Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race. Possibly she was acting as Hillary Clinton's surrogate. Or maybe she was simply befuddled by this new reality -- in which blackness could constitute a political advantage.
But whatever her motives, she was right: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.
The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.
How to turn one's blackness to advantage?
The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
03/19/2008 10:29 ||
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Jim Geraghty of National Review notes a problem with the "fridge logic" of Obama's speech.
Here's the fly in the ointment for Obama's explanation that he heard "remarks that could be considered controversial" and "incindiary language" and "views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike", but disagreed with them, and thus should not be judged by the electorate as somehow, perhaps partially agreeing with Jeremiah Wright's words.
To the best of our knowledge, week after week.... Obama took his daughters there.
Maybe Barack Obama could separate Wright's truly repugnant comments from the rest of what he preached. Maybe while offering no word of rebuke for his pastor, Obama was thinking, "there goes Jeremiah again." Barack and Michelle have sufficiently developed minds to evalutate Wright's claims - the government created the AIDS virus, etc. - for themselves. They could separate, as Obama put it, Wright's "profoundly distorted view of this country" from his words "about our obligations to love one another."
But could his daughters?
They're currently age seven and nine. They have, presumably, been attending Trinity United Church of Christ regularly, or at least as regularly as Obama.
Can you imagine any circumstance in which you voluntarily and regularly take your children to listen to words that are "divisive," "racially charged," exposing them to "a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel," and so on? Would you ever take your children to listen to a man call for God to damn America?
As a new dad, I can't imagine it.
Sorry, Barack. That's a bridge too far.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/19/2008 07:50 ||
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#1
I don't think he succeeded in convincing the people he had to convince which is everybody but the true believers. Especially since he seemed more willing to put the pillow over his grandmother's face then jettisoning his "reverend".
#3
The supporters of Obama don't care. These are the people whose lives and identity were wrapped up in the collective cause of hating George W. Bush. I've heard more than one person ask what will happen to these rabid GW haters the day Bush gets out of office? Where will all of their anger that they had deflected onto GW go? How would they cope with the loss of the one man who was responsible for every single evil that took place in their lives?
The answer is Obama. Just like GW was Satan, Obama is their Savior.
I spent the week with an Obama supporter. They are a bit shaken by this and a few of the other negative things about him, but they dismiss it with "poor Obama, his pastor says terrible things and he is smeared with the same brush". These are the same people who were terrified by the fact that GW is a believing Christian, but that Obama goes to a black seperatist church is just something that really is no reflection on him.
The only question is can Hillary convince enough of those who aren't as invested in the emotional salvation aspect of Obama to vote for her. She may be able to do that. But for many, they simply aren't paying attention or they don't care what comes up - Obama is their man.
Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.
Obama's speech in Philadelphia yesterday made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's views in strong language -- and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and "shocking ignorance" of the African American experience -- and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger -- and argued that the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda.
It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways.
The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of African Americans. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.
Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.
Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."
This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.
But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk because the virus that causes AIDS spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.
Obama's speech implied that these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" -- both are the foibles of family. But while Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.
Yet didn't George Bush and other Republican politicians accept the support of Jerry Falwell, who spouted hate of his own? Yes, but they didn't financially support his ministry and sit directly under his teaching for decades.
The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church -- a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church's pastor attacked the U.S. government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists see as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the candidate attending this church lacked judgment and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.
In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright has the opposite problem: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.
King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. . . . Hate distorts the personality. . . . The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."
Barack Obama is not a man who hates -- but he chose to walk with a man who does.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/19/2008 05:55 ||
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#1
Is it significant that this is in the Washington Post?
BTW. I'm not American and I don't know that much about your history but the quotes I've seen attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. are just wonderful. Was he really as good as he sounds?
#3
The demos are the the party of the "Hate America First" crowd. It wont hurt him a bit with his followers.
The loudest silence is coming from Hillery. She is the only one who is gonna benefit from this. She's keeping quiet hoping to cull some votes. Imagine if BO was a republican (or Nader).
A real benefit of this two person demo fight is the amount of money both are going through. Money that is not being saved for the general election.
#5
I loved the comments of John Derbyshire at NRO - corner,
"..an ugly mish-mash of ancient socialist clichés and Gen-X spoiled-brat self-congratulation, all enveloped in clouds of flatulent Oprahnian rhetoric. Ugh!
Obama's just a red-diaper baby with a nice smile. I actually like Jeremiah Wright better than I like Obama. At least you know where you are with Wright. Obama, I wouldn't trust to mail a letter."
