But you’re right, enough about Wright! I’m extremely guilty in that regard and it’s time to stop, I’m saying to myself.

Re: the “empty suit” - for my part, I was merely responding to someone else’s characterization of Obama in that vein … not endorsing it, but saying, “I wouldn’t even care if it were true, I’ll take him, from what I’ve seen.” And I do think there’s some sliver of a chance he might actually be different than business as usual. I’m not predicting it … I mean, follow the money, right? But I think it’s the best shot we have in terms of presidential candidates (hmm. maybe presidential candidates won’t be the answer …)

“It’s hard to understand why people who went to Ivy League schools and have nearly a million dollars in income would want their children to listen to screeds on white oppression.”, Amelia says. That’s kind of the point: There’s clearly more to Rev Wright than many people have garnered, as Obama alluded to in his speech.

Tuskegee was bad enough for what it was on the true facts. My understanding (perhaps too little of it) is that AIDS in Africa spread like wildfire because of African sexual practices–polygamy, concurrent polygamy, frequent use of prostitutes, and social customs which allowed men of certain social classes to force sex on young girls of a lower class–in other words everybody is having sex with everybody else. These are African social sexual practices that have absolutely nothing to do with the white devil. Isn’t it better to tell the truth if you are going to solve the problem?

I have no idea what Iraqis think or why but whatever happened to the concept — at least here where we know what’s being said — that the truth will set you free. It’s fine that people want to have meaning in their lives but if they find it by believing in convenient conspiracies those notions should be disabused not encouraged.

Have a nice day!

That is, in fact, the real world, as was the CIA’s involvement in heroin trafficking during the Vietnam war, which helped give the drug a big boost in the US, which again disproportionately affected black communities. So you have a situation in which one arm of the government is involved, however casually or dispassionately, in supplying drugs to black communities, while other arms are then locking up huge numbers of black men and boys who get caught up in the trade either as users or marketers, not to mention the other nasty side effects of the dynamic in those communities. The conclusion that the circumstances reflect a deliberate effort to destroy black communities is analogous to the reaction of some Iraqis when confronted with the mess the US has made of their country: how could the most powerful, resourceful nation on earth make this much of a mess by accident?

The AIDS legend is off the charts, but even that has a back story: black Americans of Wright’s generation are keenly aware of, for instance, the Tuskegee Experiment, in which black men were for four decades the unwitting subjects in a study on the effects of untreated syphillis. The study was terminated only after it was leaked to the press in 1972. 1972! Syphillis had by that point been safely treatable for at least 25 years, but the subjects in the experiment went deliberately untreated and were never even told they had syphillis. The leap from that very real situation to the alleged AIDS plot requires a shift in scale but not philosophy.

The real world is a very nasty place that lends itself quite nicely to conspiracy theories at least in part because there are conspiracies. Some we find out about, others we don’t.

Teaching that the CIA is selling drugs in black communities in order to destroy them is not living in the real world.

The product of this kind of indoctrination is a sense of grievance without justification and accusations of racism where none exists.

The “chickens coming home to roost” whether from Rev. Wright or Prof. Churchill has to do with fine lines. I would even say that it’s mainstream, or almost, to say that the 9/11 attacks were “blowback” for American foreign policy. But you can’t cross the line, as Prof. Churchill did, into fanaticism by saying that therefore innocent people deserved to die horrible deaths, because by virtue of being American they weren’t innocent. There was the same potential implication in Rev. Wright’s “we’re still here” line, with the added kookiness that the 9/11 attacks were retribution for race.

I only read a little bit about Afro-centrism aka black liberation theology so I could well be misunderstanding but yes I thought Rev. Wright shares the views of what’s his name, James Cone - ? — that all history and the Bible itself is about race, specifically the struggle of blacks against white efforts to eradicate them.

I don’t know what any of this means in terms of Obama. It’s hard to understand why people who went to Ivy League schools and have nearly a million dollars in income would want their children to listen to screeds on white oppression. Why would there be a level of comfort in that? What does it mean as far as understanding what issues really need fighting for?

I don’t know how different Obama will be. Certainly the lesson of the 2000 election is that allegedly small differences between Democrats and Republicans have huge consequences. At the same time I’m not thrilled when Obama says he admires the foreign policy of JFK, George Bush the first, and Ronald Reagan. If Obama means what he says then he hasn’t in fact listened to Rev. Wright’s sermons about the depredations of American foreign policy and its consequences.

i think this entire race is being driven by stereotypes on both sides. and i’m not just talking about racial or sexual stereotypes either. a lot of the above comments about obama simply suggests to me that he has been typecast as “the inexperienced empty suit”. in my opinion, he’s neither. in fact, part of what turns me off about clinton is how vacuous her foreign policy pronouncements have been.

that’s not to say that clinton is an empty suit either. she’s very substantive when we’re talking about the issues she’s got a lot of experience with, issues like family leave and health care. i just find it really weird when i see both candidates regularly referred to as something that is so different from my own experiences of them.

