While there was a lot of stiff competition for the dumbest commentary regarding the Obama speech yesterday, I think I have settled on a winner- the assertion that Obama somehow threw his grandmother under the bus. The Powerline:
When seeking to extricate himself from the tight spot in which he has been placed by his long association with the spiritual leadership of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama hauled in his (living) maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.
Steve Sailer (of VDARE fame):
But Obama is so superb with words that it’s perfectly reasonable to hold him accountable for choosing to slander his own living grandmother for his political advantage.
The Gateway Pundit:
Barack Obama threw his ailing grandmother who raised him under the bus today.
You can see where this is going. What did Obama say:
I can no more disown [my evil black angry Amerikka hating minister] 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.
Only in the minds of the fringe right can expressing a shared unconditional love with your grandmother be considered “throwing her under the bus.” It is almost as if the right-wing has thrown their collective minds under the bus, run over them, backed up for good measure, peeled out, and left reason and logic in a ditch for dead. Before I go on, I would be remiss if I did not mention this special attempt at stupidity from the “Astute” bloggers:
He mentioned his white grandparents twice. ONCE TO DIS HIS DEAD [ALIVE?] WHITE GRANDMA.
This tells me a lot about Barack Hussein Obama Junior.
Especially when you add to it the fact his memoir was called “Dreams of My Father” – and was chiefly about Barack Junior’s fixation on the black Kenyan man who abandoned him and his mother.
Deep down, Obama hates white people.
What can you say to stupid like that?
At any rate, you know whose grandmother really was thrown under a bus yesterday? EVERYONE’S:
The Federal Reserve reduced short-term interest rates for the sixth time in six months on Tuesday, capping an extraordinary series of measures it has taken to stabilize financial markets. The cut was smaller than investors had been expecting, though, and exposed some signs of a split among policy makers.
The central bank lowered its federal funds rate — the rate it charges banks for overnight loans — by three-quarters of a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, and left the door open to additional rate cuts in the months ahead.
Though it was one of the biggest one-day rate cuts in decades, investors had been betting heavily that the Fed would cut its key rate a full percentage point in response to strong evidence that a recession has begun and to the deepening crisis on Wall Street.
But two members of the Fed’s policy-making committee dissented, saying they favored an even smaller rate cut, and the policy group as a whole expressed new worries about inflation — a possible argument against any future cuts.
Everyone living on savings and a fixed income just took another swift kick to the junk yesterday as the Fed moved to bail out rich assholes who should have known better.
*** Update ***
This is just genius.
Incertus
You heartless bastard, going after those people who’ve had to scramble to get their weekend houses on the market. Don’t you know they’re liable to take a loss on those houses in this market?
zzyzx
I saw that spin on MyDD for a while. They gave up on it pretty quickly.
liberal
While I personally think the idea that the Wright business matters is idiotic, in the US (viz, with absurd double standards about examining Rethuglican vs Dem candidates) the Wright business is really bad news.
cleek
go over to the corner and search for “grandmother”. they just can’t stop mishearing what he said. maybe it’s Bad Faith Wednesday.
javaphil
I’m confused. I thought he had to condemn and denounce people that used racist language. Or does he only have to condemn and denounce the black ones. It’s all very confusing. But I’m certain that once Barack does exactly what all these fine minds want him to they will line up and pull the lever for him in Nov. I also believe in unicorns.
myiq2xu
Obama’s grandmother is an old white woman. Hillary’s core constituency.
ZOMG! He threw Granny under the bus to keep her from endorsing Hillary!
Jen
Well, I’d be upset with my grandma too, if she’d raised me under a bus. There’s really no reason why you can’t at least get in the bus sometimes and stretch your back out a little.
Nylund
“Barack Obama threw his ailing grandmother who raised him under the bus today.” – Gateway Pundit
Is it just me or does it it really read like his ailing grandmother raised him in a single day (today) and this raising all happened under a bus (thank god it was only a single day! being under a bus does not sound comfortable) and in response, Obama threw her. Actually that sounds like a reasonable response. I’d probably throw someone too if they spent today raising me under a bus.
Wait, have I just unlocked the secret to making sense of a Gateway Pundit statement?
Nylund
Damn you Jen. You said it first, and more concisely.
4tehlulz
Shorter right: If he threw only the black relatives under the bus, it would have been a magnificent speech, but since he used the word “white” at some point, he obviously hates whitey.
liberal
John Cole wrote,
Well, Sailer’s gotta be right, because his IQ is really really high; he’s one of those smart white guys he keeps talking about.
Jake
ZOMG! TEH OBAMANATION IZ GOING TO KILL UR NICE OLD WHITE LADIEZ!
Would it do any good to tell these pathetic fucktards that when he said this:
he could have been describing my maternal (non-living) granny? That woman would have made a Grand Dragon say “Whoa lady, chill out.” And she would have called him a dirty cr^cker.
rawshark
John, just laugh and point. Parsing out the stupidity is the wrong move because then we are talking about what they are saying rather than real issues, which is what they want. They want to control the narrative in any way possible.
cleek
Obama acknowledges that his pastor has said disgusting, racist things, denounces those things, explains where he thinks those things come from, but refuses to angrily end his long relationship with the man. the wingnut reaction is “LIAR! SECRET MOOSLIM COMMIE RACIST BLACKSUPREMACIST LIAR REFUSES TO THROW RACSIT UNDER A BUS!!! LIAR!!!!”
Obama mentions that racism is widespread and mentions that his white grandmother had, like many people in this country, a kind of casual racism, but refuses to denounce her and angrily end his relationship with her. the wingnut reaction is “LIAR! SECRET MOOSLIM COMMIE RACIST BLACKSUPREMACIST LIAR THROWS HIS OWN WHITE GRANDMOTHER UNDER THE BUS!!!!”
LiberalTarian
Listen, the folks who steadfastly believe Obama is a manchurian islamist are happy to have a new jingo to repeat about him. Some mentally deranged few may really believe what they are saying, but a good number of opportunists are gaming people’s brains. They don’t *care* about what he really said. They want him politically dead, and they’ll say anything they think will make that objective happen.
Don’t waste your time repeating the lie to fight the lie–only speak the truth, and mock the liars. What gets repeated most is what people believe. Make the most repeated statement the one that these deranged idiots voted for ridiculous people who have cut the foundation of the country out from under us. While true, it also diminishes their authority.
ThymeZone
We’re laughing at the idiots now, which is what happens when somebody of the caliber of Obama sets the tone, and the hyenas keep barking.
These morons are the ones who thought Teri Schiavo was one ham sandwich away from coming up with the next prime number. Who think the earth is 6000 years old. Who think the war in Iraq is the War on Terracotta, or something.
They’re IDIOTS. We needn’t pay any attention to them.
Krista
Jen and Nylund, you made me choke on my tea from giggling.
Ah fuck it. Like someone else said yesterday, he could have gotten up there and recited the Lord’s Prayer, and they would have found issue with it just because it’s him.
I’m guessing, however, that the only ones who take those asshats seriously are fellow asshats who wouldn’t approve of Obama even if God himself came down from Heaven and said, “Pick this guy, wouldja?”
Hawise
Just to be clear- he could have chosen to compare his association to Wright with his relationship to his dead white grandfather who also helped raise him. This would have made more sense to me in the male role-model category of life. He chose to out his grandmother instead. He also felt a glaring need to add the adjective ‘white’ in his comment about women and the glass ceiling. I would love to have him as a professor on racial topics but he has some serious failings on gender topics.
Zifnab
We tried that for a while, but you’ve got to point and laugh at the town fool every now and again or people start thinking it might be a good idea to listen to him.
Powerline was Time’s first – and only – Blog Of The Year. Steve Sailor is one of the “very serious people” and I have no doubt that his message will be cleaned up and echoed by David Broder soon enough. Besides, John’s reading these morons so we don’t have to. Consider this a public service that spares you the indignity of giving these shmoes page views.
