"I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins."
-- Frederick Douglass
/snip/
And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
/snip/
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.
But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
/snip/
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was a quote from Frederick Douglas about the nature of a true patriot, and then excerpts from a speech MLK made against the Vietnam war. When MLK was making that speech on 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, Jeremiah Wright was serving 6 years in the USMC.
Just some food for thought.
The attempt to paint Jeremiah Wright as a hatemonging looney is just the best shot the right has to sink Obama - nothing more, nothing less. It's basis in truth is very limited - a few sound bytes and some trumped-up words from the church's charter
Thomas wrote:Foxfyre wrote:You don't have any clue what I see, welcome, embrace, or perpetuate
Maybe you could help Cycloptichorn get a clue by more frequently speaking your own mind and more rarely hiding behind vague hearsay about what's "in the mind of many."
One of the most succinct observations yet on Foxfyre's obfuscations. I wish I had all those hours of my life back I wasted on the "homophpobic" thread attempting to reason with her.
McGentrix wrote:Quote:Tell me McG, have you ever condemmed any of the actions of the USA?
Yep.
Then some might consider you anti-american.
McGentrix wrote:
Quote:Tell me McG, how many times have you been demanded to be apologetic for the actions of others?
Depends on who they are and what actions the other has done.
You don't care to answer? I asked you how many times you've been demanded to apologetic. This should be a finite number of occurances. You don't know your own history?
McGentrix wrote:
Quote:Tell me McG, in a practical sense, what are you worried about with Obama as a President?
Extremist liberal policies.
Then why do you address Obama's extremist liberal policies instead of the words and actions of someone other than Obama?
McGentrix wrote:
Now, do you believe the US government is responsible for giving the black man aids?
No. However, I won't dismiss the theory that the virus is of human design, US or other.
McGentrix wrote:That the US government distributes drugs to the black man so they can become addicted and arrested and put in jail?
The jury is out on what degree our country has negociated with international drug traders.
McGentrix wrote:Do you think that the high number of black crime in comparison to the general population percentage should be blamed on "the white devil"?
I think any impovershed community faces more crime on average independant of the race of the people in the community. It's not a matter of opinion that many majority black communities have faced systematic hardship. If your naighborhood had "people of color" you might not be able to qualify for various loans or programs in the 60's and 70's. Think that doesn't matter now?
By the way, there isn't such thing as "black crime, and I don't believe in a white devil. I don't believe in the devil at all. But I won't ignore that the prosecution rate for blacks is much higher than it is for whites even today. I don't care to waste time figuring out who to blame, but don't pretend like everything is just "even steven" in America when it comes to race.
(I really hate discussions on race, as they seem to always neglect the hispanics, native americans, asians, and arabs.)
McGentrix wrote:
I can tell you one thing, if my spiritual adviser suggested these things, he'd not be my spiritual adviser long.
I can't tell you how I'd react to my spiritual advisor, because I don't have one. I can tell you that in all things, I don't simply surround myself with like-minded people. I am friends and seek advice frequently from others with a different world view than my own.
My friend Alex, I don't agree with a lot of what he says about politics or religion, but it doesn't prevent me from listening to his ideas or bennifiting from his advice in those times I agree with him. I don't suggest that this is Obama's relationship with Wright, I'm just saying that if you think that you're entitled to hear Obama apologize or explain Wright's words, you can hold your breath all you like. He doesn't owe anyone an explanation.
Now, go ahead and describe some of those extreme liberal ideas you are so frightened of.
T
K
O
sozobe wrote:Foxfyre wrote:You may have a point. When all there was to say about Obama was WOW, there wasn't much incentive for those who are not Obama-ites to hang around the thead. How do you argue against a WOW?
*It's amazing, when I re-read the first post, to realize that we're at this point. That Obama really might win the Dem nomination, really might become president. Very far from a done deal yet but it's pretty exciting that he's gotten even this far. So, I'm glad that this didn't stay niche; I'm glad that Obama might really go all the way, and if this thread's a casualty, ah well.
It really is amazing,isn't it? I never believed Obama had a chance against the Clinton machine. You know all this stuff about Wrigth had made Obama a much better candidate and much more able ti stand up against the sleeze machine he will face in the summer and fall.