I’m not sure which black liberation theology text you’re referring to (nor can I be sure you’re giving it a fair summary), but you can’t tie Wright to just any old thing that comes under the heading of black liberation theology - are the views you read there actually his? In any case, I find most theology pretty nutty, so the Rev gets the same pass on that I’d give to other religious leaders, whatever his actual theology is.

Also, the “we’re still here” line is in keeping with the “chickens coming home to roost” line. I’m not in favor of violence, and what people suffered at the WTC on 9/11 is beyond awful. At the same time, there is truth to the idea that the seeds for that event were sown by our government’s policies in the Middle East, and yes, toward non-white populations, over several decades. Wright’s not wrong about that.

Many of Wright’s statements are sort of Chomsky on steroids, and with a flair … not a winning political platform (hence the need for Obama to distance himself), but not untrue either. (Well, except for his AIDS statements …)

Given the nature of today’s politics, I’ll gladly take the “empty suit” over the well known suits. At least there’s some sliver of a chance he’ll be different, however unlikely it may be. And do I want to see the black community with a representative in the White House? Damn straight! (A woman would be cool too, don’t get me wrong.

This theology continues into the present. In one of the sermons about 9/11 (not the chickens coming home to roost one) he blames 9/11 on race–black people (I think he said black, not just people of color) telling white people something to the effect, “we’re still here.” Overall it’s a vision of a deeply racist nation deserving of violent retribution. I’m not sure which is worse, the indoctrination of hatred against all white people collectively, or the sheer kookiness of it all.

I’m know I’m not supposed to judge as a typical white person, but I don’t see how you solve the problems of the black community if you don’t live in the real world and see the real world causes.

And frankly, I just don’t get how a history of racial injustice justifies vicious anti-Semitism. Was Thomas Jefferson Jewish? Were the plantation owners Jewish? What justifies comparing the Hamas screed calling for the extermination of the Jews to the Declaration of Independence? Rev. Wright’s defense of the Palestinian boycott of the anti-racism conference in South Africa years ago - part of what may have been on the TV clips - was indefensible and inexcusable. If you remember that episode several years ago the Palestinians protested using Nazi iconography showing Jews as vermin and apes. Oh and then there’s another 9/11 sermon about how the Jews caused 9/11.

It’s fine if the church community defends their own — Huckabee gave a lovely defense as well — but I’ll decline to sign on.

The bigger problem that people have with Obama (bigger than Wright, Rezko, racism), is that he is what is often referred to as an ‘empty vessel’ - He is a relative unknown and he’s trying to win by concealing his true nature, his predilections of philosophy and governing.

He makes his largest point of all, not voting for the AUMF but that was a vote that he didn’t have to make. Beyond the puff about the vote he didn’t have to make, there isn’t any issue which defines him. We don’t really know him. His greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.

Modern day politics almost requires that the candidates navigate the high road and the 527 groups take the low road but that’s a strategy that is designed more for the general election than the primaries. Since the media hasn’t critically examined Obama as they have the other candidates (and most especially Hillary), he’s been given a mostly free ride which I seriously doubt that such good fortune will get past September.

But since you really want to talk about race…it was no accident that HRC (and for that matter, Bill too) were branded racists even though the generally accepted view was that Bill was the first black president (honorarium given to Bill by Maya Angelou). This was pure political calculation by Obama’s team to maximize their votes and with a very willing media looking for controversy, maximize the black vote they did. Obviously being the black candidate and capitalizing on his race cost him some white votes but so far not enough to lose…unless he gets clobbered in Pennsylvania.

If it ultimately becomes Obama as the nominee, I am quite convinced that Obama would lose the press advantage, lose control over the narrative by having to combat the endless 527 loops and the sad fact that he has accomplished little in his adult life will become the parcel of attack by McCain himself and McCain will be able to tell that story without significant damage to his prospects.

Hillary Clinton’s own former minister knows better. It would be good if more people who consider themselves progressives bothered to glean a more full understanding instead of parroting talking points from the right wing.

http://www.foundryumc.org/pdfs/Statement%20concerning%20Rev.%20Jeremiah%20Wright.pdf

“To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize.”

I guess the subject matter here is race (and gender) only, but both candidates also have problems that have nothing to do with either. If you don’t like Hillary anyway you might slide easily into thinking of her as a witch; if you don’t like Obama anyway you might slide easily into thinking of him as a typical black guy. I’m not so sure it’s easy to tease these things out.

Part of the problem with Wright is the cognitive dissonance–his message is so antithetical to how Obama presents himself. Shelby Steele says Obama was driven by insecurity, a need to be black, that he took the hatred as more rhetorical than real and therefore worth the price in exchange for a secure black identity. But even that has a measure of cognitive dissonance. The problem Wright raises is who is Barack Obama — which is a problem for Obama anyway, and so in some sense is not even about race.

