Text of Obama's SpeechFollow

Nah. I think that his approach has been to appear to the African-American community to be "one of them", while appearing to everyone else as though he isn't. By joining said church in the first place, it established his bona-fides with the black liberation movement and gave him the position and support he needed to move his career forward in the first place.

Now that this is becoming a liability, he's distancing himself from the core ideology of that political ideology. The question is: Who's he lying to?

While his speech is pretty, and covers a whole range of racial issues, it's far too general. He squirms out of each issue about himself by putting a parallel out there about some other group or some other person doing something similar. He comes off like he's trying to say we're all in this together, but IMO succeeds most at arguing that what he's been doing is ok because other people do it too. It's ok to stand idly by while a preacher instills another generation with hate, because why? He doesn't say. What part of his "unity" ideals does his lack of action entail?

The concern that'll dog him to the general election is threefold:

1. Does this represent a lack of judgment? Will he be able to see things for what they really are and act? Or will he allow himself to be fooled into thinking that what people say doesn't really matter? Or not notice them at all? Given the current world predicaments, this is a pretty critical skill to be sure of.

2. Does this represent a lack of will? Did he sit there listening to Wright and do nothing because he didn't want to rock the boat? This sort of approach may work in smaller nations, but the US is expected to lead, not sit in a pew meekly allowing others to dictate to us without rising to any sort of challenge.

3. Does this represent some degree of complicity? Did he agree with what Wright was saying, but doesn't want others to think he does? We can't know this? But it's easy to give pretty speeches on a subject. It's actions that matter. Especially for a president. As a people, we can't even have the vaguest belief that his domestic policies might be colored (excuse the pun) by fundamental ideology that is ultimately more harmful then good. And it's not a black vs white thing. It's a matter of whether someone sees solutions as movements forward, or constantly looking behind and trying to place blame? He can say that he believes in the former, but we have no evidence of a track record proving this. That's a *big* deal IMO.


On a secondary note. The real concern isn't so much about Obama but his wife. Maybe he doesn't subscribe to Wright's brand of racial ideology, but his wife certainly appears to. The paper she wrote in college certainly matches the pattern of a black liberalist. Add to that her comments recently about not being proud of her country until her husband's success, and she really does seem to be someone who does subscribe to the same sort of "us vs them" racial ideology that Wright teaches.


A First Lady does wield some power in the White House. She's the equivalent of a cabinet member in many ways, with her own staff and agenda. I think it would set race relations back 50 years if someone with a Black Pantheresque agenda sat in that office. We can't say how strong or deeply her beliefs run, but she clearly does seem to hold them, and that's also a big thing.


These are all questions that voters will want answered prior to the election. And I just don't think the Obama's are ever going to be able to give them. Not that will satisfy anyone. If Obama had a decade or so of history in national level politics, maybe. But he's so fresh and so unknown that we don't have anything to balance these concerns against. He can say "I'm not like that" all day long, but actions speak louder then words. He had many opportunities to do something about Wright but didn't. That's not very presidential at all...

Holy fuck

Do you have any idea of who the Black Panthers even were outside of TV and movies?

He'll post to correct you pointing out that he meant the actual jungle cats.

Do you even sleep?

I play poker for a living. The normal sleep cycle reflected when I take a consulting gig is mostly an aberration.

TV and movies are an excellent source of information.

My greatest fear is that Obama will appoint Dolomite as Secretary of State and Blacula as Chief of Staff.

Gbaji, I can understand your opinion, and maybe I am gullible, but I am predisposed to give someone the benefit of the doubt-- which is why, based on the Clinton's previous zany antics, why she is utterly untrustworthy in my mind. And to this point Obama has not done that.

Totem

True Johp, but unless every Media outlet starts actually airing the true of the matter, a lot of white American's will hold the snippets of Wright's sermons again him.

I'm not going to hold my breath. Meanwhile I been trying to counter all the small mined comments where I can. While reading through the comments to Roger Cohen, column Wednesday in the NY Times, I found this beautiful poem from one person who seems to get it.

How does this make any difference? He's clearly agreeing with the statement, right? Does it matter if he made the words himself or is quoting?


You present this like it's some kind of "Aha!" moment that removes all responsibility or something. He choose to quote Peck. He's just as responsible for the meaning of those words in the context of passing them along to his congregation.


