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Big Speech

Not a lot I want to say about the big speech.  I found it depressing to hear it referred to as a great, historic speech on race relations.  There was a fair amount of clarity in his history and current affairs lessons, and I appreciated the pretty accurate description of how his campaign is viewed. But I’ve been trying to figure out whether it was more condescending to black people, white people or Americans in general.   

The parts about singing and dancing in church and angry speech being difficult to understand and the excuses for bigotry from barbershops to pulpits. The notion that concerns about his pastor’s repeated bizarre and offensive statements are another “distraction.” Using all that history to cloak his very close association with a highly irresponsible, hate-spewing authority figure. Mrs. Nixon’s “plain Republican cloth coat” is pretty shabby compared to that grand mantle.

Also depressed by the idea that large parts of America and the press apparently don’t have a problem with someone occupying the White House who not only has a platform that ranges from warmed-over socialism to dangerously naive foreign policy views and lacks much in the way of meaningful professional preparation for the job, but on top of that, has a spiritual counselor who is a raving anti-American bigot. None of which points are actually about race. They are about qualifications and judgment. 

My guess is, if this thing hadn’t blown up, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright would have had a prominent place in the inauguration, as he has had in the other significant events of Obama’s adult life, and that he’d be a frequent guest in the White House. Which, given that he is not in fact a crazy old uncle, some embarrassing relative you can’t do much about, but Obama’s chosen pastor, makes me wonder how far Obama really stands from any of those views, no matter how much repudiating he does. But then again, I suspect a lot of Obama supporters, white and black, even if they wouldn’t admit to it, don’t have much deep disagreement with a lot of those views about how racist terrorism-supporting America got what it deserved.

Topics: pols, racism

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:24 pm on Tuesday, March 18, 2008

14 Responses to “Big Speech”

1. El Cid Says:
   March 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

   PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday criticized his preacher’s racially charged sermons but said he could not disown him in a speech urging Americans to move past their “racial stalemate.”

   Reuters

   Barack Hussein Obama is the word arrogance, defined. The use of the word “their” instead of our, if in fact there were A “racial stalemate“. Would that “racial stalemate” include, Condi Rice? Colin Powell? Ward Connerly? Shelby Steele?

   OR is just for people such as Michelle Obama, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

2. Liberty Peak Lodge Says:
   March 18th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

   Obama O-bummer Thoughts

   - Rev. Wright’s black anger was common currency among radical black activists during the 1960s. It was shouted from nearly every urban corner and rooftop in the 60s. It never really died out but found a cozy home in university

3. preciseTruth Says:
   March 18th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

   The Audacity of Obama

   The chickens came home to roost for Barack Obama today.

   In a 45 minute speech he seems to have said everything … and yet said nothing.

   Surprise - this is the continuing essence of the Obama campaign!

   He seems to admit that the most im

4. Common Sense Political Thought » Archives » Would You Stay in Your Church If Your Minister Were a Bigot? Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am

   [...] Jules Crittenden points out, the problem with this scandal is that for a sizable portion of the Democratic Party [...]

5. Robert Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 12:48 am

   Throwing his Grandmother under the bus was really icky.

6. The Obama Racial Division Speech: Success Or Failure? (With Reaction Roundup) Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 3:09 am

   [...] –Jules Crittenden: My guess is, if this thing hadn’t blown up, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright would have had a prominent place in the inauguration, as he has had in the other significant events of Obama’s adult life, and that he’d be a frequent guest in the White House. Which, given that he is not in fact a crazy old uncle, some embarrassing relative you can’t do much about, but Obama’s chosen pastor, makes me wonder how far Obama really stands from any of those views, no matter how much repudiating he does. But then again, I suspect a lot of Obama supporters, white and black, even if they wouldn’t admit to it, don’t have much deep disagreement with a lot of those views about how racist terrorism-supporting America got what it deserved. [...]

7. Don Surber » Blog Archive » Just ask me Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 8:40 am

   [...] Not ready for prime time. I kick the rest of the question to Jules Crittenden in Boston. And Jay Ambrose. I’ve commented enough here and it will be the subject of my weekly column in [...]

