The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former Chicago pastor whose racially-charged sermons threatened to implode President Obama’s primary bid last year, is again making waves over recent comments about his current relationship with the commander-in-chief.
“Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me,” Wright told Virginia newspaper The Daily Press when asked if he still spoke with Obama. “I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office.”
“They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is,” he added. “I said from the beginning: He’s a politician; I’m a pastor. He’s got to do what politicians do.”
The former pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama was a congregant for nearly two decades, also told the paper he holds no grudges against the president’s very public break from Wright last year.
“He’s my son. I’m proud of him,” Wright said. …
Madonn’!
Then again, what does it matter what I think? I’m just another garlic nose.
Role Of Religion In Presidential Campaign Heads 2008 ‘Top Ten’ List Of Church-State Stories
The role of religion in the presidential campaign tops the 2008 “Top Ten” list of top church-state stories, according to the editors of Church & State.
The monthly magazine, published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is the nation’s only news periodical devoted exclusively to the intersection of religion and government.
Said Church & State publisher Barry W. Lynn, “It was a wild and crazy year. To tell you the truth, I’m glad it’s coming to a close. I’m hopeful 2009 will be a lot better.”
After studying the past 12 months of news, the editors selected the following 10 stories as the most important and most interesting church-state developments for the year.
1. The Role of Religion in the Presidential Campaign: Not since 1960 when John F. Kennedy the first Roman Catholic president was elected, has religion played such a large role in a presidential campaign. News media representatives grilled candidates on what sins they had committed and what their favorite Bible verses were. Barack Obama fought false rumors that he is secretly a Muslim, and Mitt Romney’s Mormonism became a controversial topic. Candidates were held accountable for the incendiary comments of their pastors and their clergy supporters, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and TV preacher John Hagee. Many observers thought the whole thing was an unholy mess, especially in a nation that separates religion and government.
2. The Resurgence of the Religious Right: While pundits and progressives have proclaimed the demise of the Religious Right, the fundamentalist political movement remained extraordinarily powerful. Republican John McCain found it necessary to name evangelical Sarah Palin as his running mate to mollify the GOP’s restive religious base, and Religious Right forces rammed through bans on same-sex marriage in California, Florida and Arizona. Moderate evangelical Richard Cizik was forced out as government affairs representative at the National Association of Evangelicals after coming under fire from Religious Right forces.
3. The Battle Over Gay Marriage: Bans on same-sex marriage were approved in California, Florida and Arizona with conservative religious forces leading the drive. California’s approval of Proposition 8, with massive funding from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was particularly contentious. The Mormons, joined by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and evangelical Protestant congregations, were successful in passing a constitutional amendment that takes away the right of same-sex couples to marry and reflects church doctrine in civil law. The issue now moves back to the state Supreme Court.
4. The Ascendancy of Rick Warren: Once known primarily as a mega-church pastor and best-selling author (The Purpose Driven Life), the Rev. Rick Warren has rapidly moved into position as the nation’s most prominent preacher, despite right-wing views on reproductive freedom, gay rights and church-state separation. Warren, a Southern Baptist who heads Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is viewed by progressives as Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt with an ace PR team. After hosting a presidential debate stacked toward John McCain and being asked to give the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration, many think Warren seems destined to be the new Billy Graham.
5. Religious Right Influence at Justice Department: Religious Right influence at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was exposed this year. According to an internal DOJ investigation reported in the media in July, senior aides in the department used religious and political criteria to hire staff members for non-political positions. Monica Goodling, a top adviser to the attorney general, checked to see if job applicants were “pro-God in public life” and held right-wing views on abortion, homosexuality and other issues. (Goodling is a graduate of TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University.) DOJ also posted a legally dubious memorandum this year insisting that the federal government may give grants to “faith-based” social service agencies that discriminate in hiring, even if Congress has explicitly banned such bias.
6. Battles Over Creationism in Public Schools: New battles have erupted over the teaching of evolution in public schools. Blocked by the courts from teaching fundamentalist religious concepts directly in biology classes, Religious Right forces are trying a backdoor strategy. They are demanding that schools teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, a euphemism for creationist ideas. Over the heated objections of educators, scientists and civil liberties activists, the Louisiana legislature approved an “academic freedom” law encouraging such instruction in the state’s schools. Now the Texas State Board of Education is debating a similar proposal as part of its 10-year review of science standards.
7. Church Politicking Plot: The Religious Right’s dream of building a fundamentalist church-based political machine took a big step forward in 2008 when more than 30 pastors used their pulpits to endorse Republican political candidates. They acted at the behest of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a wealthy Religious Right legal outfit that wants to challenge the federal tax law ban on partisan politicking by tax-exempt groups. The ADF, which was founded by TV preachers and other religious broadcasters, hopes the Internal Revenue Service will revoke participating churches’ tax exemptions leading to a court showdown.
8. Defeat of Jeb Bush Referenda: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush saw his school voucher subsidies for religious and other private schools overturned by the state Supreme Court in 2006. Undeterred, the now former governor’s allies on an obscure tax commission engineered two measures onto the November 2008 ballot that would have repealed the state constitution’s ban on public funding of religion as well as diluted its provision for a strong system of public schools. To Bush’s dismay, the state Supreme Court on Sept. 3 struck the referenda from the ballot, derailing the scheme.
9. Blocking of ‘Christian’ License Plate: The South Carolina legislature unanimously approved a special “Christian” license plate featuring a bright yellow cross, a stained-glass church window and the words “I Believe.” Backed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, four local clergy and two minority faith groups challenged the government favoritism toward one faith. On Dec. 11, a federal district court blocked issuance of the plates. The judge’s action may forestall similar sectarian plates under consideration in other states.
10. The Christmas Wars: It has become an annual holiday tradition Religious Right groups and their allies in the right-wing media launch a yearly crusade to stop the alleged secularization of Christmas and to pressure government to include Christian symbols in the holiday mix. They rail against stores’ use of the term “Happy Holidays” and insist that advertisements say “Merry Christmas” instead. This year, much of the attention focused on a Washington State battle where an atheist Winter Solstice sign was positioned near a Christian Nativity scene in the state capital. Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly and an array of Religious Right scolds lambasted Gov. Christine Gregoire for allowing the anti-religious sentiment. Ironically, credit for the atheist display actually should go to the Alliance Defense Fund, a Religious Right legal group that sued Gregoire last year, insisting that the Capitol is an open forum where a Nativity scene (and all other forms of speech) must be allowed.
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. Americans Unitied for Separation of Church and State Links: Homepage; Americans United (Press Center); Americans United (Action Center)
You can disagree about the propriety of the auto industry bailout. You can disagree about free trade. You can disagree about a lot of things. But when you say gay people are pedophiles and rapists, that is not a simple disagreement: it is a stupid, hateful position that, say, a President-elect should stay miles away from.
Barack Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration is dreadful. His explanation is, if possible, even worse. He shrinks Warren’s grotesque comparisons down to a “disagreement,” as if we were talking about ethanol subsidies. But we are not. In fact, we are not even talking about marriage rights, we are talking about demonizing an entire group of Americans for the purpose of religious indoctrination, political gain and financial profit. …
During this year’s primary, Obama suddenly realized after 20 years that his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said things that were so beyond the pale that it was worth throwing him under the political bus, and shunning him forever. What those things were, besides loud snippets taken out of context, is not clear, but I am pretty sure Wright has never falsely accused anyone of pedophilia, rape, incest and bestiality, no matter how over-the-top his style may occasionally be. …
That Wright appears to have been replaced by Warren in Obama’s heart says a lot about the president-elect’s rootlessness and shifting identity. Within a year, he has gone from relying on the advice of a virulently progressive African-American pastor in a Chicago church, to being “friends” with an arch-conservative, bigoted, white pastor from Orange County, and handing the latter the most visible platform a religious leader in America can behold, the presidential inauguration.
Obama’s inclusiveness was always conditional, as evidenced by the Wright affair. Obama says we have to “create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable;” but is there anything more disagreeable than being called an incestuous rapist pedophile? There are plenty of people who are not invited to the inauguration, are not part of Obama’s circle, and are certainly not asked to give the invocation. If not, we would all be howling at the presence of the good people from the Aryan Nation, the Nation of Islam and sundry other groups. …
Obama’s clinical interpretation of his “disagreement” with Warren’s hate-speech … shows a horrible misunderstanding of the state of gay America, or perhaps a case of political cynicism gone way, way too far, even by Washington’s loose standards. Two weeks ago a man was killed in New York for being gay, “a lynching in Brooklyn,” the New York Times called it. Gay people and those perceived to be gay make up one in six of all reported hate crimes in the United States (and far more go unreported.) Do we really think that there is not a cause and effect between demonizing gay people and the beatings and maimings and murders they suffer disproportionately for being hated? And does Obama really want to be complicit in this persecution? And does he really want to be known as a chief contributor to the well-oiled campaign to deprive gay people of some of the most basic of rights?
We are told that Joseph Lowery, the prominent African-American minister and civil rights leader, will also be involved in the inauguration, and he is a strong supporter of gay rights, including marriage. That’s good, but what is this inauguration, some kind of daytime talk show (or CNN at any time for that matter) where every time a gay (or gay friendly) person is featured, there has to be a counterpoint, usually someone who thinks gay people should all die because it says so in the bible? By the way, we are also told that FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME there will be a gay marching band at the inauguration. Now that really makes up for being called a pedophile.
Obama, smooth talker that he is, stumbled in his response to questions about Warren’s involvement, finally mumbling something about his “consistent” support of “equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” Even that meek pronouncement was a bit of an overstatement: if he opposes same-sex marriage, he is by definition not in favor of equality. Perhaps more importantly, you definitely lose all right to call yourself a supporter of gay rights when you associate yourself so closely with a man who hates gay people. There is nothing more for Obama to say on the subject, except to apologize, explain that he was misguided and/or misinformed, withdraw his invitation to Warren, and never be seen with him again. …
“God … Is Gonna Strike Out His Hand Against, Yes, … The United States Of America!”
06 Sep 2008 07:35 pm
Remember a certain Jeremiah Wright’s rhetorical flight of Biblical hyperbole? Petard, prepare to be hoist[ed]:
On July 20, 2008, the pastor of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s home church, Larry Kroon, delivered a sermon called “Sin Is Personal To God.” Kroon, the senior pastor of the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church in Wasilla, Alaska, used the book of Zephanaiah as his reference point for discussing “that great day of the Lord when God will finally bring closure to human history… a day of wrath.” According to Kroon, “all things and all people” are going to bear the brunt of God’s “intense anger.” “There’s anger with God,” he proclaimed. “He takes sin personal.”
Kroon placed Zephaniah in a modern context, warning that the sinful habits of Americans would invite the wrath of God. “And if Zephaniah were here today,” Kroon bellowed, “he’d be saying, ‘Listen, [God] is gonna deal with all the inhabitants of the earth. He is gonna strike out His hand against, yes, Wasilla; and Alaska; and the United States of America. There’s no exceptions here — there’s none. It’s all.’”
(Kroon’s sermon can be heard here; a full transcript is here.)
Frankly, we’re stunned, in a good way, that the guy who refuses to acknowledge the validity of all marriages, actually used the word “spouse”. Here’s the micro-mini press release issued today by former Jerry Nadler staffer-turned Obama campaigner Shin Inouye:
Sen. Obama’s Statement on Passing of Del Martin
09/02/2008 (10:49 AM)
Today, Senator Barack Obama made the following statement on the passing of civil rights activist Del Martin:
“Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear that Del Martin had passed. Del committed her life to fighting discrimination and promoting equality. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her spouse Phyllis Lyon, and all those who were touched by her life.”
That’s not about to turn me into an Obama fan — Barry’s got way too much anti-gay baggage to dump, and to make up for, for me to even begin to trust him — but it’s something. What kind of “something” is open to debate; my guess is that somebody told him that ignoring the death of Del Martin would be like ignoring the death of Cesar Chavez.
I haven’t written anything in a while about Obama and Teh Gays, because there hasn’t been a lot happening — save for another fawning “some of Obama’s best friends are gay!” piece in The Advocate, “Should You Believe in Obama?,” that’s been online for the past week or more. I haven’t blogged it until now because there just isn’t that much in it to make me do more than shrug and go “Meh!”
Well, that’s not entirely true.
The article begins with former Obama aide Kevin Thompson talking about about his long friendship with the Obamas, and how cool they were with him coming out. All well and good, until:
And after Obama marched in a Chicago pride parade for the first time, Thompson says, questions again poured forth: “He wanted to know the history of Pride — how is it that every city has one, what was the origin of it, what was the whole story about Stonewall.”
Waitasec. If memory serves, the first time Obama marched in a pride parade was in 2004. Only four years ago (and at age 43), Obama was asking his gay friend about “the history of Pride — how is it that every city has one, what was the origin of it, what was the whole story about Stonewall”?
Shouldn’t Obama have known this stuff already?
Let’s turn this around: Let’s say you’ve got a white candidate who claims to be a major ally of the African-American community, whose black friends say that he’s worked tirelessly on their behalf… What would you say about such a candidate if you found out that, just four years ago and in middle age, this guy had to ask a black friend about the history of slavery, civil rights, and the Montgomery bus boycott?
It seems I knew more about the African-American struggle for civil rights by the time I was five than Barack Obama knew about the battle for gay equality when he was 43.
That bothers me, a lot. But it doesn’t surprise me. Which is probably why the thing in this article that bugs me the most doesn’t have so much to do with Obama himself (I already know what his liabilities are), but with a certain anonymous quote.
In the piece, (Bill) Clinton campaigner David Mixner says that “Some people don’t know what to make of [Obama] because he hasn’t known the leading gay activists or even his own advisers on gay issues for very long.” Nothing wrong there; what irritates the hell out of me is the follow-up remark writer Michael Joseph Gross opted to include, from “another” unnamed “national gay political leader”:
“The mafia doesn’t know him. David Geffen, James Hormel, David Bohnett — they’re not his friends. His real gay friends are regular people in Chicago.”
“The mafia”?! Thanks for propagating that little right-wing myth from the bitter lips of Michael Ovitz, Mr. Gross.
Think about it: In an article mentioning the Dreamworks head honchos, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen — super-rich Hollywood power wielders all — would you allow an anonymous comment referring to them as “the Jewish mafia”? Sheesh.
What else bugs me:
Jim Madigan, an attorney who was a student in professor Obama’s constitutional law class at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s, says Obama taught the course from a distinct perspective. Every civil rights case study, from Dred Scott v. Sandford to Bowers v. Hardwick, was made “from the perspective of the individual plaintiff,” Madigan says. Moreover, Obama approached race and sexual orientation with an even hand: “The approach was always, ‘Look at how the government is treating the individual,’?” Madigan recalls. “What was personal for him and what was personal for me — we treated them in the same way.”
