I didn’t get to hear Obama’s “I Am Not A Racist” speech, but Jay Reding did:
Rhetorically, this is brilliant stuff. But like everything else that Obama says, once one gets past the wonderful words, the message itself is largely meaningless. Sen. Obama admits that Rev. Wright is a racist with a deeply disturbing view of America. Yet he won’t back down from him (any more than he already has). On one hand, he thinks that this country needs to have a conversation about race—on the other, he is siding with people who preach a gospel of racial division.
Sen. Obama just can’t have it both ways.
It’s a given that the nation needs a “conversation about race”. Framing the conversation is the hard part.
Maybe we need a referee…
UPDATE: E-Mo at Hot Air:
It’s essentially a non-distancing distancing, akin to the non-apology apology. He excuses Wright’s anti-American rhetoric with a mixture of rationalizations. Wright gets a pass because he served in the military, because he grew up in another generation that apparently hated America, and because he does good work in other areas. Obama also makes the curious claim that rejecting Wright means rejecting the entire black community — something other black churches might see as rather presumptuous. Obama essentially argues that the same kind of anti-Americanism can be found in all black churches, and speaks at length about how the legacy of racism and Jim Crow makes this incendiary rhetoric ubiquitous.
Is that true? Hardly. Black ministers have flocked to the airwaves over the last few days to vehemently deny that kind of argument. However, Obama has little choice but to argue this, because he needs to cast his situation as having little choice in spiritual venues.
All generalizations are false, including this one – and Ed’s. Is it true that this racial rhetoric is common in Afro-American churches? No, but where it’s present, it is very prominent. There is (or has fairly recently been) at least one Baptist church in Saint Paul, and another in Minneapolis, that I’d cautiously classify as being in the same rhetorical category as Wright. If there were such an identifiable undercurrent of paranoid racism in a white denomination, they would be a (justifiable) uproar.
Now, the First Amendment defends their right to preach whatever they want, and I’ll defend that right (not “to the death” – Patton said my job is to make the other poor dumb SOB die for his country, and I’m cool with that) – but nothing about the First Amendment immunizes people from criticism.
E-Mo, eh? Ed moved over to Hot Air to pioneer angsty, emotionally aggressive poli-punk blogging?
Not so much – but look what a snappy nick did for J-Lo.
Er…wait
Actually, if Ed knew what “emo” is (the “demographic”, not the twitchy comic from the 80s), I doubt he’d want to be associated with it.
> Sen. Obama just can’t have it both ways.
Seriously. My Uncle Al in West Palm Beach says he won’t vote for any shvartza who won’t cut ties with a fakakta minister.
Uncle Al’s a bit of a meshugunah shlemiel, but he’s family.
/jc
Oy. I’m verklempt.
Ya know, it’s fascinating that one particular political party can’t move beyond race and keeps insisting on dividing the nation, and itself, along racial lines. Check out the polling on the split in the Dems these days: that’s a party that’s actually increasing the division by race.
I heard the speech while driving today. It left me rather angry at Obama, but then I focused on the message and not the rhetoric. He refused to distance himself from someone spewing racial hate and instead made excuses for it in a spectacularly dishonest manner. He said that it’s understandable and forgiveable for such behavior to exist today. He said that soundly rejecting the teachings of those who espouse these beliefs is wrong. If the history of slavery and Jim Crowe has taught us nothing, it’s that racism is ugly, unforgivable, and not to be tolerated. It’s a pity Obama hasn’t learned that.
Ah, so you’re going to vote for the white guy, eh Nerdbert? Angryclown was on pins and needles wondering about that.
Ah, so you’re going to vote for someone on the basis of their skin color and not the content of their character, eh angryclown?
It isn’t funny when you call others racists, angryclown, but it is a joke. :-/
Let me understand this, Mr. Obama: you sat there in his church for years, and let this man pour his hate and bile into the ears of your young daughters?
Sheesh.
Well, clown, I plan on voting for the person I believe best able to govern this country regardless of race or gender. Strangely enough, that’s how I evaluate the people I have to interview, too.
You, and your party? Not so much. It seems like you’re in a battle to determine whether melanin supremacy or non-chromosonal diversity is a more important factor in governing. But I guess you’ve MOVED ON from the idea that we should all be equal, eh?
Oh, and more rank hypocrisy! Shall we talk about the ever sensitive to racial comments Obama when Imus did his tasteless bit?
Well, he certainly makes a bold statement about how acceptable racist comments are in society! Now if he’d only apply it to himself.
I especially liked the part where he threw his grandmother under the bus.
He needs a white racist in his life so he can create moral equivalence in the same speech as he defends the black racist in his life. So Obama says he can’t disavow his grandma for her racist views and therefore he can’t disavow his minister for his.
Dude, you can’t pick your relatives, but you can pick your friends. And your ministers. Slammin’ Gramma was low.
.
“Dude, you can’t pick your relatives, but you can pick your friends.”
Also you can pick your nose. But you can’t pick your friend’s nose.