Ever heard of the Obamorons? These are the morons who will cheer anything that Barack Obama says. Right now the Obamorons are wildly enthusiastic about their man's race speech, and are trying to persuade the rest of us to stop talking about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and move on to talking about how Obama is the next best thing since Jesus Christ.
Obama does have some very good qualities, but it's clear he also has a dark side that is only now beginning to surface. Consider his bizarre analogies aimed at vindicating the Reverend Wright. Many of us, he argues, "disagree" with things that our pastors and family members have said. True, but how many of us have pastors who say stuff like the Reverend Wright? It's one thing to sit quietly while my pastor says things I don't agree with about evolution or the Rapture, quite another for Obama to sit quietly while his pastor says that America deserved to be attacked on 9/11 and that the U.S. government deliberately injected AIDS into the country. My guess is that even in the black church "God damn America!" is not exactly standard rhetoric. Certainly the Reverend Martin Luther King didn't talk like that.
Especially bizarre was Obama's analogy between the Reverend Wright and his white grandmother. According to Obama, grandma too was given to racial "stereotypes" and at one point confessed to her fear of black men. First of all Obama didn't cite what stereotypes his grandmother held. A stereotype is merely a generalization: it may be true or false, harmful or benign. As the sociological literature on the subject shows, most stereotypes contain at least a grain of truth, because stereotypes develop out of popular experience.
As I document in my book The End of Racism, fears of black men are rationally explained as the consequence of the fact that black men have the highest violent crime conviction rate of any group in our society. One out of four young black men are at any given time in prison, on probation, or on parole. Some years ago Jesse Jackson admitted that if he heard footsteps in the dark and turned back to find out that the person was white, he would feel relieved. The point here is that Obama's grandmother's views, as relayed by Obama, seem rooted in empirical facts and bear no comparison with the Reverend Wright's maniacal ravings.
Besides, she's his grandmother! We choose our pastors and mentors but we don't choose our grandparents. When Obama calls the Reverend Wright "family," this is because he selected him as a friend and teacher. At any point during the past two decades, Obama could have walked away from the pew. Wright is not "family" in the involuntary sense that Grandma is family. In addition, Obama's grandmother made her remarks in private, within the sanctity of the household. The Reverend Wright has been shouting his doctrine from the pulpit for decades. Private prejudice is much less harmful than public hate speech.
Obama is smart enough to know all this. So what is the explanation for the bizarre moral equivalence that he seeks to create between his pastor and his grandmother? It cannot be that she treated him badly, since Obama himself says she loved him more than anything in the world. The only other explanation is that Obama is that Obama is more attached to the radicalism of the Reverend Wright than he is to his kind old grandmother. He is quite willing to protect Wright, and his own presidential prospects, by throwing grandma under the bus. Hell of a guy, right Obamorons?
Reader Comments ( Page 6 of 40)
76. mo,
brandon is an example of the hate-filled atheist that i reffered to. the man rants for no reason.
hey did you rread the dialogue yesterday with paul and william hayseed, hayhead,he left off hayhorns.
it was hilarious. paul can be creative.
brandon,go swat flies for fun unless you can comment with sense man!!
brian at 12:07PM on Mar 24th 2008
77. Dear K,
PAGANS worshipped a tree, a rock, an animal,and still do, so what's your point? At least Christians finally got it right.-Monty
Monty,
Pagans worshipped the spirits that brought life to the trees and animals, not the animals or trees themselves. They worshipped the sun and moon because they thought god spirits dwelled there, just as the Hebrews and Greeks believed god dwelled on the mountain tops.
If the Christians truly "got it right" you wouldn't need faith to sustain your beliefs now would you? Truth is Christianity is paganism disguised as a dying and resurrecting Jesus. It is the latest religious fad.
As for the candidates......
No one truly represents America because America is divided. One half is way of to the left and the other half is way to the right and no one is wiling to meet half way.