Well, Mr. Madigan, that’s easy to do in a classroom, where every issue is dealt with in theoretical terms — and where learning from history is the safest sort of 20/20 hindsight. Outside the classroom, Obama has not yet “approached race and sexual orientation with an even hand.” He admits that the marriage of his own parents wasn’t legally recognized throughout the U.S., but can’t bring himself to make the connection between Jim Crow laws and anti-gay laws. Worst of all, in a lame attempt to justify his thoroughly unjustifiable opposition to same-sex marriage, he uses the same arguments (”tradition,” “religious beliefs,” and “states’ rights” among them) used to justify opposition to interracial marriage.
Fail.
To Gross’s credit, there is, at least, mention of some of the anti-gay company Obama keeps…
When it was reported that Obama described [James Meeks, who is also pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church and who last year was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the antigay movement”] as one of his spiritual counselors — and when the candidate was endorsed by other African-American leaders who have been outspokenly homophobic, including gospel singer Donnie McClurkin — some gay leaders condemned the U.S. senator, claiming that if he truly were our ally, he could not also be their friend.
Yeah, well, I still feel that way, even if Obama renounces all ties with his anti-gay buddies the way he did with Jeremiah Wright — because that decision was borne clearly out of political expediency, not a genuine epiphany.
I’ll also give Gross credit for ending the article with a caveat none of us can afford to forget:
Marriage marks the limit of Obama’s courage. He supports civil unions, believes marriage rights are best granted by the states, and asserts that he believes “marriage is between a man and a woman” — the phrase that’s been honed by conservative opponents of marriage equality.
His stance on marriage is the one crashingly false note in his message to gay voters. It is difficult to understand his position as anything but calculated dissembling. Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois says, “I wish he was being brave and bold and doing the right thing, but it’s his campaign’s and his determination that it would not be helpful or beneficial when running for president of the United States at this particular time. I don’t think he can risk any position other than the one he’s taken.”
Probably without realizing it, Garcia expresses the one thing that annoys me the most about Barack Obama: He’s not “brave and bold” enough to stand up for what’s right — and his anti-equality position is rooted in pure politics. If Obama is so pro-gay, and so honest and open and genuine, then he would come out in favor of marriage equality, damn the naysayers.
Finally, as long as I’m on the subject of Obama and Teh Gays, here’s something else that’s been bothering me for a while: Remember that LGBT conference call the Obama campaign (not Obama himself — he wasn’t on the call) had with a bunch of high-profile gay leaders trying to convince 1,200 listeners (including me) to go to work for Obama? The call began with Steve Hildebrand, deputy campaign manager of Obama for America, telling us that there would be another LGBT conference call “within the next two weeks, which Obama himself will join.”
That call took place June 6th. Today is September 2nd — and the Obama campaign has never followed up on its promise of a second call.
Believe me, if they had, I’d know about it — I’m on the mailing list, which bombards me with constant pleas for donations, but is conspicuously silent otherwise.
I guess I’m never going to get my questions answered.
But, you know what? All of this amounts to a whole lotta nothin’. Obama’s the nominee, and, thanks to McCain’s pick of the worst vice presidential candidate in the history of the United States, I think Obama will win. There’s not much point in my complaining about Obama anymore, as not a thing I could say or do will turn back the clock and get a real Democrat into the White House.
Oh, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop complaining about Obama — and if the guy does become the next POTUS, I’ll probably be ten times as brutal on him as I’ve ever been.
It just doesn’t matter if I criticize him or not. In case you hadn’t noticed, this politics thing is completely out of the hands of We the People, and it doesn’t matter much what we say. Our “candidates” are always chosen for us, and if we don’t vote the way TPTB want us to, there’s always election-rigging.
The short version: Anti-gay crusader and all-around unlikable Radical Righty James Dobson accused Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible, and of having a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.
We accuse James Dobson of being a rabid wingnut, and devoid of any sense of irony whatsoever, since he’s the one with the “fruitcake interpretation” (and we mean “fruitcake” as Dobson does: in the raving-lunatic kind of way).
First, here’s what has me laughing: Dobson’s panties are in a twist over Obama’s 2006 “Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America” keynote address. Back in January of this year, I came down on Obama for the same speech — but for a very different reason.
It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?
(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us who believe in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” as a bunch of Christian-haters, Obama.)
So, my problem with Obama’s speech is that he was (as usual) sucking up like mad to Christians at the expense of non-Christians — painting non-Christians as intolerant and unreasonable, and expecting non-Christians to resign themselves to accepting the insertion of “religion in the public square.”
But, as you can guess, that’s not Jimmy Dobson’s problem with Obama’s speech.
Now, I’ll make the ultimate sacrifice and actually listen to Dobson’s latest insane rant, so you don’t have to (and so you can have a transcript — which you are welcome to reprint in part or full, on the condition you include a link back to The Lavender Newswire). You’re welcome.
After some crappy intro music, endless reminiscing about Tim Russert, some yammering about 13-year-old girls getting abortions, general slams at Democrats, and the dire warning that Republicans are in danger of losing the November election unless they start “articulating more conservative values” (how much more? would advocating public hanging, stoning, and flogging for heretics be enough?), Dobson and Focus on the Family’s “vice president of government and public policies” Tom Minnery finally get down to Obama — but not before Dobson makes a disclaimer about how they can talk about Obama all they want, because the program is being sponsored solely by whatever arm of Focus on the Family it is that doesn’t have to adhere to IRS regulations.
Dobson: “I show up in that speech. I never knew that I had come under fire there, and, uh, I think that’s a good place, Tom, to start our discussion here, because this speech is about Barack Obama’s views on religion and government, and it is very telling.”
Minnery: “… And before he diminshes you, Dr. Dobson, on the subject of religion, he diminishes religion itself…”
Obama: “90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.”
Minnery: “Notice he said 70 percent of the people identify with an organized religion. That organized religion they identify with is the Christian religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition. Now, he allows that 38 percent are identified as committed Christians, but that’s a smaller number than the entire body of people who identify as Judeo-Christians, so he’s not even acknowledging the strong Judeo-Christian tradition.”
So, because he does acknowledge non-Christians, he’s dissing Christians? Oh, get off that cross, Minnery — we need the nails.
Beyond that, Minnery, are you implying that because Christians are in the majority, they should be allowed to run the country without concern for non-Christians? Actually, I’m sure that’s exactly what you mean.
Another gay-hater had this to say:
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”
— Ayn Rand
Minnery: “Then, he— later in the speech, he says: ‘Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.’
“Well I say, ‘Excuuuse me?’ 76 percent of the people identify themselves as Christians. There are only six-tenths of one percent who are Muslim, seven-tenths of one percent who are Buddhist, four-tenths of one percent who are Hindu…”
Uh-huh. And you have a problem with this why, exactly?
Not that I would ever compare Barack Obama to Thomas Jefferson, but it’s worth noting that Obama’s statement here is hardly a new idea:
“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”
— Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821 on the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
You got a problem with Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Minnery?
Minnery: “So he’s diminishing the idea that people of Christian faith have anything to say. And then he begins to diminish you.”
Obama: “And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s?”
Minnery: “Oh, we have to [camp?] on that for just a moment, because he has compared you somehow as being on the right when Al Sharpton is on the left. Al Sharpton achieved his notoriety in the eighties and nineties by engaging in racial bigotry, and many people have called him a black racist, and, uh, he is somehow equating you with that, and racial bigotry.”
Dobson: “Uh, you know, Tom, I don’t, uh, want to be defensive here. Uh, obviously, that is offensive to me. I mean, uh, who wants to expel people who are not Christians? Expel ‘em from what? From the country? Deprive them of Constitutional rights? Is that what he thinks I want to do?
I don’t know what Obama thinks, but I think you do indeed want “to expel people who are not Christians” from every American institution you can, Dobson. You’re the one crowing constantly about “restoring” the United States into the “Christian nation” it never was. You’re the one who belongs to the Coalition on Revival, along with every other whackjob whose primary goal is to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. You’re the one who trades votes for support of your maniacal crusade against non-believers through the all-powerful Council for National Policy.* You’re the one who wants a conservative Christian-only political party. You’re the one who hijacked the National Day of Prayer, specifically excluding “religions outside of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition” from participation, keeping it “Christians-only spectacle” for the past 17 years.
And there’s no question you want to deny gay people their Constitutional rights, whether we’re Christian or not.
Dobson: “Why this man jump on me? I haven’t said anything near that.
Yes, he said, “Why this man jump on me?” not “Why did this man jump on me?” (For a Ph.D., Dobson takes a lot of liberties with the English language.)
Dobson: “He also equates me with Al Sharpton, who is a reverend. I am not a reverend, I’m not a minister, I’m not a theologian…”
Dobson proceeds down the list of his college degrees. We snore throughout.
Dobson: “…and there is no equivalence to us. I don’t want to overact to it, but…”
Minnery: “Well, you’re in good company, because from there he proceeds to disparage serious understanding of the Bible.”
Obama: “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.” [laughter]
Minnery: “That kind of commentary drives me crazy. It’s almost willful to confuse the dietetic laws of the Old Testament that applied to the Israelites to suggest that the Levitical law governing stoning of a belligerent, drunkard son somehow applies to the church age of the New Testament.”
Dobson agrees; there is some talk on Deuteronomy…
Minnery: “The Lord was trying to purify [the Israelites]… trying to create a holy nation… and laws that applied to them then, the Levitical code, the dietary laws, no longer apply. Many of the principles in the Old Testament apply, but not those laws. And it seems that he’s willfully trying to confuse people with what Jesus said in the New Testament.”
Here your transcriber stops to collapse in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and then makes a mental note of this most excellent example of biblical cherry-picking, which will come in handy for future blog posts.
If Levitical dietary code no longer applies (and I’d like someone to show me where Jesus said it no longer applies), but everything else in Leviticus does apply, then such righteous men of God as Messrs. Dobson and Minnery should still be upholding the following Levitical laws:
• sacrificing goats for sin atonement (Lev. 4:22-28);
• undergoing cleansing rituals after touching a dead bug (Lev. 5:2-3) — which you shouldn’t do anyway (Lev. 11:31) — or having sex with a menstruating woman (Lev. 15:24, 20:18);
• staying away from menstruating women altogether (Lev. 15:19-30, 33);
• avoiding even looking at a woman while she’s menstruating (Lev. 18:19);
• making “wave” and “heave” offerings of animal fat, breasts, and thighs, which God commanded “by a statute for ever” (Lev. 7:30-36);
• purifying your woman for 33 days after she gives birth to a boy, or for 66 days after she gives birth to a girl (Lev. 12:1-5), and getting your priest to kill a lamb, a pigeon, a turtledove (or in some cases, two turtles) to cleanse your woman of her “blood issue” (Lev. 12:6-8);
• accepting the fact that if you accidentally get semen on yourself, your woman, or anything you own, you’ll all be unclean until nighttime, even if you wash it off (Lev. 15:16-18, 32);
• making sure your cow isn’t having interspecies sex, keeping the seeds you plant separate from one another, and never wearing linen-wool blends (Lev. 19:19);
• never making supernaturally-inspired predictions (Lev. 19:26);
• letting your hair grow long on the sides (like the Hasidim do), and never trimming your beard — you do have a beard, don’t you? (Lev. 19:27, 21:5);
• never getting a tattoo (Lev. 19:28);
• killing people who curse their parents (Lev. 20:9), people who use profanity in any way (Lev. 24:16), adulterers (Lev. 20:10), men who sleep with their mothers-in-law (Lev. 20:11, 14) or daughters-in-law (Lev. 20:12), gay men (Lev. 20:13), people who have sex with animals — and the animals, too (Lev. 20:15-16), people who consult psychics (Lev. 20:27), and girls who act like sluts (Lev. 21:9);
• eliminating divorcees, women who use dirty words (Lev. 21:7), and widows (Lev. 21:13-14) from your list of potential wives;
• keeping disabled people, ugly people (Lev. 21:18), people with broken hands or feet (Lev. 21:19), hunchbacks, dwarves, blind people, people with a Vitamin C deficiency, people with scabby skin, and men with damaged testicles (Lev. 21:20) out of your church;
• buying slaves (Lev. 22:11) and making slaves out of your neighbors and their families, forever (Lev. 25:44-46);
Dobson: “He’s equating that with the Sermon on the Mount.”
No, dummy, he’s not equating Levitical law with the Sermon on the Mount — he’s saying that if you want a theocracy, you’re going to have a hell of a time deciding whose version of Christianity will be the law of the land: your barbaric, wrathful, spiteful Old Testament, or his relatively saner, more loving New Testament.
Minnery: “And you remember, more recently, he quoted the Sermon on the Mount— cited the Sermon on the Mount as justifying same-sex marriage…
No, he didn’t justify same-sex marriage at all, Minnery.
Minnery is referring to a March, 2008, interview Obama gave to WTAP-TV, in which he said:
“I will tell you that I don’t believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them. So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don’t think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. 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.”
Obama is plainly, unbudgeably opposed to same-sex marriage — which he reiterated in the statement with which you are taking issue here. But you didn’t play that sound clip, did you, Minnery? Of course not, because it would have exposed you as a liar.
(By the way, while I agree with Obama’s last sentence — that the Sermon on the Mount is more relevant “than an obscure passage in Romans” [he’s alluding to Romans 1:26-27], Obama infuriates me with his stubborn opposition to marriage equality. Surprisingly, a presumed Obama supporter named Carlos takes issue with this, right on Obama’s Web site: “Interesting use here of the Sermon on the Mount. It would be better for Obama to just say that he is against state sponsored marriage period. Otherwise, it sounds like gay marriage is second class and not worthy of state approval while non-gay marriage is ok. It looks to me that Obama’s belief about gay marriage is simply a tactic to bridge the cultural gap between people who are more open to homosexuality and people who have problems with it. By being against gay marriage, Obama is softening his pro-gayness with the anti-gay crowd in the hopes that the anti crowd will see his point about the Sermon on the Mount and treating people fairly.” Well said, Carlos.)
Minnery: “…so it seems that he is vastly confused about the details of biblical exposition, that he’s painting himself in this highly religious aura.”
Dobson: “And then says “Go read the Bible…’”
[laughter]
Dobson: “…as though he’s some kind of biblical authority.”
[crosstalk and boring stuff]
Minnery: “… I think he is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter. I just don’t know whether he’s doing it willfully or accidentally.”
Dobson: “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”
Minnery: “Well, that’s exactly what he’s doing, and there’s another clip that gives everybody an understanding of his notion of morality.”
Obama: “…I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.”
Minnery: “See, he’s saying moral people do not have to be religious people — but religion is the grounding, the foundation for morality.”
