| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Obama: denouncing Grandma? |
| 2008-03-18 |
| Jim Geraghty, National Review This line in Obama's speech didn't jump out at me, but it's rubbing some readers the wrong way: I can no more disown [Reverend Wright] than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. As one reader puts it, "Fair enough, but it certainly sounds like he is creating a moral equivalence between a grandmother, who he did not choose and he was blessed to have in his life, and a pastor who he sought out, who he felt some sort of spiritual inspiration from, and who he does not share any bloodlines with... The idea that his grandmother expressing fear of black men is in any way equivalent or should even be mentioned in the same context as Jeremiah Wright's racial diatribes is utterly ridiculous. I doubt if his grandmother ever got up in church on Sunday and loudly proclaimed her personal reservations about black men, nor did she blame them for all of her people's troubles." As I type this, one of the lines on the bottom of the screen on CNN is "Obama: Can no more denounce Wright than his own grandmother." ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader noted, "The grandmother's comments happened long ago. Wright's hateful speech is recent. The two are not comparable." |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 Jesus, you need to read the whole speech and find out what he was really talking about, it was a pretty realistic view of the racial anger on both sides, white and black. You guys seem way off, but I guess you're just looking at some snippers and commentary. Normally I agree with comments here, but I definitely can tell tonight is anti-Obama night with 6+ articles attacking him on his speech. |
| Posted by: Glavigum Trotsky1119 2008-03-18 22:21 |
| #5 If your willing to toss your own grandmother under the bus ... Then you're almost as ruthless and single-minded as Hillary. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2008-03-18 21:36 |
| #4 If your willing to toss your own grandmother under the bus, what kind of jerk are you? |
| Posted by: Skunky Glins5285 2008-03-18 19:47 |
| #3 Cripes, I read a piece by Jesse Jackson once where he confessed his relief when he turned to see that the person following him on the street at night was white and not black. I think Grandma may have been saying the same thing. And if a lot more people stated this obvious fact, perhaps we could collectively demand a code of conduct from our young people, black, white, hispanic, whatever, that we seemingly are unable to demand today. |
| Posted by: Remoteman 2008-03-18 15:27 |
| #2 In the context of the speech he trashed his grandma but didn't trash his preacher. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-03-18 14:30 |
| #1 I knew she'd show up eventually. Another card for him to play when he needed to. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-03-18 13:52 |