Letters to the Editor

• What a shock

  [Read the article: Big weekend news]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Of the two big stories relating to the Democratic primary that broke over the weekend, Joan chose to devote almost 75% of her latest editorial to the one that involves Obama and his church. Not only that, she made sure to avoid any mention of Obama's claim that he made the move because he wanted to protect Trinity from the media as much as he wanted to protect himself from views expressed at Trinity. Whether or not you believe that, it deserved a mention.

  Then again, most of us have long since given up any hope of any objectivity out of Joan when it comes to Barack Obama. Just look at the way she touched on Father Pfleger's remarks about Hillary: First, she says that she really didn't want to have to write about something said by a guest preacher at Obama's church, and then she immediately follows that up with the observation that he's "a longtime friend and advisor to Obama," undercutting her own previous claim that it was irrelevant.

  You can't have it both ways, Joan. You're either part of the media chum-fest, or you're not. You can't pretend to be high-minded and then rake the muck. All that does is call into question your few remaining journalistic ethics.

  Then she plays dumb and pretends not to know why Obama would have made such a decision. Now, Joan might be many unpleasant things, but dumb isn't one of them. She's stupid like a fox. Obama gave two reasons for leaving, and as previously mentioned, she only covered on one of them, the one that makes Obama look like the cold, calculating hardball politician who stole those Michigan delegates from Hillary and had the nerve to steal the nomination by out-maneuvering her. Ooh! How could this inadequate black male be so uppity?

  Has Trinity changed? Obama doesn't say that. Either he attended the church for 20 years and knew that gratuitous anti-white rhetoric was accepted there, and didn't care until he was running for president, or his church affiliation was mainly a political one and he wasn't paying much attention.

  Joan conveniently ignores yet another option, which has as much legitimacy as either of those reasons: For Obama, like many educated, middle-class American professionals, church was probably a vehicle to be a part of a community, not a set of marching orders to be followed blindly. It was also a way for him to connect to black America, something he'd never had a chance to do when he was raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii. And you might be shocked to hear this, but there's a wee bit of resentment toward white America among the black community, because white folks occupy most of the top slots in a society that's stacked the deck against them.

  I think that's something that Obama needed to experience directly in order to understand and represent the black community, whether as a community organizer or as an elected representative. I don't think it was purely cold political calculation, although he's too gifted a politician for that not to have been part of his decision-making process. I think it was something he needed in order to learn how to be an effective mediator and translator between two traditionally opposed segments of society.

  Of course, this is too complex an idea to get across in a two-minute Headline News segment, so Obama's Trinity experience got boiled down into 30-second clips of crazy preachers saying crazy things. A rich and complex debate, which Obama only explored the tip of in a 40-minute speech on race, was boiled down into: Does Obama hate America, or does he simply surround himself with people who do. And, of course, his political opponents wasted no time in seizing on this narrative, which seemed to be the one chink in the armor of an extremely talented candidate.

  And so, when Trinity was transformed into a metaphor for Obama as the Other, the Manchurian Candidate who's been secretly programmed to hate America, he had to make a tough decision: Should he remain part of a church that provided him with spiritual guidance, his first real connection to black America, and, yes, some major political dividends early in his political career? Or, for the good of his campaign and the church itself, should he walk away from it, so that it couldn't be used against him and the work that he's trying to accomplish?

  I don't think that there was a good answer, but I'm glad he made the one that offers him a bit of political cover and hopefully allows his former fellow parishioners to attend services without being at the center of a political shitstorm that showed no sign of abating as long as he remained a part of Trinity.

  I also think that Obama's split from Trinity is a Rorschach test for how one feels about him. If you like him and support him, you make the effort to try and put yourself in his shoes and understand the reasons why he had to make the decision that he made. If you're not an Obama fan, you use it as an example of how he'll throw anyone under the bus if it suits his purposes. And if you're a partisan hack masquerading as an editor with integrity, you fake confusion and concern and present a selective set of facts engineered to lead the reader to only one conclusion.

  Permalink Sunday, June 1, 2008 12:00 PM