If you dismiss people who are disturbed by Wright as lesser moral beings or as people unwilling to acknowledge America’s history of racial violence and injustice or unwilling to acknowledge America’s history of violence around the world I think you’re not hearing a message that those who are disturbed are hearing. It’s a deeply conspiratorial and frankly nutty outlook that says all of human history can be defined by race struggles, that the black Jesus was crucified by the white Romans in a race crime, that AIDS was deliberately created and spread by white people (never mind the role of polygamy in Africa for its rapid spread); that drugs are brought into this country by the CIA to deliberately destroy the black community (never mind that neither the contras nor both sides in Columbia nor the warlords in Afghanistan nor combatants anywhere who sell drugs to buy weapons are doing it in order to destroy black kids in L.A.)–and it goes on and on. The subtext of this message is that the only rational reasonable response to this outrage is to hate white people. And the question comes back to how much comfort and joy can you find in an otherwise loving church to stand that, i.e., what the heck was Obama doing there? His beautiful speech never really answered that.

I’m not the only one guilty of still talking about this. It’s not over. And the problem for Obama is that he can’t honestly answer these questions. And he can’t get a pass on the grounds that people already know who he is and trust him, because people don’t know who he is.

india and pakistan probably would never have elected a woman who wasn’t the daughter of a popular former leader. same with indonesia and sri lanka. (and, arguably, hillary clinton would be an analogous example if she manages to become president)

the bottom line is that clinton has some negatives that go beyond her gender. indeed, there is clinton hatred and there is woman hatred. hillary clinton gets hit with both. if she’s unelectable that is why. there is a large group of people there who will never ever vote for her. mrs. noz’s grandmother has always voted republican but thinks bush is a disaster and that the country needs a change. and still, she says she cannot vote for clinton–she just hates the clinton’s too much–even though she also says that she would like there to be a woman president. she might vote for obama.

So we’re just guessing. We don’t know how much of a factor racism will be, nor sexism. There’s Rev Wright (who mostly spoke the truth, if somewhat stridently), a situation which Obama handled very deftly, and even meaningfully. And then there’s “Bosnia-gate” … out of which war-hero-McCain could probably get some mileage. So who knows? And then there’s the Bill factor, since we’re speculating … has the leopard changed his spots, or is there more “scandal” waiting in the wings? Or maybe the press will just make one up, a la “John Kerry’s mistress” …

Obviously my guess leans toward Obama - get him on a stage in debate with McCain and the contrast between the vibrant, charismatic Senator from Illinois and the wizzened, ill tempered homonculus from Arizona will be striking indeed. We all have our guesses, and that’s mine. Place your bets! Place your bets!

I have favored seating FL based on the initital results and doing a primary in MI. Each candidate gets an advantage in one state, but not overwhelmingly. It also is a solution that actually might be achievable, unlike full revotes.

As to the role that of sexism, racism or ageism might play in the race; From Mother Jones:

“According to a new NBC/WSJ survey, 29 percent of respondents feel this country isn’t ready for a president over 70.

By contrast, the same survey showed that 20 percent of respondents said the country is not ready for a female president and 18 percent said it is not ready for an African American one. This is consistent with an early 2007 poll that showed being 72-years-old on election day is as much of a disadvantage as being homosexual. “

Whichever of the Dems wins the nomination will 1) win the general and 2) be a huge disappointment for those whose expectations aren’t already in the gutter. As for McCain’s performance, it’s a tossup between Goldwater and Dole.

Neither Democratic candidate’s prospects are helped by the fact that the Republicans, despite themselves, managed to nominate the candidate who represents their best shot in what should be a Democratic landslide. McCain will also have the MSM on his side. The contingent of hardcore misogynists and Hillary-haters is probably larger than the base of hardcore racists, but so is the bloc of women (Democratic and Republican) who will vote for Clinton. If Clinton loses, she’ll lose the way Humphrey and Gore did, by a small margin. But she may very well win, given the state of the economy. When–not if–Obama loses, he’ll lose like Mondale or Dukakis, though probably not as badly as McGovern. Even the state of the economy won’t be enough to counteract Obama’s negatives, whereas the wrecked economy evokes, in the minds of many voters, the prosperous years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

It’s also a fact that, despite the “no more dynasties” meme, many Democratic voters would be very happy to have Bill Clinton once more near the levers of presidential power. I hope that the group of superdelegates who are poised to forfeit this election just to get the Clintons out of the way will not be allowed to succeed.

The real subtext of the Wright controversy isn’t the alleged anti-Americanism — you can’t go into a white SBC church without hearing a white pastor pounding on the podium about how America is damned for having turned its back on God for one reason or another. The point is that it undermines Obama’s claims to be post-racial, which, IMO, is really just code for “white enough.”

Disclosure: I personally support Obama at the moment, but I really only favor him over Clinton by a 60-40 margin. In the general, I will vote for a potted plant if it gets the Dem nomination.

Hillary has baggage too, but it’s old hat. Most people have already made up their minds about her. Obama is still a clean slate onto which the Media can write anything. So far they have written good things but there is no way that can last against their true love…..McCain

What a friggin’ mess……..

if hrc spends 8 years as obama’s vp it will definitely decrease the fears people have about her.