As anyone who has looked over this thread and felt the political climate over the last few days, the steam has run out on the Wright nonsense. I am quite sure that anything that could have been dug up by these pieces of **** on the right has surfaced already. The sleaze machine tried to make up something of the church bulletins but without the constant video loop, it had virtually no effect. I mean how many of these inbreds that feed on this stuff even know how to read?
Anyway, at least we are now getting close enough to Pennsylvania that the campaigns might return to some sense of normalcy.
Right now, we will just have to play this out until Indiana and NC and hope Obama sweeps those (discounting a Pennsylvania miracle.)
mysteryman wrote:Butrflynet wrote:http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/819177,CST-NWS-sweet29.article
Quote:FORT WORTH, Texas -- On the campaign trail, Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama talks about how he would use the bully pulpit if president, and he offered a demonstration Thursday when he drew wild cheers as he told a mostly African-American crowd that parents need to shape up, turn off the TV, help their kids with their homework and stop letting them grow fat eating Popeyes chicken for breakfast.
"It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the video game playing," said Obama while in Beaumont, in southeast Texas.
"So turn off the TV set, put the video game away. Buy a little desk or put that child by the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don't know how to do it, give them help. If you don't know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Keep them off the streets. Give ' em some breakfast. Come on. ... You know I am right."
'I've got to talk about us'
Can change happen with words? That's a core question being raised about the Obama candidacy.
"I've got to talk about us a little bit," said Obama. "We can't keep on feeding our children junk all day long, giving them no exercise. They are overweight by the time they are 4 or 5 years old, and then we are surprised when they get sick."
Obama -- who exercises and is careful about what he eats -- said obese children need to improve their nutrition habits, invoking the name of a chain that makes delicious fried chicken.
"I know how hard it is to get kids to eat properly," Obama said. "But I also know that if folks letting our children drink eight sodas a day, which some parents do, or, you know, eat a bag of potato chips for lunch, or Popeyes for breakfast.
"Y'all have Popeyes out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing. ... You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school."
Obama has delivered "tough love'' messages before about personal responsibility, but he seemed to revel in his "truth-telling" while campaigning in Beaumont, on a day that also took him to Austin and Fort Worth in advance of Tuesday's crucial primaries.
Bill Cosby recently said much the same thing, but he was attacked, booed, and called names by much of the black community.
I wonder why the different treatment.
Another f***ing strawman argument. Unreal!
Foxfyre wrote:Some of the **** I make up is pretty well confirmed by numerous studies over the last several years. Admittedly ABC isn't as extreme left as Salon.org or the Huffington Post or several others. If it was, it would never have done a pretty objective analysis of Obama and Jeremiah Wright as shown in the clip I posted awhile ago. But it is decidedly left of center in its ideological perspective.
Only someone "living under a rock"would view huffington or salon as extreme left. Now Mickey Mouse is a Marxist? Amazing!
snood, Your post ---4351 was excellent; it says so much more than what we've been discussing here about our country and its people; how "our" violence in other countries are not spoken but viewed as "patriotism."
Makes one wonder when we'll be able to self-examine what we do to others in the name of "democracy."
Far Wright
Why Obama's preacher problem isn't going away.
Dayo Olopade, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Now that America has seen clips of Jeremiah Wright--Barack Obama's former pastor and longtime mentor--yelling "God damn America" and referring to the United States as the "U.S. of KKK A," there are obvious questions on everyone's mind. There is, for instance, the complicated biographical question of why Obama aligned himself with Wright in the first place. But there is also the more basic political question of why the presidential candidate didn't disown Wright sooner. After all, whatever personal affection Obama felt for the man who brought him into the Christian fold, he had to realize that Wright was a ticking time bomb for his campaign--someone whom average voters would regard with justifiable horror once they got wind of his views on politics and race. So why didn't Obama push him away long ago?
Actually, he did--sort of. Recall what happened in early 2007. Initially, Obama had invited Wright to deliver the benediction at the event where he would formally launch his candidacy; but, at the last minute, Obama rescinded the invitation. In doing so, it seems likely that Obama understood his political problem and was trying to send his pastor-mentor a polite but firm message: Stay away from the spotlight and, please, for the love of God, try not to cause any controversy, lest you sink my chances of winning.
