Obama's Philadelphia Speech

im not sure i'd call it racism. that's a touchy subject as the speech alluded to. everyone has a bit of racism or prejudice in them anyhow, its basically when it leads to actions is the problem.
i think it has more to do with ignorance (not in a condecending or demeaning but factual way) and isolated communities. my high school had a very high white population (as did where i spent the 2nd half of my childhood), my college experiences were much different. there's a lot of diversity within regions of metropolitin areas in many places. the greater sacramento area has many high white communites (not where i live) but at the same time its been voted as the most mixed/melting pot of ethnicities of all cities in the country. but yet if you go more rural within the state or head to southern california it gets much less diverse. granted southern california has a high latino population but orange county in particular has a ~1% african american population so its only natural to see bias in cases such as that where there is no real community or exposure/integration of peoples.

As was mentioned earlier, this year was the Democrats' free pass. All they had to do was get behind any warm body and run a "We're Not Dubya" campaign right into the White House. With all their bickering, they're giving McCain time and ammo. We might have an election on our hands here rather than a defacto referendum.

Quite honestly, this whole situation should have been a non-issue. Obama spends a lot of time with an opinionated crackpot. So what. I would bet good money there isn't a single one of us here that doesn't have a friend/family member/associate that's just as silly. Heck, some of us here ARE the opinionated crackpot... Now, being a good Republican, I reserve the right to beat this dead horse to a pulp should we face Obama in the election, but for now, it really seems like a lot of yammering about nothing.

It's almost like the media is playing a game that's going to blow up in their face. They crowned the Ice Queen, and then starting cozying up to Obama to the point where he had been crowned, and now have manufactured an excuse to rip the crown off his head and get the fight going again. You'd think the liberal media would figure out that their quest for an exciting primary is going to make the election a legit competition. Or maybe that's the game they're playing. By weakening the Democratic candidates, an election that would have been a walkover suddenly becomes something to report about for 6 months. It would be pretty funny if the media's gaming cost their candidate of choice the election.

Well, that's seems to be main preocupation with mass media in the UK as well. Be it a soccer player, singer or a politician, they like nothing better than to build them up just to bring them them down again. Controversy ( even if only a fabricated one) helps to sell tabloids and 24 hour news networks are only too eager to conjure "news" from the thin air....

skavenhorde said:

Obama will crush McCain due to the fact that McCain is so closely tied to that war now. Not to mention that McCain has to deal with the resentment a lot of people feel towards the Republican party for the mess were in now with the economy and world opinion.

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The debate will change for Obama in the general election, because McCain matches up against him differently. His rhetoric and ambition will be compared against McCain's record of obvious heroism and long service to his country. Everyone hates the war, but McCain's support for it is understandable since most Americans supported it at one point themselves.

Personally, I'd love it if we could just turn and walk away from the war. Who wouldn't? That's exactly what Obama started off saying he would do. That and the fact that he opposed it from the beginning are what defined his candidacy.

But he eventually hedged on that, saying he would send troops back in if it became necessary. So now it's no longer a question of walking away. It's become a question of what's really necessary in Iraq, and that's the debate McCain wants.

Obama will keep playing up how he hasn't made many mistakes while downplaying how he hasn't actually had that many opportunities to make decisions either. That works a lot better against Hillary than it will against McCain. McCain can do what she can't. He'll talk about actual experience.

I'm a Republican who thinks the Republicans don't deserve another term in the White House. All the Democrats have to do is nominate a decent candidate, and I'll vote for her.

dte wrote:

It's almost like the media is playing a game that's going to blow up in their face. They crowned the Ice Queen, and then starting cozying up to Obama to the point where he had been crowned, and now have manufactured an excuse to rip the crown off his head and get the fight going again. You'd think the liberal media would figure out that their quest for an exciting primary is going to make the election a legit competition.

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Good points, dte. I heard some of the talking heads on MSNBC saying pretty much the same thing about the campaign situation being a reporter's dream as long as neither candidate is clearly in the lead. That is, the daily stories and distortions will bite the dust if even their favorite, Obama, shows a final dominance.

I've been saying all along the Rev Wright thing is a mudsling, and doesn't have anymore to do with Obama's political views than Mr. Hagee has to do with McCain's policies, and imo Hagee has some equally scary opinions:
These guys preach the bible for a living--they are melodramatic and full of hellfire and brimstone for the same reason that sex scandals sell papers and lawyers chase ambulances.

I have to agree with both you & Squeek (much as it pains me )about all this confusion lying directly at the Democratic Party's door. I think the hideous end result may be a revival of a Hillary/Obama ticket, which would suit her down to the ground.

JDR13 said:

Why is Barack Obama always refered to as a "Black" man?

Is it not common knowledge that he is 50\50 white-black? His father was Kenyan and his mother was Caucasian, yet everyone seems to think he's just "black".

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This is America, my friend. If you father was black, you are black!

Personally, I've never known anyone whose race was decided for them. As far as I can tell, it's always been a matter of agreeing with whatever someone decides for themselves. So if someone says they're black or white (or whatever), then they're black or white (or whatever).

Now that Reverend Wright has come out and responded to what he called attacks against the black church, the media's attention has once again been refocused on this issue and may be worth a revisit here.

I found Dr. Wright's comments to be intelligent, clever and entertaining and now wish I had had the opportunity to hear him preach. Not that I agree with everything he has to say -- I don't -- but what's the point of hearing a sermon that's limited to opinions you already share and information you already know?