So, animals are by nature immoral, because they aren’t religious? Mmm’kay.
Minnery: “I mean, read what George Washington said about that: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” That’s our first president.”
Our first president also said:
“I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.”
— George Washington
…responding to a group of clergymen who complained that the Constitution lacked mention of Jesus Christ, in 1789, Papers, Presidential Series, 4:274, the “Magna-Charta” here refers to the proposed United States Constitution
“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”
— George Washington
…letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, also James A Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.”
— George Washington
…letter to Tench Tilghman asking him to secure a carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, March 24, 1784, in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion (1963) p. 118, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
“Among many other weighty objections to the Measure, it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess.”
— George Washington
…to John Hancock, then president of Congress, expressing opposition to a congressional plan to appoint brigade chaplains in the Continental Army (1777), quoted from a letter to Cliff Walker from Doug Harper (2002)
And here’s what some of George’s contemporaries had to say about our first president:
“Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice.”
— Thomas Jefferson
…quoted from Jefferson’s Works, Vol. iv., p. 572. (Asa Green “was probably the Reverend Ashbel Green, who was chaplain to congress during Washington’s administration.” — Farrell Till in “The Christian Nation Myth.”)
“I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did.”
— Thomas Jefferson
…in his private journal, February, 1800, quoted from Jefferson’s Works, Vol. iv., p. 572 (”Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the Constitution of the United States; he was a member of the Continental Congress, a United States senator from New York, and minister to France. He accepted, to a considerable extent, the skeptical views of French Freethinkers.” — John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans.)
“[Washington was] a total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”
— John Bell, in 1779
…in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
“Sir, Washington was a Deist.”
— The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie
…rector of the church Washington had attended with his wife, to The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, upon Wilson’s having inquired of Abercrombie regarding Washington’s religious beliefs, quoted from John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans
“I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges, himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson
…in an interview with Mr. Robert Dale Owen written on November 13, 1831, which was publlshed in New York two weeks later, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27
“Though the General attended the churches in which Dr. White officiated, whenever he was in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War, and afterwards while President of the United States, he was never a communicant in them.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson
…from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, p. 188, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27
“…he was pleased to express himself gratified by what he had heard from our pulpit; but there was nothing that committed him relatively to religious theory.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson
…in a letter to the Rev B C C Parker, dated November 28, 1832, from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 189-191, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27
“I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation further than as may be hoped from his constant attendance upon Christian worship, in connection with the general reserve of his character.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson
…in a letter to the Rev B C C Parker, dated December 31, 1832, from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 189-191, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 28
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity…. Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson
…in a sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans, second sentence quoted in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15
“In regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth requires me to say that General Washington never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister. Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant. I have been written to by many on that point, and have been obliged to answer them am as I now do you.”
— The Right Reverend William White
…the first bishop of Pennsylvania, friend of Washington and bishop of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia, which Washington attend for about 25 years when he happened to be in that city, in a letter to Colonel Mercer of Fredericksberg, Virginia, on August 15, 1835, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27
“I find no one who ever communed with him.”
— Rev William Jackson
…rector of Alexandria, Virginia, in response to a letter from Reverend Origen Bacheler, cited in The Bacheler-Owen Debate, vol. 2, p. 262, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 28
Minnery: “Our second president, John Adams, said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Our second president also said:
“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”
— John Adams
…letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815
“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
— John Adams
…”A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-88), from Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 258, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”
“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions … shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power … we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.”
— John Adams
…letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785, quoted from Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (1991)
“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”
— John Adams
…letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
“When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.”
— John Adams
…from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.”
— John Adams
…letter to Thomas Jefferson, December 3, 1813, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”
— John Adams
…letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
— John Adams
…letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations, also from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.”
— John Adams
…”this awful blashpemy” that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
“We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. … I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. … It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu.”
— John Adams
…one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. From Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 234. Quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church.”
“The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”
— Treaty of Tripoli (1797)
…carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams
Dobson: “Related to that, Tom, there is another comment in Senator Obama’s speech that is of incredible importance in understanding his worldview. And it’s gonna be kind of difficult to explain — I ask people to really stay with me here — uh, he’s trying to make the case that it is anti-democratic to believe or fight for moral principles in the Bible that are not supported by people of all faiths, or presumably by those of no faith. Let’s listen to what he had to say:
Obama: “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”
Dobson: “What the senator is saying there in essence is that ‘I can’t seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial birth abortions, because there are people in the culture who don’t see that as a moral issue, and if I can’t get everyone to agree with me, it is un-democratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the scripture.’ Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”
Why is it “a fruitcake interpretation”? Obama’s admitting that he has no right to impose his religious beliefs through legislation.
Granted, Obama is being a total hypocrite here; he often cites (or blames) his religious beliefs for his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage equality. Typical (and just one of many examples, before and since) is this statement he made during an interview with WBBM-AM in 2004:
“I’m a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”
I’ll give Obama credit for one thing (and one thing only): At least he, unlike you, Messrs. Dobson and Minnery, realizes he might be a misguided bonehead on this issue. As he wrote in The Audacity of Hope:
“It is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ call to love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I might be seen on the wrong side of history.
Sad, though, how willing he is to support abortion rights — which most Christians see as murder — and not marriage equality, which does no harm to anyone or anything, and in fact only enhances life and affirms love.
Nevertheless, Dobson, you’re wrong with your re-wording of what Obama said in his 2006 speech.
Dobson: “Uh, this is why we have elections, to support what we believe to be wise and moral. We don’t have to go to the lowest common denominator of morality, which is what he is suggesting. Remember, Tom, that Senator Obama is a man who, while he was in the state legislature, did not oppose the killing of babies who were aborted, but then somehow came into the world alive.”
Believe it or not, Dobson isn’t pulling the first part of the second sentence out of his butt. After passing by hundreds of hysterical wingnut media outlets, I finally found one source reliable enough to lend credence to the “living abortions” story, the Beeb: “One in 30 foetuses aborted for medical reasons is born alive, a 10-year study at 20 UK hospitals has found. …”
I’m not touching this one, folks, other than to reiterate that I’m one of those odd ducks who finds abortion morally reprehensible (yes, Dobson, we agnostics have “morals,” too), yet I am 100% pro-choice. In a nutshell: It is not my place to judge or deny a woman’s right to her own body (we are not baby-making machines), and thus I’ll continue to fight for a woman’s right to choose. Period.
That, ironically, puts me on the same page as Obama — at least as far as abortion is concerned.
I do have one question for Dobson, though: If you’re in such a state over “living abortions,” why aren’t you leading some sort of movement to adopt them? Or, as most radical righties, does your concern for human beings end once they’re out of the uterus?
However, I have no idea what Dobson is talking about when he says that as a state legislator, Obama “did not oppose the killing of babies who were aborted, but then somehow came into the world alive.” Was there a Let’s Kill Living Abortions bill in the Illinois state legislature? Methinks Dobson is indeed pulling this idiocy out of his butt.
Dobson: “That to him was a moral position.”
Huh? What are you talking about, and what do you mean?
Dobson: “To me its anathema. Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?
“What he’s trying to say here is, unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe. I thank God that that’s not what the Constitution says.”
Well, I’ll give you that, Jimbo — that’s not what the Constitution says at all. Unfortunately (for you), that’s not what Obama was saying either. At all.
Dobson: “”Tom, as you can see, I’ve managed to raise my blood pressure here…”
. . .
Minnery: “He seems in this speech not to like pastors who he says deliver more screeds than sermons. Now, remember, this was delivered in oh-six — before anybody knew about his then-pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who has now become his ex-pastor.”
Obama: “They don’t want faith used to belittle or to divide. They’re tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon.”
Dobson: “Tom, I, uh, read the transcipt of this, and this one jumped out at me. You know, how interesting it is that Senator Obama is condemning pastors there for their highly emotional diabtribe, when he sat for twenty years under the tutelage of his own pastor, and eventually had to disown him.”
Minnery: “And he only disowned him when it became public that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was delivering ‘more screed than sermon.’ Apparently, Senator Obama didn’t recognize it in his own pastor, in his own church.”
Well, I can’t argue with that.
Next, it’s onto John McCain, and “the marriage issue”:
Minnery: “We are on the lip of seeing the Arizona state legislature vote, out of the legislature to the people in the fall, a state marriage amendment. That’ll be the third marriage amendment on the ballot. California will be on the ballot, Florida will be on the ballot… But it is the Republican senate that is dithering — I think there’s a lot of political cowardice there — and whether this gets out or not, we don’t know.
“We have asked Senator John McCain’s staff to say — please! — ‘the senator says he supports state marriage amendments.’ Here’s a state marriage amendment in his own home state that dearly needs a word from him. Will he say something about it to encourage the, uh, Republican leaders in the senate in Arizona to have some backbone? Not a word has Senator McCain said!”
Dobson: “Not a word! And he has said on numerous occasions, ‘I believe marriage can be and should be protected at the state level.’ This is in his state, largely because the Republicans in the state senate who have the majority have not made it happen and, as you said, the senator has not said a word about it. That is very disappointing. So this is a year when we have a lot of frustration with both political parties.”
Heh! Try belonging to a party that’s supposed to stand up for gay rights, and whose silence, at large, is utterly deafening.
Minnery: “Even as we’re speaking today, that vote in the Arizona senate may happen — we don’t know. But if there was enough backbone, they could have gotten us out of the state senate early in the session, so — beyond the ballot — and we could be preparing for the campaign in the fall.”
With the clock running out, conservative lawmakers in the Arizona Senate employed a rare procedural maneuver June 25 to force a vote on a proposal that would amend the state Constitution to effectively ban gay marriage.
But the ballot measure went down by a vote of 14-to-11; although a majority voted in approval, it needed 16 votes to pass.
If passed at a later date, SCR1042 would ask voters in November to define marriage in the Constitution to state that only a marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized by the state.
The legislation’s failure with only a few days left before the fiscal year ends was a setback for supporters who regard the legislation as a way to reinforce existing statute prohibiting same-sex marriage against what they see is an assault on traditional marriage from activist judges. They also contend that a statute could be changed; a constitutional provision would be hard to undo.
But an official for the Center for Arizona Policy, one of the conservative groups pushing for the measure, said the fight is not over. …
The vote was a temporary victory for Equality Arizona, a group representing the interests of the gay, lesbian and transgender community in the state.
“Today’s actions (bringing the measure to a vote) were an inappropriate use of power,” said Barbara McCullough-Jones, the group’s executive director. “Rather than taking care of the business of the people, political opportunists are using wedge politics to divide this state.” …
Crappy luck next time, Tommy.
Dobson: “OK, Tom, let’s get your blood pressure down. [laughter]
Before ending the show, Dobson slams all the candidates (including Hillary Clinton) for not talking about “preserving the family.”
Dobson: “It is as though the family does not matter… They don’t give a hoot about the family!”
“Well, I don’t know if you saw the article on November 6th, right after that, in the Washington Post. This one really took my breath away! It is referring to a Dr. Michael Tuly. Dr. Tuly is a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado. He is what he calls a ‘eugenicist.’ That gives you a clue. He says, and Tuly does not bother with Pinker’s pretense that what’s under discussion here is only a rare act of desperation, the killing of an unwanted child by a frightened, troubled mother. No, no, no! ‘If it is moral to kill a baby for one, it is moral for all. Indeed, the systematic, professionalized use of infanticide would be a great benefit to humanity. Most people would prefer to raise children who do not suffer from gross deformities or from severe physical, intellectual or emotional handicaps,’ writes eugenicist Tuly. ‘If it could be shown that there is no moral objection to infanticide’ — why would there be no moral objection to infanticide? Because there’s no moral objection to anything! It’s all subjective — ‘the happiness of society could be significantly and justifiably increased.’”
The equation of abortion and infanticide aside, the question I’d like to ask Dobson is whether or not he condemns eugenics outright. What does Dobson think about “fetus washing” — “treating” fetuses by “washing” them with hormones, purportedly to influence their inborn sexual orientation — the latest desperate attempt by the Radical Religious Right to “cure” homosexuality in the womb?
I love the current debate over “fetus washing”; it forces the gay-haters’ admission that we are born gay.
But here’s the best part of Dobson’s speech:
So, there is that perspective and where it leads is to the dehumanization of undesirables and we know where that led in 1938 and after, in Nazi Germany.
You should know all about “the dehumanization of undesirables” and where it leads, Dobson, as your lifelong commitment to the dehumanization (and demonization) of gay and lesbian people is as close to modern-day Nazism as you can get without burning crosses on our lawns.
By the way, Jimbo, you just invoked Godwin’s Law. You lose the argument. Ha-ha!
Would someone please read this to the Obama supporters who can’t?
I’m sure the vast majority of them can read (they are, after all, highly-educated, or so they keep telling us), but if the hate mail that’s been pouring in is any indication, an alarming percentage of Obama supporters are completely illiterate.
Oh, we’ve received a lot of wonderful, supportive comments lately — which I promise to get to, as soon as I try (with your help, I hope) to get a few things through the thick skulls of… well, Obama supporters like the one who sent this charming little love letter overnight (certain words redacted, for obvious reasons):
Fri, May 16, 2008 1:42 am Name: Jim Nacios emailaddress: jnacios@umd.edu
Message: Your “Pocket Guide to Obamaniac Behavior” is completely witless and you need to get over yourself and realize no one gives a f— if you don’t vote for Obama or if you vote for McCain or if you shove a f—ing stick of dynamite up your —.
The last word was not “ass.”
First thought: If you don’t care, why did you write?
Second thought: “umd.edu”? My, my, what fine, upstanding citizens our universities are producing — and with such an impressive command of the English language, too!
Bookmark that one, folks (you can bet Jim’s service provider has already “bookmarked” it; Jimmy falls just short of qualifying for my “Forward to the FBI” file), for the next time an Obama supporter claims that Obama supporters are not all that abusive, and that any trace of misogyny (I repeat: the last word was not “ass”) is all a figment of our tiny little female brains.
Sadly, it’s not all that atypical.
Granted, Jimmy has proved he can write (and even spell! the University of Maryland must be so proud!) — but Jimmy is one of the legions of Obama supporters who cannot read.
That, or one of the legions of Obama supporters who won’t read — thereby casting serious doubt on their capacity for critical thinking skills.
Let’s look at another message I received this morning:
Fri, May 16, 2008 11:33 am Name: The political pyrate emailaddress: ffamily37@—.net
Message: Anyone who beleives that this country is better off following the same course we’re on, by voting for John McCain instead of a viable democratic candidate, a candidate the Hillary Clinton will strongly support in November is she doesn’t get the nomination, is short sighted in the extreme.
