Comments
It’s a good speech but like everything else in politics it’s not going to change anyone’s mind I don’t think. The right will pick it apart and cite certain passages as proof that Obama is a radical racial separatist who hates America. The Clinton camp will use it as proof that he’s unelectable. And people who already support him will think it’s a great speech and solidifies their opinion of him. What I find so absurd is Clinton supporters on liberal message boards talking about how incendiary and dangrous Wright’s speeches were when pretty much any other time of year the same stuff is being said and talked about and advocated on those same forums by the people whose support they would otherwise be courting were Obama not forcing her and them further to the right in their rhetoric and approach.
Holy crap, Pat’s back! Is that the video of the speech? I can’t view it at work, but I’m hoping it is.
Yeah. Reading transcripts is for lamers.
the guy is a decent speaker, ill give him that, and i agree with some of the speech, but i can pick up on some of his double talkin’ jive in there.
i can accept that his views are not necessarily his pastors views and he probably does disaggree with some of what he says, but to say that he’s never heard the man ever speak like that? seriously? i cant beleive that wright woke up on that day and decided that on that particular day he was no longer down with whitey.
ofcourse i dont really find what wright said to be racist, but its about as helpful as any ridiculous statement al sharpton would make. they broaden the racial divide more then close it, so its not something id like to see a president involved in.
also, i thought its was funny that he condemned the talk at one part, and that in another part tried to tell the people that they are misunderstanding what goes on in his church because we have an untrained ear.
i dont think that this was an isolated incident, and i think that if it was me, and i heard my pastor talking views that were not my own, then i wouldve changed churches immediately, not 20 years down the line.
i dont really think that this paints him as a racist also, but i cant see this as being anything more then damage control, and an attempt to appeal to every side, but hey, that is politics right there.
i totally agree with kevin on the clinton angle. very dirty players that camp is.
by the way john, what did you mean by freaking out? whats the freak out about?
See, I don’t get this whole “If my pastor/rabbi/whatever” said something I didn’t agree with I’d leave the church standard that Obama is being held to. People disagree with their clergymen and their church all the time and aren’t expected to switch. Ask the millions of libeera pro-life catholics, or the conservative pro-war and pro-death penalty catholics. And I also take issue with the fact that this guy is essentially a family friend and mentor of 20 some years for Obama and there are people out there who are angry at him for not denouncing the words of this family friend strongly enough. And it’s being discussed at length on every news show and channel. Meanwhile nowhere near the same number of words and segments have been devoted to the 2 right wing evangelical preachers whose endorsement John McCain sought out, never having met them or having any history with them beyond cravenly needing the votes of their followers, and knowing full well the types of they’ve said which are more or less a lot of the same things that Wright said but from a right wing rather than left wing perspective. Overall as an atheist I think they’re all a load of bunk, and I wish people everywhere would shut the fuck up about religion. But if we’re going to spill countless amounts of ink and airtime examining the political/religious affilliations of one guy then it should be done the same amount on the other side as well.
like i said before, i doubt that wrights point of view came up over night. hes most likely been talking that way for 20 years, and being a family friend of obama for 20 years he’s definitely heard it.
now mccain may be seeking endorsments from guys who have no religious affilation with him, but theres the difference, they’re view hasn’t tainted his over the course of 20 years, while wrights has with obama.
i agree kevin, lets divide religious views from politics, but the problem here is that wrights view isnt one of religion so much as one of race, and instigates hatred.
he happens to be a pastor, but even if he was just a family friend, some other type of public speaker and confidant of obamas, the situation would be the same.
it would still concern me that the guy that supposed to bring the nation together is taking time to listen to people who would drive it apart.
and the leave the church standard is what i would hold myself to, shouldnt i expect the same from my president?
