April 22, 2008
While scanning today’s headlines, two op/eds jumped out at me; seemingly unrelated, they say exactly the same thing: We — The Left — have lost control of the Democratic Party to the “liberal elites,” the rich, triangulating Third Way DLCers who talk a great talk, but have never walked the walk — and really don’t give a damn about your walk.
The first piece, by Dana Milbank at WaPo, profiles an impoverished Pennsylvania couple who are voting for Hillary Clinton today, and — despite the silly notion that they may not “even think [Barack Obama is] American,” and the extremely disturbing racism prevalent among a few other vocal locals) — their practical, economically-based reasons for refusing to vote for Obama, even if he gets the Democratic nomination (and this couple are Democrats).
The second piece is by Chris Hedges, about whom I’ve written before in these pages; Hedges is the author of one of my favorite and most dog-eared books, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, which explains in clear, if excruciating, detail just how the Radical Religious Right has managed to embed itself into U.S. politics — and, most importantly, why religious fundamentalists of all stripes believe what they believe, and do what they do.
Make no mistake: Hedges is not the radical leftist secularist of the Right’s worst nightmares. The son of a minister and seminary graduate himself, Hedges is equally critical of atheists as he is of religionists; in his newest book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, he makes it clear that his belief in God and conviction that sin is real, and the barometer of morality, is steadfast:
We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. …
We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. …
The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction.
Hedges’ credibility established, let’s turn our attention to the first op/ed that caught my eye today, by Dana Milbank:
In This Forgotten Town, Obama Can Forget About It
The Monongahela River Valley lost its steel mills in the ’80s and, a quarter-century later, this sad town in the heart of the Mon Valley still hasn’t recovered. Its downtown is a collage of crumbling buildings, and its once-proud landmark, the 102-year-old People’s Union Bank Building, has signs in the window: “Bank Repo Sale. Excellent Deal. Eight stories. Priced to sell!”
It is, in short, just the sort of place Barack Obama was talking about when he said he wasn’t getting the support of blue-collar workers of the industrial heartland because they “cling” to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It is also the place Obama chose to visit on Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday’s primary — and the reception here explains why Obama, the national front-runner, is expected to lose Pennsylvania. …
The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they’ll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.
If Hillary Clinton wins Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — and polls forecast that she will do just that — it will be because of white, working-class voters like the Norgrens. Yet the blue-collar voters poised to keep Clinton’s candidacy alive are also the reason she is losing the national race to Obama: Though still in charge here, they have lost control of the Democratic Party to the wealthy and better-educated. …
The average household in McKeesport earns less than $30,000 a year, barely half the U.S. average. Its population has shrunk and aged with the loss of the mills, and the average home here sells for a mere $45,000. …
The antipathy toward Obama isn’t necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle … Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton’s ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama’s suggestion that she hadn’t been “proud” of her country; Obama’s provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the “bitter” remark. …
Now, on to Chris Hedges:
The left has lost its nerve and its direction
The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.
Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves. …
The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us. …
The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. … Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope. …
The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. … The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites. …
Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.
The message is the same — the Democratic Party has forgotten its core values, and we, the left wing of the (formerly-)left wing, have let the party get away with it. Of course, they’ve got the money — but we have the votes. The party can spend all the money in the world trying to schmooze us, but at the end of the day, when it’s your job that’s disappeared, and your kid who goes to school without breakfast, you have to decide what your loyalty to the party has gotten you.
The answer lies within the Democratic Party itself, in both its official platform (for which DNC has deemed the top three “key Democratic Party ideals” as prosperity, peace, and progress), and, more telling, in its simple, clear mission statement, “The Democratic Vision“:
The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.
What’s telling is that, in this statement, national security comes first — and is the first issue mentioned, again, at the beginning of the second sentence — and civil rights comes last, with the economy and vague, imprecise language about “expanding opportunity for every American” and “strong economic growth” jammed in between.
But you have to ask: What do those things mean? What do they mean, in practical terms, to you and your family?
If you take the time to read the full Democratic Party platform, you’ll see that “prosperity, peace, and progress” still take a backseat to more than 18 pages’ worth of discussion about defeating terrorism and strengthening our military.
As essential as it is to prevent another 9/11, the fact remains: If you’re hungry or homeless, you’re not going to give a damn about anything except food and shelter. That’s why the economy is the number-one issue on voters’ minds: We’re talking survival. And a whole lot of us aren’t surviving.