#6
Raleigh, N.C. After a week filled with bad news for the Obama campaign, Hillary
Clinton is out to a 56-30 lead in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.
Good enough to forge an alliance and build a new majority that move this country into manifesting the promises of 14th and 15th Amendments into real law. It took a hundred years, his leadership, and the work literally of millions to make it happen. All to fall in the end at the hands of much lessor men who would turn his legacy into the profession of race and power hustling. The alliance is now shattered. You are witnessing the historical window close after too long a period of abuse of those opportunities he opened. Does anyone question that there are hundreds of thousands Zimbabweans who'd trade places with the Rev. Wright today?
#8
Obama and Wright are a disgrace to Mr. Luther's vision. They, and the other race hustlers have prostituted and dragged that dream through the mud for their own personal power and wealth enrichment. They don't even deserve to look at the man they have betrayed.
Gladys, the Revererend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (better, mhw?) was a womanizer and a bit of a dandy, but he articulated the vision of those who sought equality of opportunity for the black man in America better than anyone else. He put his life, and those of his family, on the line every time he preached integration... and eventually he was assassinated for it.
#12
Martin Luther King himself was a fraud--a phony, skirt-chasing black preacher who plagiarized his doctoral dissertation and who swore worse than most sailors. Obama, Jackson, Sharpton, etc., are just following in his footsteps. King is nowhere near worthy of the inflated reputation he now has. Alex Haley's balloon has finally been quietly popped; maybe someday blacks will be secure enough to view MLK for what he was, not what everyone wanted to pretend he was.
The truly sad thing about blacks is that they've been offered such tawdry heroes as role models when the real, bona fide heroes they've produced--people like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Col. Allen West, Condi Rice, Ralph Bunche, Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell, to name a few--have been completely ignored (if not outright slandered) by the Democrat Party. You know, the party which claims to be acting in their behalf.
The Dems would rather honor the undeserving and inflammatory race hucksters than people who have really done something admirable. I'm sure that some day most black Americans will realize what kind of cynical scam was foisted on them by the Dems. It may not be soon, but it will come, and when it does, they'll realize that the lefty scum who kept their minds enslaved through falsehood were not one whit better--in fact, quite probably worse--than the slaveowners who bought and sold their ancestors before the Civil War
I guess I never considered him black. But I guess race is a matter of self identification. He has a good article out and I will post it in opinion.
Posted by: ed ||
03/19/2008 10:28 Comments ||
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#14
Pancho, you are exactly right on King, but not so right on the awakening of the blacks. If anything, we will continue to be dumbed down as a nation until something happens to force the truth upon us in grade school. I don't see that happening soon.
#15
Martin Luther King himself was a fraud--a phony, skirt-chasing black preacher who plagiarized his doctoral dissertation and who swore worse than most sailors.
Yes, Pancho you can say that too, but its too easy to rationalize him away by ignoring what was indeed accomplished by his actions. Same with Lydon Johnson, who can be equally characterized as a two bit hustling backwoods politician who'd use the n word at the drop of the hat, even in reference to King. However, without those two individuals the possibility of the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1965 would have been slim to none. Those acts implemented intent and words of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Just holding us up to true meaning of the words articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
#16
I think that Pancho is a little too hard on Dr. King. We'll never know for sure because he died too young. Definitely a flawed human (ain't we all) with socialist ideas. BUT, he did deliver a lot of momentum to the Civil Rights movement at the time it could be moved.
I've always wondered how much influence the forced integration of WWII had on the creation of that "teachable moment" for society.
#17
My attitudes towards race and religion were forged by my time in the Navy. Race doesn't matter, send the problem children to the chaplain. Let him give it a try.
#18
B.O.'s speech in El Dorado, Kansas, January 30 '08
You know, we have been told for many years that we are becoming more divided as a nation.
We have been made to believe that differences of race and region; wealth and gender; party and religion have separated us into warring factions; into Red States and Blue states made up of individuals with opposing wants and needs; with conflicting hopes and dreams.
It is a vision of America thats been exploited and encouraged by pundits and politicians who need this division to score points and win elections. But it is a vision of America that I am running for President to fundamentally reject not because of a blind optimism I hold, but because of a story Ive lived.
Its a story that began here, in El Dorado, when a young man fell in love with a young woman who grew up down the road in Augusta. They came of age in the midst of the Depression, where he found odd jobs on small farms and oil rigs, always dodging the bank failures and foreclosures that were sweeping the nation.
They married just after war broke out in Europe, and he enlisted in Pattons army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She gave birth to their daughter on the base at Fort Leavenworth, and worked on a bomber assembly line when he left for war.