Yeah, but let’s be honest assuming you vote, I’m going to guess that nothing Obama said or did is going to get you to vote for him since you’re predisposed to think this stuff about him and this is just red meat for your basic opinion already. Just as very little McCain could do or say would get you to not vote for him since you agree with him on a bunch of other stuff so this is stuff you’re willing to overlook. I’m the first to admit that the same goes for me in reverse. None of it is going to change how I feel at the core about that candidate. But as far as the media coverage it still should be held to the same standard. If we’re looking into someone affilliated with Obama’s camp who has said this type of stuff and it’s played over and over and over and over again on all the news outlets over the course of a week and has all of these articles written on it, and on the flip side several people affilliated with McCain’s camp have said the same things (albeit about different groups of americans) don’t you think both deserve an equal airing for people to be able to decide? Especially if there’s just as much if not more evidence in McCain’s words, actions, and voting records showing that he agrees with the stuff those guys say as there is Obama’s? Whether one’s long term pastor is or isn’t a bigot or whether someone actively sought out the approval, counsel, and company of someone who is or isn’t a bigot is really splitting hairs. If one candidate is being held to the “How does the religious company they keep infuse their actions and voting record?” then so should the rest of them. Clinton included.
My more succinct point I guess is that the media examining this stuff is ostensibly for the independent voter to have all the facts and help them decide for themselves. And if there’s an equal airing of the wack jobs on both sides and someone wants to decide as you did that McCain’s people saying “America deserves to be condemned” is less egregious than Obama’s people saying the same thing then that’s their assesement of it having seen both sides equally. But airing one ad nauseum on a seemingly endless loop, and the other getting little more than a passing mention in a few papers seems decidedly unbalanced informatively speaking.
ok, your assessment on me is not entirely accurate. you assumed since i had negative things to say about obama that i would never have voted for him, then you further thought that because i didnt like obama i must like mccain (what i love though, is that you basically figured no one could vote for clinton and didnt even factor her in – which i concur).
honestly i havent weighed in on who i would vote for yet. my definite picks are already out of the race, and im not sold on anyone else yet, including and especially mccain. i like some of what obama has said (like his thoughts on border control) but havent gotten behind him mainly on his war vote, which is at the moment the only thing i can think of that would score points for mccain with me.
i dont pick a side based on the R or D after a candidates name. ill decide who i share the most opinion wise with and will vote from there. i guess what has you making that profile of me is that i often create argument and try to be the voice of dissent on here, which as ive said before, i do that sometimes just for the sake of doing. ive did say before that i didnt think clinton or obama would see the white house, but my reasoning there was that i didnt think the people were ready to vote away from the norm (and i like to gamble on politics, see my very first post on the scrabbled).
over the past year ive seen things that i liked from a lot of people on different sides, and ill be honest and say that my opinions and ideals tend to lean right (which i know here makes me half a monster around here). my number one pick was rudy. he seemed to be the guy who was guided less by the party he was registered in and more by common sense. since he dropped out ive really been waiting for someone to sway me, and all i can say is that this didnt help obama in my eyes.
now, as far as that topic of fairness goes, mccain would be crucified on here and in the press if his religious leader had said the same things. if he has, let me know, i like to be swayed, i try to approach it all with an open mind, and like i said my jury is still out on this election. im not voting red, im not voting blue, im not voting male, female, black, or white. im voting for the person that speaks most whats in my head, and if i were obama i couldnt hold a person that talked that way in such high esteem. sorry.
i know this isnt some fancy speech or anything, but it feels more true, less like damage control, and i think serves him better:
http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=f8cea2d9-af02-4de4-b336-3519b69784f5
the lengths people go to sully someone’s rep…
politics is like reality TV, in the way that they’re all just out there to smear whoever’s winning.
Sorry, if I assumed too much Derrick, but on here you definitely appear to lean more R than D and you’ve said a lot of times over the past year that you would be money that Obama would never be president, presumably because of reasons like this. You’ve also mentioned having a favorable opinion of McCain. If I assumed wrong, apologies. Although you’re right it’s funny that neither of us are even considering someone voting for Clinton.
As for McCain he solicited the endoresements of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and embraced them on stage and both have said outright that America deserved the 9/11 attacks because we’ve tolerated feminism, abortion, and gays. He also actively solicited the endoresement of Reverend Hagee who is a big evangelical leader and has said the same things about god condemning america for those same reasons and has also talked about Catholicism being a “whore religion” and needing to wipe Islamic countries off the map. Here’s a good link with an article collecting a lot of the information about Hagee and comparing the general treatment of the two.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/28/hagee/index.html
Like I said, there’s definitely some merit to the difference between Wright being Obama’s long term pastor and McCain just jumping on stage with these guys and embracing them when it’s politically expedient. However, like I said it’s a pretty slim, hair splitting difference and if the media covered both stories the same and a majority of people came to the same conclusion you did that one is somehow better than the other then that’s informed democracy in action. But yesterday during an hour at the gym with 4 tvs on all tuned to news channels every single one of them in an hour span showed the Wright clips at least 2-3 times each and had pundits on discussing them ad nauseum. There was nothing even close to that similar a level for McCain and Robertson and Hagee.
