Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

[cosmo]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

A socialist and birth-control martyr, she favored banning reproduction of the "unfit" and regulation of everyone else's reproduction. She wrote, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control." She opposed the birth of "ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Her words reveal her motive in advocacy of birth control.

She sought to remove "inferior" people from being born to poor people, whose mothers by definition were "unfit." Sanger's partisans in Planned Parenthood, the group that stemmed from her work, will be shocked to learn that her publication endorsed the Nazi eugenics program, and that Sanger herself "proudly gave a speech to a KKK rally."

That was not surprising, since she clearly viewed blacks as inferior. Hence her "Negro Project," in which she sought to urge blacks to adopt birth control.

[superdave]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

Obama supporters mention Hagee when Obama is criticized for his church affiliations. There's an old saying that 2 wrongs don't make a right. It's amazing how people justify Obama's affiliation with a racist preacher by bringing up an evangelist like Hagee. Hagee has nothing to do with Obama and his pastor. You should simply judge Obama on his affiliation and support of a racist preacher.

Personally I've been to churches that I did not agree with and no longer attend them or watch their services. I did not agree with the message the preacher was preaching and moved on. I did not want to be influenced negatively by something I knew to be wrong or false. I firmly believe that what you consistently see and hear will eventually effect your thoughts and then your actions. For Obama to say he sat there for 20 years listening to a racist, vitriolic message and not agree with what was being preached is either a lie or he only attended to prove he was black enough.

[CactusBeats]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

God damn America? well, let's see...i guess he shouldn't be pissed about slavery!

Yes, genocide and slavery are hard to forget. Said to say that it is more controversial today for officials to apologize for slavery on behalf of citizens of a state than it is to be outraged for past abuses suffered and the legacy of this abuse. Remember, the only group who is legitimate in its outrage and who constitute the REAL vicitms in our society are subscribers to the right-wind radio hateocracy. They have made an art out of professional white privileged victimhood.

So Obama was aware of this? Surely this means that he was not brainwashed by it. Perhaps he found other redeeming values with the Church.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright has done extensive outreach in helping those suffering from the effects of HIV/AIDS in his community. He helps them access services, does education on prevention and harm-reduction, and has helped to lessen the stigma amongst those suffering its effects.

Rev Wright is controversial and will probably remain so. Perhaps that means he is doing his job in a community that has beliefs and a perspective that white right-wing America will perhaps, always find controversial. Controversial because these views would make white right-wing America confront truths about themselves that are uncomfortable and inconvenient. Rev. Wright is just echoing what his community believes itself. Real equality in the US would mean the right-wing whites would lose their privilege, a move they desperately don't want to occur. So in the meantime they will divert attention from the inequality of society and keep score on what Obama's preacher said. The hatocracy will play it, and replay it, and replay it - lessons right out of Goebbels playbook (Hitler's propagandist minister). I haven't heard positive quotes by Wright played in the media. So remember, love is always more powerful than hate.

But if you want NeoCons, then i guess Hillary or McCain will do. They are one-in-the-same...

No truer words have been spoken. Democrats=Republicans when it comes to corporate interests, especially. What do I think about a thrid party in America? Heck, I would settle for a second party!

[CactusBeats]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

I found the following to be supportive of my second point. Also found it to be thought-provoking on right-wing commentators.

