Well, she also did When Velma Takes the Stand the night before New Hampshire…
Well, ain’t that just the thing? This guy breaks all the usual rules by turning the one into the other. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.
Very, very good speech. Excellent. But not good enough. The problem is that no speech will explain away his being an attendee of this church for 20 years. Obama is the furthest thing to an idiot, but he’s asking us to believe that he was idiot enough to not know about Wright’s beliefs and positions, even IF he was not there for the extremely incendiary sermons. During his campaign he has rightly highlighted the importance of “judgement”. And this is where he has shown to have failed miserably: to not—in 20 years—have been able to see Wright for what he is.
Obama is done. I do hope he wins the primary now, as I doubt most Americans will choose to vote for a man who chose to align himself with Rev. Wright. There will be no shaking this.
It appears that the dems are about to do the impossible: lose a Presidential election after 8 years of Bush.
I still don’t understand what the big deal was in the first place. Did John Kerry get torn down for being Catholic still after the pedo priest scandal and the revelations that the church was shuffling them from parish to parish with no warnings to the parishioners? No? Hmmm…wonder why this is so much worse, then…
The United Church of Christ is not a radical denomination. This is one pastor in one church. Yes, it’s the church that Obama attends. Yes, Wright was his trusted pastor. But Wright’s transgressions on this are being overemphasized, sensationalized and replayed over and over by a corporate media that’s scared to death of an Obama presidency. Personally, I’m completely disgusted with most of the media anymore…their Clinton bias is obvious and sickening. The Republicans are salivating and begging for Clinton to be the nominee, so they have their minions who own the media trying desperately to find something to pull Obama down.
Fuck 'em.
You keep tossing coins in that wishing well. We’ll see who faces St. John in November, the one who can beat him or that Clinton person.
Did angels sing, too?
Can we all remain composed and calm down a bit, please?
But let’s keep the comparisons reasonable. ML King’s speech was a truly great moment in history. Obama’s speech was just a nice little moment in a political campaign.
It wasn’t King’s speech that was great, it was the context. The issue of his day was simple and heroic-- pure evil vs. pure good.
Obama’s context is not heroic. He isn’t defying forces of evil, he’s a politician trying to get elected.
Here’s a less heroic comparison that nobody has suggested yet, but I think is reasonable:
Obama’s speech is similar to John F. Kennedy’s speech about his Catholicism.
JFK convinced a suspicious country that the time was ripe for coming together and not being worried about how much influence the candidate’s pastor (i.e. the Pope) would have on the country.
It was a good moment in a political campaign, but not a glorious event in history.
Sure it does. Instead of addressing the issue politicians tell stories, divert attention, and try to change the subject. Ashley? What had she to do with a racist hate spewing preacherman? Nothing, but it tugged at peoples heartstrings.
He gives a good speech, but we’ve known that for a long time. I personally believe that he probably didn’t pay much attention to what was being said, and I don’t believe he holds the same beliefs. I think he told the truth about his disagreeing with Wright and etc. I’m just saying I don’t think it was a history making speech. It was good, but all of Obama’s speeches are good, especially after listening to the two I mentioned earlier.
Excellent speech, although I didn’t get to hear a bit of it at the end. I am still confused as to why Obama has to answer anything with respect to Wright, but what do I know?
Because the media are desperately trying to make this Obama’s Dean Scream…something completely innocuous or at least pretty unrelated to any of his qualifications for president that they can spin and spin and spin and play over and over devoid of any context so they can make Obama look silly or crazy or racist or something, anything, just as long as it gives them ratings and profits and helps the Republican.
Uh, because he looked to him as a personal mentor and made him part of his campaign?
Never mind. Forgot this was GD.
Frankly I thought Ashley could have been left out of the speech. I didn’t think she added anything.
This was the first speech of the campaign that I remember which pretty much anybody watching, rich or poor or black or white or other, can find something in to say “Yeah, m-hmmm, that’s me”. It addressed the same themes from Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist (a Broadway song sung by puppets for those who don’t know, but still a song whose lyrics make you “laugh because they’re based on truth”) but was also dead serious, realistic, believable, etc…
I think there’s a huge problem in the U.S. today with only being able to see people and issues simplistically. In history:
Was Thomas Jefferson
A. A great writer and a visionary and a consummate politician
B A hypocritical slaveholder who lived lavishly (and had sex with his slaves) while championing the ideals of freedom and equality?
Was Abraham Lincoln:
A. A man who held the Union together through political brilliance, force of personality, and stubborness and, in so doing, ended slavery
B. An autocrat who violated the Constitution in silencing his political enemies and believed that blacks once freed would never truly be equal
Was Martin Luther King, Jr.:
A. A man who braved numerous death threats and continual government harassment before his assassination to advance his people through gifted oratory and passive resistance and political mobilization
B. A womanizer with Communist sympathies who frequently bashed the U.S. and plagiarized his doctoral thesis
The correct answer to all is C: both A & B. All were complex men and all had very serious flaws, but few would say that they were not worthy of admiration. I doubt that Doris Kearns Godwin or other Lincoln admirers would defend his suspension of habeas corpus or plans to resettle blacks in Grenada, etc., or that most who have pictures of MLK on their wall believe that adultery and plagiarism are ethical, but they are admirers of these men “at their best”. Wright is not on their scale in fame or achievement, but he could well be in complexity, and Obama sees both the good and the bad in him and draws strength from the good.
