Obama Jumps Church

So, Senator and Presidential wannabe Barack Obama has decided to leave the Trinity United Church of Christ. He's clarified remarks about it, and decided it wasn't "a political manuever". Sure, and the 465 foot shot Russel Branyan hit in Milwaukee last night wasn't a home run.

Over at the Chicago Tribune, The Seeker blog asked the question "What do you think? Can a political figure join a congregation without putting it and its spiritual leader under the microscope?"

The answer of course, is yes. It happens all the time. In fact, Dick Cheney, one of the most despised politicians in the country goes to church regularly, can anyone name his pastor? How about George Bush's? Hillary Clinton?

The problem with "The Seeker" question was that it should have been "Can Obama pick a pastor that won't put himself under the microscope." Keep in mind, Oprah Winfrey left that church years ago because of Rev. Wright. So it's not like he just recently went off the deep end.

The Swamp has more insight from Obama on his decision, but the more he talks, the more it appears that he made a calculated political decision. While he says that he doesn't want the church coming under more scrutiny because of his candidacy, I think that the opposite is true, he's tiring of the scrutiny he's receiving for his choice in associates.

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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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Run Boy Run

You know that catch line, "Run Boy Run Boy Run Boy Run", it comes from the latest Kia commercial. It could just as easily come from the latest Barack Obama press interviews.

A month ago he said that he could no more disown his Reverend, Jeremiah Wright than he could the black community or his grandmother. This week Wright said those were the comments of "a politician". Now, the politician has decided that he can disown Wright, and is running as fast as he can, as far away from him as he can.

Obama's Wright problem got worse, and worse, and worse this weekend and Monday, as the "snippets" Obama claimed were used out of context were put into context, publicly, by Wright himself. It turns out that those "snippets" weren't out of context things pieced together to make the man look like a demagogue, they were his true feelings.

Suddenly Obama's Wright problem is two fold. The minister himself, obviously, and Obama's own speech in Philadelphia, where he defended him. To believe the minister would mean that Obama probably knew the man's feelings, after a 20 year association. To believe Obama's speech you have to believe that a man who wants to be President is completely tone deaf to his ministers rantings. Either one of those ends up meaning that Obama probably isn't the guy most folks want running the country.

Charlie Sykes put up a great list of links to both conservative and liberal reaction to Wright's recent appearances. The consensus seems to be that Wright may have damaged Barack beyond repair. The liberal defenders are starting to wonder out loud how Obama could NOT have known how Wright feels, and the conservatives are just too busy laughing about the whole thing to say much of anything.

If any of the list of liberals, or liberal leaning columnists like Dana Milbank, Eugene Robinson, Susan Estrich or Joe Klein had singly written columns announcing the downfall of Obama it would be one thing. When all of them do, then you know that the wheels are coming off the bus.

For the folks out there who think this can still pass, and Obama will win in November, all I can say is 527. There are going to be tons of 527 groups showing up, and tossing up photos of Obama and Wright together, and Wright's comments will be heard over every picture. They'll play every day from nomination to election, on every TV station in America, most radio, and be in print ads.

Add to that Obama's own foot shooting moments of late, especially "bittergate" and what you'll find is that he's so damaged he can't win. His core supporters may stick around, but that group isn't big enough to win the popular vote in the Democratic primaries, much less a general election.

Howard Dean said recently that the candidates will know when it's time for one of them to bow out of the race. It's possible that the one of them will be Obama, and it may be sooner than folks think. If he can't win North Carolina in two weeks by more than 10 points, and loses Indiana, Hillary will have more ammunition for her cannon shots of "I'm more electable".

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Change That Tune!

Today's newest game is evidently "Change That Tune". If you claim that you dodged sniper fire one week, and everyone else their denies it happened, Change That Tune, and claim you were speaking in generalities, and your memory was fogged, since it was a dozen years ago.

If you give a speech saying you'll stand by your pastor, but not his words, and folks start jumping from you ship, Change That Tune! What, you don't get this one?

Evidently on tomorrow's installment of "The View" Barack Obama will say that if Rev. Jeremiah Wright hadn't decided to retire he'd have left the Trinity United Church of Christ. But wait, a week ago he wasn't leaving, he couldn't, he was married there, his children baptized there. It would have been like ripping a piece of the family away.

While people had been willing to ignore his legislative record as the most liberal member of the Senate, and consider him the great hope for uniting the country, they evidently won't forgive him for his association with Rev. Wright. Now that he's figuring that out, in full politician mode, he's changing his tune (for the third time) on what he'd have done about the minister.

