Naomi Schaefer Riley, a Wall Street Journal writer, penned an insightful column in yesterday's edition entitled "Obama, His Pastor and The Democrats' Religion Problem."
After reading her article, I wonder if Obama and his fellow Democrats will ever truly realize what mistake he has made this past week and twenty years.
Of Obama's choice of a church, Mr. Riley writes,
"For starters: If you join a church, it should have something to do with your faith. The consensus now seems to be that Sen. Obama doesn't really believe all of the hateful and crazy things that Pastor Wright has been saying over the years. As Mr. Obama recounts in his memoir, he went to meet Pastor Wright because he was advised that it would "help your [community organizing] if you had a church home. . . . It doesn't matter where really." So he became a member of the largest black church in the neighborhood, thereby furthering his activism and eventually getting the votes of Trinity's 8,000 congregants. Which is fine, but such an attachment is more utilitarian than religious, and sooner or later its true character will show. We have only to remember how ridiculous it seemed when Howard Dean, in 2004, admitted to leaving the Episcopal Church because his Vermont parish refused to allow a bike path on its grounds. Religious people tend to join or leave churches because of things like theology, prayer and sermons."
If that isn't sufficiently damning, how about this later passage in Ms. Riley's editorial,
"Much has been said, in an effort to excuse the toxic content of Pastor Wright's sermons, about the ways in which his speeches are part of the "black tradition." But most black churches are Baptist, Methodist or independent. They have religious doctrines with a long history. Trinity, on the other hand, belongs to the United Church of Christ, a mostly white denomination defined almost entirely by its social-justice agenda.
This is how the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's (white) general minister and president, recently defended Pastor Wright: "Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild 'obscenity' in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly 4,000 cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here?" It's easy to see Mr. Obama's attraction to the UCC, and it doesn't have much to do with faith."
So we see that, for Obama, choice of church and 'religion' is probably not really at all similar to those choices for truly devout worshippers with a solely religious bent. He admits he chose his church for its size and political position, not really because he had a deep need for a religious experience and a home of kindred religious spirits.
At the end of her column, Ms. Riley writes,
"When Sen. Obama does get into the religious thicket, it doesn't turn out well. Here is his recent defense of his position against gay marriage but in favor of civil unions: "If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." As a reporter for the Baptist Press noted: "Obama's quote may open him up to further criticism from evangelicals, because it's a common evangelical belief that all of Scripture is inspired by God and equally authoritative."
As it turns out, Sen. Obama wasn't doing all that well among religious voters even before the recent controversy. Mrs. Clinton won 57% of the votes cast by white evangelicals in the Ohio Democratic primary, compared with Mr. Obama's 35%. For Democrats, Hillary's Methodist Youth Fellowship should be looking better and better."
In effect, Obama is no more a 'new style' politician than anybody else. He uses religion flagrantly to gain votes and the acceptance of a political base on the South Side of Chicago.
To most Americans, particularly those with any sort of religious background, this smacks of expediency, cynicism and hypocrisy. Not to mention cheapening everyone else's religious choices by insisting, in his speech this week, that his experiences are just like theirs, and vice versa.
But they aren't. I have heard just this week of two people walking out of a church service, and the congregation, permanently, over a minister's sermon which they found repugnant. One involved criticizing America as justly deserving the 9/11 attacks, the other a tirade from the pulpit of an Episcopalian church against wealth, followed shortly by a plea for more donations to sustain the rector's cushy lifestyle.
Real religious Americans vote on church and minister views with their feet and donations. They don't sit silently, with their children, for ten to twenty years, condoning racist and anti-American hate speech.
Not only does Obama probably not now, or ever will, realize his sin of hypocrisy in attempting to use religion as a mere stepping stone to political power. The liberal mainstream media which supports him continues, with Obama, to try to explain his debacle as one of race, rather than one of judgment and expedient misuse of religion for political gain.
Despite the media's fawning over his speech, including Peggy Noonan's somewhat muddle piece in today's weekend Wall Street Journal edition, this whole affair is not, per se, about race in America.
