This post was completed as Barack Obama announced that he will give a major address on race Tuesday, March 18. Consider what follows an assessment of the stage of things as of when he speaks.
The recently-retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's spiritual mentor, is on the evidence of his own quoted words a militant anti-white racialist (video version). He married the Obamas and baptized their children. He says the country is racist, is run to oppress blacks, and on the fair evidence of it, hates this country. True, Barack has disavowed his comments, initially through a spokesman, then himself, but if this man was spiritual mentor to the Obamas --for twenty (yes, 20) years--the couple has some explaining to do. Read the article, listen to the audio, and you can see that it will not be easy. Amazingly, it was in a speech given in Washington, DC that the reverend accused the government "lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color"--yes, that is a real quote. Earlier, on the Sunday immediately after 9/11/01, the reverend said that America had deserved the attacks. The reverend, who also rejects "God Bless America" in favor of "God Damn America," is one nasty piece of work--racist work, at that. Oh, and he also said that the government lied about...Pearl Harbor.
Add to that poisonous brew Michelle's citation with apparent approval, of Stokely Carmichael's separatist stage of racial relations (in her 1985 term paper) and Barack's citation (apparently, in his first book) of race-hustler militant Malcolm X as someone he admires, and the idea that an Obama administration will transcend race gets, as Alice might say, curiouser and curiouser.
And what of dubious supporters of John McCain? Blogger Dean Barnett observes that Big Mac has a long public record, and thus we know what kind of politician and leader he is. Obama raises the Jimmy Carter problem: risk buyer's remorse by making a hasty choice of a largely unknown figure. There is thus, Barnett rightly argues, a far greater need to learn more about Obama, and his relations with his inner circle.
Initially, on Friday, a spokesman for Obama told Fox News reporter Major Garrett that the campaign had nothing to say as to the comments aired Thursday. But then, later on, in apparent response to a growing clamor, Obama himself replied with a Huffington Post statement, which begins thus:
The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached
his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a
firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of
some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our
politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly
condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.
I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great
country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that
words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue,
whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject
outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
After praising the pastor's military service and community work, Obama continues:
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this
controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I
sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.
When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the
beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that
I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the
verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity
faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were
baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that
have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently
condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my
profound love for this country.
Obama later said on Hannity & Colmes that he rejected "completely" such stuff, and said that they are not either his or his wife's ideals. A Newsweek article (3 pages) provides much historical background on Obama's church and its growth under Pastor Wright. The author offers a sympathetic view, one not mine, but well worth reading.
ABC news reports the replies from the church, which says Wright's remarks were taken out of context. But there are two nuggets in the story. First, Wright told the New Yorkl Times last year, as to Obama's asking him not to be associated with the announcement of his candidacy: "You can get kind of rough in the sermons. … It's best for you not to be out there in public." Second, Juan Williams said yesterday on Good Morning America: "One that seems to separate black and white and suggested that [Obama]
came into that community wanting to be identified with the black
community, at a time when he was questioned as to whether or not he was
authentically black. Now, he's trying to distance himself from that
very church and say he didn't know things that he obviously had to
know."
The first ABC nugget suggests that Obama knew of Wright's poison a long time ago. The second one suggests that "authentically black" means black nationalist, and thus paints a picture of the black community, one at odds with Obama's post-racial campaign theme.
Writing in The Atlantic, Ross Douthat cites milder Obama comments (presumably, before last week's airing of the tapes with the above outbursts), likening Wright to "an old uncle" and accusing critics of "cherry-picking" statements. But, as Douthat notes, clearly Obama's congregation is a radical one. Watching the video, there is no sign of anyone marching out in disgust. To the contrary, many in the audience applauded and cheered the reverend's tirades. Victor Davis Hanson parses Obama's answers and explanations, and finds them Nixonian. Mark Steyn, ever sharp, compares Obama to a famous Jewish immigrant who came to America, Irving Berlin (born Israel Baline, in Russia). Berlin (without affirmative action) penned seven words Steyn aptly says the wayward reverend will never be caught singing: "God bless America, land that I love." Talk Radio host Michael Medved draws on his experience as a devout participant in several synagogues, and concludes that either Obama is lying about being intimately involved in the affairs of his church, in which case he would surely have learned long ago about the pastor's views and remarks, or he is lying about disapproving of Wright's views.