This country cannot afford, at this ctitical time, to allow our own dissappointment to stand in the way of stopping the devastiting course we have been put upon by GWB and a course the will be followed by John McCain.
This one isn’t hate mail, per se, and the sender is definitely capable of constructing coherent sentences (despite some misspellings and typos), but is unable or unwilling to read.
What do these two correspondents have in common?
They both assume that if I don’t fall at the feet of Barack Obama, I am voting for John McCain.
Someone show me where I have ever written — not just on this blog, but anywhere on the ‘Net or in hardcopy — or have said (I do get my mug on the TV news once in a while, you know) that I was voting for John McCain, or even considering it.
I have written that I’ll vote for Mike Gravel if he gets the Libertarian nomination (and I may, or I may not; I can change my mind between now and November), so jump all over me for that if you want to — but anyone who ASS-umes I’m voting Republican in the fall loses any shred of credibility from the get-go.
Is that clear? How can I make it any clearer? Do I have to create another brightly-colored chart to illustrate it, since that’s what put this blog on the Obamaniac Attack Radar in the first place?
Now, before anyone jumps on me for even thinking of voting third-party, here’s something I wrote on a message board, about a year ago, to a fellow Democrat who was hesitant to come out of the closet as a 2000 Nader voter (bear in mind, I voted for for Gore in 2000, not Nader):
Pffffft! I’ve never had an issue with ‘00 Nader voters. Last time I checked, this was still a democracy, which means he’s got every right to run, and we’ve all got every right to vote any way we want. I admit, I haven’t voted Green in a national election yet, but I’m more than proud to have voted Green1 in various California gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections. (Never for U.S. House, though — I worship my rep2, and would give her all my internal organs to keep her alive, and in office, forever.)
The problem isn’t with third-party voters, or third parties — it’s with the two-party system. At the risk of boring everyone to tears, if I had my way, this is how I would change the U.S. voting system — and I guarantee you, there would never again be a rift between the Dems and the Greens (and it would a] eliminate the two-party system, and b] force parties to form coalitions, and learn the elusive art of compromise):
1. Radical campaign-finance reform — meaning, complete elimination of all corporate donations, PACs, and soft-money donations, while keeping the cap of $2,000 for individual donations — and also cap the total amount any candidate can collect. AFAIC, the uneven playing field we have now is what’s killing the U.S. democratic system.
2. Eliminate the electoral college. Period. Popular vote only. That is true “direct representation.”
3. Ban all electronic voting systems. Period. Traceable paper ballots only.
4. Standardize all paper ballots. None of this “butterfly ballot” stupidity again. At the same time, replace all lever voting machines (they still exist) and punch-card machines, and convert to ink-only OCR (optical character recognition).
5. In the case of absentee ballots (which I now use solely), provide an automatic return receipt/confirmation of delivery, with matching voter-card number, from the state Secretary of State. Raise the cost of return postage to pay for it. Exempt low-income voters from paying for postage at all, by increasing sales tax/compensating for the increased tax somewhere else — e.g., impose a luxury tax like New York state does; anybody who can afford a $50,000 automobile can absorb an increase of a fraction of a penny in the tax they’re already going to pay.
6. Force all states to allow its residents to vote absentee, with no need for a “reason.” (I’m not incapable of getting my butt to the local polling place; I do it because I want the best paper trail I can get. Fortunately, in California, you needn’t provide proof of any pressing “need” to vote absentee.)
7. Make voting compulsory. Period. Impose community service (not fines) on every eligible voter who fails to vote. Exempt all mentally-challenged citizens.
8. Make voter registration compulsory, and make registration easy and accessible. Males who reach the age of 18 already must register for the Selective Service; the most they must do is fill out a simple form available at any post office. Do the same with voter registration. Do not impose penalties for failure to register; instead, withhold the ability to obtain/renew one’s driver’s license/state ID card/passport, auto registration, etc., until one registers. Exempt, as above, all mentally-challenged citizens.
9. Repeal all state laws barring convicted felons from voting. Period. Stealing a car has nothing to do with whether or not a U.S. citizen should be allowed to have a voice in the electoral process. In addition: If Death Row inmates have the right to get married while awaiting execution, they should be expected to uphold the duty of active participation in the system that grants them their most basic civil rights.
10. Hold all state primaries on the same day. Period.
11. Instant-runoff voting. Restructure the entire voting system to resemble the best of the Australian voting system (where it is called preferential voting). Ignore the fact that Australians vote for parties, not candidates, and adapt the tier method of voting for candidates: Ballots no longer allow you only a single choice among all candidates in the same race, but allow you to number your preferences, from 1 to 5, 1 to 10, 1 to 300 if need be.
The voter is not required to choose more than one candidate, but may rank two, three, or all candidates. (In Oz, this is “optional preferential voting.”)
If your number-one choice fails to gain a majority, then your #1 vote goes to your #2 choice, and so on down the line, until the process of elimination identifies the top vote-getter.
Australians have been voting this way for nearly a century; although they vote for parties instead of individual candidates, there is no reason the same system could not be applied to individual candidates.
Well, that went off on a tangent, but I still like every last idea.
The real point is at the beginning: I respect the choice of anyone who votes his or her conscience and core values. If one’s conscience and core values are guided primarily by party loyalty, then so be it — hold your nose and vote your party’s candidate. But don’t you dare attempt to coerce me or anyone else to do the same, just to… what is it that motivates you loyalty-oath types, exactly? Do you need external validation that your straight-party ticket really is the right thing to do, and if you don’t get it, you go ballistic with cries of treason? I don’t know. All I know is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, for most hardliners to believe that many Americans really do vote for the person, not the party. (And that doesn’t make them traitors or trolls; it’s makes them thinking people.)
In any case, I do not respect anyone who votes on auto-pilot without thinking his or her vote through.
If you tell me you’re voting for Obama, or writing in Clinton, or drafting Adlai Stevenson straight out of his grave, or — yes, even voting for John McCain — based on your true, genuine, honest belief, after much rational thought, and untainted by doubt, that you are making the very best decision you can (and not because it’s the “cool” thing to do, or because you’ve been intimidated by your own party, or because your wife won’t give you any if you don’t) — then I respect your decision.
Yes, I do respect those who will sit out an election, if the positions of all candidates, from Republican to Socialist, conflict so seriously with your core values that you cannot in good conscience vote for any of them.
If you do something because you can’t stand up to peer pressure, you’ve sold out. You’re not an adult (or not a self-respecting adult) if your true convictions are so shaky that you’ll cave in just because a bunch of people keep yelling at you. (The only exception: physical torture. But I don’t think the Obamaites have figured out how to put the rest of us in concentration camps. Yet.)
Maybe I’m less susceptible — and therefore the most frustrating to the Obamaites — to propaganda, and hardly inclined to do anything just because somebody tells me to do it. I’m gay, after all, and I’ve been completely out since I was 19. If I caved to what everybody told me I had to do, or else, I’d be alone, celibate, miserable, haunting the confessional every Saturday seeking absolution, and rattling my Rosary in the pews, begging God to “cure” me… of who I am.
Anyway…
I do, of course, hope everyone will vote one way or another, and even those sitting out the presidential GE will do their utmost to participate in every down-ticket election, and vote on every state proposition. Hope, that is, not try to force.
I myself will not be leaving any slate unmarked on my ballot this fall. But: My vote is my own, and I will vote my conscience and core values, right down the line. No amount of bullying or threats can change my vote — only I can do that, and whatever way I go in the GE, my decision will be based solely on the research I’ve done, and careful weight given to all the pros and cons of each candidate (and each ballot measure).
Now, all you Obamaites so eager to tell me to stick dynamite up my private parts, get this through your thick skulls: Your bullying does not work, and your thuggery is not welcome here.
If you still don’t get it, Obamaites, read my response to your fellow illiterate, “Angry Black Guy,” and have someone explain the meaning of dicto simpliciter to you. In very small words.
And another thing: Where do you Obamabots get off on assuming every non-believer is part of the Zell Miller conservative wing you want so badly to purge from the Democratic Party? How can you delude yourselves into believing the GOP line that Obama is a “liberal”?
I’m a freaking Kucinich supporter, fercrimenysakes! I’m an anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-choice, left-wing lesbian who just keeps getting more and more liberal every year. Every time I take the Political Compass, I grow dangerously closer to falling off the lower left quadrant. I’m a bigger lefty than the Dalai Lama (which is understandable; with all due respect, he hasn’t achieved enlightenment in the area of same-sex relationships yet). I believe that Log Cabin Republicans are selfish, narrow-sighted moneygrubbers, or self-loathing homophobes, or both. I’m a happily unapologetic, ex-Catholic agnostic who’s about to marry a happily unapologetic, ex-Baptist atheist, and while we both value the right to freedom of religion as much as we value our own civil rights, we demand strict separation of church and state. Last month, you could have found us protesting one of those “ex-gay” shams.
I’d be a freaking Greenie if I thought the Greens had a practical plan for building the party from the ground up (instead of leaping at the presidency every cycle, without building the necessary foundation to get there first).
I am the Radical Religous Right’s worst nightmare. How can anyone seriously call me a so much as a “moderate,” let alone “conservative,” anything?
But hardly anyone will read or heed all that. In fact, just minutes ago, I received another message, this time a real suck-up job from what I guess must be a Republican, expressing sympathy for Hillary supporters who aren’t getting enough “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” from their own party, and inviting me to join Republicans, independents, and other “moderate Democrats” to bring down Obama in the fall.
“Other moderate Democrats”? Why does anyone get the idea that only “moderate” (read: conservative) Democrats prefer Clinton over Obama — or that Obama is some kind of radical liberal?
Obama supporters (and now, I see, some conservatives) have no clue what a “conservative Democrat” is — or what a “liberal Democrat” is.
Assuming they can comprehend this without visual aids, I’ll try to put it in a way even the most feverish Obama supporters can understand (although I’m not getting my hopes up).
Dear Obama Supporters:
Hillary supporters — and everyone else who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, but primarily those old, irrelevant, used-up, “post-sexual” paleofeminists you detest so much — cross all economic, class, social, and color lines.
As the full-page ad in today’s USA Today, placed by the newly-formed WomenCount PAC, says:
We are the women of this nation. We are rich and poor, young and old, married with kids, married without kids, single moms, gay, straight, and widowed. We are every color. We are of every religion. We are from all political parties.
I add: We are also what you will become, Obama supporters — minus the childish vitriol and the “Fine! You can’t be my bestest friend no more!” crap the most embarrassing factions of your camp keep spewing.
What, do you think you invented the politics of “hope and change”? That was your grandparents’ generation — or were you playing hooky from civics the week you were supposed to be learning about FDR’s New Deal? Rebelling against “The Establishment” — which had screwed up the world (a world you never asked to be born into! wahhhhh!) — and demanding the reins be turned over to the younger generation — that was old news before the Summer of Love (1967, for you Rebels Without A Clue) was over.
And you don’t have a corner on anger and despair after surviving eight horrible years under a delusional, paranoid, liberal-hating Republican president who used deceit, dirty tricks, bullying, and outright lies to get what he wanted, who was responsible for the deaths of more than one million innocent people in the dying days of a useless, senseless, immoral war, whose Machiavellian economics devalued the dollar to the point that Americans were blanching at the sight of their grocery bills, whose foreign policy resulted in record-high gas prices all over the country, who shamed the United States in the eyes of the entire world, and who was never brought to justice for his crimes. That’s my generation we’re talking about now: My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter in 1980 — a re-election he lost, by the way, after serving the same sort of well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual (save for the Camp David Peace Accords) single term I expect your Great and Powerful Obama will serve (minus Carter’s much-needed wonkism) before being forced to pack it in and move home to Illinois, once and for all. (That is, if by some miracle Obama actually wins the GE.)
That said, I’ll tell you what a liberal is — and isn’t:
A liberal is me — and your mom, and every real man secure enough in his own personhood that he cannot be swayed by peer pressure from doing what’s right, and would never dream of stooping to ugly, little-bully-boy tactics to get his way. We are the ones who marched and rallied for the ERA, the ones who sat in dusty, unused storage rooms on college campuses planning the next Take Back the Night march. We are the ones who actually care about the right of our fellow Americans to personal liberty and autonomy — and who don’t view reproductive rights and same-sex marriage as “wedge issues” to be dusted off and abused to suit a political agenda. (”If McCain wins, there goes Roe v. Wade!” … “OH NOES! How could the California Supreme Court make this decision, now?! Why can’t you gays wait your turn? You’re going to lose us the election!!!”)
A liberal is not someone who slithers out from under the harsh light of reality in a pathetically transparent effort to appease the anti-choice and anti-gay brigades for political purposes…
“I trust women to make a prayerful decision about this issue.”
Well, so much for atheist women!
“I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy.”
So women are supposed to get permission from their doctors, husbands, and ministers first? Oh, well! So much for atheist women, single women, and women who don’t subjugate themselves or their bodies to anyone else’s authority. C’est la vie!
“Although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”
There is no secular argument against same-sex marriage. All anti-gay positions stem solely from (uninformed and misguided) religious beliefs. Period.
A liberal does not agree that homosexuality is not a choice, and then deny gay and lesbian people the same rights he has — while citing the same moribund, hateful excuses used to keep his parents from marrying.
A liberal recognizes the “states’ rights” argument against federally-recognized same-sex marriage for exactly what it is: the same old argument against interracial marriage, regurgitated and reprocessed to take advantage of more modern bigotry.
A liberal does not throw gasoline on the fire of anti-gay bigotry among the most conservative churchgoers — who preach love but teach hate — in order to score votes and money, by making a radical “ex-gay” his mouthpiece… and then refusing to acknowledge, much less apologize for, using homophobia against us to win them (but still expecting our money and our votes).
I could go on like this all day — Obama himself has handed me a bottomless quiver — but the point is this: To compartmentalize all of us who do not worship King Obama as “right-wing Democrats” (or Republican poseurs; I, for one, would have had to pretend to be a Democrat for nearly half a century to pull it off) is even more ludicrous than it is insulting.
We were the ones on the streets, demanding our rights, and your rights, and “change” fueled by “hope” before most of you Obamaites were so much as a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.
(As for the middle-aged and elderly Obama supporters? Well, I don’t know about them; I don’t know what in their life experience could possibly make them so blind. I really don’t. But they do seem to be in the minority of Obama supporters, and they’re not sending me the kind of vulgar hate mail our little friend Jimmy did today.)