March 20, 2008, 11:24PM
Obama's preacher isn't so far out of black mainstream

By E.J. DIONNE JR.
The Washington Post
Let's ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Is he as far outside the African-American mainstream as many of us would like to think?
Because Barack Obama's speech on race in America was so candid about both the legitimacy of black and white grievances — and the flaws in those grievances — it carries the risk of offending almost everyone.
The man who, by parentage, is half black and half white took it upon himself to explain each side's story to the other. Obama resembled no one so much as the conciliatory sibling in a large and boisterous family shouting: "Please, please, will you listen to each other for a sec?"
One of the least remarked upon passages in Obama's speech is also one of the most important — and the part most relevant to the Wright controversy. There is, Obama said, a powerful anger in the black community rooted in "memories of humiliation and doubt" that "may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends" but "does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. ... And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."
Yes, black people say things about our country and its injustices to each other that they don't say to those of us who are white. Whites also say things about blacks privately that they don't say in front of their black friends or associates.
One black leader who was capable of getting very angry indeed is the one now being invoked against Wright. His name is Martin Luther King Jr.
An important book due out next month on King's rhetoric by Barnard College professor Jonathan Rieder offers a more complex view of King than the sanitized version that is so popular, especially among conservative commentators. In The Word of the Lord is Upon Me, Rieder — an admirer of King's — notes that the civil rights icon was "not just a crossover artist but a code switcher who switched in and out of idioms as he moved between black and white audiences."
Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. ... And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."
If today's technology had existed back then, I would imagine the media playing quotations of that sort over and over. Right-wing commentators would use the material to argue that King was anti-American and to discredit his call for racial and class justice. King certainly angered a lot of people at the time.
I cite King not to justify Wright's damnation of America or his lunatic and pernicious theories, but to suggest that Obama's pastor and his church are not so far outside the African-American mainstream as many would now suggest. I would also ask my conservative friends who praise King so lavishly to search their consciences and wonder if they would have stood up for him back in 1968.
These are realities that Obama has forced us to confront, and they are painful. Wright was operating within a long tradition of African-American outrage, which is one reason why Obama could not walk away from his old pastor in the name of political survival. Obama's personal closeness to Wright would have made such a move craven in any event.
I'm a liberal, and I loathe the anti-American things Wright said precisely because I believe that the genius of our country is its capacity for self-correction. Progressivism and, yes, hope itself depend upon a belief that personal conversion and social change are possible, that flawed human beings are capable of transcending their pasts and their failings.
Obama understands the anger of whites as well as blacks, but he's placed a bet on the other side of King's legacy that converted rage into the search for a beloved community. This does not prove that Obama deserves to be president. It does mean that he deserves to be judged on his own terms and not by the ravings of an angry preacher.
Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post. (postchat@aol.com)

[cosmo]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

Yes, genocide and slavery are hard to forget. Said to say that it is more controversial today for officials to apologize for slavery on behalf of citizens of a state than it is to be outraged for past abuses suffered and the legacy of this abuse. Remember, the only group who is legitimate in its outrage and who constitute the REAL vicitms in our society are subscribers to the right-wind radio hateocracy. They have made an art out of professional white privileged victimhood.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright has done extensive outreach in helping those suffering from the effects of HIV/AIDS in his community. He helps them access services, does education on prevention and harm-reduction, and has helped to lessen the stigma amongst those suffering its effects.

Rev Wright is controversial and will probably remain so. Perhaps that means he is doing his job in a community that has beliefs and a perspective that white right-wing America will perhaps, always find controversial. Controversial because these views would make white right-wing America confront truths about themselves that are uncomfortable and inconvenient. Rev. Wright is just echoing what his community believes itself. Real equality in the US would mean the right-wing whites would lose their privilege, a move they desperately don't want to occur. So in the meantime they will divert attention from the inequality of society and keep score on what Obama's preacher said. The hatocracy will play it, and replay it, and replay it - lessons right out of Goebbels playbook (Hitler's propagandist minister). I haven't heard positive quotes by Wright played in the media. So remember, love is always more powerful than hate.




No truer words have been spoken. Democrats=Republicans when it comes to corporate interests, especially. What do I think about a thrid party in America? Heck, I would settle for a second party!

What are you talking about? You seem to be an anti-religous individual just to be one, and you seem to have no recognition of history, at all. Who needs to keep apologizing for the ills throughout history? Also, wasn't it America and Great Britain that continuously sent their navy into the seas to stop pirates from transporting slaves? I do believe so. It was both of these countries that started the war against slavery, mainly the pirates coming from muslim countries.

Moreover, if one were to study the history of slavery, they'd understand that every single race were once slaves.