I don't see DD condemning on McCain's comments on how Iran is funding terrorism. I believe McCain said 3 or 4 times that Iran is helping Al Qaeda. Shouldn't a man experienced with war know the difference between Iraqi insurrectionist (the unemployed middle class of Iraqi) and Al Qaeda (Islamic extremist who want religion and government as one?).
Yes race is a big issue but aren't we forgetting the war? These comments are far more dangerous coming from a man with itchy trigger fingers aimed at Iran than Obama's race card.
goddess1prevail at 12:07PM on Mar 24th 2008
78. I was puzzled by your statement, "Private prejudice is much less harmful than public hate speech."
How is that the case? It seems that private prejudice can be just as, if not even more, harmful than public hate speech.
The person who may not say it is still living according to those prejudices and sometimes they have power and preach from pulpits. Instead they hide behind white robes so to speak and act upon their prejudices. If you call ne the "n" word to my face, I know where you're coming from. If you're sweet as pie to me on the phone and then when I show up and you see my black face and you treat my like dirt, isn't that harmful and insidious? If you have those prejudices and deny me a loan or a job because of them isn't that dangerous?
I understood Obama's point perfectly. Growing up in the church, we call each other brother, sister and mother. The point was not dissing his grandmother, but saying those we love have ideas and say things that we don't agree with all the time but they are still our family and people are complex, just as the issue and history of racism in this country is complex. Our founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson held slaves and slept with their slaves and enslaved their own children and yet wrote words like "all men are created equal." Many church-going "Christians" went to church on Sunday morning and lynchings on Sunday afternoon.
America has treated many of its citizens of color like second class citizens and they have been the objects of homegrown terrorism, and yet we still love this country and have fought and died for it, even though it relegated us to 3/5 of a person at first and did not want to see us as citizens with equal rights. But yet, we still believe in the hope of America even though we may be angry about its treatment of African Americans(Who in their right mind wouldn't be? We should all be angered by injustice.) and its actions at times.
Roc at 12:12PM on Mar 24th 2008
79. DD: "Obama Dissed His Grandmother"
No he didn't. --Joe Bob
________________
He sure did "diss" his grandmother. He disrespected her by needlessly fingering her as a racist. Joe Bob, you claim that Obama merely used her as an example of how some of our loved ones can be racist (even though they're our loved ones.) Gee, Joe Bob...if your simple explanation makes it much clearer for people to understand racism in America then why did that genius Obama have to mention the race and relationship of his "loved one"? Why not use general terms to describe how such racism among loved ones arise much the same way you just did?
I'll tell you why not, because Obama is a bigot who thought nothing of sullying his dead grandmother's reputation. And if you think that calling someone a racist isn't an insult then you won't mind when I arbitrarily label 83% of the black people in the United States as racists, right? The truth of that statement really doesn't matter because it's not an insult in your world. So, why should anyone care if it's true or not?
And beyond his besmirching his own departed grandmother for no good reason, Obama then went on to needlessly finger ANOTHER white person as a racist in his MPU speech; a white campaign worker. And the poor girl had never even murmured a racial slur in front of his majesty. Still, Obama thought it vital to making scoring his political points that he both fabricate someone's racism and then assign it to a young white woman.
So, not only does Obama lack a sense of respect for his white ancestors, he simply lies out of convenience when it fits his political agenda.
A vote for Obama IS a vote for continued black racism in America.
Paul at 12:14PM on Mar 24th 2008
80. Paul,
"He disrespected her by needlessly fingering her..."
At least they didn't put THAT on YouTube
Mokele-Mobembe at 12:16PM on Mar 24th 2008
81. brian - you come here and repeatedly ignore all points of view that don't play in your extremely tiny world and you only post to get others riled up. You're much like Dinesh, sitting by the pool with his glass of wine, chuckling at the hate jokes.
Go fuck yourself.
brandon at 12:17PM on Mar 24th 2008
82. Paul is obsessed with calling Obama a racist.
He also makes blanket generalizations and negative stereotypical statements about African Americans.