Jen
I’m confused. The wingnuts can run over lesbians a lot easier if they’re already under the bus. Wouldn’t they want her to be there?
Ninerdave
Really, these are not serious people.
You do have to give them props. To be that divorced from reality you have to have one really tightly closed circle jerk.
fap, fap, fap, fap, fap
Walker
I know this is an Obama thread, but this point cannot be made enough. The government’s War on Savers will kill the elderly in this country. And the AARP just sits idly by doing nothing.
Ninerdave
…and it’s greatly appreciated.
L Boom
And then he’d be picking on a dead guy, which would make him look even worse. But of course you know that.
The whole purpose of mentioning his grandmother was to point out the disconnect between people’s practice and ideas. His white grandmother loved him and raised him, but she was honest enough with him and with herself to confess to him that she was no saint, and he was honest enough to use this in a speech to illustrate the idea that people can be deeply flawed, however well-meaning they might be. And I suspect you know that, too.
Zifnab
The AARP fought like rabid badgers to save Social Security from getting turned into a Bear Sterns hedge fund. Cut them some slack.
Fwiffo
Get that blogger a copy of Strunk and White, stat!
From this speech, are we able to ascertain the nature of this alleged grandmother’s counter-tops?
Martin
The wingnuts are terrified of being called out on what they are. They aren’t necessarily racists, but there is certainly a racial bias that they layer over in economic or value terms.
Obama was willing to call out his granny on having that bias. The wingnut fear is that they’ll be called on it as well (individually or collectively) and this discussion will undermine them. They don’t want to have an honest discussion of anything, especially race.
myiq2xu
The wingnuts are delirious with joy. They can play clips of Rev. Wright, clutch their pearls and scream “ZOMG! Racism!”
BTW – I typed that with one hand tied behind my back like I promised.
Hawise
Jen, you don’t have to mimic them to make your point.
L Boom, he was in a no win situation, I just feel that his anecdote would have related better if he had chosen his grandfather instead. Unfortunately it would not have fit into the narrative that he has built about his life and candidacy. I would simply be happy if he was less of the politician that he claims not to be.
Jay C
Heh. There’s no surer sign that a public figure has actually gotten the best of the wingnuts than when the fulminating vehemence of their critique flies off into the ether like this.
And just for historical reference: persuse the following little gem from Mark Kleiman .
Best post today.
Xenos
E.B. White edited the New Yorker, so concise prose based on Anglo-Saxon word choices must be an effete liberal plot. BillO will be out defending the War on Latinisms pretty soon.
Still, it is time they ditched the umlaut in ‘cooperation’.
ThymeZone
I know, I know. But I have a clear line of separation with the blog and most commenters and for that matter most pundits on all sides. I don’t subscribe to the idea that the media actually has that much influence on retail politics. People generally detest the media. The media polls somewhere below ex-con-used-car-salesmen and child molestors. David Broder? If you can find one voter in any demographic who is influenced by David Broder, I will eat a worm and send you the celphone video.
Time Magazine? They’re about as relevant as Newsmax, maybe less. Seriously, why the blog world pays so much attention to that shit is beyond me. The intertube-trons are an opportunity to move away from that old model of information dispersal, and yet the keepers of the trons stare at the tv the way a baby stares at a mobile over his crib. Ga ga, goo goo.
Fugeddaboutit. One of the signatures of Obama’s campaign is that he has reached over the heads of the old information infrastructure and gone directly to the people. That’s how he raised $55m in one month … a record AFAIK for any campaign ever … on $100 contributions.
David Broder? Pssht. Fuck him.
Path
John, have you checked rogerlsimon.com? He actually wrote a poem to express his ‘feelings of (manufactured) outrage’!
And there wasn’t anything particularly insane coming from Malkin or was it that she didn’t say anything different from every other rightwing blogger?
Jen
Mimic them? I’m not claiming to be any great wit, but I feel like it’s safe to say that I’m funnier than the Gateway Pundit or Powerline.
Ninerdave
I think it’s simpler than that Martin. They are loyal to the GOP brand. Hell or high water and no one is going to tell them any different. They simply don’t care. If the GOP Dem’s platform tomorrow, they’d happily go right along.
socraticsilence
Michael J Totten from PJ media, lays out what I think the standard is now (in comments to a White Man’s Burden Poem by Roger L Simon):
“Barack Obama gave a good speech, and I think he means well, but he should have chosen a pastor in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s real simple, and nothing he can say will ever change that. ”
So there you have it, he needed a King like minister, that’s the new standard, and I think its only fair to start applying that level of achievement to everyone: I mean McCain was great but wouldn’t he be better if he was more like Audie Murphy, you know a real hero, I think we can reject him now. And Hillary’s ok, but she’s no Mother Theresa, so out she goes, this new unfair standards stuff is great!
Jen
This was funny, from Sadly, No!
Best Freeper Comment EVAH!
Martin
That’s pre-MUP-speech thinking. I suggested they are worried that his speech will change the dialogue from supporting that endless loop to one where people can honestly say that their grandma used to toss epithets. If that happens, they can no longer play their clips without being called out for what they are. So here again they attack the message to try and shift it from what it says to what they need it to say – which is that Obama is a dirty grandma hater who doesn’t actually care if we address race. Had he left out the grandma line, they would have found an even thinner thread to yank on still hoping the whole thing would unravel.
See, when I write stuff, try and focus at least enough energy on what I’m actually saying as you spend on how you will attempt to discredit me while thumbing your ass. (Maybe it helps you think, I won’t judge)
Sheesh, and even after I said something nice about you…
ThymeZone
Obama, today. As I said to another thread, he is again changing the subject. Wingnuts and people like myiq and lukasiak can sit here and bite ankles all day over petty crap that means nothing, basically mimicking the righty blogs. But Obama has a campaign to run, and issues to talk about, and is moving on.
My suggestion would be that we also move on. There’s a lot of important stuff to talk about in this country.
There’s a guy named McCain who doesn’t know the basics about Iraq, apparently, and wants to represent himself as Mister Foreign Affairs/Military Day One Readyguy.
And these idiots think they can elect him, and defeat our guy, by talking about what days Obama might have been in church.
Hello?
dslak
McCain needs to be called on this kind of stuff, because “National Greatness” is going to be what his campaign is all about.
McCain is worried that, if we admit to losing Iraq, people will no lose their faith in American exceptionalism.
He fails to see that the Bush administration’s torture regime, and browbeating of domestic opponents, has already done that.
dslak
That second line should read “people will lose their faith”
demimondian
Wow! MUP was raised under a bus? That’s either one heck of a life story, or an example of vast cosmic powers with teeny little living space.
TenguPhule
But how will we keep track of those who require mandatory euthanization?
TenguPhule
Please no. We have enough garbage floating in the shallow end of the gene pool as it is.
Cyrus
I think this misses the point. Very few people, if asked why they believe what they believe, would cite David Broder’s opinion. However, a lot of what people believe is influenced by what the media covers. Broder may not be the real problem, but Judy Miller and Joe Klein are, or their editors, and Broder is one of the public faces of people like that.
cleek
this MLK ?:
yeah. i bet Michael J Totten would’ve loved to hear some of that.
myiq2xu
The GOPers weren’t impressed, and they smell blood.
I know Obama supporters want this whole thing to be over, but that speech didn’t do it.
This is not an intellectual issue, it’s visceral. Those clips of Rev. Wright are red meat to the GOP base, which now has something to rally around.
There are lots of those independent and swing voters that this will resonate with, and not in a good way. Explanations that revolve around “understanding the black experience” won’t fly.
Don’t get mad at me, I think it’s no big deal. But I recognize that there are a lot of people who do think it’s a big deal.
The GOP doesn’t really even have to do anything. Their surrogates in the media will just keep playing those clips, over and over.
