 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
No, of course, I didn’t expected him to declare Wright anathema with bell, book, and candle. You just dont cast a life long spiritual mentor out the door, even one that may have had a history of loss of discretion in the tone and demanor of his sermons from time to time.
What I wasnt expecting was his laundry list of America’s past racist offenses to justify not only Wright’s blatant hatred of white America but his suggestion that it was the feeling shared by most African Americans. Maybe Im niave here, but I dont believe thats true.
Nor that “anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition”.
BS! The Reagan coalition was built on more than just an impatience with affirmative action, but the on the wishes of a lot of people that the government on a wide range of things, not just affiormative action, just leave us alone, and the get the hell out our way, thank you.
These are not only outright falsehoods, but echoes of what Obama I can only assume, learned from attending the church of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and now holds as his own beliefs.
Even if all whites do have a knee jerk reaction as you say; and yet he he wants to garner support among mainstream white as well as blacks, and last time I checked that’s how you win Presidential elections, that speech was a strange way of doing it.