One last message from the Clueless Comment Bag today before we turn to other things:
Fri, May 16, 2008 9:58 am Name: Joe Bob
Message: Why is it all your links involve blatant insulting of other people while railing against how these people have been insulting, isn’t that just a perpetual cycle? I apologize if certain people on this wild west of the internet angered you, but i’m not sorry I chose from 3 great people the one I thought was best for the future, yet I come here and see people who 2 years ago screamed “right wing conspiracy” teaming up with those some people to damage someone, it’s all surreal…
“Joe Bob,” you are the most clueless of all. You’re not so much as insinuating that I’m voting for McCain as your cohorts are; you’re accusing me of 1) “teaming up” with Republicans, to 2) “damage” Obama.
Here’s your clue, “Joe Bob”:
Republicans hate me. They hated me yesterday, they hate me today, and they’re going to hate me long past the day Barack Obama’s name is just a distant, bad memory. Why would I “team up,” for any reason, with people who want to deny me my civil rights (and, in too many cases, actually want to see me dead)? Masochism? (No; masochism must be the reason I’m still involved in politics at all.) Racism? Hey, go for it — you’re one of the eight or ten Obamaites left who haven’t screamed “racist!” at me yet.
(I will admit it’s been much easier to read the comments sent me by conservatives lately; oh, they’ll shoot me down on every point, but none of them has even begun to approach the vitriol of the Obamaites. The last death threat I got from a Republican was, I think, in 2003; the last accusations of “anti-Americanism” were a couple of years ago. I don’t know if they’ve been chastened by what they got out of their loyalty to Bush, or if, after the last seven years, they’re just exhausted. I can only guess; to really get into their heads is next to impossible. In any case, the occasional Repubs who write me these days, no matter how much they disagree with me, have been pretty respectful. Of course, even a hearty F.U. would sound almost reasonable next to the most abominable (or Obamanable) of Obamaite nastygrams I’ve been getting.)
I don’t want to “damage” anyone. I want my country to avoid making the disastrous mistake of putting Barack Obama in the White House, because, I sincerely believe, he will be such an utter failure (and a one-term president), he will ensure another eight-year Republican administration, beginning in 2012.
I don’t like his positions. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw a HumVee. I think he’s inexperienced, arrogant, and a media creation no more substantial than a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character. I think he is a hawk in dove’s clothing. I think he is a triangulator, a capitulator, a homophobe, and a religionist whose beliefs (learned at the knee of one of the most bigoted, hate-filled preachers I’ve ever heard) trump his reason. He does not represent my best interests, and, more importantly, he is not the right person to lead this country at this time.
I might be persuaded to change my mind about him — after both he and his supporters get a lot more seasoning in the reality-based world instead of that fantasyland most of them live in now.
After all, I was reluctant to vote for Al Gore in 2000; he was just too conservative for me.
Now… What I wouldn’t give for the new-and-enlightened President Al Gore.
1 A) Pete Camejo for Governor of California, against Gov. Gray Davis’s 2002 re-election; there was no way at the time California was going to hand the key to the governor’s mansion over to a Republican (until the 2003 recall fiasco; then I voted against the recall, and for Cruz Bustamante). B) Todd Chretien for U.S. Senate in 2006, against Democrat-In-Name-Only Dianne Feinstein, for reasons too numerous to list.
2 I don’t “worship” my rep anymore. And while I still might give her all my internal organs to keep her alive, I would no longer do the same just to keep her in office. Yes, Anna, you’ve got my vote again, but you’re on thin ice; if you weren’t running uncontested for the Dem nom in the primary, you might have lost my vote to a different Dem.
Just when Obama supporters were hoping the Jeremiah Wright flap had started to die down, and that Donnie McClurkin was already just a distant memory (as if), the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston’s Windsor Village United Methodist Church raises his ugly head, reminding voters all over again that Barack Obama’s choice of the company he keeps, frankly, sucks major weenies.
No doubt you heard that Jenna Bush, the snottier of George and Pickles’ two vacuous party-animal daughters, got married yesterday.
Anyway, Jenna (who wore white *snort!*) married a geek (who parts his hair on one side as if this were 1964) named Henry Hager, who, we think, is perfect for her; he’s the son of John H. Hager, “Virginia’s first director of homeland security and a former lieutenant governor … [who in 2005] joined the Bush administration as an assistant secretary of education.” Henry himself interned for Karl Rove, and went on to work for the Bush-Cheney reSelection campaign.
(We wish Jenna and Henry everything they deserve in life. We only ask that they refrain from breeding.)
So, what’s the big deal about Kirbyjon Caldwell? Why should we care, or be surprised, that a right-wing preacher who somehow forgot about his own involvement in the “pray the gay away” movement joined a Bush Twin and her icky boyfriend in the bonds of unholy Republicanism? Caldwell is, after all, George W. Bush’s own “spiritual advisor.”
And if you don’t get the symbolism of “marrying” the Obama camp to the Radical Right camp once and for all, then you have no sense of irony whatsoever.
In the course of less than one hour this morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., did more damage to Barack Obama than any ten of his lunatic “God Damn America” rants from the pulpit.
Even the Obamaniacs are upset — yes, even the ones who have been screaming “Wright is RIGHT!” and “Obama could NOT disown his pastor” and “This is just a tempest in a teapot, a manufactured controversy, a non-issue — Wright won’t have any effect on Obama’s candidacy,” and all the rest of the “Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah“ garbage that, these days, has about as much effect on those of us rooted in reality-based thinking as dragging one’s foot to stop a 747.
Well, guess what? The unending Wright story is not a tempest in a teapot — and now that virtually every MSM outlet in the country is leading with headlines suggesting big trouble for the Obama campaign, now the Obamaniacs are getting it. Now they’re screaming, “OMG, Obama’s got to DO something! Obama’s got to completely, totally disown Wright, right NOW!”
(The only thing that hasn’t changed: When one Obamanut expresses even a single, rational, independent thought, the rest of the Obamanuts eat their former comrade alive. But that’s the usual reaction when the collective cognitive dissonance of a cult is threatened.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. In short, Wright did the unthinkable: he opened his mouth again. And this time, he may have sunk Barack Obama for good.
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama’s presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama’s longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered — and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks (”God damn America”) and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright’s audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama’s vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio’s April Ryan, confirmed that Wright’s security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
Not that you haven’t heard Wright’s rantings about all these things (and worse, much worse) before, nor should it come as a surprise that he and Farrakhan are still the best-bestest of buddies. So what? So this: Just when you thought Wright couldn’t make things any worse for Obama, Wright dropped a bombshell, expressing what those of us not awash in Jesus Juice Obama-flavored Kool-Aid have been thinking, and saying, about Obama all along: Obama was forced to distance himself from Wright solely for the sake of politics, and if those Wright sermons hadn’t become public, Obama would still be calling Wright his “spiritual mentor”:
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. “He didn’t distance himself,” Wright announced. “He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.”
Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, “We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.” The minister continued: “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”
Joe Fitzgerald of The Boston Herald picked up on something similar Wright said to Bill Moyers: “He [Obama] says what he has to say as a politican. I don’t talk to him about politics.”
Please. When a man spends 20 years absorbing another man’s sermons, it’s reasonable to conclude his beliefs and values will be informed and shaped by what he hears; if not, the man doing the preaching must be woefully ineffective.
So take your pick: Either Obama is showing the electorate a face that’s insincere, or Wright showed the viewers a leader who’s inept.
Is Wright trying to sink Barry? “Maybe,” muses Amy Sullivan of Time, “Barack Obama skimped on his contribution when the offering plate came past at Trinity United Church of Christ. Or perhaps he nodded off during one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. It’s hard to think of another reason why the Illinois Senator’s former pastor would put on the kind of performance this morning at the National Press Club that can only be described as a political disaster.”
Or maybe Wright’s ego is so swollen from the roaring cheers bouncing off the walls inside that echo chamber known as Trinity United Church of Christ, he thinks the outside world is no different from the insulated little cocoon he’s built around himself.
Sorry, Rev. Nobody who heard you this morning is shouting “Amen!” this time.
If you had a chance to listen to Rev. Jeremiah Wright — at his NAACP appearance in Detroit, or in his talk at the National Press Club — you came away with two impressions: first, Rev. Wright is a learned, compelling, often hilarious speaker; second, he is a genuine threat to the presidential hopes of Barack Obama.
His NAACP speech was shaped around the theme that “different does not mean deficient.” He talked about how blacks and whites were “different” in everything from language to music to religious worship. He interposed his speech with snatches from speeches, songs — at one point, brilliantly imitating the sharply different styles of marching bands. Michigan State, he demonstrated, simply did not move on the field the way the Grambling Band did.
He also offered a highly inclusive vision of the change America needed — rejecting exclusionary thinking whether it was white vs. black, black vs. white, straight vs. gays, Christians vs. Jews. There was nothing in that part of the speech that was objectionable or offensive.
Now, wait a minute. Wright emphasizes how “different” blacks and whites are, then waxes poetic about “inclusion”? I thought the goal was to appreciate our differences, while focusing on how we’re really all the same under the skin — yet Wright, in his comparison of two marching bands, makes fun of the way white people can’t dance? Hm.
Or, as the hard-right National Review put it — which will give you a good idea of how well this Wright business is going over with the tighty-righties Obama thinks he’s going to win over — in a piece titled “Jeremiah Wright May Have Just Sunk Obama’s Campaign:
And since then, it’s gotten worse, even with a Bill Moyers interview that wasn’t softball so much as it was Nerf Tee-Ball. We’ve heard Wright compare the Roman Legions who punished Jesus to the U.S. Marines, we’ve heard him argue that the U.S. and al-Qaeda are doing the same acts under different flags, etc.
Now we hear Wright analyzing the differences between white and black brains (!)…
Back to Greenfield:
So what’s the problem for Senator Obama? In his National Pres Club speech, we saw another side of Rev. Wright — utterly unrepentant about any of the things he has said, and insistent that the wave of criticism aimed at him was really “an attack on the black church.”
That argument is familiar — even pervasive. When a visible member group that has suffered exclusion is challenged, that individual is frequently heard making that argument. Senator Huey Long argued that attacks on his honesty were really attacks on the poor for whom he spoke; Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton both argued that attempts to hold them accountable for misconduct were really attacks mounted by their political enemies.
No kidding. If I had a nickel for every time an Obamanut called me racist for criticizing what Obama says and does, or went into a mindless rage at Hillary Clinton for something Obama said or did (what, did she cast a spell over Barry to make stupid remarks fall out of his mouth?), I would have a lot of nickels.
In wrapping himself in such an argument, Rev. Wright never even seeks to confront the core of the criticism: What did you mean when you said what you said? Why tell your congregation that AIDS was a government conspiracy to commit genocide on African-Americans?
[Wright] didn’t distance himself from any of the sentiments underlying the clips shown on television. Indeed, the former pastor embraced the most controversial items he has said.
On his contention that the U.S. government had created AIDS as a method of committing genocide against African-Americans, Wright referred to a hotly-disputed 1996 book “Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola : Nature, Accident or Intentional?” by Leonard G Horowitz, which contends that AIDS and the Ebola viruses evolved during cancer experiments on monkeys.
He also referenced “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet Washington, and said based on the Tuskegee experiment — in which the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a 40-year study on 400 poor black men in Alabama with syphilis whom they did not properly treat — “I believe our government is capable of anything.”
Greenfield again:
More broadly, Rev. Wright’s counterattack reframes the argument in starkly racial terms: “Attack me, attack the black church.” It is exactly the opposite what Senator Obama has been arguing throughout his campaign; that it is past time for the United States look beyond race. Indeed, Wright’s vision of this controversy strikes at the heart of Obama’s view.
Greenfield concludes — correctly — that Wright is stuck in a moribund mindset, seeming “not to believe that the United States has in any serious way come some considerable distance — and one of the surest signs of that is the plausible presidential candidacy that Wright’s comments have so seriously harmed.”
I’ve never dismissed the fact that racism still exists in this country — but Wright and his flock appear utterly unable — or unwilling — to process the fact that all whites are not stuck in the 19th-century.
Jeremiah Wright, however, is. He’s soaking in it. And for whatever unresolved personal issues he has with whites, his “ministry” appears to dedicated not to empowering disenfranchised African-Americans in any positive, progressive, forward-looking way, but to keeping the hate — and his own “us vs. them” mentality — alive.
Jeremiah Wright is not a stupid man, but one wonders if he suffers from some sort of incurable amnesia — and if he enjoys that amnesia, deliberately induced or not.
To wit (quoted from Tapper):
“Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy,” Wright said, since Farrakhan had not enslaved Africans and brought them in chains to the U.S.
Wright argued that his fiery nature was appropriate since the leaders of the U.S. have never apologized for slavery or racism.
Oh, really now? I knowwhat President Bill Clinton said in 1998 — and it sure sounded like an apology to my ears:
“Surely every American knows that slavery was wrong, and we paid a terrible price for [it], and that we had to keep repairing that.
“And just to say that it’s wrong and that we are sorry about it is not a bad thing.
“That doesn’t weaken us.”
What does Wright want, for every U.S. president, past and present, to get down on his knees? (In Clinton’s case, yeah, probably.)
That’s just another example of Wright’s deliberate blindness and stubborn insistence to remain entrenched in a view of a United States that has long since progressed beyond Wright and his antiquated — and divisive, damaging, dangerous — ideas.
One last thing: In demanding an apology for slavery, Wright said: “Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country’s leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I’m not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I’m still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?”
Yeah, capisco, loud and clear. What’s funny is that Wright would stoop to using the language of us “garlic noses” to make his point.
Barack Obama has taught me that racism — even faux outrage over nonexistent racism — is worse than the most egregious sexism or homophobia.
Always. Without exception.
I’ve also learned — from Obama supporters — that the word “urban” is racist. (And for nearly half a century, I thought “urban” meant “of or pertaining to a city,” as opposed to the country, or the suburbs. Silly me!)
I’ve also learned — from some backwater ‘burb (oops, sorry! is “‘burb” racist, too?) in Illinois called Carpentersville — that saying a couple of kids are climbing a tree “like monkeys” is racist. (That would have come as a surprise to my dearly departed grandfather, whose pet name for me was “macaca” — and not in the George Allen sense, either. As much as I detest the idea of agreeing with Tony Blankley on anything, even the weather, it’s true: “macaca” is indeed an Italian term of endearment expressing good-natured exasperation with a mischievous child; it means “clown,” or “goof.”)
Moving to nip in the bud some potential bad press, White House hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign persuaded a delegate to step down after she was ticketed for calling her neighbor’s African-American children “monkeys.”
Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Carpentersville village trustee, was elected as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She sports an Obama sign in her front yard.
On Saturday, two neighbor children were playing in the tree next-door to her house.
Ramirez-Sliwinski “came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski’s property,” Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.
Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word “monkeys,” but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree.
“Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn’t want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren ‘monkeys,’” Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before.
“She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American,” Kilbourne said.
Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama’s campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were “divisive and unacceptable.”
