Mmmmmmm. Sockpuppetty goodness:ÂÂ
Personally, I found the speech riveting, provocative, insightful, thoughtful and courageous — courageous because it eschewed almost completely all cliches, pandering and condescension, the first time I can recall a political figure of any significance doing so when addressing a controversial matter.
There were numerous manipulative tactics which the average cynical political strategist would have urged him to employ, and none of those were found in his speech.
*******
Then again, I found the whole Wright “controversy” manufactured and relatively petty from the start, and worse, the by-product of a glaring double standard, so the speech obviously wasn’t aimed at people who had the beliefs about this whole matter that I had.
Yes, Gleen(s), manufactured out of the rhetorical opportunities created by you and likeminded individuals who were eager to demagogue the Hagee issue. The only double standard in question is the one that causes you to believe that Obama’s investment in the manifest ugliness of his pastor’s beliefs are not to be subject to the same form of critique. You give hypocrites a bad name.
People who aren’t moved by Obama’s rhetoric, as we’ve already seen from Andrew, will not be moved because they are dysfunctional, as Gleen(s) make clear when they cite Steve M from No More Mister Nice Blog:
The premises [the speech] lays out require you to be an adult, and I’m not convinced that most Americans are adults, at least when looking for a candidate to support. . . . This isn’t what Americans like to hear in political speeches. They like to hear: Good people = us (America, our party). Bad people = them (communists, terrorists, criminals, drug dealers, our ideological opposites, the other party, or some group we identify in code rather than explicitly).
That wasn’t the tone of this speech. I hope I’m wrong, but Obama may pay a price for not giving people what they like to hear.
People who mistrust Obama’s rhetoric are childish, whereas the folks who hoot and holler over American chickens coming home to roost because of God’s enormous offpissing due to America’s the development and propagation of the AIDs virus are. . . what?
But in Obama’s faith in the average American voter lies one of the greatest weaknesses of his campaign. His faith in the ability and willingness of Americans to rise above manipulative political tactics seems drastically to understate both the efficacy of such tactics and the deafening amplification they receive from our establishment press. Even Americans who authentically believe that they want a “new, better politics” may be swayed by the same old Drudgian sewerage because it is powerful and ubiquitous.
On the contrary, Obama seems to have had finally to address the unreasoning, bigotted, violent stupidity of the pastor with whom he willingly associated for many years and has supported and included in an advisory committee to his campaign at this point in the campaign appears to have arisen as a result of press reluctance to criticize him.
When Gleen(s) speak of “depressingly familiar garbage,” the self-referentiality is, as always, lost on him. But what emerges most strikingly from this typical pile of self-regarding drivel is the fundamental elitism that drives them and their sympathizers to be so dismissive of the cognitive ability of middle-class white Americans. They’re like the car company that blames consumers for lacking discernment when they don’t buy its products. And they share this ethos with Obama.
Let’s leave aside for the moment the question of whether BHO actually properly addressed the Wright issue, and even leave aside the dispute of whether BHO needed to address the Wright issue. How do people believe this speech said anything important at all about race or race-relations in America?
From this speech it seems BHO’s take on race in America is:
– Black people are angry and have a right to be angry;
– White people need to give black people more money and do more for black people.
– Corporations are bad and government is good.
This is hardly a thoughtful or realistic view of how to improve conditions in the black community in America or how to improve race relations.
Indeed, it is simply the same cliched b.s. that the left constantly states, over and over again, despite the demonstrative failures of such approaches.
How anything in BHO’s speech is considered “great” is beyond me. Yes, BHO speaks well and has great delivery. There were some great verbal fourishes.
But there was absolutely no substance in the speech – I defy any lefty reading this blog to quote something substantive from the speech in response.
The speech contained no new ideas, no new insights, no new policy proposals or solutions. No hard truths to the black community – just the same ol’, same ol’ (i.e., blacks are angry, whites need to do more).
How does this pass for “great” or “inspirational”?
America must change, must cleanse itself of the sin of racism. Obama has shown the way. Despite being a member of racist church nearly his whole adult life, despite being mentored and married by a racist ideologue his whole adult life, despite contributing thousands of dollars to further the goals of this racist church, despite having his wife married to him and his daughters baptized in this racist church, a single sortta apologetic, sorta self-justifying speech absolves Obama for decades of hatred and racism.
So I call upon all Americans, not just the racist non-whites, to make the same speech. At a stroke with mere words America will be cleansed, healed, changed! Obama was right, he can change America. His example leads the way! Racism can be ended in a moment!
Until he outlines a platform for America, all his support is purely glandular.
That is, folks are reacting to his secondary sexual characteristics, like his low, bassy voice, and photos of his ab’s on the front page of the National Enquirer. These traits are sexual cues, not intellectual ones.