The latest Hightower Lowdown arrived in my mailbox yesterday; the entire issue is dedicated to spelling out, in many simple but terrifying tables, “What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy.” I won’t get into the whole thing here; it deserves to be read, and digested, in full. Suffice to say, if you’re not rich, you’re in trouble.
Nevertheless, you may be surprised to learn that economic fears are apparently not affecting votes:
With growing layoffs, tight credit and an ailing housing market, 67 percent say the economy is an extremely important issue, up from 46 percent in November. Gasoline prices follow close behind at 59 percent.
The war in Iraq — the dominant issue for several years — stands at 48 percent. …
Yet those who have become extremely concerned about the economy since last fall show no significant difference from everyone else in backing a presidential candidate. Both groups divide about evenly between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, and between McCain and the other Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. …
People calling the economy extremely important lean toward the two Democratic presidential contenders, while those less concerned prefer McCain. The partisan divide helps explain that, as does income. Of those most worried about the economy, people earning under $50,000 a year prefer the two Democrats over McCain, middle-income earners are divided evenly, and McCain wins the most affluent.
Democrats divide between Obama and Clinton about the same whether or not they are extremely concerned about the economy.
While I’ve long believed (and still do) that a Hillary Clinton administration stands a far greater chance of restoring economic health in the U.S., it appears that voters see so little difference between A) the two Democratic candidates, and/or B) the two parties, that the most pressing issue — the economy — isn’t having much effect on voters who were going to vote Democratic (or Republican) anyway.
And that begs the question: Is there any longer a truly significant difference between the parties, on this or any other urgent issue on which the very survival of our people, and thus our nation, hinges?
Not that I’m advocating anyone vote Republican, mind you — that would be utter insanity. No; what I’m asking you to think about is just how far to the right the Democratic Party has shifted (on every issue, not just the economy), and, more importantly, what you are going to do about it.
Can the Democratic Party be fixed from within? That’s one option. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along, isn’t it? We’ve been holding our noses and voting a straight Democratic ticket, because we have no other choice — or so we’ve been told. And while we’ve been gritting our teeth and waiting for our party to return to the core values that made this country great, the big-money types keep dragging the party further and further to the right — and us along with it.
You know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results every time.
I just can’t do the insanity thing anymore. Where I go from here, I don’t know. The Greens, God love ‘em, cling too stubbornly to the idea that they can run a presidential candidate every term before building the party from the local and state level up (like the Republicans did — quite successfully, if you’ve noticed). I’m not a Libertarian (although, honestly, if Mike Gravel wins the LP nomination, I will be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life). What about the Socialist Party? As noble as Socialist goals are, no, I’m not so idealistic as to believe society can be rebuilt from scratch.
All I know is that I never left the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Atheism/Agnosticism,
Barack Obama,
Business/Economy,
Democrats,
Election 2008,
Employment/ENDA,
Green Party,
Hillary Clinton,
Homeland Insecurity,
Libertarian Party,
Mike Gravel,
Military/DADT,
Pennsylvania,
Radical Religious Right,
Republicans
March 15, 2008
Last October, Barack Obama attempted to defuse the Donnie McClurkin debacle by issuing a statement (actually, burying it deep within his campaign Web site) that affirmed his “belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens.”
I blogged the statement under the title “Barack Obama Attempts Damage Control, Comes Up Short. Way Short.“
While Obama supporters screamed, “What else do you want him to do?!” I explained that Obama could say whatever he wanted, but if he didn’t back up his words with actions, his words were meaningless.
As it turned out, his words were meaningless. Obama refused to dump McClurkin (or any of the rest of the anti-gay bigots) from his “Embrace the Homophobia Change” Gospel Tour, despite the widespread outcry from gay and lesbian Americans pleading with Obama not to allow a homophobic, “ex-gay” bigot to speak on his behalf, and especially not to exploit the deeply-ingrained homophobia endemic to conservative Southern black churches as a means of gaining a few political points.
But Obama didn’t listen to us, and “after the tour when asked why the campaign would seemingly reject gay voters for far-right leaning blacks a campaign insider replied, ‘We got what we needed to get out of it.’”