What stands out in my mind are the religious political figures here in America that fought to put an end to slavery, through the abolitionist movments and by using religious text to expound on their views of religious and political freedom. Abraham Lincoln did so, and all you'd have to do is read his second inaugural address. So did William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who put a religious inscription from the Bible on the Liberty Bell. Also, Thomas Jefferson wanted the national logo to be a jew leaving Egypt for freedom.

And what about Martin Luther King? This mans philosophy was entrenched in his religous beliefs, and it was his beliefs that sought to bring freedom to the blacks in the south.

And it sure wasn't by preaching this black liberation theology that Wright espouses.

[Miroslav]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

[quote=88Mariner;580578]God damn America? well, let's see...i guess he shouldn't be pissed about slavery!/quote]

If you really want to unite the American people for Hope and Change, do you really think that the "God damn America" platform is the best way to go about it? Slavery happened well over 100 years ago...if Obama wants to win the presidency and realize all the Hope and Change he keeps talking about, it would be intelligent of him to avoid the racist blamefest and to closely associate with people who actually want to try to do something productive for the future.

[88Mariner]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

"God damn America" is not only not Obama's platform, but it's a line taken out of context from Wright's sermon. Stop assuming that a few sound bites played over and over on MSM outlets too lazy to do real investigative journalism accurately reflect a 30+ year ministry of a pastor. But of course, since Obama didn’t draw a pistol and shoot his pastor dead, he must agree with what the pastor! Now we're thinking like Ann Coulter!

You see, Miroslav, instead of caving into political expedeince, Obama managed to explain why many blacks of his minister's generation have that anger born of their experience with racial prejudice (one that I might remind you didn't just end in the late 60's...that didn't end just because the law said it ,must end). Then, of course, he explained why many whites are also angry because of what they perceive as injustices caused by affirmative action and favoritism. People should have stood up and cheered, but we get this. This complete bankruptcy of thought.

Hmm. perhaps you're right Miroslav. Maybe it's high time we legitimize the neoconservative doctrine of guilt-by-association. I mean, it's really efficient at smearing people. And, you don't even have to talk and debate policy! Hell, you don't have to 'think' at all! You simply have to be spoon-fed what the media tells ya. I mean, it worked well to shut down Ron Paul...right?

I agree with you, on the point that it would be intelligent of him to avoid the racist blamefest and to closely associate with people who actually want to try to do something productive for the future. Mostly, i agree with you because he already has.

You know, I am pretty damn angry at the government too. Not in the same way as Wright. But I am angry about the health care absurdity, the lies about Iraq, the ever changing justification for being in Iraq, the amount of money that Iraq sucks out of our government, that Cheney does not care that 70% of his citizens think his warmongering is wrong, that the deficit is out of control, that the Finance system has become a Ponzi scheme run by corporations the government looking the other way. I am angry that corporations have broken the checks and balances that used to be im place through lobbying and campaign manipulations. I am angry at a two party system that is dysfunctional and more interested in getting each other than governing for the citizens. I am angry at the education system for not teaching children to write, to do math, to read a map, to know the difference between a scientific fact and an opinion. I am angry that this admnistration wants to keep all of their comings and goings secret and erased, while they want ot know what everyone else is up too. The hypocrisy drives me nuts. I am angry that John McCain wants to carry on these policies tenfold. That he doesn't want to close the borders, fix the deficit, or end a stupid occupation of a country that was more harmless to us than Canada. I am angry that Clinton pads her resume and tries to take credit where it isn't due. I'm angry because Clinton and McCain are really one-in-the-same...thier aims are equal, and the means only different by degree.

I know you disagree with me on these points. That's fine. We'll agree to disagree. But ...i'm not going to throw my rage about these problems out with the bathwater because somebody wants to pull some McCarthy-esque shit, hoping I wouldn't critically think about what was being said on television.

This conservative-atheist-whiteboy is outa here....

