Are you being serious? Because I don’t know what this means. I know it’s a line I’ve heard Obama use.
Yes, I’m being serious. It’s an MLK Jr. line. Are you being serious that you’re unaware of Obama’s answer to your question? You’ve heard him use the line but never listened to why he was using it? His argument is that this election, right now, is critical. I tend to agree.
Indeed.
I’m not trying to be ornery here, but you seem incredulous here. I’ve read a lot of MLK speeches - hell, one of his best friends at Morehouse is my mentor and I was an African-American studies concentrator - and I’ve not encountered that line before.
And perhaps you listen to every speech Obama gives, but I don’t. I don’t listen to every speech Hillary gives, either.
Actually, thanks to Shayna for providing that excerpt.
It is from his Dream speech.
I am incredulous whenever someone’s position with regard to a candidate is based upon an assumption they have done nothing to investigate. Obama has a clear argument here that he mentions in dozens of speeches. That you have not considered it, even though it is central to your argument against him, makes me wonder how much you’ve really examined your own opinions.
I pray that I never get so cynical that reading a speech like that makes me wonder what the guy’s angle is.
Point one - Indeed, you’re correct. I should have known that. :o
However, you seem to be under the impression that I’m somehow obligated or required to follow “dozens of speeches.” I do know, believe it or not, that his argument for his candidacy is that “now is the right moment,” not to mention Dick Durbin’s urging, etc. It doesn’t mean that I find that logical or compelling.
Furthermore, you seem similarly under the impression that your opinion on how much I’ve examined my own opinions holds some weight with me.
Keeping this clean, as I’m in GD.
This is exactly right. If anyone doubts it, tell me the last time you heard a politician give a similar speech.
We have had to listen to every speech and conference of Bush for 7years. Obamas speech was so far above what Bush does that it makes it seem even better. Although the Fool me once ,speech will be forever in our memories.
My favorite part, how he wants to move past the soundbites of modern media, has left the modern media with nothing to say. My local news station tried to come up with a story and failed miserably. Unless they played the speech over, the inverted triangle is only a meaningless mirage.
Obama has good speech writers and they did a good job. It wasn’t his best delivery but it was probably a function of time. He was under the gun to address this. The speech probably works in his favor in the short run but the issue cannot be resolved. There is no way he can reconcile his 20 year relationship and support of Reverend Wright. The guy is an urban hillbilly whose church decided to sell what is being billed as his most controversial rants.
This puts Obama in a bad spot. He can’t totally divorce himself from Wright with a 20-year relationship behind it. Nobody will believe he wasn’t aware of Wright’s opinions if he was his mentor. On the other hand he had to cut him loose from the campaign which reinforces the fact that Wright’s prejudices are a political liability. He didn’t cut Wright loose until he was forced to. There is a logical disconnect between the events that will continue to haunt Obama.
To the extent this follows him is the question that cannot easily be debated. People who support him hear his speech and believe it forgives any apparent sins. Those who do not support him believe a 20 year association with Wright cannot be explained away by the speech. The internet will circulate Wright’s speeches and Obama’s explanation until people get tired of hitting forward.
Are you saying, in other words, it was all for naught?
No, I’m saying it’s electronic fodder. It will be floating around for a while. Obama put his best foot forward and it will go where it goes. Not much else he can do.
I agree. I suspect it’s because one part of him feels ‘called on the carpet’ in even having to do the speech. If he’d wanted to do the speech for its own merits, he would have done it a long time ago. He was forced to do it under the gun as part of what is essentially damage control.
The best thing to do in that case is to make the damage control seem like something pro-active rather than defensive and he did that reasonably well for his style. But he glossed over the contradictions between having before said he was never present when Wright made inflammatory comments of that sort (not just those, specifically) and during the speech he explicitly said he WAS present at times like that but that basically he can’t disown him because he’s black just like he can’t disown his grandma who is white for having made racial slurs. This is the ‘uncle’ approach he’s attempted before (and had dismissed by Anderson Cooper during that interview) in which he equates staying at one specific church with a family member that you can’t distance yourself from. Not the same and it won’t fly. He obviously joined the church to be ‘down’ as Moto essentially said and now it’s coming back to bite him in the ass. To his credit, he tried to spin it as a positive by taking the opportunity to speak eloquently about racial relations in a way that shows a good understanding of the nuances from all sides.
But I do expect that the attempt to slick past that earlier statement that he’d never been present when such things were said will be drilled in the coming weeks and this won’t be the end of it. And not in a good way for him.
I don’t think this is what Obama wants to be talking about between now and Apr.
Meanwhile, Hillary gave a good speech yesterday that was on issues.
I’ve got two questions for some of you.
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Bush campaigned in 2000 at a racist extremist university. McCain today has been soliciting the support of religious extremists. Not just having a relationship with, but soliciting support from. What speech should McCain make?
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Wright and Obama go back 20 years. Obama has seen him do wonderful and charitable things in the community. If you had a mentor for 20 years, a friend, would you throw him over for some controversial talk? And while you’re at it, should he have stopped talking to his grandmother?
Obama never said that he had never heard anything controversial from the pews, just that he hadn’t heard anything from the Fox News Scary Negro loop before. So there was no “lie.” Sorry.
It’s interesting – and no snarkiness intended – but it’s precisely because of the fierce urgency of now that I think his candidacy is premature and what we need now is HRC and not Obama. In 8 years, maybe.
(I also found it rather annoying that he’d use MLK’s line and implicitly claim MLK for his side, but that’s another matter…)
I’m an HRC supporter, but I have to agree. Obama is now a parser like all others. I guess it’s the lawyerly thing these politicians have. Welcome another parser to the Family of Parsers! LOL
Yeah, it sucks to by cynical sometimes (speaking for myself). I do think he meant everything he said in the speech.
Doesn’t make me think he should be POTUS, but it wouldn’t have much mattered what he said on this point because it’s not my reason for electing someone.
Sorry, he **did **say he hadn’t heard inflammatory comments of that sort ever before.
Nobody is going to believe that. He’s lying.