It is simply about a black candidate using religion in an attempt to curry favor with his core base of racist-leaning voters in Illinois' largest city early in his political career. Having been identified with a racist minister, Obama won't throw away his ticket to his core political support. Instead, he is crying 'victim' over race.
Personally, I don't think Americans will elect a victim, nor a racist. No matter what Obama and his mainstream media acolytes believe and maintain to the voting public.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Shelby Steele and Geraldine Ferraro on Obama's Dilemma
This week has seen some unbelievable developments in the US political sphere.
On Tuesday, Obama delivered a speech calculated to extinguish the fire which has ignited over his minister's now-very-public anti-white and anti-American statements. I wrote a post about the speech here.
Geraldine Ferraro, one-time Vice-Presidential candidate for the Democratic party, offered this view of Obama's actions and speech, on John Gibson's Fox News show, as seen here on YouTube.
On Tuesday, Obama delivered a speech calculated to extinguish the fire which has ignited over his minister's now-very-public anti-white and anti-American statements. I wrote a post about the speech here.
Geraldine Ferraro, one-time Vice-Presidential candidate for the Democratic party, offered this view of Obama's actions and speech, on John Gibson's Fox News show, as seen here on YouTube.
Shelby Steele wrote this editorial in the Wall Street Journal on the day of Obama's speech. In it, he opined,
"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."
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."
Ferraro was and is being excoriated by the press and Democrats for her remarks, while Steele, a distinguished black historian now at the Hoover Institute, has received absolutely no reaction to his editorial of which I am aware.
In an attempt to fend off charges that he called his own grandmother a racist, Obama made these remarks later in the week on a radio talk show. The YouTube video has take the audio track and used it as the centerpiece of a very judgmental video, but the audio is, nonetheless, real.
I have heard this unedited comment by Obama about four times on Fox News in the last two days, and I believe he also said something to the effect that the reaction he attributes to his white grandmother is 'bred into' whites. I may be wrong on this, but I don't think so.
Never the less, as the video notes, he clearly stereotypes whites with the phrase "typical white person."
Does anyone believe that a white candidate for President of the US who used the phrase "typical black person" would still be in the running?
It's my guess that this entire issue has spun in a manner totally unforeseen and unwanted by Obama and many blacks unrelated to him. Just when race was fading as an issue for mainstream America, Obama has brought radical blacks like Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright, whose positions depend upon continued exploitation of imagined racism in America, (back, in Jackson's case) into the limelight.
As Shelby Steele noted in his editorial, Obama doesn't really offer America much beyond a vote to assuage guilt over prior generations' involvement in slavery.
As a Caucasian American, I must say that I feel absolutely no guilt over prior generations' actions. What happened, happened. I cannot change it, and I did not partake in it.
If I, and many other millions of Americans feel likewise, and would prefer to vote for any minority on their qualifications, rather than their being a member of a minority, where does that leave Obama?
Nowhere.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Obama's Race Speech Fails
Having seen the speech and heard a day's worth of commentary on Obama's attempt to quell the mounting furor over his minister and spiritual adviser's well-publicized and documented racist and anti-American speech, I must conclude that he failed.
Sure, as I told the liberal son of a friend last night, Obama convinced his own party's left wing, and probably the slightly-left-of-center members, as well.
But, despite naming the fear, in hopes of conquering it, he almost certainly has lost the 'Reagan Democrats' of mid-America. They are the middle-class, sometimes blue-collar, often male voters who swing about the center of the American political spectrum.
Listening to the more balanced black commentators yesterday, including Fox News/NPR's Juan Williams, it was obvious that even they felt Obama erred grievously by failing to have left his church and minister years ago, upon hearing the latter's anti-white and anti-American statements.
A liberal friend of mine agreed with me that Obama has now lost the election by failing to explicitly and totally sever himself from the repugnant minister. But, in reality, she said, he lost when he continued to sit in the church's pews and silently accommodate and tolerate such speech. Interestingly, she asked,
'How, as a partly-white American, could he sit there in silence and have half of himself damned by this minister?'
