Excerpt
Ah, well, no, the senator told ABC News. The Rev. Wright is like "an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with." So did he agree with goofy old Uncle Jeremiah on Sept. 16, 2001? That Sunday morning, Uncle told his congregation that the United States brought the death and destruction of 9/11 on itself. "We nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," said the Rev. Wright. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards."Is that one of those "things I don't always agree with"? Well, Sen. Obama isn't saying, responding merely that he wasn't in church that morning. OK, fair enough, but what would he have done had he happened to have shown up on Sept. 16? Cried "Shame on you!" and stormed out? Or, if that's a little dramatic, whispered to Michelle that he didn't want their daughters hearing this kind of drivel while rescue workers were still sifting through the rubble and risen from his pew in a dignified manner and led his family to the exit? Or would he have just sat there with an inscrutable look on his face as those around him nodded?
All Sen. Obama will say is that "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." And in that he may be correct. There are many preachers who would be happy to tell their congregations "God damn America." But Barack Obama is not supposed to be the candidate of the America-damners: He's not the Rev. Al Sharpton or the Rev. Jesse Jackson or the rest of the racial grievance-mongers. Obama is meant to be the man who transcends the divisions of race, the candidate who doesn't damn America but "heals" it – if you believe, as many Democrats do, that America needs healing.
Yet since his early twenties he's sat week after week, listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race-huckster.
What is Barack Obama for? It's not his "policies," such as they are. Rather, Sen. Obama embodies an idea: He's a symbol of redemption and renewal, and a lot of other airy-fairy abstractions that don't boil down to much except making upscale white liberals feel good about themselves and get even more of a frisson out of white liberal guilt than they usually do. I assume that's what Geraldine Ferraro was getting at when she said Obama wouldn't be where he was today (i.e., leading the race for the Democratic nomination) if he was white. For her infelicity, the first woman on a presidential ticket got bounced from the Clinton campaign and denounced by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for her "insidious racism" indistinguishable from "the vocabulary of David Duke."
Oh, for cryin' out loud. Enjoyable as it is to watch previously expert tossers of identity-politics hand grenades blow their own fingers off, if Geraldine Ferraro's an "insidious racist", who isn't?
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2 comments:
If his church isn't that controversial, then is it fair to assume that this episode gives us a look into what is being preached in black churches across the country? Is this the "Change We Can Believe In"?
No one is saying that African Americans have not been the victims through slavery and, later on, implicit racism. Today it still exists in pockets. But today the country has far more intolerance of racism and the majority of people in this country look beyond skin color.
In the age of an African American man legitimately running for president, is it unreasonable to expect most African American's to accept that the vast majority of whites (republicans and democrats) are in full support absolute equality, regardless of skin color.
Why then should Americans accept the words of this preacher to be considered to be a continuation of the "progress" that has been made. It seems to me that his words discount the efforts of every white soldier who died in the civil war to end slavery, every white civil rights activist in the last 50 years, and every white citizen who has not a racist bone in his or her body.
These words are basically, all whites are evil, and are so based solely on skin color. It was Barack's right to belong to this church for 20 years, but it is our right to assume that this church is a reflection of some, if not all of his core beliefs.
Do we want a an African American for president? Absolutely. It would be an ideal situation for a true uniter for the races. But would someone who follows a white man hater be the right person for this job. Doubtful.
Couldn't agree more
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