What is wrong with this picture?
Don't listen to this "Paul".
Linda at 12:21PM on Mar 24th 2008
83. brandon,
have civilty man. and your latter comment is lude,crude, and not to mention,impossibe. be a kinder gentler person if you want respect.
brian at 12:22PM on Mar 24th 2008
84. Kat,
Your ignorance is amazing. First of all, the number of people "persecuted" by Christians does not even compare to the number of people persecuted and murdered by pagan, atheistic, Nazis and Communists! You need to study history. Second, unless you walk everywhere you need to stop complaining about oil consumption. I haven't seen any environmentalists boating to Europe or walking cross country when they need a flight; nor have they all built solar or wind powered homes. Frankly, I get sick of the hypocrisy. As far as Christ’s return, it will happen. Christians don’t need evidence. We have faith through the merciful grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Since you hate Christianity so much feel free to move to the Middle East and see how much you a Westerner and product of the Christian west is embraced!
janesophie1 at 12:22PM on Mar 24th 2008
85. paul,
how many hay names did you have for william? that was funny. i got a churtle out of all that. you wore him out. but it was good, good job
brian at 12:24PM on Mar 24th 2008
86. Paul,
Do you just ENJOY being angry? His grandma is only besmirched in the minds of people who HEARD the speech, but didn't LISTEN to it. Not to sound too much like brian, but here is an example of spreading Hate in the name of Tolerance. Does it make one a bigot to say that the potential for racism dwells within all of us?
Mokele-Mobembe at 12:24PM on Mar 24th 2008
87. If you have those prejudices and deny me a loan or a job because of them isn't that dangerous? --Roc
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No, Roc...stop bellyaching. It's not dangerous. Rather, it's ILLEGAL and I'm sure you would report such illegal activity to the nearest chapter of the NAACP or directly to Al Sharpton dot com or some other similar agency if you ever encountered it. So you can drop the bullshit story. Discrimination is illegal. If you don't get a loan or a job because of your race then you have legal recourse. So, get over it and move on, as so many have suggested white people should get over it and move on in the face of Obama's shrewd bigotry.
Paul at 12:26PM on Mar 24th 2008
88. DD: To the list of gaffes that show up in your blogs from time to time, we can now add a short memory. In today's offering, referring to Rev. Wright's anti-US venon, you asked rhetorically if members of other churchs are exposed to such rants. The answer, of course, is YES and you won't be happy to learn the sources of those diatribes.
Not long after the attacks of 9-11, Jerry Falwell and some other evangelical preachers joined Pat Robertson in proclaiming that we brought all that violence on ourselves. So, just as Wright was condemning American behavior, the aforementioned were doing the same thing. If there is any difference at all, it is one of degree.
After Robertson et al "let loose", did we witness a mass exodus from the congregation of Falwell's Lynchburg church? Did droves of students at his Liberty Univ. drop out and seek to continue their education elsewhere? Did TV viewers click on their remotes and switch off Robertson's "770 Club"? The answer is No, No, No. More importantly, did conservative talking heads like you, Limbaugh and Fox News call for just those sorts of protests?
I readily acknowledge that hypocricy resides on both sides of the political divide. But I must say that folks like you have developed it into a high art form.
Marty Adams at 12:27PM on Mar 24th 2008
89. "He also makes blanket generalizations and negative stereotypical statements about African Americans." --Linda
_______________________
Yes...I do...statements like, "My grandmother was a typical white person...she was a racist."
Linda doesn't want you to listen to me because she has chosen to defend the indefensible. I'll let you make up your own mind.
Don't listen to me if you don't want to. This is AMERICA after all. We are free to gather our own information and make our own choices.
Apparently, Linda doesn't care to grant you that same respect. She figures that you're too dumb to draw your own conclusions from the vast amount of free information out there. I won't insult you the way she does.
Paul at 12:29PM on Mar 24th 2008
90. as another minority person...i thank you for writing this article.
rebekah at 12:33PM on Mar 24th 2008