“Given the incident, she is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced,” said campaign spokesman Ben Labolt.
Let’s recap:
• Calling Hillary Clinton a “big f*****g whore” and Geraldine Ferraro “David Duke in drag” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to dress down Randi Rhodes (hey, ya think Obama returned the money raised at Randi’s Hillary-bashing event?)…
• Preaching about evil, children-killing gays is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to fire Donnie McClurkinbefore handing him a microphone and giving him free reign to spew his hateful, “ex-gay” tripe (hey, ya think Obama returned the blood money from that fundraiser?)…
• Condemning America to hell, blasting mythical “rich white people” for all the evil in the world, making appalling cracks about “stemen-stained dresses,” and slurring Italians as “garlic noses” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to stand up and walk out on the bigot he calls his pastor, “spiritual mentor” and “role model” who “helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated,” Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (ya think Obama plans to take back the tens of thousands he’s tithed over two decades?)…
• Consorting with such organizations — established for the sole purpose of demonizing and legislating gay and lesbian Americans out of existence — as Americans for Truth and Focus on the Family, calling various mayors “slave masters” and certain politicians “house n****rs,” warning “white people who believe in Jesus” that “I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of y’all racist” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to cut ties completely with another of his “closest religious advisors,” Rev. James Meeks…
• Expressing the desire to “rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to take his own wife aside and tell her to chill the anti-Clinton crap, her condescending reluctance to back Hillary as the Democratic nominee, and the grim view she takes of America, at least when she’s representing him in public…
…but saying a couple of kids were climbing a tree “like monkeys” is “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to kick Ramirez-Sliwinski to the curb?
So, now what? If you call playground equipment “monkey bars,” are you a racist? I guess so, since anything and everything — as long as it suits a pro-Obama agenda — can and will be deemed racist.
(It’s also not lost on us that Ramirez-Sliwinski was an elected delegate, more beholden to the wil of the people than to the will of any candidate.)
What’s more, you read that first line in the story right: Ramirez-Sliwinski was ticketed — cited and fined — under the stupidest ordinance we’ve heard of in a long time. From the Chicago Tribune:
Carpentersville Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski vowed Monday to fight a citation she received over the weekend for a comment that apparently offended her African-American neighbors. …
Ramirez-Sliwinski, who is Hispanic, was issued a citation alleging that she violated a village ordinance prohibiting disorderly conduct. The ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people, and one of the boys told police he was scared by Ramirez-Sliwinski’s comment, Police Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said.
The citation carries a fine of $75.
“She was not arrested. She was not fingerprinted. It is a local ordinance violation,” Kilbourne said.
“Conduct that disturbs or alarms people”? Remind me to stay the hell out of Carpentersville then. The way this stupid law is worded, I could be cited if my “Christian Right is Neither” T-shirt “disturbed or alarmed” somebody.
(On the other hand, I could go to Carpentersville and lodge a criminal complaint against every right-wing church that preaches anti-gay rhetoric from the pulpit. Now that would be fun. And it would also trigger an emergency meeting of the town council to repeal that stupid law, quick-smart.)
The Trib piece also provides more detail on the “monkeys” incident, in Ramirez-Sliwinski’s own words:
[Ramirez-Sliwinski] said the parents were outside, but she intervened because she was concerned about the boys’ safety and because the small magnolia tree was being damaged.
“I went over to the kids and told them to get out of the tree,” Ramirez-Sliwinski said.
The father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business, she said, and “I calmly said the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys.”
There has been friction between Ramirez-Sliwinski and her neighbors in the past. She said she has told them to turn down loud music and has instructed them on how to properly use the village’s new garbage bins.
Ramirez-Sliwinski said she intends to contest the citation in an effort to force the neighbors to talk to her. …
Attempts to reach the neighbors for comment were unsuccessful.
“My take on this is that it is really being blown out of proportion,” Village President Bill Sarto said. “To a great extent, you have to take the remarks and put them in proper context. The trustee saw children playing in a tree, and she made an observation that they should be careful because they are acting like monkeys. Had they not been in a tree, it could be inappropriate.”
Hey, but what do I know? In Obama’s book, I’m just another “typical white person.”
Here’s the last word, from Village President Bill Sarto, quoted in the Sun-Times piece):
“Frankly, I don’t see a law that was broken here,” [Village President Bill Sarto] said. “I think this entire thing has been blown out of proportion. She’s a good neighor. She went over to caution the children to be careful not to fall out of a tree.
She has never indicated to me any prejudice whatsoever. We have a trustee who has been convicted on four counts of domestic battery and refuses to resign from the board. He beat his wife with a baseball bat. This seems far less egregious to me.”
Name: ETSpoon email address: spoonreport@hotmail.com Message: Wow! Whodah guessed a queer’d be so racist!!
Just kidding.
Love Ann Coulter
But the rest… All I can say is: Thank you for your support, and for your courage to speak the truth, which means more to me than I can express:
From Tyler D:
No comment is really necessary except my complete and unequivocal support!
From Linda C:
I believe that Senator Obama should be expelled from the United States Senate. I believe that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a traitor to this beloved country of mine and that Senator Obama supports him. If you listened or followed the “rhetoric” of Obama’s speech, he admits he lied. I cannot respect Senator Obama or Reverend Wright.
From Karen M:
Sorry, not going to convince you…… Am going to AGREE with you! Wright is the Racist. And, Obama, appears to be one, too!
From coquettelovesjesus:
I’m sorry about his racist remarks. I’m also amazed at the people who cannot see through the bubble of Obama. If he can sit in a church and listen to this racist ranting and not make an appointment with the pastor and try to clear up these remarks and then leave because there is obviously no hope, well what kind of a commander in chief would he make? The truth will set you free but you need to read the truth for yourself. You need to let the Holy Spirit lead and guide you. When He does, there is a transformation that comes about in your life that leads you to repentance then a whole change in your life towards love and good. Anything different than that is not of God, there is none good but God.
From MoniQue:
Obama can kiss the Italian vote arrivederci !
The FACT is that Italians did not exist as a people until at least 500 years AFTER Jesus.* The “Romans” in Jesus’ day were actually of Greek origin. And Obama calls his pastor a “scholar?”
Just ask any animal. They will teach you they do not see a black person or a white person, they just see a HUMAN.
From MarieL:
So wrong, on so many levels! “Garlic Noses?” “Italian style lynching?”
Jeremiah Wright needs a lesson in true tolerance and history! If I’d used RevWrong’s reasoning on a logic exam in HS, I’d gotten a big “F” - Romans were Romans, not Italians, and the Roman empire was one of the most ethnically diverse (in urban areas) of any in history. The Pax Romana meant fairly open borders, safe passage and excellent trade. Guess “Pastor” Wright proves that we’re really all alike - even an Af-Am uber-theo-pseudo-lib can be a bigot.
As a woman, I know how the c-word rings in my ear. As a lesbian, I know how “dyke” sounds when it’s thrown at me as a slur.
But I never thought, in this day and age, I would feel the sting of anti-Italian hate. That should have died out with my grandparents’ generation — but it appears that the Wrong Mr. Wright has been keeping that brand of discrimination alive and well, thankyouverymuch.
The following is all over the right-wing blogosphere this morning. Well, of course it is; do you think any Obama worshippers would dare touch it? And now that I’m bringing it up (and I suspect I will be the only left-wing blogger to dare mention it), I’m bracing myself for yet another round of hate mail.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give Wright a pass on “garlic noses” — it isn’t the only time he’s let his animosity toward Italians come through, loud and clear:
Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been a member for two decades, slurred Italians in a piece published in the most recent issue of Trumpet Newsmagazine.
“(Jesus’) enemies had their opinion about Him,” Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. “The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans.
“From the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth (in a barn in a township that was under the Apartheid Roman government that said his daddy had to be in), up to and including the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death on a cross, a Roman cross, public lynching Italian style. …” Wright wrote. “He refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others.
“The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God,” said Wright.
Every issue of the magazine published last year included Wright’s column, “The Message,” in which he covered a range of subjects, including his views on other African-American churches as expressed in his April 2007 commentary “Facing the Rising Sun.” …
Trumpet Newsmagazine started publication in the 1980s in Chicago and distribution expanded in March 2006 to several other cities, with broader circulation through subscriptions. On the magazine’s masthead, Wright is named as the magazine’s CEO and Wright’s daughter, Jeri Wright, is the publisher.
Requests for comments from Jeri Wright, the magazine’s marketing staff, and the Obama campaign were not answered by press time. …
“Garlic noses”?
“Public lynching Italian style”?
Why doesn’t he just come out and call us greaseballs, wops, dagos, gumbas, mafiosi?
So, before you hit the comment link below and tell me what a racist I am (because… what? because I have the audacity to criticize a man who happens to be black?), consider how you’re going to convince me — a third-generation Italian-American extremely sensitive to cracks about her rich heritage — that Wright isn’t the bigot here.
Convince me that I don’t have the right to rip into anyone who calls Italians “garlic noses.”
(CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s aides blasted Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign Monday after a major Obama supporter referenced the blue dress at the heart of former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment scandal.
Gordon Fischer, a former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party and part of Obama’s Iowa support team, also compared Bill Clinton unfavorably to Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy was a senator who was known for leveling accusations that people were Communists or spying for the Russians in the 1950s.
“When Joe McCarthy questioned others’ patriotism, McCarthy (1) actually believed, at least aparently (sic), the questions were genuine, and (2) he did so in order to build up, not tear down, his own party, the GOP,” Fischer, wrote on his blog.
“Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping — instead he is hurting — his own party. B. [Bill] Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica’s blue dress.”
. . .
Fischer, who endorsed Obama last fall, later removed the post from his blog and replaced it with an apology.
“I sincerely apologize for a tasteless and gratituous [sic] comment I made here about President Clinton. It was unnecessary and wrong,” he wrote.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, Clinton aides said Fischer’s decision to attack the New York senator reflected “gutter tactics that [the Obama] campaign is now deploying.”
“This is now the Obama campaign’s primary message to the American people,” said spokesman Howard Wolfson. “Not to build him up, but to tear Sen. Clinton down.”
He also dismissed Fischer’s apology. “In my opinion the remarks of Gordon Fischer are very much in keeping with the campaign Sen. Obama is running. So I don’t know why he would apologize.”
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can cool it for a while with the hate mail, Obamaniacs — you know what I mean: the ones that go “You racist!” and “You quoted Fox News! That proves you’re a paid political operative for Hillary and/or the GOP!”
Here’s one you can’t lay at our doorstep, from Queerty.com — a news blog (one of our favorites, in fact) even queerer than the one you’re reading right now, and one that’s been extremely fair (often to a fault) to The Anointed One:
… First, we had Donnie McClurkin, the man who nearly derailed the Senator’s mega church campaign. Then came Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s preacher who damned the United States and spurred that revolutionary race speech.
And now Fox’s ire-inducing Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes have turned their attention to another Obama “spiritual counselor,” Reverend James Meeks, a state Senator who spends his free time blasting the bent boys and girls. Obama’s camp already denounced the remarks, saying:
Obama has appeared at hundreds of churches and served with scores of colleagues and can hardly be expected to be held responsible for all that they say.
While that may be true, Meeks’ history will certainly propel a few news stories this week. …
Meeks, who’s closely associated with anti-gay groups like Americans for Truth and Focus On The Family, told a reporter during his 2006 gubernatorial run that he’s the perfect candidate for conservative white voters: “Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I’m their guy. I have their philosophy.” That philosophy became his common call during that year, when he was swiftly defeated:
Come on with me white churches … Call me and tell me to run for governor. White people who believe in Jesus, call me and tell me to run for governor”
…
If I do run and there are two people in the race who both are not standing for morality, if I don’t have every white Christian vote in the state of Illinois, I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of ya’ll racist.Just one year earlier Meeks railed against white Christians…
Meanwhile, like Wright, Meeks has come under fire for using the pulpit to dispense racialized opinions, even referring to mayors as “slave masters” and some unnamed politicians as “house n****rs…
Though he’s since apologized for those remarks — and, again, Obama himself has denounced them — we’ve got no doubt Meeks’ Obama connection will be making the rounds this week. Can we expect another speech or will Obama be able to shrug this one aside and start focusing on the task at hand: the campaign. We’re hoping the latter, because the Democrats need to make sure they’re strong enough to fight John McCain. And the past few weeks have not been helping their case.
More — including links, an embedded video of Meeks, and some spirited reader comments (”Obama describes Meeks as one of his ‘closest religious advisors’; Meeks appeared in TV ads for Obama’s US Senate campaign; When he ran for US Senate in 2004, Obama campaigned at Meeks’ Salem Baptist church; Meeks’ church was Obama’s last stop on the night he won that primary … Obama appointed Meeks to his exploratory committee for the Presidency; Meeks is listed on Obama’s campaign website of influential black supporters”…) — at the link.
I just finished watching The Race Speech. It was a nice speech — but I don’t need a history lesson in race relations; I wanted Obama to address the specifics of the Jeremiah Wright issue, and then get very specific about the theology he’s pledged his loyalty to — and the church he’s pledged his money to — for the past twenty years.
At best, he dismissed Wright as a member of a dying generation, for whom “the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away,” and downplayed the constant, consistent message of his own brand of “liberation theology” as only “occasionally” finding “voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.”
It also irritated the hell out of me that he compared Wright’s long history of anti-white rhetoric to Geraldine Ferraro’s one-time gaffe:
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
And, again, while Wright may sound like a crank to those of us to whom his brand of fire and brimstone are foreign, his divisive demagoguery is entirely consistent with the theology to which Obama subscribes.
That is worrisome.
In short, Obama really didn’t say anything new. It was the same “hate the sin, love the sinner” speech he’s been making since the Wright firestorm erupted, only padded with a lot of historical references.
Of course, I’m a hard sell — but that’s the point: I am the person very Obama had to convince. He didn’t — no matter how his followers praise this as the greatest speech since Lincoln’s “House Divided.”
So, mission not accomplished.
Now, there was something even more interesting to me, as a gay American, that jumped out near the very beginning of the speech:
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
There’s nothing remarkable about alluding to the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution when discussing slavery; it is, however, highly ironic that Barack Obama — staunch opponent of same-sex marriage equality — would invoke the Equal Protection Clause, on which the most elementary argument in favor of marriage equality is based.
I know his devout flock won’t see it, but Obama’s double standard on issues of equality becomes only more pronounced every time he speaks.
Read it and weep, Barack (or better, yet, save the party and drop out now) — it’s on the front page of the Politics section in today’s New York Times:
In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in relationship with Mr. Obama, saying the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself from his pastor. But perhaps the two could repair things, said Mr. Wright, pointing out that Mr. Obama’s opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, had faced worse.
