Barack's Speech

[brotherdoobie]

How do you feel Barack handled the recent situation - regarding his pastor?

I felt that his speech was one of the most important speeches I've heard in a long while. I found it to be moving and from the heart. I found him to be honest and refreshing. I particularly enjoyed seeing him stand up for a friend...a friend who said some things out of bitterness and anger, but who has lived a life time; showing that actions - speak louder than words - all fucking day long.


Peace, Paul

[Skiz]

I knew there was a reply coming, but I was at work while the speech aired.

Know of any links where I can find it in it's entirety?

EDIT: Found it...


pWe7wTVbLUU

[j2k4]

I was not impressed, beyond viewing it as another example of his ability as an orator, although, given 7 years of Bush, sounding good by comparison is easy.

Hillary is another small property on the stump.

I think Barack might have been better-served had he not been so intent on building street-cred for the past 20-odd years in anticipation of his run for the presidency; he's played games with the question of whether he was in the pew when Wright said what he said, so his credibility, to me, suffers thereby.

Frankly, I'm more concerned that the 8,000 members of Wright's (former) flock found no problem with his sermons.

That's a lot of people living (and thinking) in the past.


Apart from that, I haven't spent much time thinking about it.


BTW-

How about this guy?

The Honorable James David Manning, PhD.

From Harlem, I believe.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OgtIqeV-6mk&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=khuu-RhOBDU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6Op5or_vkcc&feature=related

Maybe Hillary has something to explain...:whistling

[Smith]

I think he said some very intelligent and real things. I think this guy has had a tuff candidacy so far, look at what the media has been saying about him. Is he black enough? Is he too black? I even saw CNN call him Barack Osama. Is america ready for a black presidents the question that keeps being asked. I ask what the fuck does that have to do with anything. It seems like the media doesn't want a black president.

[j2k4]

Thomas Sowell on Barack and his speech:

Obama's speech

By Thomas Sowell


Did Senator Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia convince people that he is still a viable candidate to be President of the United States, despite the adverse reactions to statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright?


The polls and the primaries will answer that question. The great unasked question for Senator Obama is the question that was asked about President Nixon during the Watergate scandal; What did he know and when did he know it?


Although Senator Obama would now have us believe that he is shocked, shocked, at what Jeremiah Wright said, that he was not in the church when pastor Wright said those things from the pulpit, this still leaves the question of why he disinvited Wright from the event at which he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination a year ago.


Either Barack Obama or his staff must have known then that Jeremiah Wright was not someone whom they wanted to expose to the media and to the media scrutiny to which that could lead.


Why not, if it is only now that Senator Obama is learning for the first time, to his surprise, what kinds of things Jeremiah Wright has been saying and doing?


No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them.


The cable news journalists who are playing the tapes of those sermons were not there. The tapes were on sale in the church itself. Obama knew that because he had bought one or more of those tapes.


But even if there were no tapes, and even if Obama never heard from other members of the church what their pastor was saying, he spent 20 years in that church, not just as an ordinary member but also as someone who once donated $20,000 to the church.


There was no way that he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit.


Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.


Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech — a theatrical masterpiece — will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now "move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory.


Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful.


Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks — especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons.


Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago — even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white — in Chicago.


Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why.


But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together.


Yet the past continues to follow him, despite his attempts to bury it and the mainstream media's attempts to ignore it or apologize for it.


Shelby Steele depicts Barack Obama as a man without real convictions, "an iconic figure who neglected to become himself."


Senator Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people's psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy.


But President of the United States, in a time of national danger, under a looming threat of nuclear terrorism? No.

[deuce6000]

This is the first time since i could vote that i have actually thought about not voting.I just don't like any of the choices at all.Not sure what i will do.Maybe something will change my mind in the near future.

[devilsadvocate]

If you can watch without preconceptions the full sermons that the clips where taken from are here.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TRINITYCHGO

From all the fuss made anyone would have thought that Obama gave the sermons.

With all the noise from people that are suggesting Obama must be a racist and those saying he isn't it appears to have gone unnoticed that Obama is the only one saying we all need to stop fighting.

[Busyman™]

I knew there was a reply coming, but I was at work while the speech aired.

Know of any links where I can find it in it's entirety?

EDIT: Found it...


pWe7wTVbLUU

Thanks for that, Skizo.

Damned impressive! I hadn't heard the speech until today.

I might even give him a chance at my vote.

