Thursday, April 17, 2008
A compilation of Obama and Wright quotations
The comments on this blog have on several occasions drifted into jousting over various things that Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and their pastor Jeremiah Wright have said, and what those statements might mean about Obama. Those comments -- and, perhaps, some of the underlying posts -- have been long on characterization but short on substance, a point our various defenders of Obama have made repeatedly. Well, John Hawkins has assembled a giant pile of Obama and Wright quotations, complete with links. Wright has definitely said some fairly crazy things (particularly about AIDs being the product of a conspiracy), but I must confess that I do not have a big problem with most of Barack Obama's supposed gaffes. That does not mean I agree with his favored policies -- as far as I'm concerned, the more concealed-carry the better -- but I do not view most of Barack Obama's statements as inherently offensive or obviously disqualifying. Certainly no more so than being an unreconstructed liberal.
[Scheduled]
4 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Thu Apr 17, 10:47:00 AM:
As an occasional contributor on the subject of the Democratic primary competition, I will plead guilty to not having linked to Wright's youtube videos, Michelle Obama's public statement regarding her newly discovered pride in America, or Obama's San Francisco observation about economic issues driving "Clinging to guns and religion.
By the time I posted, these comments were no longer news and had been largely absorbed as fact. As the say in the legal profession, there doesn't seem to be much dispute about the facts in each case -- because there is excellent and obvious supporting video or other reliable transcription.
In fact, I have not noted any Obama defender calling the facts into question. There has been debate about the underlying interpretation, but I would think that's to be expected, even encouraged. That's actually where the meat of these issues really lies - what does it mean that each of these statements were made? Were they mistakes? Were they honest reflections of perspective? What does the association brought into question mean?
All of these are relevant considerations in weighing the choice between Obama and Clinton. Because I clearly don't support either, it strikes that me that I can be reasonably objective. and beyond that, I can be unfailingly critical of both because I have no axe to grind for either.
It's quite liberating actually. In some sense, and though I will support McCain in the general election, I have no particular problem criticizing him because he wasn't "my guy" either. But we can put that to the side for now.
As to last night's debate, I missed it. April 22nd is a big day. Pennsylvania may have more impact on selecting a candidate than it's had since the 18th century.
By 
, at
Fri Apr 18, 12:57:00 AM:
Well (as an apologist) I do find the comments on HIV pretty offensive, but the rest are somewhat defensible, and not very racist. What critics fail to take into account is that African-Americans, i.e. "blacks", constitute not only a racial group based on skin color, but also a distinct culture. If you substitute the word "black" for some other cultural group like "Catholics" the non-racist meaning becomes apparent. The term "white" is too broad to mean much beyond the racial classification.
As for the interpretation that Wright blamed America for the 9-11 attacks; I don't think that's what he really said. My take is the idea that if America lives by the sword, it may die by the sword. If much of America's foreign policy is based on military force (and it is), regardless of whether that force is morally justified or not, we will eventually become a target, particularly as the world's sole superpower. As Wright said, that is something we should reflect upon. You cannot be a policemen and avoid taking a certain amount of flack.
By Cardinalpark, at
Fri Apr 18, 10:57:00 AM:
Maybe to me the most offensive quote from Obama directly is his reference to his grandmother as a "typical white person."
What, Mr. Obama, is a typical white person? Please describe.
Does that make it ok for me to describe someone as a "typical black person?" Or a typical _____.
I think not.
By Escort81, at
Fri Apr 18, 11:42:00 PM:
Squealer -
I'm with you on your take on the AIDS remark, as I think most sane people are. As I posted previously, I can almost see Obama saying, "Yo, Rev, icksnay on the AIDSray." I have read and heard some discussion that the AIDS myth can resonate in segments of the AA community because of the notorious Tuskegee Experiments held between 1932 and 1972, and woven into the popular culture with the play and HBO movie Miss Evers' Boys. I suppose it would not help to point out that as grotesque and heinous as that episode was, the government funded program did not actually infect the men with syphilis, but rather it deliberately failed to treat the control group subjects with the best available medications, especially after 1947, when penicillin was available.
I think the other major Wright-ism that I find most troubling is "The government gives them the drugs," which seems to say that the U.S. government has purposely dumped vast quantities of illegal drugs on inner-city blacks to keep them down. I assume he is referencing the story that bounced around in the 1990s that the CIA invented crack cocaine for this express purpose. My cousin, who has a moderate case of schizophrenia and is on the oral form of Haldol, and sends me letters explaining his concerns about the CIA, might agree with that. My take is that an organization that predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall as the bricks were hitting them on the head could not possibly engineer such a feat. In any case, a community leader should not engage in such accusations and rhetoric unless he believes it has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, or some other high standard (that clearly in this case has not been met).
Wright kind of lost me when he talked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the connection to the 9/11 attacks in the "chickens coming home to roost" paragraph, but I imagine he was just speaking metaphorically across the broad swath of history -- that is, he did not call up Osama on the phone and find out that the WTC was targeted as payback for devastating the Japanese in August 1945, and bringing WWII to a quick end. Full disclosure: there is some chance that I would not have been born had it not been for the use of the A-bombs -- after a couple of years of work in hunter/killer groups in the North Atlantic targeting U-boats, my father was a Lt. aboard a destroyer escort that had orders to transit the Panama Canal in August 1945 to head to the Pacific for what was termed "picket duty" (being a blocking back for larger warships), and some gentlemen flying Zeros into the decks of U.S. Navy warships may not have been terribly welcoming. It would have been a shame for me had my parents not had the chance to meet in 1947 and enjoy my birth a dozen years later. So, I'm biased, and I think Truman made the correct call. In any case, the A-bombs concluded a declared war between nation states, with the Japanese government understanding (see, esp., the Potsdam Conference) that it ought to D up or surrender or face the consequences. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but there is a distinct difference between that kind of use of force and an unannounced attack by a non-state player against a civilian target (the WTC). Nonetheless, I recognize that many left-leaning and far left history and politics professors would say that the use of the A-bomb was not justified, so Wright's comments on this topic are not as whacky as the other two discussed above. If Rev. Wright is part of the Noam Chomsky / Howard Zinn school of American History, then he is of course free to preach that line of thought (up to, but not including the point of advocacy for a specific candidate). Clearly, many in the TUCC congregation subscribe to that approach, based on the reactions in the videos. What is relevant for the U.S. electorate is whether Barack Obama shares the beliefs of his fellow TUCC congregants with respect to each of the "greatest hits" pronouncements (I don't believe he does, but until he explains specifically, one-by-one, why he disagrees with the statements on the video loop, it will be hard to know with any certainty), and if he does not, how could he be unaware of Wright's overall views after 20 years in his church? Again, TUCC members are free to hold those views, but as a politician holding such views, your ceiling is probably Mayor of Berkley, CA or Madison, WI, or congressman from Cleveland, but POTUS might be a stretch, you know, since most Americans do not subscribe to the Zinn/Chomsky interpretation of U.S. history, unless I am grossly mistaken. Even Carter only became a convert after leaving office.