“At least there are no semen stains on any dresses,” Mr. Wright said, one of several digs he has taken at the Clintons.
“That kind of frankness scares people in the campaign,” he added.
It shouldn’t scare anyone — it should simply disgust and anger the hell out of all Democrats, no matter who they support.
Sadly, however, it has become the norm for Obama supporters (among whom Mr. Wright remains, despite his previous “frustration” over being “disinvited” from The Big Obama Show) to fling every piece of poo recycled from the Newt Gingrich / Ken Starr era at Hillary. It’s déjà vu all over again — only this time the attacks are coming from within the Democratic Party. (Or are they? It’s often difficult to believe that even half the most vocal Obama supporters are anything but Hillary-hating GOP plants.)
The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not antiwhite. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their education and work ethic.
“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.
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.”
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 Michelleamong 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.
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.”
“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.
“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 ofother 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.
Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11
Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”
In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.
Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.
. . .
“He has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive,” said another member of the congregation.
. . .
Obama has praised at least one aspect of Rev. Wright’s approach, referring to his “social gospel” and his focus on Africa, “and I agree with him on that.”
Sen. Obama declined to comment on Rev. Wright’s denunciations of the United States, but a campaign religious adviser, Shaun Casey, appearing on “Good Morning America” Thursday, said Obama “had repudiated” those comments. …
No, we’re not done discussing Jeremiah Wright.
Provoked by an Obama supporter’s remark that white people can’t possibly understand what goes on in a black church, I’ve spent a good deal of time over the past 24 hours trying to understand the particular brand of theology that fuels much of Wright’s rhetoric.
I think I have a handle on it. While my opinion of Wright’s methods is even dimmer than it was yesterday, I think I have a better understanding of its origins, and even of some of the code phrases he employs.
I want to give myself some more time to gather my thoughts — or revelations, actually, as what I’ve discovered explains a lot of things, such as Barack’s refusal to do the right thing with regard to the Donnie McClurkin imbroglio, and Michelle Obama’s ongoing disparagement of America, among other things (and how all of this plays into a fascinating perspective of religious identity) — before I attempt to explain where I think this is all coming from… and the insight it provides into the real Barack Obama.
Judging from the astronomical number of hits yesterday’s Wright entry received, I know there are many, many people as simultaneously interested in and outraged by the Wrong Reverend Wright as I am.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 2005. Credit: Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service
The senator “affirmed” his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a “sounding board” to “make sure I’m not losing myself in the hype and hoopla.” Both the title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright’s sermons. “If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”
This following video is, according to Fox News, from Wright’s Christmas sermon. (Gee whiz, what a message of peace and unity for Christmas, eh?)
My transcript (free to use, with attribution/link, please) is below.
On edit: YouTube keeps pulling the video, but a lot of people keep re-posting it — so if you get the “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” message, check back later, as I’ll do my best to find a new copy every time I see it’s gone missing again.
Who cares about what I’m going through? Who cares about what poor people have to put up with? Who cares about what a poor black man has to face every day in a country and a culture controlled by rich white people?
Somebody missed that — you got nervous, because we got some white members here. I’m still in bible country. I am still in [unintelligible].
Jesus was a poor, black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people. The Romans were rich, the Romans were Italian — which means they were European, which means they were white — and the Romans ran everything in Jesus’ country.
It just came to me with— with— with— within the past few weeks, y’all, why so many folks are hatin’ on Barack Obama. He doesn’t fit the mold. He ain’t white. He ain’t rich. And he ain’t privileged.
Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fit the mold. Giuliani fits the mold. Rich white men fit the mold.
Hillary never had a cab whizz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color. Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man driving in the wrong…
I am sick of Negroes who just do not get it!
Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single-parent home. Barack was! Barack knows what it means to be a black man livin’ in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people! Hillary can never know that!
Hillary ain’t never been called a n*****! Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons! Hillary ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folks who [unintelligible] everything, or to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than that C student sittin’ in the White House!
Ohhh, I am so glad that I got a god who knows what it is to be a poor black man, and in a country and a culture that is controlled and run by rich white people!
He taught me, Jesus did, how to love my enemies. Jesus taught me how to love the hell outta my enemies! And not be reduced to their level of hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness.
Hillary ain’t never had her own people say she wasn’t white enough!
Jesus had his own people sidin’ with the enemy!
That’s why I love Jesus, y’all. He never let their hatred dampen his hope. …
I’m biting my tongue to refrain from saying what I’d like to say regarding your “level of hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness,” Mr. Wright, as my Italian blood (which ain’t half so white as you’d like to think) is a little hot right now.
No, actually, it’s very hot.
Here’s something I can say with complete impunity, Mr. Wright: You are outright lying about Barack Obama growing up poor, underprivileged, and “raised in a single-parent home.”
And Barack himself “admitted in his book, Dreams from My Father, that he had no clue what it meant ‘to be a black man in America.’ And with precious few African-Americans around him in Hawaii, he learned how to ‘be black’ from ‘TV, movies, the radio; those were places to start. Pop culture was color-coded, after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style.’”
Oh, wait, one more thing: Mr. Wright, I hope the Internal Revenue Service is already investigating your church, and preparing to strip it of its tax-exempt status.
But then, the IRS is already interested in the United Church of Christ — a shame, really, as the UCC is the most Christ-like Christian denomination this side of the Quakers, far more colorblind than you are, and far more liberal than Obama himself — due to your unabashedly racist, one-sided politicking, and to Barack’s own shortsightedness.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about this letter from the IRS to the United Church of Christ, regarding Obama’s use of your pulpit for campaign purposes:
Because a reasonable belief exists that the United Church of Christ (”church”) has engaged in political activities that could jeopardize its tax-exempt status as a church described in section 501(c)(3) and exempt under section 501(a), this letter is notice of the beginning of a church tax inquiry described in IRC section 7611(a). We are sending it because we believe it is necessary to resolve questions concerning your tax-exempt status as a church described in section 501(c)(3) and in section 170(b)(1)(A)(i) of the Code.
Our concerns are based on articles posted on several websites including the church’s which state that United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.
All 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, their integrated auxiliaries, conventions or associations of churches, are prohibited from participating in, or intervening in (including the publication or distribution of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. This is an absolute prohibition, violation of which results in denial or revocation of exempt status and/or the imposition of certain excise taxes, if applicable.
The prohibition against political campaign activity does not prevent candidates from being invited to speak at an event of an organization described in section 501(c)(3). If a candidate is invited to speak in his or her capcity as a candidate, then other candidates running for the same office must also be invited to speak and there should be no indication of support for, or opposition to, any candidate by the organization. Alsom the prohibition does not prevent an orgnization’s officials from being involved in a political campaign, so long as those officials do not in any way utilize the organization’s financial resources, facilities, or personnel and clearly indicate that the actions taken or the statements made are those of the individuals and not of the organizations.
… not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.
The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.
. . .
In his Jan. 13 sermon, Wright said:
“Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
FOX News purchased the video recordings of Wright’s sermons from the church.
“It’s pretty clear an indirect endorsement of Barack Obama — that’s not something you’re supposed to do according to the tax code,” said Andrew Walsh, a professor at Trinity College who specializes in religion in politics.
“Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
You need help, Rev. Wright. Your soul is poisoned by hate. If you’re hearing any “voices” guiding you, they don’t belong to angels.
It’s sad that your “hatred, bigotry, and smallmindedness” may be the thing to bring down one of the few genuinely liberal Christian churches in the modern world.
It’s sad that the IRS wouldn’t think of narrowing its focus to a single, rogue church within an otherwise upstanding denomination.
It’s sad that the entire UCC body may become collateral damage in your crusade against those of us who don’t buy Obama’s lies — or yours.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t comprehend how Michelle Obama’s remark, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” could possibly be perceived as a dismissal of every American achievement of the past 25 years.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder, as Sasha Issenberg put it, “So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?”
Now, thanks to Lauren Collins in the March 10, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, we know what Michelle Obama thought — and thinks — of the United States.
It isn’t pretty.
Collins’ article, “The Other Obama: Michelle Obama and the politics of candor,” depicts Michelle Obama in a generally positive light, both praising her “lack of pretense” and attempting to explain why Michelle says the things she does.
Problem is, Michelle comes across as angry and bitter — especially at the lousy hand she’s been dealt (never mind her superior private education and income, both personal and household, which is more than most Americans could ever dream of grossing) — angry at everyone and everything. This is not a role her husband’s campaign advisers want her to portray. (”‘Occasionally, it gives campaign people heartburn,’ David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, admits.”)
She also just can’t seem to shut the hell up. While we’re all for outspokenness, especially from a woman (and especially from a woman belonging to a minority group; remember, yours truly is an outspoken woman who belongs to a minority group, too), she is the spouse of a presidential candidate, who, every time she opens her mouth, manages to insult a wide swath of the electorate.
It’s not difficult to envision the way her tendency — no, her compulsion — to shoot from the hip would play in her role as First Lady, especially when the precarious art of international diplomacy demands discretion.
Unfortunately, Michelle Obama hasn’t the first clue about discretion.
Beyond the cringe-making spectre of Michelle’s tactlessness offending some less-than-understanding head of state (can you say “international incident”?), the United States cannot afford to be represented by a First Lady (the official “hostess of the nation”) who repeatedly denigrates her own country. Our standing in the international community is on life support as it is; we do not need a First Lady who agrees with our detractors that the United States is a hellhole of greed and hate.
It doesn’t matter what Michelle thinks she means, or how her nebbish husband (who, notes Collins, has been “working the hapless-hubby routine for a long time”) or his campaign advisers try to “clarify,” explain, spin, or dismiss her words; it’s how her words come across. Anyone who thinks the American public is going to sit down, parse out those words, and spend any time trying to find a deeper layer of meaning (assuming there is one) is a fool; Americans have been conditioned to make snap decisions on first impressions and sound bites.
Worse, it appears Michelle is unlikely to be reined in; Collins writes that she knows what to say and what not to say, but “her pride visibly chafes at being asked to subsume her personality.”
Here’s a newsflash: “Personality” does not preclude tact. And if one’s “personality” is so literally compulsive that one cannot contain one’s unthinking brashness, there are bigger issues involved than mere pride.
Michelle Obama, Collins writes after witnessing a speech at a little South Carolina church, “acknowledged … that some advisers have lobbied her to take a sunnier tone, with little success.”
When Michelle made her “really proud” remark, a casual online acquaintance suggested, in a public forum, that perhaps it was indeed time someone in the Obama camp take her aside and advise her in the art of finesse. Barack supporters, predictably, flew into a rage at the idea of putting a gag on the irrepressible missus; most spat out accusations of “sexism” (ironic, as genuine sexism is usually the first resort of offense against Hillary Clinton), and more than a few attacked my acquaintance as a racist “threatened by an uppity black woman.”
This reaction was, apparently, not atypical, as it is echoed by Collins in her re-cap of the wider fallout over Michelle’s gaffe:
The sentiment — that America was in a mess, and Mrs. Obama was not happy about it — was not a new one, but her unfortunate formulation instantly drew charges that she was unpatriotic. Bill O’Reilly spawned his own scandalette, remarking, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” Victor Maltsev, of Rego Park, wrote to the Post, “Obama wants to be our next first lady? Watch out, America!” Cindy McCain seized the opportunity to draw a sniffy contrast between the Obamas and her and her war-hero husband, telling a cheering crowd, “I don’t know about you — if you heard those words earlier — I’m very proud of my country.”
It was a manufactured controversy, but it reflected a real cavalierness on Obama’s part — not toward the Blue Angels and 9/11 and the Berlin Wall and America’s armed forces, as her various critics had it, but toward the reality that it might be wise for a person whose spouse is running for President not to say something that could be construed that way. The controversy over her brand of household humor may have been a matter of cultural misinterpretation. But Obama’s blitheness about politics may have less to do with race than it does with class — conservative commentators pegged her as a paragon of élitist leftism — or, more likely, for a daughter of blue-collar Chicago, with personal disposition.
Of course, the Obamacans missed the point. As usual.
The point, again, is: Michelle’s unbridled derision of the United States makes Barack look bad. If she becomes First lady, she’s going to make the United States itself look bad.
If you think that assessment is a knee-jerk overreaction, consider this exchange between Collins and Michelle:
In Wisconsin, I asked her if she was offended by Bill Clinton’s use of the phrase “fairy tale” to describe her husband’s characterization of his position on the Iraq War. At first, Obama responded with a curt “No.” But, after a few seconds, she affected a funny voice. “I want to rip his eyes out!” she said, clawing at the air with her fingernails. One of her advisers gave her a nervous look. “Kidding!” Obama said. “See, this is what gets me into trouble.”
“I want to rip his eyes out!”
I’m sorry, but there’s no “clarifying” a remark like that, no “kidding” away a remark that, made by you, Mr. or Ms. Average Citizen, would bring the Secret Service to your doorstep. (Don’t laugh; law-abiding Americans have been hauled in for a lot less than wishing physical harm — “kidding” or not — to a President of the United States.)
It is clear, however, that not all of Michelle Obama’s outrageous remarks are unrehearsed. Collins observes:
Pundits have portrayed Obama as an oversharer and a taskmaster, demeaning her husband by acknowledging his morning breath and his body odor. But the domestic carping that commentators have taken as some sort of uncontrollable T.M.I. tic serves Obama’s husband well, and this may account for her frequent recitation of the mundane details of their housekeeping arrangements. …
. . .
The ordinary card, in fact, may be one of the Obamas’ best assets. It assuages fears of difference — “We’re just like you” is the cumulative message of all the back-and-forth about the breath and the bread — and inoculates against jealousy, a smart bit of self-deprecation on the part of a young, gifted, attractive couple whose fortunes have risen quickly, like movie stars insisting that they were unpopular in high school.
But the Obamas are anything but “ordinary.” By now we all know the basic facts about Barack Obama’s life:
The product of a brief marriage between a black Kenyan scholar and a white Kansan mother, fellow students at the University of Hawaii, Barack was abandoned at age two by his father, but, despite his standard stump-speech sob story of being “raised by a single mother,” was hardly fatherless; his mother was remarried to an Indonesian student, and when Barack was six, the family moved to his stepfather’s homeland.
Barack’s “critical boyhood years,” Hank De Zutter reminds us, “from two to ten — were spent neither in white nor black America but in the teeming streets and jungle outskirts of Djakarta.”
By the time Barack was ten, his mother divorced again, and sent Barack to live with her parents in Honolulu. Barack’s grandparents enrolled him in the prestigious (and expensive), racially diverse Punahou prep school. From there it was onto Columbia University (he earned his bachelor’s in political science in 1983), and then Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1991.