As I recollected to my friend's son last night, Michael Dukakis' turning point came in a debate, when he failed to say he'd want the death penalty for the hypothetical rapist of his wife, should such a person be caught. Americans found his carefully-couched, legalistic reply to be unnatural and suspect.
In this campaign, I believe we are witnessing a similar moment for Obama. This is his Waterloo.
For what it's worth, his speech reflected the perspective of someone with whom, frankly, I seem to share very little in the way of views of our country.
Again, speaking with my friend's liberal son, I opined that while Obama is contending that race is a paramount issue in today's America, I simply don't agree. It's nowhere on a list of my top five or seven issues most in need of address in America today.
In fact, this young man with whom I spoke is, himself, the son of a multi-cultural couple, and speaks his mother's non-English language fluently. He attended a first-rate private high school, and one of the best Ivy universities. He surely is not the victim of racism in today's America.
What Obama construes as racism is, I believe, more a function of poverty stemming from America's uneven, locally-funded and controlled educational system. Confusing the two is a horrendous mistake.
By, among other things:
-comparing his minister to 'everyone else's' minister, rabbi, or priest in making statements with which he disagreed,
-using his own grandmother as a source of racial slurs,
-claiming that the race issue will be used by conservatives as they have used 'fear' tactics in other campaigns,
-claiming that the race issue leads to legitimate, wider debate of Obama's other favorite campaign topics,
I think Obama pointlessly and ineffectively made his speech a grab-bag of topics which both elevated the minister, rather than disowned him, and blurred the focus of his statements.
In the end, his explicit refusal to repudiate his relationship with the racist minister will assure that this issue has a life as long as Obama's candidacy.
Sure, as I told the liberal son of a friend last night, Obama convinced his own party's left wing, and probably the slightly-left-of-center members, as well.
But, despite naming the fear, in hopes of conquering it, he almost certainly has lost the 'Reagan Democrats' of mid-America. They are the middle-class, sometimes blue-collar, often male voters who swing about the center of the American political spectrum.
Listening to the more balanced black commentators yesterday, including Fox News/NPR's Juan Williams, it was obvious that even they felt Obama erred grievously by failing to have left his church and minister years ago, upon hearing the latter's anti-white and anti-American statements.
A liberal friend of mine agreed with me that Obama has now lost the election by failing to explicitly and totally sever himself from the repugnant minister. But, in reality, she said, he lost when he continued to sit in the church's pews and silently accommodate and tolerate such speech. Interestingly, she asked,
'How, as a partly-white American, could he sit there in silence and have half of himself damned by this minister?'
As I recollected to my friend's son last night, Michael Dukakis' turning point came in a debate, when he failed to say he'd want the death penalty for the hypothetical rapist of his wife, should such a person be caught. Americans found his carefully-couched, legalistic reply to be unnatural and suspect.
In this campaign, I believe we are witnessing a similar moment for Obama. This is his Waterloo.
For what it's worth, his speech reflected the perspective of someone with whom, frankly, I seem to share very little in the way of views of our country.
Again, speaking with my friend's liberal son, I opined that while Obama is contending that race is a paramount issue in today's America, I simply don't agree. It's nowhere on a list of my top five or seven issues most in need of address in America today.
In fact, this young man with whom I spoke is, himself, the son of a multi-cultural couple, and speaks his mother's non-English language fluently. He attended a first-rate private high school, and one of the best Ivy universities. He surely is not the victim of racism in today's America.
What Obama construes as racism is, I believe, more a function of poverty stemming from America's uneven, locally-funded and controlled educational system. Confusing the two is a horrendous mistake.
By, among other things:
-comparing his minister to 'everyone else's' minister, rabbi, or priest in making statements with which he disagreed,
-using his own grandmother as a source of racial slurs,
-claiming that the race issue will be used by conservatives as they have used 'fear' tactics in other campaigns,
-claiming that the race issue leads to legitimate, wider debate of Obama's other favorite campaign topics,
I think Obama pointlessly and ineffectively made his speech a grab-bag of topics which both elevated the minister, rather than disowned him, and blurred the focus of his statements.
