3/20/2008
Listening to Obama’s speech on race in this country a few days back again reinforced to me the fact that Obama is a highly skilled politician. First, because the guy can deliver a speech so brilliantly. And this one was truly brilliant.
At the same time, it left no doubt in my mind that this guy is just another politician, not the savior he’s being billed as by his loyal supporters. And I’m surprised that no one has yet called out the fact that Obama was telling us things that his grandmother once said, likely thinking that it would never go past their intimate family circle.
Instead, Senator Obama aired his family’s dirty laundry out for the nation to see and history to record. The fact that his grandmother once said that she was afraid to walk past black men on the street — Jesse Jackson once said the same thing, btw — and that his grandmother has in the past uttered “racial epithets” that made him cringe. I’m assuming his grandmother must be dead and his mother still alive since he didn’t air her dirty laundry in the speech.
The fact is, once Pastor Wright’s statements emerged in public, Senator Obama tossed him aside. When we began to hear Pastor Wright’s sermons saying that God should “damn” America and that HIV was manufactured by the government to kill Blacks, Senator Obama quickly move Pastor Wright off of his advisory council.
Then, when people began to seriously ask Senator Obama why he stayed in that church for 20 years, he tried to justify it by pulling his own grandmother into the fray and using her as a negative example. “Well,” says the Senator in so many words, “my white grandmother said racist thing too!” Of course, what he forgets to mention — but that which we all know anyway — is that you can pick your pastors and your church, but you cannot pick your family members.
You can, however, publicly humiliate them by pointing out their racist views to the entire country I guess.
If that’s not a skilled and typical politician for you, then I don’t know what is.
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