Guys like Newt Gingrich will piously talk about how terrible racism is and quote Dr. King. Some bloviating gasbags like Hannity and O’Rielly will play connect the dots with Obama not putting his hand over his heart and not wearing a flag pin, Michelle Obama’s comments about being proud of her country for the first time, and Wright saying “God Damn America.”
And they’ll do it with a straight face.
zulu
ask yourself would he had “dissed” his granny
if she was black & said these things
NOT
Tsulagi
Well, I’m guessing during his limited experience with women he’s gotten the nickname “tiny,” and that’s the root cause for his observation.
Steve V
It’s all about tarring the opposition’s character. Good faith or bad faith or whatever have nothing to do with it, and they’re good (and extremely well-practiced) at it. The Wright situation was something of a gift to them for that, but Obama seems to have a way of just gliding over the right wing outrage machine without being seriously damaged. By the time of the Pennsylvania primary, this could all be a distant, long forgotten memory.
I listen to right wing radio sometimes just to hear what nonsense they’re up to, and yesterday Hannity was talking about Obama’s campaign in the past tense, as if it had already been killed off by this. That seems to be the place they want to take this to. BTW, did you see that Huckabee came out in Obama’s and Wright’s defense? Very interesting!
dslak
Myiq, I was saying months ago that an Obama candidacy was going to bring out the latent racism in the GOP.
You know however that, were it not for this, or were Hillary the likely nominee, there would still be something else in a similar vein. Manufactured rage is all they’ve had to go on for quite some time, and they’re not going to stop as long as it keeps working.
zulu
this is about Judgement Obama says he has judgement to lead
but yet he couldn’t find the door OUT of that CHURCH
wow even Stevie Wonder could have(and he is blind)
Obama is a DISGRACE Wright on!
David
Here’s a fun mental exercise: Imagine that the Corner folks found out on their own that Obama’s grandmother, who raised him, had made repeated, if infrequent, racist statements to him during his formative years. They would, of course, never throw her under the bus, right?
myiq2xu
That was a no brainer. But this is a gift to them.
I have no doubt that Rev. Wright is a good decent man. I’m sure he has done many good things. But he apparently holds some views and has said some things that are politically toxic.
It’s unfair, but Obama is getting nailed for guilt by association.
All the reasoned explanations in the world won’t change the visceral reaction people will feel when they see Rev. Wright say “God damn America.”
Obama should have gotten out in front of this a long time ago.
dslak
Zulu, I am intrigued by your ideas and I would like to receive a copy of your newsletter.
crw
Hate to say it, but myiq is right. The Rethug strategy is now crystal clear. They’re going to brand Obama as a radical leftist, America hating angry black man. His speech, while good, can’t alone stop this meme. The Rethugs and their media surrogates are going to go into Big Lie mode now – keep repeating the charges and pointing to the clips and other things like the Weatherman association enough and the meme will take root. It’s all about going after the people who haven’t firmly accepted Obama as part of their in group yet, and sewing doubts so they can’t accept him.
ThymeZone
Numm, no, sorry, no sale. I am going to need to see the data on that. I just don’t believe that this is true.
And if you look at the numbers, in terms of readership and viewership, it’s nonsensical. How can 1% of the population have that kind of influence over 100 million people?
And my 1% is generous, it’s a peak viewership type of number. How many people actually read David Broder? I would wager it’s not even one tenth of one percent.
Sorry, I think the media influence is largeley self-referential. I think they talk to and listen to each other much more than ordinary people do.
There’s a news-cycle effect, but the interpretation and spin that emanates from the noise machines has little effect on the great middle of the voting population.
Unless you can show me data to the contrary, that’s what I am going to believe.
Gus
myiq, there’s nothing short of repudiating everything he believes that would satisfy the types of people you’re talking about. Those people would come out in force to vote against a black man anyways. I think Obama should move ahead as if his speech was his final word on this. This thing will never be over for the Gingrich’s and Hannitys, regardless of what he does. Fuck them, he’s not trying to win those assholes over anyway.
dslak
Maybe, or maybe if he had, it would have been used against him in the primary, before he had shown that he could win votes from a cross-section of people.
The fact that Hillary hasn’t jumped on the Wright bandwagon is a proper testament to this fact that her ambition knows no bounds.
Of course, if you’re predisposed to believe that about her anyway, the fact that not kicking Obama when he’s down might help her electorally only shows what a power-hungry wench she really is.
John Cole
What do you mean it is “now” clear. This was their strategy with Gore, this was how they turned Kerry into an America-hating war criminal, this was what they tried with Jim Webb, this is what they are going to try to do to Obama, Hillary, or whoever wins the nomination.
The key to the Democrats is to not pay attention to the inevitable patented attack, and to trudge forward with the nomination process and put forth the best candidate. the Republican modus operandi has been clear for years. The faux outrage yesterday to Obama’s spectacular speech clarified nothing other than how limp their attacks really are.
borehole
Check out this gem of non-point-getting I found at a right-wing hack website:
“And what kind of man throws his ‘white grandmother’ at us in such a way?”
That’s some kook who goes by “Taylor Marsh.” The name’s familiar; she must be ex-NRO or something.
dslak
No. Freaking. Way. If only it weren’t for Wright, they would never have fallen back on easy stereotypes that have been successful for them in the past.
Damn you, Scott Beauchamp!
JWeidner
I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that a Clinton candidacy is a gift to them as well. No one brings the right wing together quite like the Clintons. At this point, no matter which Democratic candidate is chosen, the right will have something to crow about. And crow they will, over, and over, and over, and over.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Face
Not sure that these closet racists want to use a bus reference in reference to something a Black person did….
myiq2xu
The mad dog racists would never vote for Obama. But this will energize them against Obama.
There are a lot of swing voters that will be affected by this, some who are closet racists and some who aren’t.
At this point, there isn’t much else Obama can do but keep trucking and see how it plays out.
chopper
wait…stevie wonder is blind? get the fuck outta here! you’re kidding, right?
ThymeZone
Nope. Wrong again. This thing changes the alignment on this issue. It gave Obama the opportunity to take the high ground. Race is now the third rail of this campaign season. Clinton can’t touch it, and McCain can’t touch it.
Only the insane people on the fringe are going to bark about it — well, except for idiots like you and lukasiak — and the more they bark about it, the better. It’s a winner for our side, not a loser. For the simple reason that Obama makes it a winner. He owns the issue.
You? I don’t care what you think, you’re a jackalope salesman. But anyone else? Just line up myiq’s words on this subject on one side, and Obama’s on the other, and compare and contrast. Most people can figure out which is the winning argument on this topic. It’s Obama’s.
myiq, lukasiak, and the crazy fucks on the right, or Obama? Whose vision do you like, whose do you respect?
It ain’t hard.
ThymeZone
To what end? Who listens to mad dog racists? Who votes their way?
Seriously, list those people, will you? Or STFU.
crw
Well, for a while it looked more like they were going to brand Obama as an empty suit with nothing but tired old (bad) Democratic ideas. You know. That other meme they use against Democrats.
Anyway, I think it’s a fair point that Obama has handed the slime machine a lot of ammo. Yes, they would have eventually pulled this line out anyway, but if all they had to draw on was lapelpingate, it wouldn’t have stood a chance of sticking and Obama could have just ignored it. Now he’s going to have to spend time proving that yes, he does in fact love America. Fortunately, I think Obama is good enough that he can do so while staying on message and maintaining his image as a straight shooter.
ThymeZone
Exactly.
dslak
McCain won’t touch it. He’s going to have hell keeping his surrogates from touching it.
The battle between McCain and the wingnuts has yet to truly begin.
myiq2xu
He needed to put some distance between himself and Rev. Wright years ago. If he had done it in 2004 when he was elected to the Senate he would be in a lot better shape. Move to Washington, join a diffent church.
Hillary and her campaign don’t even want to talk about it. Even mentioning it can backfire, especially when people are trying to blame her for starting this mess.
