Letters to the Editor
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Sorry Taliesan
How could I forget that the Rapist and Child loving Zuma is the head of the ANC...BTW, What is Mbeki's policy towards the AIDS crisis in SA?
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Taliesan
Good times, good times, in Port Elizabeth. By the way even critics like Sandile Memela don't believe that any whites have anything to apologize for now.
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A question I think would be interesting to ask
The Reverand...and notice, I'm not saying we should ask Obama.
Many people have brought up the fact that it is rational, in the context of the Tuskegee Experiment, for Reverend Wright, other black leaders and members of the black community to believe that the government would, in fact, unleash this on them on purpose.
What I'd like to ask the Reverend, since he's the one who is now most famous for the topic, is what did he think when AIDs was first discovered? You know, when it was considered the gay disease, and all the right-wing preachers were saying this was a plague that the gay community had brought on itself. At that point, if everyone recalls, the only people considered in danger were the gay male community, a few hemopheliacs who might have gotten blood transfusions before they tested the blood supply (Ryan White, if you recall) and intravenous drug users who shared needles with the infected - who would have to be gay male intravenous drug users, and yes, there were some. However, if I recall the attidtude of most the black ministry at the time, it was, there are no black gay males. It was remarkably, well, short-sighted, along with most of the rest of America.
I recall it pretty well because my brother, who is gay, eventually left the city he was living in in the early 1990s after many of the people he knew died of AIDs. It is interesting that my brother does not believe that the government deliberately released AIDs into the gay population. He believes it simply failed to do anything realistic about it, deliberately, under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, until it was too late to save many of the people who were already infected, because of who it was killing - which is a very different thing.
So, what did the Reverend think then? Was he concerned about AIDs at all when it looked like it was confined to the gay community? Or, like the Rev Falwell and others on the other end of the religeous political spectrum, did he think most of America could be unconcerned and they could just watch the gay community get what was coming to it?
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blank
Well I suppose if you see nothing wrong with murdering black people you might feel that the Apartheid government had nothing to appologise for, but then the rest of us kind of want to get past this whole "Racism" thing.
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Sue, you may be correct about many in the black ministry... but Wright is not among the homophobes.
http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=17266
"With Obama competing with rival presidential contender Hillary Clinton for gay votes in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, revelations of Wright’s controversial sermons have raised questions among some activists about whether Obama’s longtime pastor was among the preachers who delivered fire-and-brimstone sermons attacking homosexuality.
“Absolutely not,” said Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, the Chicago-based state gay rights group.
“Trinity has been among the strongest supporters of LGBT rights,” Garcia said. “I have the highest regard and admiration for Rev. Wright.”
Gay Chicago resident Ronald Wadley, a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, said Wright enthusiastically backed suggestions by gay church members to create a gay and lesbian singles ministry as part of the church’s existing ministry to heterosexual singles.
“We call it the same-gender loving family ministry,” Wadley said. “It’s a ministry that was formed to allow people to have an outlet to reconcile their sexuality with their spirituality,” he said.
“He has always been supportive on gay issues,” Wadley said of Wright. “He has a stance that we all go by, under the credence of John: 16 — that we are all created by God.”
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What about Joan Walsh?
You condemn the "mainstream media" for their treatment of this story but you pass on criticizing Salon's editor Joan Walsh, for continuing to push this story in support of Hillary's candidacy. And how many more articles are coming from Salon on a "story" that revolves around Obama's pastor's words while only War Room briefs are written about the words actually coming out of the mouths of his rivals: the growing list of Hillary's lies padding her slim resume or McCain's words showing he doesn't understand the political situation in the middle East? Two much more important factors in choosing a President but they are almost ignored while Salon joins the right-wing media machine in keeping this story alive as long as possible (even though 70% in polls accept Obama's explanation). Why Salon? Orders from above?
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Taliesan
Tick, tock...C'mon answer my question...I've got to get to my secret White people meeting...
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Liberal Terms
If I was black, and didn't find the Harvard fast track, I'd take Wright's position. Just like if I was born Palestinian I'd probably be dead by now with the smile on my face that eluded me in life. But I'm a liberal.
Gary is right to exorcise the demon of excessive patriotism in a land that does so little to care for its own as this one. But how many look at the world from any perspective but their own--outside the box of their color, sex, or class--which is so defining it is rarely revealed? (We used to proudly call those with the capacity to do so "liberals," but now we don't know what to call them.)
It'd be more powerful to frame the discussion in terms of how consensus is made and changed--how the thoughts, ideals, and asperations of the few and the great slowly change society. And he almost gets there, but instead he gets caught in a polemic that makes him sound defensive and victimized.
When Clinton said McCain and his wife loved America, I don't think he was dissing Obama in particular, but it's politics, and he does have that option. Play fair Gary.
What he's inadvertently acknowledging is that the juggernaut has been brought to his knees. The source is deadly in a nation willing to fund the largest army on the planet for the last sixty years. They're going to chop him to bloody bits if he gets to the GE and it's a shame to see. The argument that he is the most electible has been dealt a deadly possibly mortal blow.
Is there still time for him to win the nomination and have the chips fall where they may? What is the responsible course of action in order to wrest the nation from the scourge of right wing domination?
That's the question for those emotionally committed--what kind of leaders are they? It doesn't just apply to the rich, famous, and elected. How do they want to influence the mob whose answer to every conflict is bomb, bomb, bomb?
I'll fight anybody who tries to rub it in. This is when consolidation among liberals begins--not those who don't understand what the term means, or laugh at us. It can't be taken personally. Too much is at stake.
The job is to not let the consensus who gave the nation George W. Bush rule America any more. If you don't know that, it's time to learn.