Most people would have taken the hint. But not Jeremiah Wright. Less than a month later, he was on Fox News bickering with Sean Hannity about "black liberation theology" and admonishing the famously obnoxious TV host, "Let me suggest that you do some reading before you come and talk to me about my field. " Five days later, he was in The New York Times complaining about Obama's decision to block him from speaking and volunteering that, "[w]hen his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli [to visit Muammar Qaddafi] with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell." And he wasn't done yet. Days after that, Wright uncorked an open letter to the Times that accused reporter Jodi Kantor of misrepresenting her interview with him. The screed rambled for more than a thousand words before culminating in this: "There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!"
Why wouldn't Wright take the hint that Obama seemed to be offering and quietly slink into the background, at least until November 2008? Two months ago (long before his most inflammatory sermons had surfaced), I visited Wright's church on a Sunday morning. And what I witnessed that day makes the answer quite clear.
To put it mildly, Jeremiah Wright is a man who is comfortable in the spotlight. Over the past 36 years, he has built Trinity Church, on Chicago's South Side, into a wildly successful institution comprising 8,000 members. The church sponsors two senior centers, an addiction-recovery program, two daycare sites, student mentoring, prisoner visitation, yoga in the mornings, and "singles sermons" on Friday evenings. But, come Sunday morning, all the attention is on one man. On the day I visit--the morning after Obama's landslide victory in South Carolina--three cameras in the main sanctuary are trained on Wright, dressed in one of his trademark dashikis, as he flaps and struts through the Gospel of John, wherein Jesus thwarts his enemies not with force, but with words. The syncopated speaking style politicos have come to expect from Obama has the audience of thousands transfixed. Wright's gravelly tenor hums through the Trinity loudspeakers, and the worshippers are on their feet, murmuring amens. Even choir members can be seen scribbling in their bulletins during the sermon, on the blank, lined pages reserved for such note-taking. (The fine print below? "Sermons copyrighted by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.") A scant 30 minutes after the sermon's conclusion, I was able to purchase a copy of Wright's message on DVD in the church bookstore.
Dwight Hopkins, a church member and professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, told the Baltimore Sun that some refer to the blocks surrounding Trinity as "Wrightville." Hopkins added that Wright "doesn't like" the nickname, but, that Sunday, I was struck by how much of the sermon was about--well, him. During the address, he let fly with a verbal fusillade aimed directly at his detractors: "I don't care what nobody in the 4-H club says. Y'all know what the 4-H club is?" The church roared, and he explained: "That's Hannity, Hillary, Hobbes, and Haters." Later, while discussing his opposition to South African apartheid, Wright seemed to take another shot at his enemies: "I was talked about then, and I'm still talked about now," he thundered. "But I'm not going to stop being me because of what somebody says about me. [Jesus] set me free to be me and he set me free to forgive stupidity." And here he gets in one more jab: "So I forgive you, 4-H club; I forgive you, confused journalists; I forgive you, nervous negroes--I forgive you."
Having lived for so long at the center of a world he built, Wright may simply not be used to restraining himself. (Indeed, during the past year, even as he had to know that Obama's high profile could bring the press to his pews, he continued to evangelize against the government.) But it isn't just that Wright is self-centered, although that seems to be the case; it is also that his worldview doesn't recognize firm boundaries between religion and politics, or really between religion and anything. When Wright finally carried out his long-planned retirement at the end of February (no doubt much to Obama's relief), his church held a two-week-long celebration honoring him as a "Theologian/ Teacher," "Ethnomusicologist," and "African World Visionary." Don't laugh; for Wright, such distinctions are necessarily fluid. The sermon I attended freely mixed faith and politics--at one point, Wright intoned, "I got to tell somebody what the Lord has done for my people. I'm gonna use my mouth! Listen to me and listen carefully: Neither Hillary, Hannity, nor Hobbes ever had a grandparent in slavery or on a slave ship beneath the decks, never had a grandparent in a slave dungeon on the coast of West Africa as a prisoner. That's my people's story, and if you think I'm gonna stop telling it, you got another damn thing coming!" No wonder he can't resist sparring with Sean Hannity and The New York Times.