Obama-supporter and author Gerald Posner finds Obama's denials of knowledge implausible, noting that the audience reacted to Wright's post-9/11 diatribe as if it were nothing out of the ordinary--likely the case--and that thus Obama surely knows more than he is telling us. Bill Kristol's analysis is the best one I have seen, showing the implausibility of Obama's claim of limited knowledge about his pastor's views, and summing up Obama in a perfect paragraph:
The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a
conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and
disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a
terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope
there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of
artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.
But there is, alas, more on race in the Democratic race. Columnist Rich Lowry sees in the sacking of Geraldine Ferraro, for saying that had Obama been white, he would not be where he is in the race, if even in it at all, a "grievance-politics cataclysm"--identity and victim politics run amok, and consuming the Democratic Party. Lowry says that in the "unholy trinity" of race, gender and class that has been the staple of identity politics for a generation, race trumps the other two, a fact publicly bewailed by feminist supporters of Hillary. Writer Matt Bai discerns a new, emerging racial divide, as shown by Obama's having done best in states with mono-racial white population, or with black majorities; Hillary wins states with mixed populations, suggesting that it is racial proximity fosters animosity and resentment, not racial isolation. As Charles Krauthammer, in another fine column notes, in racially-mixed Mississippi Obama won 92 percent of the black vote and 26 percent of whites. Two weeks before the South Carolina vote, Obama led Hill only 53-30 among blacks, and then came Bill Clinton's cracks about Obama being another Jesse Jackson. Hill's black vote numbers now resemble that of Republican candidates. Jonathan Chait, writing in The New Republic, sees Hill's strategy as so damaging Obama as to make him unelectable, and thus ensuring her selection at the Convention. Civil rights author Abigail Thernstrom nails the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and subsequent racial gerrymandering, for creating minority-dominated jurisdictions, which then elect minority candidates based upon ethnic and racial bona-fides. She adds that in 2000 former Black Panther Bobby Rush creamed his black opponent for House seat, by convincing voters that his opponent was "not from us, not from the 'hood." His victim? One Barack Obama.
Perhaps, in the end, Obama will run a truly post-racial campaign, and perhaps his wife will soften her hard edges, as to her public opinions about life in a country that has been miraculously good to her and her family. But that leaves perhaps a bigger problem for Obama: Just what strong criticism of Barack Obama will not be deemed racist by his supporters? Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" line re Obama and his positions on Iraq, and Hillary's citation of Martin Luther King needing LBJ's help, and the red-phone phone ad are now all stamped by Obama supporters as racist. This, observes pundit Robert Novak, exposes an "ugly racial divide" in a political party whose members publicly profess that they are color-blind. In fact, Democrats are race- and gender-obsessed, mired irremediably in the poisonous swamp this is identity politics in full, ugly flower. Even liberals have noticed. Witness Newsweek's "The Deep Blue Divide" piece, recounting how plain-folks Dems who regularly meet now barely speak to one another, or do so between clenched teeth. In the general election, such absurdity will strip Obama of his trans-racial appeal, thus racialize the election, and make a GOP win more likely. But it will be a more poisoned polity that the Obama candidacy leaves, and not, as initially dreamed of, a less polarized one. And in that, every American will become a loser.
Oh, one more tidbit: Guess who goes on trial come September, in Las Vegas (unless the case is postponed again)? America's most famous acquitted double murderer! How will "If I did it?" play in the fall election, given radically divergent racial perspectives (2/3 of blacks think he was--yes, framed) on his trials and tribulations?