From a public relations point of view, Wright is doing exactly the wrong thing, and that's bad news for the Obama campaign. If he was going to respond, he needed to have done that immediately. And it needed to be done in a way that communicated straightforward honesty. This wasn't the right time for clever retorts and rapier wit.

Reverend Wright was probably a fine preacher and is someone Obama has undoubtedly benefited from knowing, but I think it's safe to say that Wright won't be getting a Christmas card from the Obamas this year.

I agree, Squeek that this is a really bad time for Wright to cash in on his new brand-name quality, as it were, but I hope it does for a lot of intelligent people what it did for you--that is, get them to take a little closer look at what's behind the sound bytes and scare tactics. Probably too much to hope that it can counter the whole negative weight of all that, though.

Are you talking about the Bill Moyers interview or has he done something more while I wasn't looking? That one is supposed to be very good.

Edit : Yeesh--I googled him--he really has been whooping it up out there!

Squeek, I agree with you. I am black and I enjoyed Wright's NAACP speech.

However, I do disagree with the broad strokes he takes to distinguish the learning styles of black kids versus other groups (claiming we are more 'right' brained oriented). In my mind it seemed like he was trying to say we didn't have the proper wiring to learn analytical and objective subjects such as math & science. I mean, I know he is speaking in broad symbols and realizes there are exceptions, but its promoting negative ideas to those who already feel blacks don't have the tools to excel academically. Being a former software programmer, this is a subject dear to my heart.

Honestly I believe the ability to sit still in class and to respect your teacher and learning process is a question of NURTURE & environment, not something innate.
Your parents either instill in you the value of school, education, and learning OR they don't. True, there are still going to be cut-ups regardless (heh -- even I got in a trouble a bit in middle school), but I think that's more personality than race.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

As a slight aside from the main thread of Obama/Wright issue for a while, let me quote something from Jane Smiley's artice from todays The Huffington Post:
"But Obama wouldn't have this problem if Americans didn't have the idea that their president has to be a man of faith. If Americans thought that the president just had to be an intelligent and knowledgeable person, a competent policy wonk and an inspiring public speaker, Obama would be home free. But as an atheist, or an agnostic, or even someone who kept his beliefs to himself, Obama would have never had a chance. He could be ten times as smart and well-prepared as George W. Bush, but he would never get the votes."

I could not have put it any better myself!

How does Jane Smiley know how important Obama's religion is or isn't to him and whether or not he would have promoted that aspect of himself under different circumstances? Isn't she only guessing?

John McCain has been keeping his beliefs pretty much to himself. He's responded to questions about his faith, but that's about all. That may have hurt him in the South where some voters seemed to have preferred the pro-life position of some of his opponents, but that's been the only impact so far.

I strongly believe the concept of racial differences is nonsense. When I was a high school teacher, the school had a very high proportion of Asian students. There were however, 2 very distinct groups. One group were recent immigrants, the other was primarily students who had been born here. They were VERY different in attitude, ethos, etc. Your cultural environment while growing up makes FAR more difference than your racial heritage!! People are people, no matter how different they make look on the outside. Skin colour, race, ethnic origen shouldn't/doesn't make any difference IMO!!

Well, Reverend Wright has officially been "kooked" by the media and everyone, and Obama stepped right up and severed ties with him. Kooks don't have to be taken seriously. So that solves that problem.

Wright wasn't worth losing the Presidency over, apparently. He wasn't part of the change Obama keeps asking all of us to buy into with our votes. He'll probably end up writing a book, doing a few speaking engagements and maybe a Larry King interview.

Wright is a smart, well educated veteran who served his country and his parish who blew it when he exorcised his right of freedom of speech at the wrong time. He became an inconvenience for a Presidential candidate, and now he's nothing but a kook.

Obama never knew about Wright's kooky side. Yeah, right.

Isn't that an American tradition, Milk and Kookies!!

Well, nobody made him act like a kook. He did that on his own steam. And btw he is writing a book that goes on sale in November. I agree with you, Squeek that it always seems to be about selling a story with the media, though, never about substance.

Obama's in a no win situation imo. If you look at the video of his speech, you can see he's not just mouthing a convenient bunch of platitudes, he's deeply angered at what he feels is a betrayal on a personal level--which perhaps is a two way street, of course. But I really don't see what else he can do at this point. As a politician, he certainly is not able to accept this kind of vulnerability. I do give Hillary a few points for not jumping into the fray(yet) but she really doesn't have to--Wright made the choice to come out now with his message and doesn't seem to mind that he himself is throwing Obama's campaign under the bus and he doesn't need any help.

...who blew it when he exorcised his right of freedom of speech at the wrong time.

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I bet the Obama camp wishes Wright's freedom of speech *had* somehow been "exorcized" instead of exercised.

Anyway, while I have no quarrel with Wright and I find him charismatic, entertaining and intelligent--except maybe about the AIDS thing--and I'm sure he's been an excellent force in his community, my personal take is that Wright really isn't and shouldn't be worth losing the presidency over. Is he going to be sitting in at foreign policy sessions and figuring out how to withdraw troops from Iraq? Is he going to advise Obama on how to lower gas prices? Would he be greeting world leaders at political summits and negotiating global agreements? Naaa--he's what he's always been, a candidate's pastor and pretty irrelevant to running the country, and a non-factor in judging who is and isn't qualified to do it.

But then religion is pretty much a closed book to me and I freely admit I don't understand its importance to many people. Still--I don't think it mates well with politics.


@Corwin Milk and Kookies go great with guns for breakfast.