Calling Out Obama, Again

Poor Barack Obama can't catch a break. Even after his softball session on Sunday morning TV, columnists are blasting him for his hypocritical Rev. Wright reaction.

Gregory Rodriguez from the LA Times is the lastest. I'm going to have to look at some of his past columns, if they are all as full of sarcasm as this one, I'll start reading him regularly.

Rodriquez calls on Obama to live up to his own speech from last month in Pennsylvania. In it, he said we had to re-examine the old wounds of racism and start a dialogue to start healing. His minister started talking about those wounds, and Obama dumped him faster than you can say "dropping in the polls".

I'm actually not sure why Rodriquez, or others, are surprised by Obama's actions. It's the typical one of both politicians, and various leaders of different races and religions. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been calling for the same type of dialogue for decades, and immediately shutting up anyone who's "dialogue" isn't exactly what they want to hear.

What Rodriquez gets right in his column is the fact that you can have as many group discussions with various leaders as you want, those don't deal with the everyday, everyman reactions that keep racial tensions festering. And, he realistically points out, we probably never will get rid of all of those reactions.

Just like "Crazy Uncle Jeremiah" won't go away, and probably won't continue to thinks AIDS was invented by the government for genocidal purposes, Jesse Jackson probably won't quit being relieved when the footsteps behind him are a white man. To his credit, at least at times Jackson has listened to why so many black youth end up in a life of crime. Wright, on the other hand, hasn't addressed the reason AIDS is so prevelant in the black community, he's looked for a scapegoat instead.

No, it doesn't matter how many touching speeches Mr. Obama gives, Grandma is probably still going to be warry of the black guy at the bus stop. Hopefully she never says it again, lest she be disowned, too.

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Poor Obama Supporters

The poor Barak Obama supporters have been trying to find a way to spin their candidate out of the Rev. Wright mess all week, and not have Obama look like either a fool or a bigot. Unfortunately for them, he put himself in a position that leaves only those two views available.

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent piece in today's Washington Post called The 'Race Speech' Revisited that has those supporters in a tizzy in the comment section. Krauthammer calls the race speech in Philadelphia "that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud", and he's correct. Wright himself proved that on the main stage of the National Press Club, by repeating all of his "out of context" quotes (as Obama called them) in full context, to a national audience.

The current spin du jour for the left is that McCain has the same problem, with John Hagee, who is a white minister and has spewed some pretty lousy stuff himself. Warner Todd Huston at NewsBusters actually wrote a very good breakdown (6 weeks ago!) of why these are two completely different situations.

A quick recap, Obama sat in Wrights pews for two decades, McCain doesn't attend Hagee church, Obama had Wright baptize his children, McCain's kids never knew Hagee, Obama in his book (unlike his recent news conferences) called Wright his spiritual mentor, McCain hasn't claimed anyone as a mentor in that capacity.

E.J. Dionne, spinning for Barack, wants "Fair Play for False Prophets", and tries to put Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others into the same mold as Wright when it comes to politics. Again, the comparisons fail since no candidate has other than Obama has spent a majority of their adult life in the pews of any of these guys.

I also challenge his assertion that the media isn't as tough on them as they are on Wright. The media has been beating up on "religious right" ministers since the Reagan years. If anything, they've given black ministers like Al Sharpton a pass on their rhetoric and actually made them out to be somehow above the fray; when in fact they stir the pot.

With the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina coming up Tuesday it will be interesting to see how much this week has hurt Obama. He's never done well with the white working class, and if those numbers take a big drop in these to primaries expect to hear Hillary talking about electability louder and louder in the next couple of weeks.

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Thanks, Whoopi

I'm going to do something that most folks on my side of the political spectrum won't do, I'm going to thank Whoopi Goldberg for something she said on The View this morning.

Mind you, I'm not a regular watcher of the show, but I was working at home today, and the wife left the TV on the channel that the show comes on. So, I was quite surprised to hear a frank discussion by the whole panel about Al Sharpton, and whether or not he over does it with his constant crusading.

Everyone seemed in agreement that his (seemingly) constant complaining about everything distracts from his message when it should matter. Then Whoopi surprised me, by saying one thing she'd like to see Al do is apologize to the 3 Duke LaCrosse players.

Her whole point was that there are problems involving the races, and there are appropriate times to jump on those problems. But, when you find out you are wrong on something, like the Duke case, if you don't apologize for jumping the gun, you lose credibility. Al should actually know this already; Tawana Brawley comes to mind quick; but doesn't seem to remember that he had quite a few years after that incident before anyone took him seriously again.

So, from a right wing nut job, Thanks Whoopi, for calling Al out on this, coming from middle aged white guys it doesn't carry much weight, but maybe your request will get through to him.

Technorati Tags: Al Sharpton, Whoopi Goldberg, The View, Duke, Tawana Brawley

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