Watching a slow motion train wreck?
It’s hard to say anything particularly new about the Obama / Wright controversy. For the Senator’s opponents, it looks at this point like a gift that will keep on giving, perhaps all the way to November. First the Senator refused to disown Wright, then all of a sudden he discovered that he really, really dislikes the man, and so on. Despite the claims of Senator Obama and his wife that people are tired of hearing about this strange preacher and his strange opinions, the topic continues to fascinate many in America (and if Americans were able to tire of Reverend Wright in 45 days, how come it took the Obama family 20 years to do so?). Charles Krauthammer has a good summary of where things stand:
“I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” — Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18. Guess it’s time to disown Granny, if Obama’s famous Philadelphia “race” speech is to be believed.
Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it “should be required reading in classrooms across the country.” College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews. Apparently there’s been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative…
Wright’s latest comments — Obama cited three in particular — were so shockingly “divisive and destructive” that he had to renounce the man, not just the words. What were Obama’s three citations? Wright’s claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American “terrorism.” But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago…
Obama’s turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites — one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia — now stands discredited by Obama’s own admission of surprise. But Obama’s liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation…
This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a “new politics,” rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It’s hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be “contextualized”…
For the reasons stated in Krauthammer’s last paragraph and others, it is awfully hard to imagine Senator Obama winning in the general election. Of course there will be forceful condemnation from the elite media any time the Senator’s opponents mention Reverend Wright as the fall rolls along, but Jeremiah Wright just might have some new things to say later this year. As has been reported, Reverend Wright may have an agenda of his own (repaying Obama for his “nonsense and betrayal“) — and he has forcefully shown that, at least so far, he will not silenced.
Will the media be able to ignore the Reverend if he has some further interesting things to say about himself and the Senator in September or October, or are we possibly watching a slow motion train wreck?
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Senator Obama parlayed membership in Reverend Wright’s Church into political office. A Harvard lawyer is going to have some convincing to do to become accepted in the neighborhood. I can’t fault him for that.
However, I will not accept his sudden ignorance or change of position for anything more than it is - a savvy politician attempting to appeal to a different electorate. It takes a suspension of credulity I cannot achieve to believe that the Senator didn’t know Reverend Wright’s positions.
One is left with the conclusion that Senator Obama will say anything to get elected. That doesn’t make him unique. It does, however, mandate that one examine even more closely the Senator’s voting record and legislative accomplishments.
I find no reason at all to vote for the Senator. If Kennedy was a Profile in Courage, Obama is a Profile in Invisibility. He’s not there when positions need to be taken.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Obama’s “ignorance” of who Wright really way says so much about the man Obama. And if the MSM cared to look — this is by now a pattern from Obama - from his “boneheaded” ethical lapse with the Rezko mansion/lot to Ayers - (the Sen. has more ties to ayers than he admitting) to Auchi to Farakan, etc. When caught Obama seems unable to come up with any real explanation (because the truth is he is selfishly out for himself period) and stutters through some lame excuse. At this point there is not one reason left to believe this guy.
We have already lived through 8 years with one deceptive, manipulative President - we can’t afford another.