Superficial and endocrinological: lacking a discreet platform to appeal to us, this is the level of most folks’ support for Barry.
Except for, that is, the support of his foreign supporters. They see, I think, a little bit of Teh Jihad in him… I do, too.
Well, he’d bust a nut for Alan Keyes, wouldn’t he?
Now there is the “Obama-Wright escape” clause for those embarrassing situations where you can now say .. “I can no more likely renounce him/her than Obama could renounce Rev. Wright.”
Wow. Doesn’t that make the world a better place ?
Or .. I would like to invoke my “Obama-Wright escape” clause rights.
Ranks right up there with the 5th amendment.
Perhaps Gleen should automatically consider this repsonse the next time he demands a repudiation of someone.
The premises [the speech] lays out require you to be an adult, and I’m not convinced that most Americans are adults, at least when looking for a candidate to support. . . . This isn’t what Americans like to hear in political speeches. They like to hear: Good people = us (America, our party). Bad people = them (communists, terrorists, criminals, drug dealers, our ideological opposites, the other party, or some group we identify in code rather than explicitly).
Again, the leftbots sketched clearly — they really don’t like or trust most Americans for exactly the same behavior they so eagerly exibit.
Projection, thy name is Progressive.
Insty links to a very insightful Mickey Kaus commentary. Obama’s a skillful three-card monty dealer.
The speech was nothing but cliche and pandering. Here are a couple of passages that really bothered me:
“I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.”
Nice use of the passive voice. Which statements specifically? How does BHO feel about those statements? And not just the statements themselves, but the philosophies and the world view that informs those statements.
And in the next paragraph:
“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely–just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”
Remarks that who could consider controversial? Once again, he is just a suit of mirrors, as he leaves it up to each of us to decide what was controversial, and by the way, whatever that is, he condemns it.
nawoods
What gets me is the pass Barry gets for admitting, “why yes, I did hear those remarks”, when just a bit ago he was saying in his best Claude Rains voice “I was shocked, shocked to find out my own Pastor was saying those things”
I didn’t see anything like an apology for
lyingmisleading everyone until cornered with evidence he was actually in the church and nodding along with Wright’s paranoid rantings.[…] Matthews gets the worst of it, as well he might, but let’s spare a thought for the blogosphere’s most shameless hypocrite, who demagogued the McCain/Hagee thing so exquisitely for so long and yet somehow finds the objections to Obama’s 20-year marriage of political convenience with a conspiracy theorizing hate merchant completely overblown. Collins dispatches with him here. […]
” it eschewed almost completely all cliches, pandering and condescension”
Sometimes a person just has to bust out laughing.
DId anyone call this scumbag radical on his smearing of his Grandma?
I mean, just think about that…
†it eschewed almost completely all cliches, pandering and condescensionâ€Â
This word “eschewed”, althought it sounds like it might, does NOT mean “chewed over and over since it is the main course”.
Just thought I would clear that up…
Crap, I didn’t see your post on Kaus’s column. Sorry.
Darleen,
I hear you. I don’t see how he thought that line would fly with anyone except his most ardent supporters. In some ways though, I wish people would stop focusing on that particular issue. It’s becoming a distraction as it gets people caught up in the whole was he/wasn’t he there argument. In the end it really does not matter, and does not change the circumstances of his twenty year association with the church. I’m already seeing throughout the blogs people saying “Aha, you lying wingnuts, he wasn’t there when the statements were made.” And again, the questions should be, Which statements? What parts of the church’s teachings does BHO accept and reject, and what does HE think is controversial?
It’s just that Glens gets it pompously ass-backwards a lot.
(Just what am I trying to say!!)
I find it remarkable to imagine that the ONLY occasions Wright uttered outrageous things were those that have been hyped on Youtube. Sure …Obama didn’t hear THOSE sermons, which were the only times he EVER uttered noxious things.
And, we’re supposed to believe it.
Glenn is gay for his thesaurus too, like the Huffpo windbag.
[…] Collins at protein wisdom has some gleenings. This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:57 am and is filed […]
Calling every politician but Senator Obama manipulative certainly sets new records in the annals of irony.
The speech contained no new ideas, no new insights, no new policy proposals or solutions.
But…but…teh Obamessiah is for CHANGE!!!! And HOPE!!!1! Like, hope for change!1!! Change = New, so you’re just spewing racist wingnutty shit!
DId anyone call this scumbag radical on his smearing of his Grandma?
Some guest on “Faux” News (Rich Lowry? I forgot already) just slapped him for airing his grandmother’s dirty laundry. I still can’t believe he did threw his own G’mama from the train like that.
thanks for the informative post