(This song is paraphrased, I don't have the exact lyrics in front of me)
Stanza 1. (Sunday Talk Shows)
If I had heard any such sermon from Reverend Wright, I'd have confronted him about it.

Stanza 2. (The Great Speech of 2008)
Yes, I heard some things that I strongly disagreed with. But I could no more abandon the Reverend than I could a family member.

Stanza 3 (tomorrows View)
I'd have left if he hadn't decided to retire.

Months ago I said that once the sheen started wearing off folks would realize that "St. Barack" isn't the next messiah, but a politician. It looks like that's starting to sink in. The Democrats are realizing that they have Hillary "Harding" Clinton in one corner, and "The Great Unknown" in the other, and are starting to get nervous.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen is calling for a neutral site meeting of the party Super Delegates in June to "assess the situation" and see if they can't come to a consensus over who the nominee should be. He wants it to be public, and on the record. Good luck with that part, most of them don't want to be know as the backstabbers who killed a candidacy before the convention.

Unfortunately for the Democrats Bredesen's idea probably won't fly, and we'll have a fight through the summer until their convention, turning off more potential voters as the mud continues to fly. And John McCain will get to sit back, laugh, and let his opponent fight their own party.

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Choosing Friends, and Pastors

Mary Mitchell at the Sun Times is indignant over Hillary Clinton's mentioning of Rev. Jeremiah Wright with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial board. I'll give Mitchell the point for Clinton wanting to change the subject from her Bosnia lie. She also gets a scores one for pointing out that some politicians depend on voters being idiots to get elected.

However, Hillary's comment on Wright was correct, you can't chose family, but you can chose friends, associates, and pastors.

Mitchell, like many in the media, seems to be disconnected from "the average joe" on the Wright issue. While many of us are wondering how you'd sit through 20 years that had to include more than a few such sermons and not be wondering if the preacher was off his rocker, Mitchell is wondering why were aren't all just happy St. Barack talked.

I've left a couple of different churches over issues of management and direction. It's not hard to find a new one if you look. In Chicago Obama could have picked from hundreds of black parishes to find spiritual guidance. Instead, he chose one that apparently chose to mix some very unchristian thoughts with it's Sunday sermon.

While Mitchell paints Clinton as someone who needs dumb voters to move off the Bosnia problem and go back to Wright. The problem with that theory is Obama counts on the same dumb voters to believe that he was oblivious to his spiritual mentor's radical leanings for 20 years. Maybe we could rename the candidates Dumb and Dumber, or the folks defending both of them.

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A Week Later

A week after Barack Obama's speech the Washington Post has four different columns about the speech and it's effect and consequences in today's paper.

Robert Novak looks at the problems it may be causing him with super delegates.

David Broder comments on the presidential bully pulpit aspect of the speech.

Bomani Armah asks Barak to show us his "white side" in a satirical look at the speech and the "one drop rule".

Jonetta Rose Barras writes on why she's no longer in the camp of the Rev. Wrights of the world after spending a few decades believing it was the correct path.

Novak makes the point that since the speech Obama's numbers have fallen in Pennsylvania, as some of the undecided white vote decided he was just "another black candidate" based on his speech, not a trancendant one.

Having watched any number of white people be "tossed under a bus" because of racially inept statements, they evidently don't get why Obama can't disown his minister like Hillary was forced to disown Geraldine Ferraro.

This, according to Novak is going to cause a superdelegate problem for Obama, as the start looking at electability once again. They'll wonder if the Republican Attack Machine won't roll Rev. Wright back out come the fall, and beat Obama to death with the good Reverend's words.

Broder's piece is about the substance of Obama's speech and it's delivery. He believes it helped Obama paint himself as a person, like Reagan (sorry Democrats), who can use words to effect change and rally people behind him.

There's little doubt that Obama is a great orator who's come up with top notch speech writers. For him to get to the place Broder puts him though, he has to get past the problems Novak pointed out.

Barras' piece is long, but explains her journey from a person who saw everything in the country as separate for blacks and whites to someone who realized that working together works better. It kind of reminded me of the David Mamet piece in the Villiage Voice, "Why I am no Long a Brain-Dead Liberal".

She doesn't think, by a long shot, that racially everything in the country is perfect. Instead she seems to have found that while imperfect, it's not nearly as bad as the Rev. Wrights, Jesse Jacksons, and Al Sharptons believe it to be. She seems to have stepped out of the comfort zone of those folks, ventured into the "real world" and found out that there are whites, asians and hispanics that aren't afraid to help, all you have to do is ask. And evidently she found enough to give her some hope that all isn't lost as Wright seems to think.