I also find is amusing how it's pointed out so strongly that Peck made those statements "On Fox News" as though this means that this guy was someone the "other side" agreed with. Um... Newsflash. Fox News actually puts differing opinions on their broadcasts. Yeah. Shocker...

Peck has been a strong anti-war guy through the entire thing, yet the way he's introduced in these articles, you'd think he was a rank-and-file guy or something (with a tie in to the "even their own guys don't agree with them!!!).


This in no way excuses Wright's statements, nor excuses Obama from failing to either realize the nature of the guy he listened to for 20 years, or failing to do something about it when he did realize it.


At the end of the day, that's a disaster for Obama. This is why I said several days ago that this was the "wheels falling off the bus" moment for Obama. There's no way out of this. He either used the Trinity church to gain political power by appearing to agree with the black liberation theology taught by Reverend Wright, or he actually agrees with that theology, or he's just a naive idiot who didn't figure out what was being said around him for 20 years.


All three possibilities are no-go's for a president. IMO, he can't recover from this.

Joined a radical black liberation theology church in order to gain political support from said radical black groups, and then expected the general population to accept that it doesn't mean anything when running for President?


Yes. I am right. No candidate for President has succeeded at doing this.


Or were you trying to make some weak comparison to other presidents just because they attended church? You do realize the difference, right?

A group that considers themselves to not be a part of the US as a result of their skin color, and preaches that the worlds ills are the fault of another skin color would fall into the category of "radical". yeah...

No. I expect that had he truly not agreed with the man on those issues, he might have said something, even privately to him. Or, barring that, gone to another church...




You have no clue here. That is true for *most* churches. They're about the religion and not much else. Trinity Church is specifically an "afro-centric" political church. It's focus is politics, and religion is the vehicle by which those political ideas are presented.

Um... Your chump argument is actually valid though. Why would someone like Obama attend such a church? Are you seeing the problem here?





Usually, you expect that if someone spent 20 years in a radical church like that, that they agree with the teachings of the leader of that church, right? While we can speculate that perhaps Obama did that in order to broaden his horizons or something, and that he himself is not radical at all, we can't know that. Joe random voter can't know that.

In the absence of any longstanding public record to the contrary, it's somewhat prudent for a voter to err on the side of caution here, don't you think? Now, if Obama had a decades long public career dealing with racial issues and dealing with them fairly, we could perhaps make a valid case here. But he doesn't. So we're kinda left with what we do know, which is that for 20 years he's attended this church and listened to this preacher spew anti-america and racist rhetoric and hasn't apparently done or said anything until it became a problem for him politically.


That's not going to inspire confidence in the average voter, now is it?



No. I get it just fine. His speech was largely meaningless because no matter how neatly he dances around the issues, he can't ever escape this core problem that I've outlined.




Um... No he didn't. At no point in his speech did he actually address this issue. He talks *around* it, but doesn't confront it. Go and read the speech. Then stop and read it again. Every time he starts of talking about his failure to say or do anything about Reverend Wright, he switches it to an anecdote about someone else. He talks about his grandmother, as though her racism excuses Wrights. Then he talks about Wright, as though his personality (which we have to take his word on) excuses his racism. He talks about the good works of the church as well, but again doesn't address the core question straight on.


Instead he dismisses it with a comment that not everyone agrees with their pastor about everything. Um... I don't know anyone who'd stay in a church if the pastor said that sort of thing and they didn't actually agree with it. No one. Not one person. Zero. Zip. Nada.


He fails to say what everyone already knows is true. That this church carries some significant weight politically for black Democrats in the region. If you want to advance in the Dem party in Illinois, it's a good idea to attend this church. See how that works? We all know it's true. Everyone knows this except the blind sheep out there. We all know that's why he joined. And now he's paying for it because he's being held to account for the language and teachings of the very church he needed as a black man to advance in politics.

Ironic, isn't it?

gbaji, please actually listen to all of Rev. Wrights sermons and then tell me you still don't understand the issue, instead of repeating, what every negative comment about Barack Obama, has been written on numerous blogs for the last 3 days.

Yes my eyes hurt looking and reading everything I can find, with what people have been saying, since I first found fead the speech Tuesday.