[Miroslav]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

^^ well, first off yeah we can agree to disagree. I hope you understand that in doing so it doesn't mean I don't respect you. I'm not really into Mccain or Hillary, but i guess I'm just too cynical to believe that Obama is going to be such a pure child in the otherwise dirty world of politics

One other thing, though...just how are McCain and Hillary "one and the same"?? In the sense that they've both been around Washington forever? Because if you look at their proposed policies, they're actually quite opposite. Hillary wants to get out of Iraq, get some form of nationalized healthcare, raise our taxes, redo NAFTA, invest in alternative energy, fight Big Business, expand government, blah blah... Last I checked, McCain wants to stay in Iraq as long as it takes, keep the Bush tax cuts, reduce corporate taxes, not socialize healthcare...you get the picture. On the other hand, Obama wants to do almost all of those same things that Hillary talks about...

[stencil_cp]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

obama has responded very well to this firestorm. and his respectful insight on race (domestic) tells me he's better suited to tackle multi-cultural issues (foreign) than i might have thought.

if rev wright's church produced a hateful obama, who's political judgement was in question, and who was bent on ruining america, i'd be more skeptical. but the guy is solid. he's smart enough to know that black church rhetoric will reflect years of that culture's having been subject to racism and might well be angry sounding. i don't know why the idea surprises so many people.

unfortunately it's an easy crutch to bash obama for people who already didn't support him. the favorite buzz word for staunch conservatives to throw around is calling this type of talk "unamerican," a bothersome use considering that whole free speech thing in article I and the way this country was founded.

the current administration is jacked up on the old boys network. that's my take. whether anyone disagrees doesn't take away rev wrights freedom to trash them for it, or speak harshly about the whole country. i'm disgusted by much of US policy, and if i speak harshly it's because i want it fixed, not because i'm being "unamerican."

obama wants to fix it. that's what you do when you see a problem. he's not a product of rev wright, they know each other. hell i've got way crazier friends than that guy, but they're my mates soo whaat kin ya duo?

[CactusBeats]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

[quote=stencil_cp;582109] i'm disgusted by much of US policy, and if i speak harshly it's because i want it fixed, not because i'm being "unamerican."

obama wants to fix it. quote]

Its going to take longer than eight years to fix this mess. It may well take two or three generations if it even can be fixed.

[Garrick]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

it is people like his pastor that keep our country segregated. when we finally start seeing each other as equals and INDIVIDUALS, stop grouping race as a "category" and race isn't a MAINSTREAM ISSUE, which seems hardly possible given today's society, we will no longer be discriminating.

and personally, before you obama lovers bash me this is my opinion, there's plenty of reasons why obama should not be president besides his pastor's stupid racist personal beliefs.

[CactusBeats]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

it is people like his pastor that keep our country segregated. when we finally start seeing each other as equals and INDIVIDUALS, stop grouping race as a "category" and race isn't a MAINSTREAM ISSUE, which seems hardly possible given today's society, we will no longer be discriminating.

I agree with you partly. Each generation sees race as less and less important. I think your above quote shows how far we have come since the world Rev. Wright grew up in which formed his worldview. Remember, that was a very different world. I think people of our generation are more "colorblind" and as time goes on things hopefully will continue to get better. Obama is a generation removed from his pastor also which virtually guarantees a different worldview.

and personally, before you obama lovers bash me this is my opinion, there's plenty of reasons why obama should not be president besides his pastor's stupid racist personal beliefs.

I respect your opinion Garrick. I think overall this may have hurt him too much to win in the general election although I don't personally think this by any means disqualifies him. Not too sure if the Dems ought to nominate him considering this. Time, a few more primaries, lots of polls, and perhaps the convention will tell.

[toasty]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

I think overall this may have hurt him too much to win in the general election although I don't personally think this by any means disqualifies him. Not too sure if the Dems ought to nominate him considering this. Time, a few more primaries, lots of polls, and perhaps the convention will tell.

I don't think it will actually end up being a serious impediment in the GE. He took a hit from it, but the polls have already reset, and in this age of short news cycles, this isn't going to have legs for much longer, especially with the violence in Iraq ticking upwards and giving the media something else to latch onto. Expect the story in the next few days to be, "Is the Surge Actually Working?" not "Is Obama's Pastor a Racist?"