Armah takes a tongue in cheek look at Barack Obama's heritage and tells him it's time to start showing off his "white side". He's gained his black "street cred", and now needs to remind people, by posing for pictures with the other half of his family that he's white, too. Read the comments to see how many foaming at the mouth liberals don't get satire, even when it's pointed out in above the title line.

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Reflecting On The Speech

After a few days of reflection there is more reaction to the Barack Obama race speech, and it's not all as good as the earlier, glowing reviews.

Dan Schnur, John McCain's 2000 communications director, writing in his NY Times Blog see's Obama's standing going up in peoples eyes because of the speech, but that they'll be less likely to vote for him.

His arguement is somewhat compelling. He say's the speech definitely shows Obama's skills as an orator, and leader on a tough subject, but also reminded people of how much is still unknown about him. The unknown is what he thinks makes Obama harder to elect than say, Hillary Clinton, who's been through this wringer before, and has less unknowns.

He also correctly (I believe) points out that Obama probably played the Jeremiah Wright problem the only way he could. While many of us would have preferred that he toss Wright under the bus, not his Grandmother, that would have angered a much larger group of his supporters. His denouncement of Wrights words, but not the person, mollified the middle of the road folks, and kept the African-American constituency happy. Yes, conservatives were left unsatisfied, but then he wasn't going to satisfy conservatives anyway.

Charles Krauthammer was less impressed by Obama, giving his column the title "A Brilliant Fraud". Charles want's to know why Obama didn't leave a church that he obviously knew was run by a man with some strange beliefs and horrible rhetoric.

He takes Obama to task for tossing Grandma under the bus, noting that the example of her saying she was afraid when she passed black men on the street was something that Rev. Jesse Jackson has admitted to in the past. And while she may have said some things in private that bothered him, she wasn't standing on a stage, trying to incite a thousand or so when she said them, as Wright was.

His criticism of Obama for staying in the church is well placed (IMHO), if as he said on Tuesday, Wright is a man rooted in the past, and spewing vitrol from an era gone by, why did he expose his daughters to it?

It's a good question, if you are a man of "hope and change", they why not find a better spiritual venue for raising your children than a place that claims nothing has changed and there is no hope? I'm not an expert on African American churches, but my guess is there is one out there that more closely aligns to the Senator's hope and change mantra than Trinity UCC. In fact, I pray that there is one, because if there isn't, the black community is in much more dire straits than anyone can imagine.

If you need a totally useless comparison, though one that makes some sense in the context of Obama's assertation that Reverend Wright lives in the past, read E.J. Dionne's column. He spends his time comparing Wrights current demeanor with that of Rev. Martin Luther King. Great comparison, if King were speaking today, or Wright were preaching in 1968. However, they are 40 years, and eons separated.

What I gleaned from Dionne's column is something Krauthammer pointed out in his; because of "white guilt" the liberal elite would love and defend Obama's speech, and Rev. Wright. Dionne proves it his column, becoming the apologist white guy for the Reverend.

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The Rank And File Don't Buy It

After Barack Obama's "ground breaking speech" yesterday I listened to the new casts, and you'd have thought he single handedly defeated racism in America, and made his pastor a thing of the past.

Then around a couple of different water coolers today; both physical and electronic; I found that the rank and file white guys, the folks this was supposed to help with, aren't buying it. While many think that he expressed some great ideas, and spoke a lot of truth on race relations, and where they need to go, they thought that the meat of the speech, dealing with Rev. Jeremiah Wright came up lacking.

There are two reasons, apparently. The first is many think that Obama should have denounced the Pastor, not just "the words". They wanted Obama to take the route the Clinton campaign was forced to take with Geraldine Ferraro for expressing her opinion. Obama instead gave the pastor a big forgiving hug, for expressing his. Considering Ferraro was obviously seeing America through the same "static" lens of his Pastor, some thought he should have forgiven her in his speech.

Secondly, many folks saw this as a politician covering his tail. Just days before he'd been on the news programs telling us how he'd never heard any of the inflammatory rhetoric. Yet yesterday, he confessed to being in the pews for some of the speeches, and disagreeing with them.
(I personally think Fox News caused that, by claiming to have "hours" of Reverend Wright's sermons on tape, and that Obama couldn't possibly claim to have been absent from every one.)

But that second reason brings up the question, is he a liar? Which is true, what he said on the talk shows last weekend, or yesterday's speech? If yesterday is the truth, then why; as he claimed he would have on the talk shows; didn't he confront the Reverend?

Obama wanted to make Reverend Wright go away with yesterday's speech. But from what I've listened to today, in person, on the radio, and read in blogs, he didn't accomplish that. Instead, he may have opened a whole new can of worms. He may find that he'll have to defend himself against the questions raised above.

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