It’s not as if Obama wasn’t aware of McClurkin’s virulently anti-gay views and vile rhetoric before the concert tour; even if Obama could feign ignorance prior to the announcement of the concert, he couldn’t once the news hit the blogosphere, and certainly not after Human Rights Campaign head Joe Solmonese spoke directly with Obama to express (albeit with the HRC’s usual cloying spinelessness) “our community’s disappointment for his decision to continue to remain associated with Rev. McClurkin, an anti-gay preacher who states the need to ‘break the curse of homosexuality.’”
Why am I rehashing this old news? Because Barack Obama just used the exact same, ineffectual game plan (with one variation; this time, he dumped his human albatross, posthaste) in his attempt Friday to distance himself from the inflammatory, racist, and anti-American sermons of his church pastor, “spiritual mentor” and “role model” who “helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated“: Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
In response to the nuclear explosion that finally hit the MSM over the past 48 hours, Obama issued a statement, “On My Faith and My Church“. Let’s look at his dodge-and-weave points one at a time:
The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring,
And you mention his imminent retirement, why? As if to suggest he’s old, past it, and won’t be saying these outrageous things anymore? Or to imply that he just started pulling these ideas out of the air only recently, and it’s time he be put out to pasture?
Wright has been preaching his Gospel of Hate for a long time — we suspect since day one, but at least for the past seven years. His “God Damn America” screed (in response to the 9/11 attacks) dates to September 16, 2001.
And his retirement has nothing to do with anything. His upcoming retirement was common knowledge well over a year ago.
What’s important is what you, Barack, have been absorbing at the feet of your spiritual advisor for two decades.
…has touched off a firestorm over the last few days.
A firestorm in the MSM, yes, but then the MSM usually lags far behind the Internet. Wright has been on our radar since well before you decided to run for President.
He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.
With which statements, specifically, do you disagree?
I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies.
How about his anti-white statements?
I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit.
Then why did you refuse to fire Donnie McClurkin from your gospel tour?
And if you believe that “words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit,” why, after “strongly disagreeing” with McClurkin’s views, did you refuse to “exclude from [your] campaign the many Americans including many in the African American community who believe the same as Pastor McClurkin”?
In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
Again, which statements? It sounds like what you’re really saying is this: “I don’t want to to be pinned down to anything specific, because if I reject Wright’s anti-white remarks, I’ll piss off Black Liberation Theology believers, and if I don’t, I’ll alienate a vast swath of my white base. So I’ll just say that whatever you disagree with, I disagree with. Just think of my statement as part of the ‘blank screen’ concept, where you project whatever you want onto it.”
Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright
Which “particular statements” were those again?
are so contrary to my own life and beliefs,
Are they? How do we know that if you won’t tell us exactly which statements you disagree with?
And if you “reject outright” all of Rev. Wright’s racist, anti-American remarks, then why did you continue to attend his church for twenty years, and donate a healthy chunk of money ($22,500 in 2006 alone) to a church whose pastor who has been “disparag[ing] our great country” and “degrad[ing] individuals” from the pulpit for years?
But issuing vague statements of condemnation without addressing specifics is just par for the course for you, Barry. As Ronald Kessler re-caps in Friday’s Wall Street Journal (emphasis mine):
Considering this view of America, it’s not surprising that in December Mr. Wright’s church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. In the church magazine, Trumpet, Mr. Wright spoke glowingly of the Nation of Islam leader. “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening,” Mr. Wright said of Mr. Farrakhan. “He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.”
After Newsmax broke the story of the award to Farrakhan on Jan. 14, Mr. Obama issued a statement. However, Mr. Obama ignored the main point: that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Mr. Farrakhan, and that Mr. Wright’s church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader.
Instead, Mr. Obama said, “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.” Trumpet is owned and produced by Mr. Wright’s church out of the church’s offices, and Mr. Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor.
Meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Feb. 24, Mr. Obama described Mr. Wright as being like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.” He rarely mentions the points of disagreement.
In fact, you’ve been forced to “clarify” the remarks of so many of your closest supporters (your wife Michelle among them), you have your standard condemnation speech nearly down pat.
In addition to your deliberate vagueness, there’s another big problem with the way you deal — or don’t deal — with the stunning gaffes of the people you surround yourself with, Barack: You ignore the problem — and ignore it, and ignore it, and ignore it — until you are wedged so far into a corner, you are forced to deal with it.