“When your opponent is self-destructing, don’t interfere.”
dslak
So now you’re saying Obama isn’t enough of a cynical politician that he would leave his own community church in order to join one in DC with a less controversial pastor?
Bubblegum Tate
I bet they thought long and hard about whether to go with the “He threw his granny under the bus!” line or the “ZOMG! His granny’s a racist just like his racist-ass minister!” line.
myiq2xu
George Bush didn’t talk about the swiftboat thing, did he? He didn’t need to.
I’ll bet Hillary is putting out the word that she doesn’t want anyone connected to her campaign to say anything at all on the subject. McCain is probably doing that too.
ThymeZone
Why yes, yes he is. And he won’t even have to phony up a teary moment for the cameras to do it, like some lying-ass candidates would do. Or phony up a “Shame On You Hillary Clinton” charade for the cameras to get attention.
Or have his wife go out and declare Hillary Clinton’s policies to be “fairy tales.”
Nope, all Obama has to do is stand there and say what he thinks and believes, and oddly enough, most people are going to see that he means it and means what he says.
When the rubber hits the road, and it’s time to have the debates with the corpse of John McCain, I think we’ll do fine.
L Boom
Cleek, I’m pretty sure the MLK, Jr. they’re referring to is the recently canonized patron saint of MLK Day, the fearless civil rights activist who so bravely championed the January three day weekend.
And myiq, how would you situate the concerns about Obama’s pastor in relation to Hillary’s (and Bill’s)refusal to disclose their tax returns and, especially, reveal the names of Clinton Library donors? Obviously, McCain’s own lack of disclosure won’t be a concern, nor will the lack of disclosure of Bush Library donors for Dubya.
The Wright angle is the single attack that’s gotten any degree of traction on Obama. Compare that to Hillary Clinton, the lightning rod for right wing hate for 15+ years, and all the crap they’ll be dredging up, plus all the new concerns that may or not be valid. Hell, to motivate their base, chanting her name is enough to set them off frothing.
There’s really no comparison between their vulnerabilities, especially once you start considering Hillary’s attacks on her own party. Racism will most certainly be a factor in the election, but I think Obama’s doing a good job defusing it, and might even be able to turn it into an advantage with the whole kooky hope thing.
ThymeZone
Yeah? Let me know when that memo reaches your fucking desk.
myiq2xu
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
ThymeZone
Oh, you mean be more like Clinton? Choose a pastor based on political marketability?
Yeah, we need more of that kind of bullshit from the people who want to run our country. Really, that’s what we like.
ThymeZone
You’d be the expert on denial around here.
Tsulagi
Exactly.
Fixed.
rawshark
That’s not how it works. The media knows what the people are thinking and plays to those thoughts. This gives the proles the impression they are thinking independantly when they are actually being lead. The beauty is in concinving people who have no background in a subject that they have good ideas about the subject based on surface observations. Show people a laffer curve and they will combine that with there want of ‘no taxes’ and they will believe they understand and support the premise that lowering taxes raises revenue. Seriously I have a friend who said, ‘when an NHL owner says he lost $10 million its because last year he made $50 million and this year he only made $40 million’. This same person has argued laffer curve nonsense with me. But he’s convinced he didn’t learn this shit on right wing radio, it’s his own thinking. He’s demonstrated he can’t even think on the level required to understand the laffer curve but he wants to argue with me that its correct. Where do I start?
But of course the media has had no role in shaping these beliefs.
ThymeZone
Another thing the Demcowards are missing here, is that race is not going to play like Swift Boats.
I seriously doubt that the country is going to sit by and let GOP surrogates try to turn this campaign into a race and religion slugfest the way they did with Kerry and the Swift Boat message. Too many people are going to stand up and say no, starting (as evidenced yesterday) with Obama himself.
Kerry just turned away from the Swiftboat thing. We saw yesterday that Obama isn’t going to turn away from anything, he is just going to stand up and speak directly to it.
Kerry was a phenomenally bad candidate. This year, the GOP has the bad candidate. It’s time for a few Dems around here to get a spine.
ThymeZone
Like I said, show me the data. I do not believe in the all-powerful media. I have never seen any data or analysis that proved its existence. If you dial out the self-referential bullshit, there isn’t any there there.
David Broder is completely inconsequential. If DougJ didn’t have an obsession with him, nobody here would even know who the hell Broder is.
dslak
John has mentioned here before how he likes Huckabee on a personal level (though he wouldn’t want him to be president). There’s more vindication of that kind of view to be found here.
h/t Sullivan
The Other Steve
Who is Hillary’s pastor? I heard a rumor that she belongs to a right-wing prayer group, basically connected to James Dobson.
It would explain her pandering on video games.
dslak
I would, but I have an unhealthy interest in teh Stoopid.
Gus
I think Hillary’s non-response to this whole fooferaw has been right, both ethically and politically. She could probably fan the flames, but I haven’t heard her even mentioning it. Of course fanning the flames would cost her what little black support she has left in the primaries and suppress the black vote in the general if she’s the nominee. I agree with myiq’s take on McCain allowing his surrogates to use racial divisions while staying above the fray himself. I’m sure that’s an agreed upon tactic.
dslak
It’s not pandering if she believes that shit, as she very well may.
The Other Steve
myiq seems to be in some kind of denial.
Look at the response here… Yeah, there’s a bunch of tards beating a dead horse. But there are a lot of reasonable types who are staying hands off.
Tards beating a dead horse are not a good thing. It makes you appear petty, vindictive and small.
This was very bad for John McCain. His supporters are placing him in a very difficult position with their responses.
myiq2xu
Oh, gee, I must have missed the part of the speech yesterday where he said “I support everything Rev. Wright said.” First Obama denied even hearing controversial statements, then yesterday he admitted hearing some, just not the ones on the videos.
Why was Wright “disinvited” from giving the invocation last year at the official start of obama’s campaign?
dslak
I’m more inclined to think that McCain’s self-inflated sense of honor will keep him from condoning that kind of behavior.
Eventually, somebody in the GOP is going to say something that’s near blatantly racist, and McCain’s going to have to respond. He needs to keep his nose clean if his denunciations are going to look genuine.
Path
And so ends any chance of the wingnuts ever liking Huckabee.
ThymeZone
Yes, but that speaks to my point. People who get their ideas from right wing radio will believe anything.
We are going to outnumber those people this year. The heyday of talk radio politics is over. They can’t even keep their coalitions together. They were against McCain a month ago.
Dems love to laugh at the GOP for being cowards about terrorism, but Dems are sounding like cowards in the face of the scary GOP and talk radio. WTF? Stand up to them. They are idiots.
ntr Fausto Carmona
Um, the right wing have always had something to rally around: “The liberals are worse.”
ThymeZone
You’re an idiot, man. You really think that this kind of petty bullshit is going to shape this election?
You’ve managed to drag BJ down to that level, but I don’t think you can get the whole country to go along with your silly horseshit.
Martin
Sure, the party faithful will. Why should we expect otherwise. But people need to stop equating RedState and Rush with the majority of republicans. The question is how many of them will be reached and if they are, how many would reject GOP attacks as being uncalled for? And I’m as guilty of this as anyone else, but it’s been easy and convenient to put the emphasis of the religious right on ‘right’ instead of ‘religious’. I think we will see some unexpected alliances here because the GOP pulled this group to their side to turn them into partisans, but generally they aren’t. The GOP may still be feeding them the best lines, but they vote for their own interests – and attacks against a UCC church don’t play. I see a lot of ‘UCC are black militant racists’ which is fucking absurd. UCC was born in part out of the german and dutch reform movements.
I predict that the GOP, smelling blood, will routinely go tone-deaf against their own constituents. If they are lucky, they won’t lose more than they gain. But the effort won’t be to pull independents off of Obama as much as to secure their entrenched base.