8. MikeHu Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

   Obama can say all he wants about how he didn’t agree with Wright’s sermons, but the fact that he obviously thought these “sermons” were appropriate for his children tells me all I need to know. “Teach your children well” indeed.

9. tree hugging sister Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

   “Would that “racial stalemate” include, Condi Rice? ”

   According to his man o’ God, you’ve misspelled her name…

   “For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you’ve got five million blacks who are out of work,” he said. “For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you’ve got 10 million blacks who cannot read. For every one Condoskeeza [sic] Rice, you’ve got one million in prison. For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat, at the Masters, with his cap-blazing hips, playing on a course that discriminates against women. For every one Tiger Woods, we got 10,000 black kids who will never see a golf course.”

10. RebeccaH Says:
    March 19th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    I’m disappointed in Barack Obama. I thought, with his message of racial reconciliation, and with a few more years of experience in government and a softening of socialist views, he might make a credible candidate one day. Maybe he agrees with Reverend Rabid’s anti-American, anti-white views, and maybe he doesn’t. All his speech told me was that he is the same dissembling, pandering cynic that Hillary Clinton is.

11. Dave Surls Says:
    March 19th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    “There was a fair amount of clarity in his history…”

    There was a fair amount of hogwash.

    “The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery…”

    America’s original sin? Slavery in America was the creation of black Africans, Muslim slave traders and European monarchies. It had existed in Africa pretty much forever, and slavery in Africa was managed by states that were all run by black people. IOW, black Africans were the biggest slavers of all…there were many times more slaves in Africa than there ever were in the United States. Slavery existed in the Americas for centuries before the United States was created. Less than 5% of the slaves brought from Africa to the New World were brought to what eventually became the United States of America. So how is slavery particularly this nation’s “original sin”?

    “the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.”

    Crapola. The founders left the matter of the slave trade to the states to decide, and about ten years after the Constitution was signed, every state had outlawed it (South Carolina briefly reopened the trade in 1803), which is more than you can say for the Muslims, Africa, or Europe (except for Denmark which followed America’s lead and outlawed the slave trade in 1792). The truth is is that America led the way in outlawing the Atlantic slave trade which had been practiced by Muslim, black African and European states foir centuries.

    Obama is a class A bullshit artist, (or an ignorant idiot) who is presenting a distorted picture of the history of slavery in order to justify the irrational hatred for the United States and Whitey that is the fundmental tenet of the racist church he belongs to.

12. mwl Says:
    March 19th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    My suspicion is that his views are no different from those of his wife and pastor, but he’s slightly better at hiding them.

    So pick your poison: Either Obama’s lying to us about disagreeing with Wright’s views, or he’s weak for sitting quietly while Wright spewed the venom with which Obama claims to disagree. And any claim that Obama didn’t know the full depth of Wright’s lunacy is simply incredible. No matter how you slice it, Obama’s lengthy association with that church says nothing good about his character and judgement.

    The more I see, the more I think an Obama presidency would be just like Carter all over again. Supine foreign policy, and ruinous economic policy. That’s a change we don’t need.

13. Dave Surls Says:
    March 19th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    When Don Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” Obama said Imus ought to be fired and that he, the Great Obama, would never have anything to do with Imus ever again.

    But, when his dirt-bag “pastor” (effectively) calls an 18 year white girl, who went missing in Aruba, a drunken slut, and implies that it’s no big deal that she’s vanished and presumably been murdered, Obama’s attitude is is that he can’t possibly disown this noble man-o-the-cloth.

    And, we all know why. It’s because Obama is himself a racist (hence his 20 year membership in a racist church), and his attitude is total tolerance for black racism, no tolerance for white racism…same sort of double standard white racists employ…only reversed.

    Go ahead and vote for this scumbag if you want to, but if your daughter goes missing overseas, don’t expect a government headed by Barack Obama to do anything about it, if she happens to be white.

14. More B. Hussein Obama Crap « Truth, Lies and In Between Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am

    [...] Big Speech [...]

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