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| The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud (Krauthammer) |
| 2008-03-22 |
| The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks? Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for Sept. 11 -- "chickens coming home to roost" -- because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?) What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them? Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?" But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction. His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence and (b) white guilt. (a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "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." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others? "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was Grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street. And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus's time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did Grandma. Yet Obama compares her to Wright. Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred? (b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then he proceeds to do precisely that. What lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course. This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination. But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend? The first black presidential candidate, undone by his own racism. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #10 To add to the "Why worry about his pastor" question, here's your answer.... Obama has NOT told ANY of us who he IS, period. All he's selling is "Change" and "a new hope". No specific plans, no outlines of how to pay for these plans, etc. At least with Hillary, we KNOW she's gonna bankrupt us with "Universal Everything". Thus, when a man (much less a politician looking for the highest office in the land) tells us NOTHING about whom he/she is, we MUST "look at the company he keeps." What's funny about this is that so many are paying attention to his pastor, but he has MANY other ties to nefarious people...for example, that former head of the Weather Underground (an ADMITTED domestic terrorist group and leader). Not that I want Hillary in office either, but at least we KNOW her skeletons. |
| Posted by: BA 2008-03-22 23:23 |
| #9 Another little problem is that Obama's advidor (that is "reverend" Wright) hates America. And Obama is OK with it. Now Obama is free of his opinions but if I were an American I wouldn't trust the Presidency to a guy who hates the country: that does not lead to have the interests of the country at heart. While we are at it is said in Spain: "Tell me with who you are walking with and I will tell you who are you" and Obama walks with an antiamerican and a racist. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-03-22 20:58 |
| #8 "The former marks his as a liar, the latter marks him as an empty suit politician." No reason he can't be both, OS. Oh, wait.... He is. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-03-22 16:55 |
| #7 Peral, its relevant because Obama made it that way. Early on, he gave great credit to Wright, and that racist bigoted travesty of a church. So Obama hs put himnself in the place where either a) he believed that racist stuff and is trying to cover it or B) he didnt beleive it and his "religion" is worn on his sleeve. The former marks his as a liar, the latter marks him as an empty suit politician. In either case, Obama at the heart of the matter, has not done much anything at all to claim the mantle of Christian Faith that he is attempting to grab votes with. And that makes it relevant - it points out he is a power hungry politician at heart, one with marxist and socialist tendencies. He may be glib, but ultimately no different than Hillary in terms of his lack of qualifications for the Presidency, and similar in his lust for power and his willingness to do nearly anything to obtain it. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-03-22 16:47 |
| #6 "If Obama was white and attended a 'KKK' church and had the KKK 'Grand Wizard' (or whatever-the-hell-its-called) as a close advisor the Media would be all over it - giving us 24/7 coverage." And there you have the leftists and the MSM (but I repeat myself) in a nutshell, CF. They set a much lower standard for ALL minorities because they're sure minorities can't live up the same standard as white people do. "The |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-03-22 15:34 |
| #5 Not only is the guy's Obama' pastor (for 20 years) but one of his closest advisors. And the fact that Michelle has much the same 'tone' gives a pretty broad hint to the person Obama is and what kind of things Obama believes in. If Obama was white and attended a 'KKK' church and had the KKK 'Grand Wizard' (or whatever-the-hell-its-called) as a close advisor the Media would be all over it - giving us 24/7 coverage. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2008-03-22 13:12 |
| #4 That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination. the Kraut-hammer pounds Obama's fraudulent speech to smithereens. _:) |
| Posted by: RD 2008-03-22 13:10 |
| #3 Are we going through all this because what the guy's pastor says? Who gives a sh*t. |
| Posted by: Pearl Pholuns7216 2008-03-22 12:57 |
| #2 A very interesting point was made last night on local talk radio. Wright's "chickens coming home to roost" speech was delivered on the very Sunday after 9/11. Many, many Americans were in church that day. Where was BHO? Was he absent that day too? He's already on record as "absent" but I wonder - is it possible to place him at that church....on that day....listening to that sermon? |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2008-03-22 11:32 |
| #1 Krauthammer...Krauthammer...what can I say about Krauthammer??? Yep, nothing! |
| Posted by: smn 2008-03-22 11:32 |