During the Cleveland debate (February, 2008), Tim Russert asked you a simple yes-or-no question, and you, in your usual indirect manner, dodged and weaved until you were pinned to the mat:
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, one of the things in a campaign is that you have to react to unexpected developments.
On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: “Louis Farrakhan Backs Obama for President at Nation of Islam Convention in Chicago.” Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?
SEN. OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.
RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?
OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can’t say to somebody that he can’t say that he thinks I’m a good guy. (Laughter.) You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.
RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism “gutter religion.”
OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That’s why I have consistently denounced it.
This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I’ve been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.
RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, “Audacity of Hope,” you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan “epitomizes greatness.”
He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Moammar Gadhafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, “your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell.”
What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?
OBAMA: Tim, I have some of the strongest support from the Jewish community in my hometown of Chicago and in this presidential campaign. And the reason is because I have been a stalwart friend of Israel’s. I think they are one of our most important allies in the region, and I think that their security is sacrosanct, and that the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.
And the reason that I have such strong support is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, but also because of the fact that what I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community.
You know, I would not be sitting here were it not for a whole host of Jewish Americans, who supported the civil rights movement and helped to ensure that justice was served in the South. And that coalition has frayed over time around a whole host of issues, and part of my task in this process is making sure that those lines of communication and understanding are reopened.
But, you know, the reason that I have such strong support in the Jewish community and have historically — it was true in my U.S. Senate campaign and it’s true in this presidency — is because the people who know me best know that I consistently have not only befriended the Jewish community, not only have I been strong on Israel, but, more importantly, I’ve been willing to speak out even when it is not comfortable.
When I was — just last point I would make — when I was giving — had the honor of giving a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in conjunction with Martin Luther King’s birthday in front of a large African-American audience, I specifically spoke out against anti- Semitism within the African-American community. And that’s what gives people confidence that I will continue to do that when I’m president of the United States.
MR. WILLIAMS: Senator…
CLINTON: I just want to add something here, because I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti- Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country.
And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.
RUSSERT: Are you suggesting Senator Obama is not standing on principle?
CLINTON: No. I’m just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we’ve got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.
OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There’s no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word “reject” Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word “denounce,” then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.
CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent.
(APPLAUSE)
Is getting a straight answer out of you always like pulling hen’s teeth?
Back to your statement on Wright:
…a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright
You mean how Wright is “like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that [you] don’t agree with”?
I’m not sure you want to go there, Barry; after all, you can’t choose your relatives, but you do choose your pastor, and you do choose to spend two decades listening to and learning from a racist.
You’ve said it more than once about your Christian faith, Barry (lifting it, actually, from page 208 of The Audacity of Hope): “It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany.”
As Ben Wallace-Wells wrote in Rolling Stone (more than a year ago, mind you): “Obama wasn’t born into Wright’s world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell’s nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and ‘felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.’”
Barry, in my culture, there’s an old saying about people who claim to be straight after having gay sex: “Once is an accident. Twice is a phase. Three times — they like it.”
…and my membership in the church.
Let me therefore provide some context.
As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.
It’s probably not a good idea to mention HIV/AIDS right now, as you’ve just reminded the reader of Wright’s belief in the tinfoil-hat theory that “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life.
Oh, you didn’t just say that. You did, didn’t you?
No matter how carefully your writers crafted that sentence, you just said that 1) Wright preaches the gospel of Jesus (if so, that’s a different gospel, and certainly a different Jesus, that the one I was raised on); and 2) you “base your life” on the teachings of a man who hates whites.
Fire your speechwriters, Barry.
In other words, he has never been my political advisor;
Well, he was one of your political advisors, until yesterday — although the African American Religious Leadership Committee on which he served has been dismissed as, among other things, “the sort of largely honorary, advisory body that in recent days has recently been used mostly to throw people off who say controversial things.”
But where you’ve really backed yourself into a corner, Barry, is in saying Wright “has never been my political advisor.”
Unless I missed it, you’ve never contradicted a word of the 2007 Chicago Tribune article that states:
“Though Wright and Obama do not often talk one-on-one often, the senator does check with his pastor before making any bold political moves.
“Last fall, Obama approached Wright to broach the possibility of running for president.”
If that’s not political advice, then what is it?
(You also said: “What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice.” Does that mean you do get political advice from Wright — just not on a “day-to-day” basis?)
…he’s been my pastor.
He’s a heckuva lot more than just your pastor.