You need to watch the message again. They don’t need to understand the black experience. They need to see that Obama understands the white experience. Look at the interviews of blue-collar workers in PA – every response for whether they would vote for Obama has been ‘I need to see that he understands my situation’. These people vote their own interest. They don’t fucking care about what happens in a church in Chicago when their job in Scranton is going to the shitter.
myiq2xu
The response here? Where 99% of the people are Obama supporters and the rest are Democrats?
The people I’m talking about probably don’t even know what a blog is.
And they won’t beat anything. They’ll play videos.
ThymeZone
I don’t know, shit for brains. To give you something to yuck about?
Steve V
By the way, on the timing of this and Obama’s failure to somehow get in front of the issue, remember that Obama himself admitted in his HuffPo piece that he heard of Wright’s statements at the beginning of his campaign — a year ago. He responded by disinviting Wright to the kickoff event (or whatever event it was). I can only assume that Obama was waiting for someone to make an issue of it for these last 12 months, but he was never asked about it and it was never brought up. I don’t think there’s much you can do to get in front of an issue that doesn’t exist yet, so I don’t fault Obama for failing to get in front of it; the question is, how did Wright remain a non-issue for so long? And why did it come up now? (BTW, I am squarely in the camp of those that think this whole business is BS.)
ThymeZone
Where the hell do you live? Upper Dumbfuckia?
dslak
Yes, but it does show that, unlike some other Christianists, Huckabee actually believes the things he says, and doesn’t say those things just for his own political benefit.
It’s moving to see a middle-aged, white Southerner saying, “Hey, that black guy might be angry, but why shouldn’t he be? Look at how we’ve treated him!” Unfortunately, Obama really can’t put it that way because he can’t be “the angry black man.”
ThymeZone
According to a guy whose self-described preference is watching porn all the time.
Wow, teh wit and wisdum of you is whelming.
myiq2xu
When that happens, McCain will piously denounce the person and explain how racism is a bad bad thing while he tosses them under the Straight Talk Express.
He might even quote Dr. King.
dslak
He very well may, but he’s going to alienate some of his base in doing so, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The GOP doesn’t do Sistah Souljah moments.
myiq2xu
Fuck you TZ
You just want to pick a fight. Stick your head up the pony’s ass and fight for air.
myiq2xu
The DNC has approved the Michigan revote plan
The only obstacle is the MUP:
Grand Moff Texan
What can you say to stupid like that?
How about, “shut up, minority.”
.
myiq2xu
George says:
myiq2xu
Sure they do. Two minutes in the penalty box, public apology, welcome back to the club (after the election)
dslak
After the DNC made their decision, did Obama say that he disagreed? If not, it’s hard to see how he’s an “obstacle” or is trying to prevent a revote.
Until he does, this is just pure hackery, and you know it.
dslak
No examples are coming to my mind. Are you aware of any?
Pug
The faux outrage yesterday to Obama’s spectacular speech clarified nothing other than how limp their attacks really are.
I am a little surprised the best they’ve been able to come up with is “he threw his white (did I mention she’s white?) Granny under the bus”. It’s pretty lame.
Their problem is that anybody over about 40 knows exactly what Obama was talking about.
p.lukasiak
While saying “gramdma is a racist, but I love her anyway” may not quite be “throwing her under the bus”, its not exactly an admirable thing to do in the name of political expedience.
But IMHO the grandma statement is going to have more far-reaching consequences than just in the “grandmas and those who love them” demographic. The problem is that a whole lot of people think that “fear of black men on the street” is perfectly legitimate, especially if its dark, and the street is deserted — and implying that its ‘racist’ to be more afraid of black men is not going to sit well with them.
I had a huge on-line discussion about this with college students when I worked at Penn — most of whom took great offense at the idea that being afraid of black men at night in University City was a sign of subconscious racism. To them, it was simple common sense — because as they put it “most of the crime” in that neighborhood was committed by black people” which was true in one sense (most of those arrested for property crimes were black) and completely false (they and their peers were the biggest ‘criminals’ in the neighborhood — they were underaged drinkers and drug users, and suppliers of drugs and alcohol to minors.)
AkaDad
This pastor controversy coming out now is a gift. Imagine the media bringing out the pastor’s speeches on November 1st.
Perspective. I has it.
Eric K
Besides the fact that he wasn’t doing anything like what these wingnuts are saying, if any of these doofuses had read Obama’s first book they’d have seen that he covered these incidents with his grandmother then. Seeing as how he wrote it long ago (15 years?) I’d say it is a pretty safe bet he and his grandmother have talked about this stuff many times, probably before the book was even published and she has no problem with him bringing this stuff up.
Hawsie, if you’d read the book you’d know that he brought up his grandmother instead of his grandfather because she was the one who had the issues, his grandfather got upset with her over it at the time.
rawshark
No it doesn’t, it proves my point, that’s why I said it. You said people aren’t led by the media but then said people who are will believe anything. Huh? My point is not only will they believe anything but they will also believe they came up with the idea that they didn’t hear it on the radio. This is how it works. You feed them the thoughts in such a way that they think they came up with them on thier own.
myiq2xu
Trent Lott
dslak
Surely you can’t be referring to his “We should’ve elected Strom Thurmond” remark, so what do you have in mind?
Brachiator
No. Hillary’s constituency is cranky old white women. Obama’s granny: probably not cranky.
When creationists go to see “10,000 BC,” do they only watch 2/3 of the movie?
Even idiots get to vote. They cannot be dismissed.
You’ve got a point here. Many will not bat an eyelash if a white minister says that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for an America that tolerates homosexuality and abortion, or if a white minister says that the Catholic Church is a whore and that Mormons belong to an anti-Christian cult, or even if ministers or even the pope says that Jews need to start embracing Jesus.
But if a black minister evokes prophetic language to say that God should damn America if it doesn’t get right with respect to social justice, then all hell breaks loose.
It IS visceral and primitive. The right wing has done its best to return us to the idea not just of “America, right or wrong,” but everything that America does, has done, or will do is right. Period.
Catholics who would continue to go to mass even if their priest announced that he had diddled an altar boy earlier that morning are outraged, outraged, I tell you, because Obama didn’t immediately bolt from his church the moment that pastor Wright uttered his most toxic, “anti-American” sermons.
If a minister or political leader attacks “the Other,” many people will not get upset. But many who hear Wright say “God Damn America” feel personally attacked. They are not interested in nuance, nor will they stop to ask why he might have said it.
And they may vote their fears. Ironically, Lynndie England may be more in sync with an aspect of the national mood that suggests that Obama commenting about his grandmother’s worst utterances was a greater sin than anything that the woman herself ever said or believed.
In a recent interview, the woman who was a center of attention in the Abu Ghraib photos says:
Iraqis, after all, are just an Other. And torture and other evils are not so bad if you keep it quiet, and keep it in the family.
myiq2xu
The GOP has a weird advantage. They know they’re racists, so they are usually much more careful about what they say.
Macaca notwithstanding.
Eric K
p.lukasiak,
Either Obama’s point went right over your head, or your being a deliberately obtuse Hillarybot.
Yes, most people, especially those of Obama’s Grandmothers generation, have those kinds of fears. And other than the rabid conservative types at The Corner, most of them have conflicted feelings about it. At some level they feel some guilt about it. What Obama is saying is “I understand this, my Grandmother understands this and we love each other even more because of this, not less”
LiberalTarian
Yes, these folks are behaving like mad dogs.
MAD DOGS.
You don’t try to negotiate or reason with a mad dog. You shoot it.
These guys are stupid, obnoxious, hateful, lousy, etc. etc. etc., because they care more about their party than the health of their fellow citizens.
You WILL meet these people on the street. Don’t ignore them, don’t cede to them out of a sense of civility. They are not civil, so there is good reason be impolite to them. Use mocking derision and rejection. Of course, that is pretty easy for me, since I long stopped being friends with any Republicans after they put that neo-Nero in power. Tell anyone who will listen that this is the party that turned the whole country into the Schiavo circus, and that is what they will do again on every level.