In a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, my grandparents held on to a simple dream that they could raise my mother in a land of boundless opportunity; that their generations struggle and sacrifice could give her the freedom to be what she wanted to be; to live how she wanted to live.
I am standing here today because that dream was realized because my grandfather got the chance to go to school on the GI Bill, buy a house through the Federal Housing Authority, and move his family west all the way to Hawaii where my mother would go to college and one day fall in love with a young student from Kenya.
I am here because that dream made my parents love possible, even then; because it meant that after my father left, when my mother struggled as a single parent, and even turned to food stamps for a time, she was still able to send my sister and me to the best schools in the world.
#19
The Anerican race scene started with the collision of two diometrically different extremes. White immigrant Europeans who came from societies of mansions and wealth. Black people sold as slaves to merchants by rival black tribes fro profit who came from the wilderness and underdeveloped African jungles.
It has taken hundreds of years in America for these two peoples to normalize and even up. But what will tilt things in the wrong direction is the spewing of hate from one race towards the other. Martin Luther King did not spew hatrid and that brought people together, Jeremiah Wright and his proxies who damn this nation, most prominent proxie being Obama who clearly admires Wright, would destroy a tremendous amount of that progress in America.
#23
My mother came here with one small suitcase and the desire to become self-supporting. My father had a bit more, but that's because he had been working to support himself and his mother since the age of fifteen. Neither exactly qualified as mansions and wealth, although some of Mama's cousins were very wealthy, indeed.
Even better. MLK did a lot for this country, though as Pancho points out he had some flaws. However, the only perfect man died on the cross and we should not go overboard dwelling on the flaws of a man who rejected violence at a time when so many embraced it.
#25
It was the Democrat party (Dixiecrat) that were the traders, and still are. It is demoralizing to have this hyprocracy forced into the public scene like this. Blacks were not the only slaves, many do not realize that. Democrats want to enslave the entire nation for those idiots marx and lenin. That party is an abomination.
#26
And yes, it is significant that this appeared in the Washington Post. It's as startling as if Le Monde wrote against President Chiraq while he was still in power.
#27
It's as startling as if Le Monde wrote against President Chiraq
As an aside :
Actually, and JFM could correct me, as I DON'T read l'immonde out of sheer principle, bar a few online articles pointed out by critics like Erik Svane from NP!, le monde was rather anti-shirak, in fact, it's main cartoonist made him a constant target; true, the run up to the OIF saw the msm embrace the "pacifist" and the gvt's political line (and reciprocally), but I think l'immonde always has been rather critical of shiraq, starting from the 1995 election, when it shilled for the other "conservative" candidate, édouard balladur. In France, the msm is not at the feet of the pols, in many regards, it is the other way around, the pols are terrified of going against the dogma pushed by the shattering classes.
#29
Here from Salon is a cynical hard bitten Chicagoin journalist writing, in a left publication, about Obama's Chicago legacy with the white left and the pro-Paleos
#31
White immigrant Europeans who came from societies of mansions and wealth.
My Irish Great-grandfather would be surprised to hear that, since he stepped off the boat with only one change of clothes and a bible as those were his only possessions in the entire world.
I'm so sick of the race baiting. The next person who whines about race and not getting a fair shake near me is gonna get punched.
What were the two distinctives of the Georgia colony?
In: Colonial America, Georgia
Answer
Georgia is the last of the original 13 English Colonies founded in North America. It was founded by James Olgethorpe for the purpose of helping indegent debtors locked in English jails. It was the only penal colony established by England. It was the only colony founded by Olgethorpe."
#34
Oh, and if I recall correctly, most slaveholders in America owned but two or three. The cotton fields of Alabama (is that right?) with hundreds of slaves being beaten by overseers, was an anomaly rather than general practice.
#35
I should also point out the enormous number of white people who worked to end slavery in the 1850s and 1860s. Ever heard of the Underground Railroad? The Army of the Potomac? Ulysses S. Grant? Abraham Lincoln? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain? Harriet Beecher Stowe? William Tecumseh Sherman? . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
03/19/2008 18:10 Comments ||
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#37
Proud - the irony of Cump being that of those listed, and for much of the Union Army/administration, he had the most experience with and in the CSA - IIRC he was the initial president of what became LSU, lived there for a while, and arguably had the greatest understanding of the psychological bases of the war - of course resulting in his, er - activities in the theater.
All of which is the most delicate way of saying he knew what had to be done and he did it.