You said Wright is your “sounding board” who helps you keep your “priorities straight and [your] moral compass calibrated.”
He’s the pastor who brought you to Jesus. He’s the pastor who married you, baptized both your daughters, and blessed your home.
He’s the pastor whose sermon — the first sermon you ever heard him preach — served as the basis for your keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and inspired the title of your second book, The Audacity of Hope.
He is your “close confidant.”
“If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” your good friend, the Rev. Jim Wallis, told Rolling Stone, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”
Wright is a lot more than just your pastor. A lot more.
And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.
Twenty years, and you never heard him say anything as inflammatory as we’ve heard over the past few days?
Or are you saying you didn’t hear these specific statements that have gotten so much airplay?
Even when you aren’t attending “the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week,” don’t you think, especially if you’re so deeply involved in the fellowship of your church, you would have heard about something so controversial as your pastor damning America to Hell from the pulpit? Or blaming Italians for killing Jesus?
Nothing? You never heard him say anything like that?
Guess what, Barry? I don’t buy that for a second. And neither do a lot of other people.
When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.
When “these statements” — meaning these specific statements we’ve been watching on every news channel?
There you go choosing your words a little too carefully, Barry — as if to suggest you were blissfully unaware of Wright’s radicalism until just over a year ago, when in truth:
“In his 1993 memoir ‘Dreams from My Father,’ Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.”
And in February, 2007, you personally “disinvited” Wright from delivering the invocation for the announcement of your presidential campaign. Reported the New York Times:
“Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
“Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. …
“‘Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,’ Mr. Burton said. …
“‘When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli’ to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, ‘with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.’ Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
“Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, ‘The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.’
“According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, ‘You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.’”
Tell us again, Barry, how you didn’t hear any of Wright’s trash talk over the course of twenty years.
But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Not even at the cost of exposing your two little girls to anti-white hate? Is that the “gospel” you want them to live by?
Let me repeat what I’ve said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
You don’t “vehemently condemn” anything until you’re forced to.
With Rev. Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me,
Not half as much as they’ve pained and angered me as an Italian-American whose people didn’t arrive in this country until 1901, were scorned as non-white for a generation, and who never had a college graduate in the family until 1974.
To have this filth thrown in my face by your spiritual mentor and role model, when it’s you preaching such empty platitudes of “unity” and “transcending race,” is the ultimate insult to my intelligence, and the ultimate self-assassination of your character and integrity.
I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in;
Barack, you own this. You were the one who made your faith just a gigantic issue in the first place. You’re constantly on about how faith informs your politics. Your faith is integral to your life; you’ve made that clear in almost every speech you’ve ever made.
How you choose to worship, and who you choose as your teacher in your walk through this life (and the next) goes right to the heart of who you are.
… on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.
That is exactly how I judge you, Barack. Sadly, you have only proved once again that your judgment is not to be trusted — any more than your empty words.
See also:
Barack Obama’s Spiritual Mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Bashes Mythical “Rich” Whites (Especially Italians)
Memo to Barack: How Do You Think “God Damn America” Will Play in Peoria?
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Africa,
Barack Obama,
Christianity,
Donnie McClurkin,
Election 2008,
HIV/AIDS,
Hate Speech,
Homeland Insecurity,
Jeremiah Wright,
LGBT Organizations,
Michelle Obama,
Race/Ethnic Issues,
Religion & Spirituality,
UCC
March 11, 2008
We’re royally pissed off at Elliot Spitzer — not because he was patronizing a prostitute (or ten, or a hundred), but because by letting his little head do his thinking, he’s really screwed over gay and lesbian Americans.
Elliot Spitzer was one of the best friends American LGBTs could ask for. He’s been a longtime advocate for marriage equality, and last April introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the New York legislature — the first governor in the country to do so. Although the GOP-dominated state senate killed the bill, we were hopeful that New York would be one of the next states (competing with Rhode Island and California) to offer full, equal marriage, à la Massachusetts.
Spitzer had also promised to sign the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA).
Now it looks like we’re going to lose our best friend in the Empire State. And even if Spitzer doesn’t resign (and, really, he has to; he violated the Mann Act), his power is effectively neutered.