And for pity’s sake, stop fighting each other (TZ and MyIQ, I think you guys are both smart and funny, but just because you don’t have a GOoPer to hit doesn’t mean the nest best target is a good substitute).
Whew. Nothing like a good scolding to make you hungry. I’m off to get lunch.
myiq2xu
TZ just wanted to prove he could tick me off.
Notice he shut up afterwards? He isn’t suffocating.
p.lukasiak
neither Eric. I understood what Obama was trying to say. I also understand how what he actually said is not going to go over well with people who consider their “fear of black men” perfectly legitimate — or at least not something that is the equivalent of Wrights’ sermons.
See I agree with Wright — and I’ve argued with much younger people that their “fear of black men” is, in fact, a sign of subconscious racism.
But I also know that I’m pretty much in the minority on these kinds of issues — and that what sounds perfectly legitimate to me isn’t going to sound that way to everyone else.
Eric K
Oh so your basically in tha camp that says “the majority of the country are ignorant fools who won’t understand nuance so we need to pander to them like right wing-nuts so they’ll vote for us”
The problem with that is if you are going to pander on all the tough issues and cave into the wing nuts why not just elect the wing nuts?
I tend to the argument that the 20%ers are just that 20% and the mushy middle is a lot more grown up about this kind of thing than people like you give them credit for.
Jen
re: Michigan revote plan
Just reading about this now, the Obama campaign’s objection is that, although MI has open primaries, anyone who voted in the January GOP primary will not be allowed to vote in this re-vote. The concern is that many Democrats, correctly understanding that they were not having a primary that would count, decided to vote in the Republican primary instead. Now, they will be disqualified from voting in the re-done Democratic primary.
This seems like an eminently logical objection to me, and hopefully one that can be worked out so that a revote can proceed. But thanks for leaving out the reason and the context and including instead a TalkLeft comment. That was much more helpful.
Jake
He tried, but unhinged racist fucks keep shooting the pastors cast in the MLK mold.
Z
For once, I am going to have to agree with myiq that this isn’t going away, and it will continue to be a big problem. I thought his speech was brilliant and beautiful. I thought it really got to the heart of things, but their are an awful lot of people out there who don’t want to hear it. Some of my grandparents were certainly racists. I would absolutely cringe at some of the things they said. I was so touched by Obama saying that, because I thought, if was bad for me, what must it have been like for him? And I can sort-of answer that question, as a lesbian who has certainly heard cringe inducing homophobic statements from my parents. They really hurt. His experience really resonated with mine. I, too, have learned from that experience that you can deeply love and learn from people who also believe abhorrent things.
But I am young enough to have that distance from the civil rights era. It gives me a different perspective. I can look at what older black people went through and recognize that it was horrible, traumatic, and if I had had those experiences I would still (even after 40 years) be angry and paranoid. I lot of older white people don’t want to give older blacks that empathy, because they think it means they will have to give up something. Plus, acknowledging what black people went through makes them feel bad, and they think that blacks have and will exploit that guilt. I have even heard conservatives say (before the Wright thing broke), that if Obama got elected it would prove that racism was over. It was as if he was their magic wand to make black people shut up. Obama refused to be that for them. He isn’t their ‘Get Out of History Free’ card, and if he isn’t going to be that, they aren’t going to support him.
Tom in Texas
pluk:
From the speech:
He didn’t say she was racist for being afraid of black people on the street. In fact, he acknowledged such fears as legitimate. He said she “on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” And he still loves her for the countless other ways she has shaped his life. I really don’t see how one can claim he’s calling people racist for being scared of a group of black men on the street without ignoring the second part of his statement on Grandma as well as the rest of the speech.
myiq2xu
So they disenfranchised themselves? Was that Josh or kos’ idea? I forget.
Time for a pity party!
Jen
What are you talking about? They were supposed to foresee that there would be a really close election, followed by a revote, and that the rules for the revote would prohibit them from voting? Is that what you’re saying? Or are you saying that excluding these folks makes sense somehow? Because I don’t understand why that provision was in there, and you didn’t give one. Did you seriously attend and graduate from law school?
Medicine Man
myiq2xu speaks sense on this actually.
I do think however that they were bound to do this to anyone the Dems put forward though. Rev. Wright has just made it a bit easier for them.
myiq2xu
Racism is no longer politically correct, even in the deep south. That’s one of the great achievements of the 20th Century.
But it is still alive and well, it’s just underground.
Rev. Wrights videos give a guilt-free excuse to oppose Obama. It’s not racism, it’s patriotism. Or it’s racism, but his, not theirs.
It’s not something that always makes sense. But we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
I just wanted to post that again.
p.lukasiak
no, that’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that it was a mistake for Obama to compare his grandmother’s confession of “racism” with the statements of Dr. Wright — at least in the way that he did. Most people will identify with his grandmother, and not see the equivalence with Wrights statements.
myiq2xu
Seriously? No. I wasn’t serious about it at all.
But I did attend and graduate.
Martin
Obama doesn’t broker in political expedience like people expect. That’s why some think he’s full of shit or stupid. They don’t get that he’s willing to take risks on his message out of a (perhaps foolish) belief of his that people aren’t stupid and can be talked across to instead of down to. There’s no reason to tell a black church during a campaign to knock off the gay bashing because it undermines their social goal of equality other than he’s in a position to do it and have it stick and the adults in the room will get that he’s serious about this shit. He’s done the same thing with separation of church and state when speaking to religious groups and here he did it with race.
The gamble is whether it will motivate someone like me who wants to reward a president that doesn’t pat the pubic on the head and them a cookie enough to push voters into his camp to make up for the mouthbreathers that just want their cookie and leave because he won’t give it to them.
So you did miss the point that Obama was saying that their “fear of black men” was perfectly understandable.
Look, some people want to jump right over understanding and get on to correction, but understanding is always the first step. If you jump to subconscious racism, you’ve lost. And that was Obama’s other point – that Wright is undermining the path to his own goal by occasionally jumping to accusations rather than understanding. So again, you conflated Obama with Wright (and yourself, as it turns out) and have extended your failure back to Obama. You’ve missed that Obama is saying that you and Wright are incorrect in your approach.
Obama was basically calling out most anyone who has voiced a strong opinion on race – both from the left and right. (Some strong voices have been saying this all along.) But the left is too eager to admonish people for their feelings and the right too eager to dismiss that those feelings cloud their judgment on policy. And the media plays each side against the other. Now, the groups at the ends probably won’t respond to the message, but the group in the middle – that are quiet on race, I expect sat there nodding along. That matches my anecdotal evidence from both Dems and Republicans.
Z
p.luk,
It isn’t necessarily most people. It more like most older people.
Jill
Actually, that sounded more like MoDo than Ann Coulter.
Tsulagi
Nope, if he is The
OneMUP, he can simply transcend early acolytes jumping to vote Republican. Ye of little faith.myiq2xu
Like Jimmy Carter said about Billy – “You can pick your friends but not your family.”
Obama chose to attend Rev. Wright’s church. He chose to make Rev. Wright his “spiritual advisor.”
He chose to get married there, attend weekly services there, and have his daughters baptized there.
Yes, I understand that Obama did not agree with everything Rev. Wright said. But it begs the question: If he objected to what Rev. Wright taught, why did he keep attending? Why didn’t he speak up sooner?
Bubblegum Tate
Also, that MLK was, like, totally Republican. Way hardcore conservative, that guy.
myiq2xu
Age-ist!
myiq2xu
The really surreal part of this whole thing is watching GOPers quote and speak of Dr. King with approval.
It’s like an acid trip, without the music.
p.lukasiak
Tom… I was actually trying to find that quote for my response to Erik K above — I knew he’d said something like that, which is why I included the phrase “at least in the way that he did.”
