Barack Obama might just be up shit creek without a paddle.
Increased scrutiny by the corporate media has uncovered a series of blistering attacks on U.S. foreign and domestic policy by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the man who founded Obama's church, reintroduced him to Christianity, and married Obama to his wife, Michelle. Wright also coined the phrase "the audacity of hope" that Obama used for one of his books.
Since Obama began his fight for the Democratic Party nomination, he has done his best to conform to the status quo, quietly jettisoning whatever sympathy he had for the Palestinians along the way. He has worked hard to be a bland, race-neutral, and unthreatening candidate that conservative white voters could vote for.
All of that is now being jeapordized with the publicity of Wright's remarks. He put the blame for 9/11 squarely on U.S. foreign policy. He said that the government had a hand in pumping drugs into inner city communities (it did, the CIA got involved with the drug trade in Vietnam and in Central America in the 1980s), locked up a generation of young blacks, and then expected support from the black community.
All of this is anathema to Obama's soft, fuzzy, content-free campaign messages of "hope" and "change." His take on racism is that America must "move beyond" it, not that it still exists and must be fought tooth and nail, with affirmative action programs, education, and grassroots movement-building a la the civil rights movement. He has been able to skirt the issue by raising his biography.
Wright resigned as an unpaid adviser and Obama denounced Wright's remarks as "inflammatory and appalling" and issued a statement stating: "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country."
"Our great country"? Those words brought to mind something Malcolm X said five decades ago:
Obama's betrayal of his pastor in the face of the (white) corporate media's attack may undermine his support in the black community and among self-described leftists. The scandal around Wright's remarks could (undeservedly) tarnish him as a fellow traveller of the far-left, or expose him as an Uncle Tom.
The bottom line is that Wright is right and Obama is wrong, but Obama's willing to take a stand and do the wrong thing if it helps him get to the White House. When the going gets tough, Obama gets going.
4 comments:
Actually, if you read or listen to the speech, Obama doesn't say that what Wright said was incorrect; he said that the way it was said is wrong. He also said that the "white" reaction to those words was wrong. He said that divisive language, language that divides people into "us" and "them" is what is wrong in this country.
That statement is right, and is not a sell out of any sort.
I wrote this post before the speech. The quotes from Obama that I used are 100% accurate.
It was a good speech, but you have to wonder why the hell this stuff matters to anyone, what with a WAR going on, the economy tanking, and the friggin' planet melting away...
Sigh.
Well, at least I got a chance to hear a bit of Rev. Wright's sermon. Malcolm said it first and better, but I'm glad to see his spirit is still stirrin' it up. You don't have to be facing Mecca to see those chickens coming home to roost, but anybody who says "Oh, look at the chickens..." is, uh, divisive???
I call it stating the obvious. Still a political crime, apparently.
Sigh.
Jeez, I never knew somebody had that speech of Malcolm's on tape...wait, it must have been filmed first, right? Then taped, then digitalized, then uploaded...
I only knew it from these raggedy paperbacks I bought and devoured thirty years ago!
Good job, young 'uns whoever you are, and thanks POS for posting it.
Of course, from a purely historical point of view, there is NO evidence WHATSOEVER to prove that slaves who worked in the house were any less angry or prone to run away than slaves who worked in the fields...
This is vintage Malcolm, educamated in prison by the Nation of Islam cult.
He got so far beyond that...he was still thinking...he was still changing...when the bow-tie brigade cut him down.
I recently rewatched the Spike Lee film.
The part where Malcolm walks the streets of Harlem in the moments before his last speech, so deep into his premonition of death, that some old lady asks him if he's ok...
Most likely a brilliant invention by Spike Lee, BUT...totally believable...
MLK saw it coming as well.
And this Obama is the heir to all that? He has some deep understanding of what...exactly?
Delegate counts? Marketing strategies?
The agony of growing up on the mean streets of Honolulu???
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