The former Michelle Robinson wasn’t exactly raised on food stamps in a tenement slum, either. A graduate of the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, a highly selective, highly competitive Chicago public college preparatory requiring “special application and entrance testing” for admission to its 450 student openings.
She went on to Princeton (majoring in sociology), and then, writes Collins:
Obama went straight from Princeton to Harvard Law School. After graduating, she became a junior associate, specializing in intellectual property law, at the Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin. She worked there for three years, eventually becoming, as she says in her stump speech, disenchanted with “corporate America.” Valerie Jarrett hired her as an assistant to the mayor, Richard Daley.
Collins also crunches the numbers:
The Obamas’ financial standing has risen sharply in the past three years, largely as a result of the money Barack earned from writing “The Audacity of Hope.” In 2005, their income was $1.67 million, which was more than they had earned in the previous seven years combined. …
. . .
Just after Barack was elected to the United States Senate, Michelle received a large pay increase — from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.
What’s more, the Obamas have no need to worry about such mundane things as daycare, housework, or having to actually go outside to get some exercise:
Last summer, Obama’s mother retired from her job as a bank secretary in order to look after Malia and Sasha when Barack and Michelle are on the road. (The Obamas employ a full-time housekeeper, and Michelle tries to see a personal trainer four times a week, but they do not have a nanny.)
Yet, Michelle still complains about the “struggle” to “balance work and family.” Never mind that having people to babysit your kids, clean your house, and make you work out four times a week are the kinds of luxuries completely off-limits to Joe and Jane American as they struggle to balance work and family.
It’s not lost on Collins (or on the reader) that Michelle Obama sees the world through a deeply-tinted lens of self-absorption:
Her frame of reference can seem narrow. When she talks about wanting “my girls to travel the world with pride” and the decline of America “over my lifetime,” you wonder why her default pronoun is singular if the message is meant to be concern for others and inclusiveness.
The question is: How genuine is that message of “concern for others and inclusiveness”?
Perhaps the sentiment is, but the “just plain folks” schtick makes the message ring hollow. The Obamas are not “just plain folks” by any stretch of the imagination — they just play them on television.
And in speeches.
At the Pee Dee Union Baptist Church, in Cheraw, South Carolina, “a hamlet of about six thousand known as ‘The Prettiest Town in Dixie,’ Michelle Obama pulled out all the stops to connect with her “mostly elderly, almost all-black crowd,” to prove she was just like them.
“On behalf of my church home and my pastor, Reverend Wright, I bring greetings,” Michelle began, and then went on to talk about her “people” (they’re from from South Carolina, too), and her grandparents’ membership in “an A.M.E. Baptist church in Georgetown.”
Notes Collins:
Obama was playing to her audience — later she riffed on “those relatives who have plastic on the furniture” and reminded the churchgoers to get “ten other triflin’ people in your life” out of bed and down to the polls on Saturday. Her appearances at the church, and many like it, were a key point of strategy in a state that would be the first real test of whether or not Barack could attract significant numbers of black voters. “In South Carolina in particular, because she had family from there, it made a lot of sense for her to speak in the African-American community,” David Axelrod said.
That’s fine, but even in print, the “plastic on the furniture” and “triflin’ people” business sounds as empty — and condescending — as her husband’s frequent — and phony — “lapses” into Southern-fried preacher-man talk. (Oh, it’s phony, all right; the man who spent his entire childhood outside the continental United States, and never knew “the black experience” during his most crucial formative years, admitted in his book, Dreams from My Father, that he had no clue what it meant “to be a black man in America.” And with precious few African-Americans around him in Hawaii, he learned how to “be black” from “TV, movies, the radio; those were places to start. Pop culture was color-coded, after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style.” Which tells you his racially-charged “Cousin Pookie” remark is utterly and completely meaningless, and merely calculated stagecraft aimed at drawing a connection between himself and a version of Black America to which he has no real connection at all.)
It’s right at the beginning of her speech to the Pee Dee Baptists that Michelle Obama, true to form, gets herself “into trouble” again.
Writes Collins:
Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents.
A nation of “cynics, sloths, and complacents”?
A country that is “just downright mean”?
I don’t care if you agree with her or not; these remarks fly right in the face of her husband’s frothy, ethereal “hope and change” meme. In fact, she answers Barack’s oft-repeated question: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”
It’s clear what kind of politics his wife is participating in. (Hint: It ain’t hope.)
“We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews.
Who are “we,” Michelle? You have no idea what it means to be “struggling folks who are barely making it every day.” None.
“Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”
Conditions have gotten worse for other people over your lifetime, Michelle. Your family has experienced nothing less than meteoric success, year after year — and your children have never known, nor are they ever likely to know, what it means to go without… or what it feels like to hear their parents arguing over money.
From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to “finagle” to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.)
So did you have to “finagle” your way into Whitney Young, Michelle? Or did you earn your way in?
Health care is out of reach (”Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America”), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won’t be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. “You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt,” Obama said. “See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s’posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!”
“Give” you “something here”? Thanks, Michelle, for making “us” (whoever “us” is supposed to be, but I’ll generously assume you mean Americans who don’t have it as easy as you and your husband) sound exactly like the worst right-wing stereotype of “entitlement mentality” liberals.
(The point isn’t lost on Collins: “Some observers have detected in Obama an air of entitlement. Her defenders attribute these charges of arrogance to racist fears about uppity black women. While it’s a stretch to call the suggestion that Obama projects an air of self-satisfaction bigoted, it may at least reflect a culture gap: last April, after Maureen Dowd wrote a column criticizing Obama for undermining her husband’s mystique, a blog riposte, circulated widely on the Internet, was titled ‘The White Lady Just Doesn’t Get It.’”)
It’s not that I’m too concerned with the damage you’re inflicting on your husband’s campaign, Michelle; I don’t like his positions, I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and I want to see him lose the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. But if Barack does win the party’s nomination, this idiocy you’re spewing is going to help guarantee a win by President McCain.
Even more damaging is the longlasting pall you’re casting over the Democratic Party — to which I still belong. You’re making Democrats look spoiled, and demanding, and unreasonable.
Yet you just go on and on. And if your crack about ripping out Bill Clinton’s eyes weren’t enough, you go on to denigrate the very real, measurable gains of the entire Clinton administration:
In Cheraw, Obama belittled the idea that the Clinton years were ones of opportunity and prosperity: “The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!”
Then you want to meet me, Michelle. I grew up without a trust fund, too, and worked crap jobs throughout my young adulthood in the 1980s. Even after I finished school, my whiz-bang computer-programming skills languished while I had to take anything I could find to pay the rent — I was a school photographer in the very worst, violence-ridden schools in the Los Angeles Unified District, and off-season I jumped at the chance to proctor the state bar exam, or the state cosmetology licensing exam, from one to three days at a time — because there was nothing else available.
Then came “the Clinton years” you disparage so easily. Almost overnight, I was awash in offers to put my professional skills to work. I climbed the ladder at breakneck speed, and my salary rose practically exponentially. Just before George W. Bush was sworn in for the first time, I was earning $110,000 a year.
Then I was laid off. The jobs dried up, and the industry I loved so much (information technology, primarily for medical manufacturing — an area in which I felt, sincerely, that I was contributing to a greater good) has never come back.
Today, I eke out a very meager living doing what I can. Two-week vacations to Hawaii are just a memory. I stay home a lot. And when something breaks, I fix it myself.
Michelle, have you ever soldered a loose wire back into place when a burner on your stove stopped working? (Have you ever even opened the top of your stove to see what’s inside, or would that get your hands too dirty?) Would you even know how to do that?
Yesterday, I fixed the silverware drawer in the kitchen. It’s the most used drawer in the house, and it finally warped to the point that it couldn’t be pulled in or out. So I took it apart and, with nails my late father had squirreled away in a cigar box, put it back together again, and made it work. I even rubbed a wax candle along the runners to make it slide in and out more easily.
Could you do that, Michelle? Would you do that, Michelle? Especially when it’s just too easy for you to pick up the phone and call a repairman — or have someone call a repairman?
I’d rather call a repairman, too. But I don’t have the money to call a repairman.
So I guess you want to meet me, Michelle, because that “point over the last couple of decades” when my life was easy was hardly a single “point”; it was eight long years of “opportunity and prosperity.” Eight years.
But your revisionist history of the first Clinton era is no surprise, Michelle. Your husband does it all the time, even going as far as venerating Ronald Reagan and praising the GOP as “the party of ideas … over the last ten, fifteen years.”
“Barack Obama’s upscale white supporters (and those too young to recall the 1970s and 1980s) tend to describe Clintonism as a betrayal of liberalism, a sellout to Wall Street, and proof that ‘the Clintons’ won’t bring about change — a view encapsulated in the Daily Kos blog’s visceral aversion to Terry McAuliffe’s mug. Yet while the courting of big donors with stays in the Lincoln Bedroom left a bad odor, as a historical matter, the Clinton years were unquestionably a time of progress, especially on the economy. And it seems that as Obama mania sweeps the educated classes, the party’s struggling lower-income base still prefers Hillary. One reason is that they’re less prone than their better-off party mates to vote out of an enthusiasm for stirring rhetoric or viral videos or a wish to play their part in a grand narrative of racial reconciliation. Having been battered by globalization, rising health care and education costs, and the subprime mortgage disaster, they’re remembering the Clinton years and voting for who they think will help them. …
“Clinton detractors … like to grouse about “triangulation.” This was pollster Dick Morris’ cynical term for the election-year opportunism behind Clinton’s moderate-seeming but mostly inconsequential ideas in 1996, like the V-chip (to screen out television violence) and school uniforms. On economics, however, Clinton’s construction of policies that defied traditional left-right categories was substantive. The Earned Income Tax Credit, which originated in a pilot form in the 1970s, attracted conservative support in the 1980s as an alternative to transfer payments as a way to help the working poor; Clinton made it a signature policy, expanding it in his 1993 bill to an additional 15 million families — a result that added up to the most significant anti-poverty measure since the Great Society. The virtuous cycle engendered by Clinton’s balanced budgets — which by paying down the debt won the confidence of bond traders and helped bring down interest rates — eventually won over many who had doubted the strategy. …
“By the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged. Real wages, after declining over the course of the Reagan and Bush years, rose under Clinton. To be sure, the gap between the very rich and everyone else widened — as it has continued to do since — but gains for the rich, for once, didn’t leave behind the poor and lower middle class. …
“It’s the economic achievements of the Clinton years that people recalled when they scratched their heads at Obama’s claim that during the last 10 to 15 years — i.e., the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies — Republicans had the “new ideas.” On the contrary, while it’s possible to argue that the GOP claimed the mantle of newness in the 1980s, when Democrats were still groping for their postindustrial vision, it was precisely in 1992 — with the emergence of Clinton’s fusion of populism and neoliberalism — that Democrats did find a program for the globalization age. And it worked.”
Nevertheless, the Obamas, and their supporters, continue to disparage “the Clinton years” — even despite Barack Obama’s own rather schizophrenic admission: “I think there’s no doubt that there were good things that happened during those eight years of the Clinton administration. I think that’s undeniable. … And, particularly, when looked at through the lens of the last eight years with George Bush, they look even better.”
To both Obamas, and to their supporters, I ask the old bumper-sticker question: So, what was it, exactly, about eight years of peace and prosperity that pissed you off so much?
Yet while attempting to stay on-message and deny everything good about the first Clinton era, Michelle Obama suffers from her own schizophrenic treatment of the Obama campaign’s “out with the old, in with the new” meme:
She exudes a nostalgia, invoking the innocence and order of the past, as much as her husband beckons to a liberating future. Listening to her speeches, with their longing for a lost, spit-shine world, one could sometimes mistake her, were it not for the emphasis on social justice, for a law-and-order Republican. “It’s not just about politics; it’s TV,” she says, of our collective decay. And, wistfully: “The life I had growing up seems so much more simple.”
Michelle, honey, you grew up when I did — you’re all of two years younger than I am.
I do agree that life was indeed simpler when we were younger, and I long for it too.
But you need to make up your mind: Do you want a return to a secure, more orderly past, or do you want to gamble what tenuous hold we have on that past and barge into the future with a set of half-baked — and often contradictory — ideas about what to do with that future?
There’s much more in Collins’ lengthy profile, well worth the full read if you want a clearer picture of the outspoken and often outrageous Michelle Obama, as well as her family (in response to Michelle’s brother Craig’s complaint about Michelle’s overbearingness in college, their mother advised: “Just pretend you don’t know her”), her marriage (”…[Barack] got me into one of these discussions again, where, you know, he sort of just led me down there and got fired up and it’s like you’ve got blah blah blah blah, and then dessert comes out, the tray comes out, and there’s a ring!”), the Tony Rezko mess, and the Obamas’ close relationship with their highly controversial, Louis-Farrakhan-admiring, racial-separatist pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (who portrays America as “a Eurocentric wasteland of lily-white lies and outright distortions”).
But we’ll end with one last quote from Collins — two paragraphs buried between pages eight and nine of the piece — which sum up the problem with Michelle Obama:
The self-assurance that colors Obama’s assumption that her personal feelings are some bellwether of American achievement is also palpable in her forceful declarations that her husband is the only person who can solve the country’s problems. “I tell people I am married to the answer,” she said, in a speech in Harlem. “The man . . . who I am willing to sacrifice,” she called her husband, in Iowa. In November, on MSNBC: “Black voters will wake up and get it.” There is a hectoring, buy-one-while-supplies-last quality to Obama’s frequent admonitions that Americans will have only one chance to elect her husband President. Someone who has spent a good portion of her life gaining purchase has suddenly been asked to sell something, and she seems to find it slightly beneath her.
Perhaps Obama’s high-handedness is preëmptive, her way of “claiming a seat at the table” — as she is fond of calling enfranchisement in the power-brokering structure — rather than waiting to be offered one. It’s as though she figures she might as well say that she and her husband are all that before someone can say that they aren’t. And there’s a sort of strategic genius to her presentation of campaigning as grinding work that takes her away from her family, rather than a glorious tour of the world’s greatest country that she would be thrilled to be undertaking even if she didn’t have to. … By loudly voicing her distaste for retail politicking, Obama makes people feel as though, by showing up, she were doing them a favor.
It’s not that Michelle Obama isn’t “grateful” for her high socioeconomic status in this country (on the contrary, she needn’t be grateful to anyone; there is no question she worked for it, and earned it), or her constant dismissal of what’s right with America, or even her deliberate blindness to how much better we had it with Bill Clinton at the helm.
It’s that she has little love for her country, and even less dedication to service to her country. She “makes people feel as though, by showing up, she were doing them a favor.”
You’re not doing anyone any favors, Michelle.
Don’t do me any favors, either… unless, of course, you really do want to meet me for a real-life lesson in how good the Clinton years really were.
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