I like McCain because he's a maverick but he's starting to seem like a half-cocked maverick and Hillary isn't getting my vote.

[j2k4]

I've heard a shitload of people attempt to validate Obama's reasoning (I can no more disown - whatever) by likening it to "family".

Baloney.

That's the point - you can't pick your family, but you can pick your church.

He chose Trinity, which, by the way, Oprah Winfrey left, reportedly because of Wright's sermons...:whistling

[dedro]

I've heard a shitload of people attempt to validate Obama's reasoning (I can no more disown - whatever) by likening it to "family".

Baloney.

That's the point - you can't pick your family, but you can pick your church.

He chose Trinity, which, by the way, Oprah Winfrey left, reportedly because of Wright's sermons...:whistling
bad choice he made. you can choose your church:yup:

[ilw]

gotta agree that the 'like family' excuse is pathetic, but the rest of the speech was pretty good. Certainly better than anything I've seen any of your other candidates (or your president) muster up. I think he'd still get my vote if i was a merkin.

[j2k4]

gotta agree that the 'like family' excuse is pathetic, but the rest of the speech was pretty good. Certainly better than anything I've seen any of your other candidates (or your president) muster up. I think he'd still get my vote if i was a merkin.

So all it takes to get your vote is a pretty mouth?

BTW-

Here's a wee secret:

Take away Barack's teleprompter and he's almost on a par with Bush.

Truth.

[Biggles]

At this stage there is bound to be jostling for position to get leverage on the various candidates.

As far as one can see, if one strips away the dressing, these three dishes all look as if they might taste like chicken. Is there that big a choice for the US electorate this time round?

Is religion that big an issue for any of them?

Is it feasible that Obama didn't pay that much attention to the pastor and his comments because he wasn't that interested?

Were the comments anti-American or merely a yearning for a different kind of America? Pastor's are allowed to be idealistic - indeed, isn't it compulsory?

A $20,000 dollar donation to a man of Obama's means might not be desperately excessive. Has Bush or Clinton donated money to their home church and if so how much? Is such a donation really anything more than the usual political kissing of babies?

Has Obama ever said any of the things that the eccentric pastor has said or is this purely guilt by association? How many of the said pastor's sermons over the last 20 years have been uncontroversial?

All things that are relevant to the discussion but what is the level of interest amongst the voters? Are there any polls on likely voting intentions regarding turnout? Are the voters engaged or are they falling asleep?

[j2k4]

Is religion that big an issue for any of them?

It becomes an issue when the circumstances are such as Obama's; when the leader of one's church engages in such racially-charged and inflammatory sermonizing.


Is it feasible that Obama didn't pay that much attention to the pastor and his comments because he wasn't that interested?

Feasible?

I suppose so, though for one running for the Big Office, it's kinda dumb, considering the micro-examination candidates are subject to, don't you think?


Were the comments anti-American or merely a yearning for a different kind of America? Pastor's are allowed to be idealistic - indeed, isn't it compulsory?

Rev. Wright's "comments" were, at a minimum, very anti-white/pro-black (take your pick); as I said before, he started this church, and built a congregation of 8,000+...the natural assumption is that his message goes over pretty big.

Alongside this, we have the anecdotal fact that none other than Oprah Winfrey quit Wright's church because she judged his sermons to be a bit much.

Last I checked, Oprah is still black.


Has Obama ever said any of the things that the eccentric pastor has said or is this purely guilt by association? How many of the said pastor's sermons over the last 20 years have been uncontroversial?

Not the point, Les.

He sat there and took it all in, apparently without objection, as least until it became clear it could have a deleterious effect on his candidacy.

Bill Clinton (you remember him, of course; the greatest political mind of all-time, and the black president who preceded Barack) would not have been so blind.


All things that are relevant to the discussion but what is the level of interest amongst the voters? Are there any polls on likely voting intentions regarding turnout? Are the voters engaged or are they falling asleep?

No one can tell, so far this side of the actual contest, but many of us are laughing at the libs, who are tripping all over themselves trying to figure out who they will present as their candidate.

There will likely be a massive blood-letting on the democrat side shortly, and frankly, it should be great fun to watch. :whistling

[Biggles]

I am not sure why but I keep expecting Hillary, a la some sort of South Park scenario, to mutate into a scary monster (OK more scary) and eat Obama, burp and then turn into a sweet flower of Democratic womanhood again.