The problem is that by the time he said the words you quoted, he’d switched gears entirely from the personal to the “larger issue of race in general.”
So when you read the grandmother quote, what you get is “I love her despite the fact that she is comparable to Dr. Wright.”
Moreover, in the actual quote you cite, Obama does imply that it is wrong for whites to feel resentment “when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced.” He’s saying that its the equivalent of “not always productive” anger in the black community that he discusses in the previous paragraph. Or as Obama himself puts it…
Jen
I realize that I am talking to myiq, which is to say that this is completely wa-hasted, but possibly other passersby will read it as well.
Point 1, substitute “Mark Penn” for Wright and “Hillary” for Obama, and you also have a decent question, aside from the fact that if Mark Penn ever touched Holy water he would presumably disintegrate.
Point 2, no one has yet asked me about my Obama staffer that I am hosting, but she is very interesting. She works 16 hour days, so there’s not a whole lot of chatting, but I am happy that she is working 16 hour days, 6 weeks before the primary, and has been doing so for the better part of a year. The ground game folks have got it together.
She said she spent an afternoon driving Rev. Wright around. She said he was just a fascinating character of a person, with some oddball ideas, but a very strong knowledge of the Bible and history. She learned all about his church and the community, she said the church essentially has a small town set up, with a grocery store, clinics, etc. to serve people in the community who need it. And she says Barack’s (she calls him Barack’s) commitment to the church is primarily one to community, and to service, and to the Christian spirit of helping the least of these my brethren which he feels it represents.
And that’s his right. He doesn’t have to leave a church and a community that he likes because of some weird comments. He doesn’t have to defend his choice of church. He doesn’t have to “speak up” about it. He chose to speak about it, and he did it eloquently and at length, with nuance and subtlety that was refreshing and unusual.
And, big fucking surprise, you’re here to complain about it.
myiq2xu
Mark Penn is more like a lawyer than a priest. You hire a lawyer because you want to win your case. His morals are not your primary concern.
You go to a priest for spiritual guidance. You expect him to practice what he . . . preaches.
p.lukasiak
Well, there are a couple of reasons —
1) Inertia
2) A stable religious environment for his children
3) It was a place where a very large part of him felt at home — and for good reason.
I think that Obama jouned the church when he was coming to grips with what it meant to be black in America. This is a man who in his youngest years went to school in Indonesia — where his “otherness” was defined as being an American, and who then attended private schools in the most “multi-cultural” state in the country. And while he probably got a taste of what it means to be black in America at the small private college he attended for two years in California, and in the two years he spent at CUNY from which he graduated, college life still sheltered him from the full impact of knowing what “being black” means.
It wasn’t until he got to Chicago, and started working as a community organizer, that the full force of the contradiction between how he perceived himself, and how “America” perceived him, was felt. Wright’s church provided the means by which he could assimilate his “black” identity in a positive way with the rest of his character. And as a result, that church is his “home” as a black man. Its the center of his comfort zone as an African America.
Not to trivialize it, but as a gay man I identify with why he keeps attending that church. Its much like the reason why gay men go to a gay bar once or twice a month. Most of us — at least those in my generation — went through a period where we identified ourselves primarily through our sexuality, we were “gay”, not “people who happened to be gay”. Over time, we recognized that being gay was just one aspect of who we are — but gay bars are still the public place where we don’t have to worry at all about what being “a person who happens to be gay” means.
So I really don’t think you or anyone else should hold it against Obama for staying in that church.
dslak
This doesn’t mean you expect him to be perfect. Don’t mistake the literal sense of a cliché with what it means.
dslak
Shit. Now I’m forced to agree with p.luk. Will my sufferings never end?
Dennis - SGMM
myiq2xu, I doff my hat, no irony or sarcasm. Effing great image.
p.lukasiak
I’m sure its just a temporary condition. ;-)
PaulB
Over the past 20 years, how many sermons and speeches has Reverend Wright given? How many articles and letters has he written? How many classes has he taught? How many speeches, both public and private, has he given? How many conversations, public and private, has he participated in?
And, for the money question, how many of these literally thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of items contained material that was even remotely objectionable?
And all of this is ignoring the fact that a church is about a whole lot more than just its minister. In some churches, the minister may well be the least important reason to attend or withdraw from the church.
You’re like the blind man with the elephant. You want us to look at just the trunk and completely ignore the rest of the animal.
AkaDad
When I was a teenager my mom used a racial sterotype. I just threw her under the bus and I’m better off for it.
ThymeZone
Then we have to outvote them. Not rocket science. We surely don’t cower in the corner afraid of them.
myiq2xu
Years ago Barack Obama met Re. Jeremiah Wright and joined Trinity UCC.
Later on he ran for political office.
Like it or not, Rev. Wright is electoral kryptonite. In another time and place it might be different, but right here and right now, Rev. Wright is politically toxic.
Barack Obama knew this. He had two choices.
1. Stay at Trinity UCC and pay the political price.
or
2. Find a new church.
Obama chose option #1. The question know is how high the price will be.
Maybe it won’t matter enough to change the outcome. Maybe Obama can overcome this.
I hope he can. I want Hillary to win but I don’t want to see Obama destroyed. I was hoping for Hillary to win this year with Obama as her successor in 2012 or 2016.
If this destroys his candidacy, I don’t think he’ll get another shot.
ThymeZone
Actually, went to lunch and AFK for a while.
Back now. Watch your six. :)
Z
OMFG. I’ve been forced to agree with parts of what p.luk and myiq in one thread. I feel dizzy.
ThymeZone
No. I wasn’t clear, apparently. Talk radio doesn’t tell people what to think, it just parrots what they already think. Did I dream that up? No, Rush Limbaugh said it, when explaining the success of his radio show. He learned, he said, to simply express more theatrically what people were already thinking. That’s what he does.
He might have an audience and some of that audience might do what he suggests, like write letters or whatever, but the ideas are already out there. He simply gives them validation.
Limbaugh hasn’t created an army of idiots out there. He simply found them, and figured out a way to make money off them. He basically said so himself in so many words. This isn’t news, this is from a bio from at least ten years ago.
In any case, the fat guy doesn’t persuade people to think like idiots. He finds idiots and persuades them that he is their voice. It’s made him a millionaire.
ThymeZone
Now that I think of it, we might be saying the same thing.
Ray C.
— G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant
These wingnut ‘tards really would say, “my mother, drunk or sober.”
Lit3Bolt
Myiq2xu, Trinity was political advantageous to Obama before, especially in the Illinois State then the US Senate campaigns. With a name like that, it’s important to be Christain (not that Islam is unacceptable to African Americans, they’re probably far more tolerant than most white americans considering the mutual history) and the church is an overwhelmingly powerful presence in the African American community. Now, should he have innoculated himself against Wright sooner? Yes. But this faux outrage among the right will wear thin quick. The meme of Barack Huessain Osama the angry black pimplord who hates America and white people will be established, but now the righties have their own tightrope to walk: attacking Obama without crossing the line into racism of their own. Inevitably, by stirring up these visceral emotions, some fundie will do something stupid like scream “Nigger!!” or “Coon!” at Obama or start talking about nooses and Obama, some assembly required (heh indeedy). White racism is punished FAR more harshly than black racism, but there’s no real way to argue the “fairness” of it, not with history totally on the African American community’s side (as it should be).
I think the impact will resound but be limited. White people can’t harp about “reverse racism” constantly without sounding completely facile and simpleminded. The right will trot out their “black intellectuals” (Shelby Steele has already said his piece for a nice white pat on the head) against Obama. But again, most if not all of these people believed Obama was a Muslim to begin with, so it’s not that great of a switch.
myiq2xu
I agree. Unfortunately, some votes won’t. The question is how many.
IOW – The FOX News demographic
myiq2xu
Damn. TZ’s return gave me the willies.
Fixt
John S.
