Washington Post
05/02/08

The 'Race' Speech Revisited
By Charles Krauthammer


"I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother."

-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18

Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews.

Apparently there's been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative. Poor Geraldine Ferraro, thrice lashed by Obama in Philadelphia as the white equivalent of Wright's raving racism, is off the hook.

These equivalences having been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were, Obama has now decided that the man he simply could not banish because he had become part of Obama himself is, mirabile dictu, surgically excised.

At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright's latest comments -- Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.

What were Obama's three citations? Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American "terrorism."

But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.

Obama's Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright's remarks: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning."

That was then. On Tuesday, Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Wright's outrages. But hadn't Obama told us that surprise about Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America's history of segregated services? How then to explain Obama's own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Wright's racist rants.

Obama's turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites-- one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia -- now stands discredited by Obama's own admission of surprise. But Obama's liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation.

Obama's newest attempt to save himself after Wright's latest poisonous performance is now declared the new final word on the subject. Therefore, any future ads linking Obama and Wright are preemptively declared out of bounds, illegitimate, indeed "race-baiting" (a New York Times editorial, April 30).

On what grounds? This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics," rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Obama could explain in all its complexity.

Turns out the Wright show was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Obama.

Hey
Quit throwing those little sissy UFC punches there Pete!

That horse isn't even tapping out!

hehe

quote:

Obama's newest attempt to save himself after Wright's latest poisonous performance is now declared the new final word on the subject. Therefore, any future ads linking Obama and Wright are preemptively declared out of bounds, illegitimate, indeed "race-baiting" (a New York Times editorial, April 30).

You proved his point. Thanks for playing sport!

More neo-con hubris from our resident jock-sniffer. Maybe a few more pasted op-eds written by think-tank geniuses will convince everyone Obama is the black equivalent of Strom Thurmond. Maybe if PA throws enough mud at Obama everyone will forget what a shi_tty job Republicans have done the last eight years...

Keep squawkin', chickenhawk.

PA has a lustful obsession with Obama, and is distraught that Obama is not gay.

Go here to this link:

http://www.fredstates.com/

Enough silliness and satire to go around and around about all THREE candidates!

You'll either laugh, or spit nickles.

But, you won't regret it... unlike voting for the wrong person.

Here is an interesting article that was in Newsweek today.

http://community.cnhi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/55410432/m...831079831#7831079831


According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons,

...Yet obama was okay with it? How else do you sit under that for 20 yrs?

She's been around black churches all her life, so Reverend Wright's anger-filled message didn't surprise her.

...Us either, the only thing suprising is that we should believe that all that wasn't going on for years.

one campaign adviser, who declined to be named discussing the Illinois senator's sentiments. "Early on, he was in search of his identity as an African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man. Reverend Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in helping him understand the black experience in America.

...You know I have never had to ask anyone what the white experience in America. Why? Because I am white and I live in America therefore I know what it is like. Why did Obama need another "man of color" to tell him what to feel?


Winfrey wasn't going for that. She's secure in her blackness, so that didn't have a hold on her.

...So, let me get this straight.
Obama is an insecure "man of color" that is getting his identity from Mr. Wright, and has been getting this "picture" from Mr. Wright who he cannot disown anymore than he can disown his "white" granny, of what the "Black" experience is in America. And he has been getting this indoctrination for 20 yrs. And suddenly he is shocked and hurt and angered as soon as someone else hears what he has built himself upon?

Finally, I got it.

Let's head to the voting booths.

quote:

Originally posted by leftcoastlooker:
...You know I have never had to ask anyone what the white experience in America. Why? Because I am white and I live in America therefore I know what it is like. Why did Obama need another "man of color" to tell him what to feel?

Primarily because the power structure has bent over backwards to encourage blacks to identify themselves as being separate from... instead of a part of.

So, in order to be part of being separate from, one needed to learn the jargon of staying there.

Until recently... which is what makes Obama's candidacy so promising for a lasting change in one among America's least resolved social enigmas.

Yes, we can.

Hey by the way Mike, that link was funny.

Check out this one when you get a chance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20164519/displaymode/1107/s/1/

quote:

Originally posted by leftcoastlooker:
Check out this one when you get a chance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20164519/displaymode/1107/s/1/

Wonderful! Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Pete Kirkman:
More neo-con hubris from our resident jock-sniffer. Maybe a few more pasted op-eds written by think-tank geniuses will convince everyone Obama is the black equivalent of Strom Thurmond. Maybe if PA throws enough mud at Obama everyone will forget what a shi_tty job Republicans have done the last eight years...

Keep squawkin', chickenhawk.

More liberal "logic." First, call the story old (check). Second, attack the writer (check).

Using that "logic," can I assume (as many of you do here) that by NOT disagreeing with the article that you believe it is true? Is this the reason for calling a relevant topic dead and attacking it's writer?

Perhaps this guy helped "President Bush and Republicans cause 9/11" (-Pete) as well! ROFL!

Squawk! Squawk! It's liberal logic! Why can't they see the truth? Squawk!