Letters to the Editor
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Goodness! Get to know people...
Chances are that if you are all in a tither about Rev Wright, you are white. Chances are you don't have many close black friends and you didn't grow up in a multiracial neighborhood. Chances are you passed on black history in college and get your understanding about it from the news media. Chances are you still harbor some irrational fears about black people and get nervous if one stands behind you in a line at the grocery store. Chances are you don't remember Martin Luther King, or Vernon Johns, or Adam Clayton Powell or even Barbara Jordan.
Genetically and famialy(?), Barack Obama is half white--raised by a white family. But in the U.S. he is forced into black society although being white would be a whole lot easier. If he were white, however, I feel Barack Obama would still be the exceptional person that he is and would easily have functioned in the stellar orbits of the world stage. I know few white people as eloquent and poised and driven as Obama. In Harvard, the top law firms and corporations would have grovelled at his feet, and he would have still found a place directing traffic on the top rungs of the social order.
If he'd been in the same school, the same time as the Clintons, they would have paled in comparison to this laid back brilliant person who has destiny written all over him. He would have shot up even faster and brighter if he had the privileges being white in this country gives you.
What gives Geraldine Ferraro the right to judge Obama? What are her special credentials that give her insight on who's real and who's not?
I grew up in Evanston as a black person and lived among both black and white people. I've been to black churches and white churches; I;ve always had friends from many cultures. I am equal to anybody.
But I am black and have endured the mistreatment. Sure we've moved on, but history can't be rewritten, nor can it be suppressed. Jews carry the Holocaust with them forever, a period of unimaginable trauma, the memory of which will affect some more deeply and permanently than others. Women in this country were oppressed and victimized as well, clearly evident in the sulky tone of Gloria Steinem's op-ed piece in the New York Times where she complained that, in her view, this country had treated women worst than anyone else and continues to force them into the most restrictive role of anyone.
Now no one beat up on Hillary over Steinem's over the top remarks Rev Wright has done no one harm--certainly no more harm than the Enron or Countrywide executives whose corporations have destroyed this country as badly as any terrorist any day.
Tell me something that Barack Obama has done that has harmed rather than helped people. What have his actions been? Where is this secret life where he is plotting to hurt the country?
Reverend King, whose life we commemorate every year, was also a stern social critic of a country that had yet to reach its ideals. Democracies grow via challenges and critiques not by complacency and blind patriotism. Some of our best politicians have been flag burners and revolutionaries and we should treasure our right to cry foul when something stinks. I wouldn't trust someone who wouldn't.
As long as we are so easily manipulated by people who aren't thinking about you but about themselves and their potential losses, we'll continue to elect presidents like bush.
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This is Crap
I could point out various ham-fisted attempts to make Obama look bad in this piece but I will focus on this:
It is stupid to suggest that Obama's stance on Iraq was easy and risk free as oppossed to Hillary's. Obama had ambitions to seek higher office. Illinois is less of a blue state than NY. By being reasonable while the majority of politicians were stupidly joining the chorus for war took wisdom and balls.
Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the war even though he is from a state much redder than NY. Hillary could have opposed the war and not suffered as a Senator. Maybe if she and her husband had spoke out forcefully against it, we could have avoided this human tragedy. It's painfully obvious that Hillary's presidential ambitions were her motivation for voting the war. She thought her hawkishness could serve as a rhetorical strap-on. Her actions were the epitome of selfishness and cowardice.
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"spare bedsheet and a set of scissors"
Oh, that's right! Anything that might be in any way close to be critical of Obama, that isn't glowing with adoration of Obama (Our Glorious, Sacred and Wonderous Leader) is...of course!...racist.
Gads...it sounds so, so, so Republican!!
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@snoman
Oh, that's right! This is all Clinton's fault. Clinton actually MADE Wright say all of those things! She twisted Obama's church's arm into releasing all of those DVD's of his sermons to sell for money. It was Clinton all along. How sill of all of us!!! It's all her fault. Damn whore. Damn that bitch! Blame Clinton.
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Controversial Preachers
You know, it's really pretty damn ironic, isn't it? Jesus was a controversial preacher with the ability to inflame his critics and shock his followers. Sometimes he even got a little physical, like that time he booted the merchants out of the temple. It really makes me wonder about those righteous right-wingers and their followers...if Jesus actually was sitting among them now, they might not recognize him.
But whatever...I was so inspired by all this "controversy" I sent a check to TUCC as an Easter gift, and an identical one to the Obama campaign.
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Clinton's got her own closet
Look inside and let Pandora out.
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@uncle
You say: "Yes, the angry black people who have gotten screwed over and have been unable to get over it. Let's not elect Obama and we can go back to forgetting about them."
I'm sorry, but this is pure pap. It has absolutely nothing to do with the hate-filled raps from Jeremiah Wright. Nor does it have anything at all to do with voting for Obama, unless the point here is to simply make a point of voting for the black guy. Great.
Know what's striking so often here on salon.com? That so many posters are still hewing to the White Man's Burden School of Race Relations. And. You. Don't. Even. Know. It.