In fact, a new poll suggests that it may already be over:

The racially charged debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor hasn't much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, called the latest poll a "myth-buster" that showed the pastor controversy is "not the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign."

But both Democrats, and especially New York's Sen. Clinton, are showing wounds from their prolonged and increasingly bitter nomination contest, which could weaken the ultimate nominee for the general-election showdown against Sen. McCain of Arizona. Even among women, who are the base of Sen. Clinton's support, she now is viewed negatively by more voters than positively for the first time in a Journal/NBC poll.

The latest survey has the Democratic rivals in a dead heat, each with 45% support from registered Democratic voters. That is a slight improvement for Sen. Obama, though a statistically insignificant one, from the last Journal/NBC poll, two weeks ago, which had Sen. Clinton leading among Democratic voters, 47% to 43%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657171729866843.html?mod=politics_primary_hs

It's always the same thing
1. Bad news comes out
2. Voters react in knee jerk fashion
3. Candidate addresses the issue (unless you're John Kerry)
4. Voters rethink their reaction
5. Things reset, with whatever damage done, done

Point is, I think Obama has taken whatever hit he's going to take, and he probably won't continue to drop on account of this. This WSJ poll is a pretty good sign for him. If McCain chooses to raise it in the GE, it will already be old news and unlikely to do much more damage.

Also, McCain isn't exactly on the best footing to attack Obama on this. His pastor has floated similar conspiracy theories, but perhaps more importantly, he went out of his way to cozy up to Jerry Falwell, who everyone has always known is a divisive and bigoted figure, and whom McCain himself had previously criticized.

[Miroslav]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

very interesting opinion article on Obama by Shelby Steele about the role that racial identity plays in Obama's campaign and the whole racist pastor flap...not saying I agree with all of it, but an interesting perspective nonetheless. After this I went back and re-read Obama's speech on race, and I have to hand it to him...the man has remarkable insight and oratorical capabilities.

The Obama Bargain

By SHELBY STEELE
March 18, 2008; Page A23

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.

This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.

His actual policy positions are little more than Democratic Party boilerplate and hardly a tick different from Hillary's positions. He espouses no galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future." And he has failed to say how he would actually be a "unifier." By the evidence of his slight political record (130 "present" votes in the Illinois state legislature, little achievement in the U.S. Senate) Barack Obama stacks up as something of a mediocrity. None of this matters much.

Race helps Mr. Obama in another way -- it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America's tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America's redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?

Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).

[cosmo]

Re: Could Obama's church pastor hurt him politically?

obama has responded very well to this firestorm. and his respectful insight on race (domestic) tells me he's better suited to tackle multi-cultural issues (foreign) than i might have thought.

if rev wright's church produced a hateful obama, who's political judgement was in question, and who was bent on ruining america, i'd be more skeptical. but the guy is solid. he's smart enough to know that black church rhetoric will reflect years of that culture's having been subject to racism and might well be angry sounding. i don't know why the idea surprises so many people.

unfortunately it's an easy crutch to bash obama for people who already didn't support him. the favorite buzz word for staunch conservatives to throw around is calling this type of talk "unamerican," a bothersome use considering that whole free speech thing in article I and the way this country was founded.

the current administration is jacked up on the old boys network. that's my take. whether anyone disagrees doesn't take away rev wrights freedom to trash them for it, or speak harshly about the whole country. i'm disgusted by much of US policy, and if i speak harshly it's because i want it fixed, not because i'm being "unamerican."

obama wants to fix it. that's what you do when you see a problem. he's not a product of rev wright, they know each other. hell i've got way crazier friends than that guy, but they're my mates soo whaat kin ya duo?

Obama's talk of unity is skin deep. Obama's friends consist of Rezko, who he lives right next door to, and a former weather underground terrorist, Bill Ayers. This guy knows how to make friends, doesn't he? He claims to be a healer and a uniter, but his past and his friends show just the opposite. He gives us the same ol' failed policies that have a history of failure, straight out of the 1960's.

His run for the presidency will end just as McGovern's did.

He's done for.