Who won’t be voting for Clinton or Obama anyway, so who cares what they think? Roughly 25% of this country will never stop supporting George Bush and will never vote for a Democrat. They have been programmed that way. There is no point in worrying about how these people think or how they will vote.
John S.
Who won’t be voting for Clinton or Obama anyway, so who cares what they think? Roughly 25% of this country will never stop supporting George Bush and will never vote for a Democrat. They have been programmed that way. There is no point in worrying about how these people think or how they will vote.
wheaton pat
Cheney is related to Obama.
50% chance it is on the maternal grandmother’s side.
Connect the dots
hamletta
Only those who’ve never belonged to a church. That’s a pretty small number.
ThymeZone
Boo!
Heh.
reliapundit
thanks for the link!
at first, obama accused us whiteys of cherry-picking racist wright’s remarks, and denied hearing them. then – as ABCNEWS points pout, he admitted hearing stuff just like it all the time.
we didn’t cherry-pick.
you have – regarding my post.
you left out THE FACT that obama only mentioned his white mother once in the whole speech.
in a speech about race in america the half-white/half-black
obama on ly taks about his blackness.
and dissed his white grandparents whop raised him.
coupled with the FACT that he barely mentioned his mother in his first book – his memoirs – which are also fixated on his black father and hos blackness,
and in consideration that HE CHOSE a black supremacist church, an has attended it for 20 years,
it is fair and reasonable to assume obama feels more black than anything else and has a deep dislike to whites.
he’s allergic, at best.
wright is an out-and-out racist who hates whites.
obama’s life the last 20 years, and this speech – in it’s glaring omission of anything even barely hinting at any pride in his whiteness SAYS EVERYTHING.
I marched with Dr. MLK Jr.
King was no racist.
Wright and Obama are.
horatius
This whole flap will cease to be an issue if Hillarybot nosediggers like myiq=0 and p.luk stop making it an issue.
horatius
Oh and reliapundit, gag on my cock.
p.lukasiak
then you should stop framing questions in this fashion…
…because they make it sound like you do care personally.
There is a difference between noting that something a candidate has done will cause him or her political damage, and demanding an explanation actions that should not be objectionable.
This, however is a valid question…
Staying with his church was not politically expedient, and that lack of political expedience with cost him with voters, although it shouldn’t.
But by attempting to “hide” his association with Dr. Wright and the Trinity Church (e.g. the disinvitation of Wright from the announcement of his candidacy, and then lying about the reason Wright wasn’t there), not speaking out on racial issues when they first became a controversy that was damaging his opponent, and making a major speech on race relations only when his relationship with Wright was causing him political damage — well, it all reeks of political expediency, and should, IMHO, cost him votes.
jxn
amazing how this story brings out the most idiotic members of our population to comment in my local newspaper website sfgate.com
John Cole
I blockquoted 3/4’s of your entire post and provided a link, you retrograde moron.
Sasha
[bombthrow] I read this and it tells me, his behavior is hurting him because he’s putting political expediancy over what’s right . . . just like Clinton. [/bombthrow]
;)
Tax Analyst
I’m surprised reliapundit left out the most shocking part. That Obama actualy threw his white grandmother under the BACK of the bus…you know, where all the BLACK people were seated.
So, there was a link to this moron “reliapundit” somewhere in this thread? Ummm…think I’ll spare myself, thank you.
p.lukasiak
(lobbing it back before it explodes….)
hey, if there is anything I’m happy to see at this point, its the acknowledgment by Obamettes that Obama is no better than Clinton in the “typical politician” department
;-)
Krista
…under a bus.
reliapundit, take your meds, honey.
Rick Taylor
Not true. I can see you haven’t been perusing the pro-Hillary blogs.
Sasha
[Toss back]
How can anyone be better than Clinton at being a “typical politician”?
:)
I’m glad that Obama avoids reaching for that goal, low as it may be.
truth machine
Hawise Says:
Just to be clear- he could have chosen to compare his association to Wright with his relationship to his dead white grandfather who also helped raise him. This would have made more sense to me in the male role-model category of life. He chose to out his grandmother instead.
Some people are mindboggling stupid. Did it ever occur to you that his “anecdote” might be true of his grandmother but not his grandfather?
truth machine
As if somehow that isn’t true.
You’re a transparently lying piece of feces.
Martin
Jesus, the ignorance in this country is stupefying.
It’s not a black supremacist church. It’s a UCC church. UCC came out of german and dutch reform churches. How racist can it be and be part of a denomination that is 99% white?
Again, the media LOVES rolling out new video. Why no new clips of Wright? All of his sermons are available – why isn’t there a single new 30 second racist clip? Maybe because that clip is an outlier? Go read a more typical sermon.
truth machine
I can imagine someone being so mindbogglingly stupid that they can’t think of any answer other than that Obama is a bad negro who must not be our President, but to continue to ask this question after Obama clearly answered it reaches the depths of dishonesty. Here’s a hint: 30 seconds isn’t 20 years.
truth machine
It isn’t just ignorance; there was nothing “black supremacist” even in Wright’s replayed-every-10-seconds comments.
Obama was so incredibly kind, generous, and conciliatory toward these “resentful” racist white scum, something they do not deserve, and still they attack him.
truth machine
Which Wright does, jackass.
truth machine
Oh, you’ve conducted a scientific poll? I think those truly unable to see it are beyond his reach. But I’ve seen numerous testimonials of people who, through their identification with his grandmother, have seen their way to supporting him. They don’t have to see any equivalence with Wright’s statements — which wasn’t the point — all they need to do is understand why he didn’t disown Wright, just as their friends and relatives who disapprove of their own racial antagonisms haven’t disowned them.
truth machine
Not knowingly, fool.
Not with foreknowledge, fool.
Time for stupidity, apparently.
truth machine
You’re a liar.
Since you’re such an expert on what Obama has said, you should already know, as he has explained it.
truth machine
So Lanny Davis didn’t get the memo?
truth machine
Ask yourself whether you’re an illiterate racist.
bodhi
Didn’t Obama also throw his momma from the train?
jeeze –
this is the fucked up beyond belief primary campaign!
Tired of the same ole mud slinging politics??
Then it’s time to sling some WET PAINT !!!!!
VOTE WET PAINT
http://wetpaint2008.blogspot.com/
comments welcomed
Darkrose
I would just like to say that this thread is so much easier to read…with PIE.
4jkb4ia
If anything Obama may have thrown the Obamacans under the bus! The Obamacans remaining are the ones who realize the people who supposedly speak for them have lost all decency.
Br'er Bear
So, first the “Astute”:
“He mentioned his white grandparents twice.”
Then the “Ass Toot”:
“ONCE TO DIS HIS DEAD [ALIVE?] WHITE GRANDMA. [et sqq.]”
(Yeah, the “Astute” characterization was generous on my part…)
-Br’er Bear
Typical White Person
Obama compared rejecting Wright to rejecting the entire black community and rejecting his grandmother who got harassed by a black panhandlers. That’s fucking insane.
jones
Don’t be stupid. He DID equate his own grandmother’s privately spoken words with the very public racism of his preacher.
All this is elementary. Obama is dead in the general. He had a chance by coming across as “post racial” and not a race hustler like Jackson or Sharpton. This has exposed his true feelings about white people to a lot of white people who trusted and believe him. He won’t survive this.
The question is, at this late date, can the Dems afford to deny him the nomination? He can’t possibly win, but if they don’t give it to him, blacks are going to go batshit insane, as in rioting in the streets angry.
So, Dems may have to sacrifice this election for the greater good of the party, since Hillary probably wouldn’t win anyway with no black support.
heh, the Dems certainly come up with interesting ways to flush away their best year yet to win the presidency, after 8 years of an unpopular Rep. prez, an unpopular war and the economy going South, they are going to lose to a 72 year old war hawk.
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
truth machine
Typical White Person
Racist asshole.
jones
Racist asshole.