Calling this speech a move done of political expediency misses this point. He already did all the requisite denouncing and rejecting one could ask for, but he went one step beyond that. No one was demanding this speech but he gave it anyway.
We can fault him all we like for not recognizing that Wright would be a liability. Yes, that was poor judgement. He should have known that anyone who talks like that was a risky person to be around. He could have been smarter. But when we fault him for his lack of foresight in this regard, essentially all we’re doing is faulting him for not being a better politician. Not this isn’t a good and valid critique, because it is. We need a good politician in the White House.
But Obama is brilliant in coming out with this speech bcause it undercuts the “you shoulda known better” argument without even addressing it explicitly. What Obama explained is that Wright’s views are not isolated, they exist for a reason, and they don’t make the guy a monster, just wrong. Not unlike many of others who have felt left out of the system. And this is why he hadn’t felt the need to disassociate himself from a guy who has influenced him in so many other ways. So yeah, he shoulda known better, but Obama is human first, a politician second.
Do we want to elect a human who may screw up but responds to those mistakes responsibly or do we want to elect a politician who is so afraid of making mistakes that they separate themselves from their own humanity (and ends up making mistakes anyway)? This is the unspoken question that Obama left us with. Yeah, I’m reading a lot into his speech but I don’t care!
I really think you’re wrong about this. I don’t know what your experience with church and pastors is. I’ve been attending my current church since I moved to my current home almost eight years ago. I was attracted to the church primarily by the style and content of the pastor’s preaching, which I heard a few times at services before deciding to join the church. My pastor is pretty good at using scripture and a bit of eloquence and analytical ability to explain important Christian concepts.
During the eight years I have attended this church, I have learned some other things about my pastor. He thinks there should be daily prayers in public schools. I don’t. He is against allowing gays to marry in civil ceremonies sanctioned by the state. I am not. He is a young earth creationist, or at least he implies that he is in front of the congregation. I am not a YEC. While I have been learning these things about him, I have also formed strong personal bonds with lots of people at this church, many of whom have similar views to mine on the issues I just mentioned. I have become involved in playing music at this church during services. I am a member of a house church or small group within this church.
Should I leave the church because the pastor has views with which I disagree? If he loudly espoused some of these things outside of the church, I probably would. If any of these views were constantly harped on in church, I surely would. If these views were central to my pastors belief system, instead of being peripheral issues, I surely would. As it stands, I’m still there. I don’t think anyone at my church thinks that we all agree with the pastor on every issue. If people outside of the church think that I agree with him on every issue, they are wrong.
If Obama had ever espoused any of these radical views of Reverend Wright, I would be concerned. As it stands, and in light of the content of today’s speech, I’m not concerned at all.
I would ask all parties in this thread carping about specific words and phrases either appearing or not appearing in the text–magellan01, MrMoto, Bobotheoptimist, athelas–to read the above section carefully. Do we really want this election to be yet another game of “gotcha”, a contest where the valiant Tim Russert finds another cherry-picked quote to trip someone up over, where words played on a 10-second tape loop fuel a cacophany of talk-radio blather?
They used to call it “bread and circuses”. I for one am sick and tired of phony-issue distractions covering for the real and often complex problems we should be dealing with. I’m sick and tired of message boards and TV new channels poisoned with predictable, opinionated claptrap designed around the soundbite controversy-du-jour. For that reason alone, I applaud Senator Obama’s speech, and personally consider it one of the best political speeches of our time; not for the grand phrasing or the applause lines, but for a content so despreately needed in our media-addled age.
The whole point of the speech was to explain that he does see Wright for who he really is, and that who Wright really is is not captured in a couple You Tube clips. Do you really think you have some deeper insight on Jeremiah Wright, as a person, than Obama does just because you’ve watched a couple minutes of video?
Instead of throwing Wright under the bus, he gave a nuanced view of race relations in America empathizing with all those who have been angered, condemning the expressions of that anger while acknowledging that it has legitimate causes.
Sure, the speech won’t win him any points with those who insist on him rejecting and denouncing Wright, but most of those people weren’t going to vote for him anyway. However, I think he’ll offset damage done recently by the controversy, as well as diminish the ability of his opponents to use it against him later.
For what it’s worth, a friend of mine who is typically politically interested but who has been quiet about her opinions on the primary thus far said today “For the first time, I’m really glad he’s a candidate.”
Just one person, of course.
Are you sure about that second part?
If that’s the case then it’s a gain for Obama. I suppose we’ll see some polling data about this somewhere down the road.
I think you need to reread my post.
As an aside, I think your post above, in defense of the man who said, “words matter”, is more than a little ironic. Unintenionally, no doubt.
Gotta run for now. I hope to be back later.