Over the past week, as the controversy surrounding his anti-American rhetoric has grown, Wright has remained uncharacteristically silent. Does this mean that the pastor has finally taken Obama's hints and resolved to shun the spotlight? Somehow, I doubt it. Like other people who believe the world revolves around them, Jeremiah Wright never seems to stay quiet for long.
Miller, are you officially admitting that your posing as a Hillary supporter was a facade? I mean do you think you were fooling anyone in the first place?
Heresy! Rendell endorses Fox News VIDEO
sozobe wrote:Foxfyre wrote:You may have a point. When all there was to say about Obama was WOW, there wasn't much incentive for those who are not Obama-ites to hang around the thead. How do you argue against a WOW?
<sputter>
OK, gonna say something.
I like this thread a lot. I get that it's changed, and honestly not sure I'd have it any other way.* To wit -- Obama was niche for a long time. Sure, some guy who might possibly run for president, OK, whatever. Many people weren't yet interested in the presidential race (as Walter noted at some point recently, I started this over two years ago now), and for quite a while -- I'd say up until Iowa -- this thread was mostly about the more wonkish political junkies among us. Lots of speculation and if-this-then-that's and also, yes, talk about the substance of Obama. Who he is, what he stands for, what he believes, what he wants to do, how he plans to accomplish those things...
Lots of talk in Wonkville, and some of my favorite people live there.
But then, after Iowa, there was a bit of a shift. Not anyone's fault, just a change in focus. Wait a minute, this guy could actually win the Democratic nomination?
(Do you remember how much of a foregone conclusion it was before Iowa that Hillary would get the nomination?)
And then, after that... wait a minute, this guy could actually become our PRESIDENT??
That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
And I get that.
Things have really gotten ugly -- and I mean that in the awful-wallpaper-pattern sense, not the blood-and-gore sense -- since it started to look like a) the Dem nomination is Obama's to win unless he really messes up, and b) if he gets the Dem nomination, McCain is in trouble.
We then moved out of Wonkville and into Partisanville. Wonkville is about figuring things out; arguments go places. Partisanville is about throwing stinky objects at each other and seeing what sticks. Oooh, that did! Yay, let me find more.
Now, I don't want to get too us-vs.-them -- not the point. Individuals can belong to both -villes -- Cycloptichorn can be a wonk par excellence and then turn way partisan. Bear spends a lot of time in Partisanville but he has some really nice insights when he deigns to share them. And he's not a "them" just 'cause he supports Hillary.
And -- aside from all that stuff -- then there's the current lull. The surfeit of wonky stuff to wonkishly discuss and crowd out the ugly-wallpaper partisan stuff. Did Obama win TX? Not sure, won't know for a bit yet. Was Hillary's Tuzla thing ridiculous? Sure was. So. When's PA?
*It's amazing, when I re-read the first post, to realize that we're at this point. That Obama really might win the Dem nomination, really might become president. Very far from a done deal yet but it's pretty exciting that he's gotten even this far. So, I'm glad that this didn't stay niche; I'm glad that Obama might really go all the way, and if this thread's a casualty, ah well.
Very good. I hadn't thought of it like this other than to accept that this is the natural progression of things.
Thanks, snood and FreeDuck.
Two addenda:
1. I didn't mean "surfeit," I meant the opposite. "Dearth," I guess. (And I claim wonkhood?)
2. Not everything here recently has been ugly-wallpaper. Definitely some good stuff continuing and don't want to dis the people who have been sticking it out and providing that.
Nice post. I vote "plenthora" as the opposite of "dearth".
The word you wanted was plethora: p-l-e-t-h-o-r-a . . .
sozobe wrote:for quite a while -- I'd say up until Iowa -- this thread was mostly about the more wonkish political junkies among us. Lots of speculation and if-this-then-that's and also, yes, talk about the substance of Obama. Who he is, what he stands for, what he believes, what he wants to do, how he plans to accomplish those things...
Lots of talk in Wonkville, and some of my favorite people live there.
