Letters to the Editor
madamfauntleroy
Published Letters: 653 Editor's Choice: 2
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jonathon and drichmond
[Read the article: Who wants to be a Democrat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You beat me to it. Bless your hearts.
US terrorism abroad is shameless, only it is state terrorism and many times carried out by proxy states. But this certainly does not belong on the sound bytes of election year politiking. People's memories are short. Look how old the Spitzer story has become. People in this age of fast news cycles and media manipulation, do not really study the history of their candidates, or the history of their own country's involvement in overseas imperialism.
Tuskegee experiment did not get revealed until years of silence on the deliberate infections of scores of African American men. Is it any wonder that many people do not trust their government?
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odog11
[Read the article: Who wants to be a Democrat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The new pope has made some very inflammatory comments about a lot of things. The catholic church is riddled with millions of dollars worth of settlements for sexual abuse of children. The sin of pedophelia alone should have crushed the catholic church world wide. But I haven't seen the faithful emptying out the parishes.
I would like to know if you were as incensed when Falwell and Robertson blamed 9/11 on homosexuals, feminists, and atheists? What did you do about it? I'd just like to know so we can all collectively rid this land of all over the top demagoguery, starting with Wright, Robertson and others.
Are we now going to condemn candidates by guilt of association? I think Ferraro's comments were crazy, she left and Hillary apologized to the AA community. Obama made amply clear that he does not support all of Wright's views. You need to let it go at that. In a perfect world, we would all be without sin and I am an atheist. Go figure.
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Doggedly dog
[Read the article: Who wants to be a Democrat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You still have not answered my question although I think your question has been answered at several levels by many thoughtful posters.
I would like to know if you were as incensed when Falwell and Robertson blamed 9/11 on homosexuals, feminists, and atheists? What did you do about it? I'd just like to know so we can all collectively rid this land of all over the top demagoguery, starting with Wright, Robertson and others.
Surely you can answer this simple question, can't you? What have you done about other demagogues in our society?
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odog11
[Read the article: Who wants to be a Democrat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First off, I am neither a member of their congregation nor do I solicit their adivce or employ them in any fashion. So Madam It's quite easy for me to say they are morally repugnant.
The problem is that I'm not asking about the social ills from our past that lead Black folks to believe these ridiculous conspiracies from the likes of Wright and Farrakan. I'm asking why it took so long for s seemingly intelligent person to denounce these ridiculous comments. Do you think he truly does not agree with Pastor Wright or was this done for political expediency.
Thanks for your courteous reply. I think when people on either side start to ridicule and belittle the other, that's when we end up with threads of punches and counterpunches.
You do ask a fair question and the answer really lies somewhere in a historical perspective in people who have been institutionally oppressed even to this day. Frankly, when I listened to Wright's pithy sermon, he really was not that much off the mark. I did not hear anything about the AIDS epidemic from the clip that has been played over and over on TV, and I take your word that maybe he did say something about that in one of his sermons. The historical context to that is the Tuskegee experiment that the US government inflicted on AA men of a certain generation. People don't forget that and it is easy to consider that AIDS too is a man made disease. We will have to wait decades to find out about that as we did in the Tuskegee case. You can google and learn more about that.
As for US terrorism overseas, most of the world, outside the US, considers the war in Iraq as an act of terrorism, not to mention the funding and arming of Israel with sophisticated weaponry to fight the Palestinian sticks and stones for survival. It is very patriotic and essential for people to speak out against any kind of oppression, whether at home or abroad. That is the American way, and that is really what separates the US from most other nations. Remember also, that people like Cheney, Bush, Falwell and Robertson and a great many others, supported the apartheid system in South Africa. That was not too long ago. Where would Nelson Mandela be today, if the anti-apartheid movement started in colleges, universities and churches had not succeeded? Many prior US policies supported the apartheid in South Africa and that is what Wright was speaking to.
You ask if Obama is now speaking out for political expediency. Probably. The American imagination is very limited and it is probably better to nip this one before moving on to other contraversies emerge. I am not even sure if Obama has been to church since he started to run for president. If he was not present when Wright made those remarks, how would Obama know? How many people discuss the Sunday sermons on their way home, much less repeat them to an absent church member?
So here is a dilemma for all of us. As an atheist, or at least someone who believes in the separation of church and state, why can't we leave the issue of people's faith alone? Even if Obama were a Muslim, what's wrong with that? Did we start to condemn all christians after what Timothy McVeigh did? Why is going to church a requisite to run for president? Hell, Bill Clinton went to church every Sunday, with a Bible under his armpit and look where that got him?