#38
Proud - the irony of Cump being that of those listed, and for much of the Union Army/administration, he had the most experience with and in the CSA - IIRC he was the initial president of what became LSU, lived there for a while, and arguably had the greatest understanding of the psychological bases of the war - of course resulting in his, er - activities in the theater.
All of which is the most delicate way of saying he knew what had to be done and he did it.
'Will they be allowed to smoke?" asked the Iraqi colonel, as he weighed up a request to supply a dozen men to accompany British troops on a mission against terrorist bombers.
Not only is there no good solution to the Gaza problem, there's no "solution" at all. But in the Middle East, solutions are rare; what's needed is the best imperfect option among alternatives.
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WHAT IS needed, instead, is an option based on reality, not wishful thinking: to push Hamas back. Israel's interest is to minimize attacks on its soil and citizens while limiting the cost of the response needed to achieve that goal. This can best be done by combining a more active version of current policy and the creation of a security zone in the northern Gaza Strip to push Hamas and its allies out of range.
#1
I think Mossad should slip some rockets to the Pals, rockets designed to blow up on launch. Then spread rumeors the source was trying to kill off the leadership of Hamas for whatever reason. Then watch the show.
Either that or buy a few C-130 gunships and have them flying constantly and rain down hell instantly upon any site that launches a rocket into Israel. If you're using the 30 mm cannon (or whatever) the untrained eye may just assume it was a missle launch accident.
A Moral Outrage By Mortimer Zuckerman, US News & World Report
The world applauded when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing Jewish settlers. At last, the Palestinians were free to show how they could build their own society.
But what did they do with their freedom? They elected the terrorist organization Hamas in 2006. First Fatah and now Hamas have rained 4,000 rockets on Israel, killed 24, and wounded 620the equivalent of killing 1,200 Americans and wounding 31,000.
And what does the world do?
It criticizes IsraelIsrael!for a "disproportionate" response. Israel is discriminating in trying to defend its people. It attacks Gaza's rocket launchers, weapons factories, and terrorists, all hidden in civilian areas.
What is a proportionate response? None at all, it seems.
Hamas kills indiscriminately. It makes no distinction between civilians and combatants. But it is Israel that earns the opprobrium.
Where is the world's outrage against these Palestinian war crimes? Twelve resolutions have passed the United Nations Human Rights Council on the conflict, but not one has made even a passing reference to the terrorism against Israel.
Where is the appreciation that while under attack, Israel has continued to supply its enemies with electricity and with 2,500 tons of food and medicines every day? Last year, 14,000 Gazan Palestinians were treated in Israeli medical facilities.
But Palestinians continue to get away with their confidence trick of persuading the world that they are the victims. The death of every Arab woman and child is a propaganda victory for Hamas, so it uses women and children as human shields and then exaggerates the casualties. (I've chopped it up - go read it like he wrote it.)
#1
I've read previous stuff from Zuckerman that seemed well-researched, well-grounded, and arguments with logic. He's one of the good guys, apparently, even if I don't always agree with him
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/19/2008 21:58 Comments ||
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Huda al Husseini
It is the first marathon of its kind in which the finishing line is undefined. Speaker of the Lebanese parliament Nabih Berri is gaining ground and may continue to do so with no end in sight.
Berri still has energy to continue this long marathon if only just to hinder the election of a Lebanese president so that he may arrive at the Iranian parliament (Majlis-e-Shuray-e Islami). Perhaps Berri is unaware that since the day he suspended the activities of the parliament there have been parliamentary and presidential elections held in Syria and that Iran just held its parliamentary elections last Friday, while the presidential elections are expected to be held in June 2009. The Lebanese parliament is not functioning thanks to its head whose only task may be summed up as calling for a session then cancelling it and then calling for another only to cancel it again all of which is taking place without obstruction.
#3
Her Congressional Campaign Contributions have topped $40,000.00 in one week! Power to the Sheeple!
P.S. - I'm gonna get me one of them "Cindy Sheehan for Congress Ink Pens". They're only $10 each for something that looks like what we buy 100 of for the same price.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/19/2008 10:37 Comments ||
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#4
As usual Ms. Sheehan confirms the assumption that she's not very bright.
#5
As a matter of fact, during WWII, Japan killed very few American civilians. However, the US military command in the Pacific killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in aerial bombings and with the use of the new WMD; H-bombs.
However, the Koreans, Chinese, Indo-Chinese, Philipinos, Guamites, Indians, et all...guess the old WMDs just were not evil enough, eh Unit 731?
The H-bomb. huh. That one in 1952?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