In the end, his explicit refusal to repudiate his relationship with the racist minister will assure that this issue has a life as long as Obama's candidacy.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
On Race & Obama's Minister
Let me state my conclusion up front and clearly. In my opinion, Obama's church's minister probably has, and/or will, cost him his chance to become President in November of this year.
Over the past week, the just "retired(?)" minister of Obama's church, Jeremiah Wright, has once again ignited a firestorm. I write 'once again, because he was identified as a racist minister as long ago as last March.
Here are two YouTube videos from that time period. One is of Sean Hannity interviewing Wright on Hannity & Colmes, while the other, a month earlier, shows Tucker Carlson discussing Wright's explicitly racist themes.
Hannity & Colmes interview with Wright March 2007
Tucker Carlson February 2007
More recently, these two clips were added on YouTube. The first is a video of Wright's anti-white, anti-Hillary diatribe.
This next clip appears to be the taping, while in a car, of a radio address by Wright.
I was unable to locate the video in which Wright, shortly after the 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, rails against US foreign policy and echoes Malcolm X by saying that the 'chickens have come home to roost.'
Why did it take so long for the mainstream media to finally identify Wright's racist themes? Why has it taken over a year for Obama to address this issue?
This isn't about freedom of religion, or the explanation of a race-neutral church to the rest of America.
This church had on its website, until, it has been reported on Fox News, just this week, information about it's insistence for church members to propagate 'black values.'
The problem for Obama, as I see it, is to explain to Americans why the pastor whom he says converted him to Christianity and has been a close confidant for over a decade holds explicitly racist, anti-American views. And why Obama has, in full knowledge of this, continued to participate in the church and associate with the minister.
If I had five minutes in which to question Obama, here are some questions which I would ask:
-Do you agree with your minister's expression of your church's precepts in explicitly racist tones?
-Do you feel that by associating with this church and minister, and its racist views, you are expressing your own values to the American voting public?
-If you continue to support this minister's views, by not explicitly denouncing them and leaving his church, does he not provide an example of the sort of advisor you would choose as President?
-Is your support of this minister an example of your judgment of people and values which you would carry over to your administration, if elected President?
-If you don't feel it is fair to judge you by this minister, his words and values, then how are the American people supposed to gauge what you have done that does provide evidence of your judgment, values and choices of advisers? Are they to assume that you will dump any now-inconvenient and inconsistent prior advisers, or repudiate similar actions or beliefs, in order to win votes?
Last night, on Fox News, an Obama apologist kept exhorting the on-air anchors to 'give (Obama) a chance to explain himself' in his speech later today.
Frankly, I don't think that speech will matter. What is to 'explain' about Wright's recorded anti-white, anti-American speeches? Nothing. They speak for themselves. So does Obama's lack of response to their known existence.
He didn't leave his church a year ago, when these issues were raised. He didn't repudiate the minister.
It seems very clear that Obama is now caught precisely in the race-trap he sought to avoid. Many who ardently support him are anti-white racists. If a white candidate for President had a church and minister which had identical themes and 'values,' only substituting the word 'white' for 'black' or 'african american,' he'd be hounded out of the Presidential race and his party by the (liberal) mainstream American media.
At this point, even if Obama can paper over this mess among his party's voters, and still beat Hillary, I think it will turn many centrist, blue-collar Reagan Democrats against him. Obama's apologies or late attempts to distance himself from his racist minister may play well to the upper-income white Democrats who feel guilt for prior anti-black racism, but it probably won't work with middle-class white voters.
By failing to have openly denounced his church and its minister as soon as they espoused racist and anti-American themes, Obama has opened himself up to justifiable criticism of his judgment, awareness of the actions of those he claims are close to him and advise him.
When we choose a President, we ultimately choose his/her character and values, because we don't know exactly what challenges our country will face on that President's watch.
As Obama attempts to dance and weave away from this crisis, he exhibits a character which is, in my opinion, fatally flawed for a person who would be President.