We don’t care a whit if Elliot Spitzer wants to pay for sex, and whatever damage he’s done to his marriage (and his relationship with his children) is his own concern. What a person does sexually, in private, is nobody’s business — unless his behavior puts a crimp in somebody else’s freedom. That includes conservatives trying to force the rest of us to live by their “moral values,” or, in Spitzer’s case, a single individual setting back the march toward LGBT equality by way of a really stupid choice he made for his own selfish pleasure. In short, Elliot Spitzer traded our freedom for the promise of a lousy orgasm.
A lousy, expensive orgasm. It’s difficult to imagine what you get for $4,300 — the price Spitzer was going to pay for a call girl named “Kristen” — but we imagine it wasn’t seven minutes in the missionary position.
Whatever Spitzer was going to get for his money, he didn’t get it. We were the ones who got screwed — without, as my dear departed father used to say, so much as a kiss.
Then, of course, there is the damage Spitzer has done to the Democratic Party, the extent of which remains to be seen. We already have a hint about the extent of the damage he’s done to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; within minutes of the story breaking on the newswires, Barack Obama supporters on the Message Forum That Shall Remain Nameless were using the Spitzer scandal to smear Clinton. First, they somehow rationalized (if you can call this line of thought “rational”) that Clinton was tainted merely by her association with Spitzer, one of her most high-profile supporters; furthermore, they decided that this association by default cancels out Obama’s relationships with Donnie McClurkin, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and the rest of the homophobic bigots from whom Obama refuses to distance himself.
As if.
Second — and this is very real damage — the widely-circulated image of Spitzer’s wife, the silent, suffering Silda, standing by her man…
…brought the image of Hillary standing by Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal back into razor-sharp focus.
Literally. This is the image ABC decide to run to illustrate a piece called “Why Women Stand by Their Men“:
Counter-clockwise from upper left: Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Craig, Mr. and (now ex-) Mrs. Jim McGreevey, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.
What’s wrong with this picture? For starters, three of the four disgraced politicians are Democrats. Having researched political pecadilloes for years, I can tell you that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the cheating department. Granted, represented are four of the most infamous sex scandals in recent memory (although it’s a stretch to call the Lewinsky scandal “recent”), but if ABC had asked for my input, I could have given them dozens of examples of humiliated wives standing by their men — from the other side of the aisle.
In any case, Clinton (Hillary, not Bill) is screwed no matter whether Spitzer resigns or not. As Peter Baker wrote in WaPo:
Spitzer has been a bad-luck charm for Hillary Clinton to this point. His illegal immigrant driver’s license proposal arguably became the first time she was thrown off her stride in this campaign. … That led to a bad patch for her that lasted all the way through the Iowa caucuses. …
Now Spitzer may throw her off stride again at a moment she needs to keep her momentum going. And on top of that, even if he does spare her by resigning soon, that has a cost too — one fewer superdelegate for her at the convention.
It’s not lost on us, by the way, that this scandal comes at the most inopportune time for Democrats — and at a very convenient time indeed for Republicans. (You’ve already forgotten all about Vicki Iseman, haven’t you?)
And it’s not lost on us that Spitzer was nailed by a federal wiretap — you know, that part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the feds to listen in on your phone calls for any half-assed reason they want (or no reason at all). It was the Bush Machine that turned the U.S. into “one nation, under surveillance” — and we knew Big Brother wasn’t going to confine wiretapping to terrorism suspects.
OK, OK, so the Spitzer hooker bust was a by-product of a “routine tax inquiry” by the IRS, and prostitution was said to be “the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators” looking into the suspicious movement of funds through Spitzer’s hands. But the timing of the emergence of a “confidential informant, a young woman who had worked previously as a prostitute for the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., the escort service that Mr. Spitzer was believed to be using” who enabled the investigators “to get a judge to approve wiretaps on the cellphones of some of those suspected of involvement in the escort service” seems awfully convenient. To the Republican Party, that is.
But, all speculation aside, what’s done is done — and what’s been done is irreversible.
As for how badly Spitzer has hurt the Democratic Party, hurt Hillary Clinton, and hurt us LGBTs — who saw in Elliot Spitzer the closest thing we had to a savior — only time will tell.
But it’s gonna hurt every last one of us.
And all because Elliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his penis in his pants.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
Permalink
|
Trackback
|
Category:
Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton,
Corruption,
Crime,
Democrats,
Donnie McClurkin,
Election 2008,
George W. Bush,
Hillary Clinton,
Homeland Insecurity,
Jim McGreevey,
Larry Craig,
Marriage Equality,
New York,
Republican Sexcapades,
Republicans