I need to stop watching South Park :unsure:

To be less mean, all three candidates seem much more middle-of-the-road than the options offered in recent years. McCain does not come across as a die hard Conservative and one suspects that were he to succeed he would shift even more comfortably to the middle ground to accommodate the wider constituency upon victory...or am I missing something?

[ilw]

The absurdity ... will crest over the coming week as the nation watches, ... as King is lauded on one side and Barack Obama's former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, remains lambasted on the other.

Wright is no King. His delivery is too shrill, his demeanour too hectoring, his message insufficiently unifying. Nonetheless, Wright and King come from the same tradition of militant religious leadership that has been a hallmark of black political life for well over a century. Under slavery and then segregation, the church was one of the few places that African-Americans could gather and organise autonomously - giving primacy, for better and for worse, to the pulpit and the preacher in black politics.

"The principal social institution within every black community was the church," writes historian Manning Marable in his book Black Leadership. "As political leaders, the black clergy were usually the primary spokespersons for the entire black community, especially during periods of crisis ... To some extent, this tradition has been characterised by a charismatic or dominating political style."

It is unlikely King would have fared any better on YouTube or the blogosphere than Wright did. King, like Wright, was excoriated for opposing the "senseless and unjust war" in Vietnam. "The reaction was like a torrent of hate and venom," recalled one of his aides, Andrew Young. "As a Nobel prizewinner we expected people not to agree with it, but to take it seriously. We didn't get that. We got an emotional outburst attacking his right to have an opinion."

A few months before he died, King told parishioners at his church in Montgomery, Alabama: "We are criminals in that war ... We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world ... But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." And how would God deal with an unrepentant America? "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

After a few loops of that on 24-hour cable TV, it's not difficult to imagine the anchors pressuring Bobby Kennedy to disavow all association with such a wayward black preacher.


Also watched one of Wright's sermons which the fox clips are pulled from, and quite frankly in context its really not so bad. His fire and brimstone delivery and the 9/11 conspiracy are messed up, but i get the impression that many merkin preachers are sensationalist (a result of strong market forces at work?)


edit: for the record i'm sitting on the fence, all god botherers are nuts.

[Biggles]

The absurdity ... will crest over the coming week as the nation watches, ... as King is lauded on one side and Barack Obama's former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, remains lambasted on the other.

Wright is no King. His delivery is too shrill, his demeanour too hectoring, his message insufficiently unifying. Nonetheless, Wright and King come from the same tradition of militant religious leadership that has been a hallmark of black political life for well over a century. Under slavery and then segregation, the church was one of the few places that African-Americans could gather and organise autonomously - giving primacy, for better and for worse, to the pulpit and the preacher in black politics.

"The principal social institution within every black community was the church," writes historian Manning Marable in his book Black Leadership. "As political leaders, the black clergy were usually the primary spokespersons for the entire black community, especially during periods of crisis ... To some extent, this tradition has been characterised by a charismatic or dominating political style."

It is unlikely King would have fared any better on YouTube or the blogosphere than Wright did. King, like Wright, was excoriated for opposing the "senseless and unjust war" in Vietnam. "The reaction was like a torrent of hate and venom," recalled one of his aides, Andrew Young. "As a Nobel prizewinner we expected people not to agree with it, but to take it seriously. We didn't get that. We got an emotional outburst attacking his right to have an opinion."

A few months before he died, King told parishioners at his church in Montgomery, Alabama: "We are criminals in that war ... We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world ... But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." And how would God deal with an unrepentant America? "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

After a few loops of that on 24-hour cable TV, it's not difficult to imagine the anchors pressuring Bobby Kennedy to disavow all association with such a wayward black preacher.


Also watched one of Wright's sermons which the fox clips are pulled from, and quite frankly in context its really not so bad. His fire and brimstone delivery and the 9/11 conspiracy are messed up, but i get the impression that many merkin preachers are sensationalist (a result of strong market forces at work?)


edit: for the record i'm sitting on the fence, all god botherers are nuts.

Fair point well presented. There are a fair number of churches where one can hear some fairly radical stuff every Sunday - Fred Phelpps' mob are much nastier.

I seem to recall that Carter's church wouldn't let black people be deacons of the church - he voted against that rule but he didn't leave when it was passed as far as I am aware (although Kev isn't one of Carter's biggest fans anyhoo as I recall :whistling )

[Snee]

The Daily Show's first take on it. (http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=164437&title=baracks-wright-response)

There was another segment as well that covered media rections to it, that was pretty ace but I can't find it now.