But then, after Iowa, there was a bit of a shift. Not anyone's fault, just a change in focus. Wait a minute, this guy could actually win the Democratic nomination? [..] this guy could actually become our PRESIDENT?? [..]
We then moved out of Wonkville and into Partisanville. Wonkville is about figuring things out; arguments go places. Partisanville is about throwing stinky objects at each other and seeing what sticks. Oooh, that did! Yay, let me find more.
Brilliant description of the dynamics. Thanks for that. Voice of reason, as always.
Count me in as yearning back for Wonkville. As yearning for Wonkville, period. I hate the throwing stuff and seeing what sticks mode. I get involved, too, but it repulses me even as I do it. Such a f*cking waste of time; it's not like anyone's convincing anyone, and we're definitely not learning anything anymore either.
I know the people here. You're all very familiar, and you all know me. So I dont feel like packing up and going to some wonkier forum, if it exists. Plus, I do like interspersing wonky stuff with random fun threads in General, and you dont have that on, I dunno, the Monkey Cage or Pollster (wholly aside from those being blogs that are broadcast to the visitors, rather than created by them).
But man, I'd pay to have a Wonkville forum/community within A2K. I havent got a clue how you'd enforce it and keep Partisanville out (especially since, like you say, it's sometimes the same people), but I'd pay for it. Would save me lots of time and especially stress, annoyance, frustration. I'd be on there and skip the rest.
Setanta wrote:The word you wanted was plethora: p-l-e-t-h-o-r-a . . .
Actually, I like the plenthora variation better, what with its suggestion of 'plenty'. I'm now trying to figure out what sense of magnitude would be conveyed with a spinoff variant, 'plenthorette'.
Foxfyre wrote:You may have a point. When all there was to say about Obama was WOW, there wasn't much incentive for those who are not Obama-ites to hang around the thead. How do you argue against a WOW?
So then when there was actually something substantive to discuss, this did generate interest among those who enjoy discussing something instead of just saying WOW.
I guess you didnt actually read any of this thread back in those days, because it was a far cry from "just WOW". Back then there actually
was substantive discussion. About the strengths but also flaws of Obama's platforms and proposals - those who
were reading along will remember the rather exhaustive criticisms and defenses of Obama's health care plan, for example, thanks to Obama critic Thomas and Obams defender Soz, among others. About the strengths but also flaws of Obama's vision - inspiring or just vague? About strategies - is he able to expand the Democratic coalition, or vulnerable to even more erosion of the party's FDR-era voter base? About the role of race in America, and class - does Obama make enough of a priority of bread and butter issues of poverty, employment, income, is he not too wedded to the agenda of postmaterialist feel-good liberals?
The "substantive" contributions you claim for you and yours in this phase of the thread, on the other hand, basically come down to ever again dredging the mud of guilt-by-association with the Wright thing; recounting how some people (not you, of course, never you yourself, but
some people) think Obama doesnt love his country and is at heart some black militant radical; and an endless flow of gotchas and "liberals suck! no, conservatives suck!" type exchanges.
Some substance.
nimh wrote:Setanta wrote:The word you wanted was plethora: p-l-e-t-h-o-r-a . . .
gaahloshes..
macadamia!
Oh cool ! ! !
I am surprised that anyone outside of Canada would be familiar with that.
Mukluks
Bus ! ! !
Setanta wrote:The word you wanted was plethora: p-l-e-t-h-o-r-a . . .
How true. Ever meet an engineer who could spell? Still, that is what the spell checker is for.
Thomas wrote:I disagree. One of the key success factors of the Bush II presidency was his ability to wear a flight suit and to strut around in it on an aircraft carrier.
No, no - you missed the last update. It's not being able to credibly strut around in a flight suit that qualifies one for being President. The one thing a real President must be able to do is
to bowl.
So says Joe Scarborough, on that liberal bulwark of a medium MSNBC. If you're not "a real man" enough to "get 150", well, then you're just flat out unqualified to be President:
Quote:During the March 31 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly mocked Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance -- which Scarborough called "dainty" -- at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Deriding Obama's score, he said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." Scarborough added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least."
Later in the show, after NBC political analyst Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."
Ah, the blessings of mainstream American news reporting... those darn liberal media.