Dick Morris opined on Hannity and Colmes last night that the Democrats mistakenly have chosen Obama as their Presidential candidate before appropriately vetting him.
I think Morris is right, and this issue with Obama's minister and church are a prime example of that.
Over the past week, the just "retired(?)" minister of Obama's church, Jeremiah Wright, has once again ignited a firestorm. I write 'once again, because he was identified as a racist minister as long ago as last March.
Here are two YouTube videos from that time period. One is of Sean Hannity interviewing Wright on Hannity & Colmes, while the other, a month earlier, shows Tucker Carlson discussing Wright's explicitly racist themes.
Hannity & Colmes interview with Wright March 2007
Tucker Carlson February 2007
More recently, these two clips were added on YouTube. The first is a video of Wright's anti-white, anti-Hillary diatribe.
This next clip appears to be the taping, while in a car, of a radio address by Wright.
I was unable to locate the video in which Wright, shortly after the 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, rails against US foreign policy and echoes Malcolm X by saying that the 'chickens have come home to roost.'
Why did it take so long for the mainstream media to finally identify Wright's racist themes? Why has it taken over a year for Obama to address this issue?
This isn't about freedom of religion, or the explanation of a race-neutral church to the rest of America.
This church had on its website, until, it has been reported on Fox News, just this week, information about it's insistence for church members to propagate 'black values.'
The problem for Obama, as I see it, is to explain to Americans why the pastor whom he says converted him to Christianity and has been a close confidant for over a decade holds explicitly racist, anti-American views. And why Obama has, in full knowledge of this, continued to participate in the church and associate with the minister.
If I had five minutes in which to question Obama, here are some questions which I would ask:
-Do you agree with your minister's expression of your church's precepts in explicitly racist tones?
-Do you feel that by associating with this church and minister, and its racist views, you are expressing your own values to the American voting public?
-If you continue to support this minister's views, by not explicitly denouncing them and leaving his church, does he not provide an example of the sort of advisor you would choose as President?
-Is your support of this minister an example of your judgment of people and values which you would carry over to your administration, if elected President?
-If you don't feel it is fair to judge you by this minister, his words and values, then how are the American people supposed to gauge what you have done that does provide evidence of your judgment, values and choices of advisers? Are they to assume that you will dump any now-inconvenient and inconsistent prior advisers, or repudiate similar actions or beliefs, in order to win votes?
Last night, on Fox News, an Obama apologist kept exhorting the on-air anchors to 'give (Obama) a chance to explain himself' in his speech later today.
Frankly, I don't think that speech will matter. What is to 'explain' about Wright's recorded anti-white, anti-American speeches? Nothing. They speak for themselves. So does Obama's lack of response to their known existence.
He didn't leave his church a year ago, when these issues were raised. He didn't repudiate the minister.
It seems very clear that Obama is now caught precisely in the race-trap he sought to avoid. Many who ardently support him are anti-white racists. If a white candidate for President had a church and minister which had identical themes and 'values,' only substituting the word 'white' for 'black' or 'african american,' he'd be hounded out of the Presidential race and his party by the (liberal) mainstream American media.
At this point, even if Obama can paper over this mess among his party's voters, and still beat Hillary, I think it will turn many centrist, blue-collar Reagan Democrats against him. Obama's apologies or late attempts to distance himself from his racist minister may play well to the upper-income white Democrats who feel guilt for prior anti-black racism, but it probably won't work with middle-class white voters.
By failing to have openly denounced his church and its minister as soon as they espoused racist and anti-American themes, Obama has opened himself up to justifiable criticism of his judgment, awareness of the actions of those he claims are close to him and advise him.
When we choose a President, we ultimately choose his/her character and values, because we don't know exactly what challenges our country will face on that President's watch.
As Obama attempts to dance and weave away from this crisis, he exhibits a character which is, in my opinion, fatally flawed for a person who would be President.
Dick Morris opined on Hannity and Colmes last night that the Democrats mistakenly have chosen Obama as their Presidential candidate before appropriately vetting him.
I think Morris is right, and this issue with Obama's minister and church are a prime example of that.
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