Meh. It was a good speech that covered all the bases, but his delivery was uncomfortable. I agree with Kevin in that I don’t see why this issue would influence someone’s decision to vote for Obama. That’s like saying I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000 because he campaigned at Bob Jones U or never distanced himself from his grandfather’s attempt to form an army to overthrow the government. I had billions of other, better reasons not to vote for the guy that weren’t so nebulous and stretched across his relationships with other people. Jeremiah Wright’s an epic-level asshole, but a church is often the cultural epicenter of the American black community and Obama couldn’t really afford to turn his back on that.
I think a lot of us more secular types, growing up in a nation settled by a hell of a lot of Puritans, have developed an ability that allows us to sense the Religious-Crazy in people’s eyes. A superpower to intuit when someone crosses the line from devout worshiper to Wingnut McCrazypants. I could catch the reek coming off Bush from a thousand miles away… you can easily assemble the contextual clues and see a guy who believes himself divinely appointed (along with a bunch of other silly shit). I don’t get a sense that McCain or Obama put Weirdly enough, I get a little bit of that scary vibe from Hilary… though I think we could replace the concept “God” with “Self”.
Kevin said:Sorry, if I assumed too much Derrick, but on here you definitely appear to lean more R than D and you’ve said a lot of times over the past year that you would be money that Obama would never be president, presumably because of reasons like this. You’ve also mentioned having a favorable opinion of McCain. If I assumed wrong, apologies. Although you’re right it’s funny that neither of us are even considering someone voting for Clinton.
As for McCain he solicited the endoresements of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and embraced them on stage and both have said outright that America deserved the 9/11 attacks because we’ve tolerated feminism, abortion, and gays.
yeah, like i said in my previous post, my philosophies do learn more to the right. also, my bets on obama (and clinton) were for two reasons, 1. i just didnt see the country ready to vote a woman or a black man, and 2. me and john had bets on the presidential election 4 years ago, it made election day fun to follow for me. ill totally admit that my first point was wrong, which helps restore some of my faith in humanity.
did i say i favored mccain? i dont remember, so i cant say why. im for staying in iraq, i admit that, so it mightve been about that, but for me its not enough for me to elect the whole package on one issue. i just did a search on him and then read my comments and didnt see anything but maybe the search function is flawed. cant imagine how that could be. i know that some one else said they would vote mccain before clinton, but that wasnt me (though i would at that point).
thanks for providing text for me to compare. though i still see a difference between the too (though even ill say its slight), i still agree that it bugs me to see politics and religion entangled. its hard to untangle them though because sometimes you have to consider it part of what makes the persons morals and values. honestly my big beef with the whole issue (as stated originally by me, and them in my rebuttal to your comments) is that i just dont by him not hearing this from the guy ever, and even between his original reaction, to his speech, he slowly breaks down from never hearing things like that, to hearing things like that but dimissing them. i dont totally not like the guy, i just didnt see the speech as being anything great, or anything to freakout about, just damage control. the interview was more real, more believable, and he told me the things i want to hear.
obama could win. i think he stands a really good chance, and ill loose my bet. but i cant say for sure that he would be my guy. i wont be pissed if he wins, i wont move to canada, ill ride it out for four years, judge him on his progress and vote accordingly. if its clinton though, im outta here.
also falwell’s dead, so you win.
Amazingly enough, Huckabee actually made some great points about the speech.
Derrick, I’m curious to know what you think Obama and Clinton would do that would make you want to leave?
“As for McCain he solicited the endoresements of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and embraced them on stage and both have said outright that America deserved the 9/11 attacks because we’ve tolerated feminism, abortion, and gays.”
im just going to weigh in on these topics so you can see where my head is at:
i dont think america deserved 9/11.
i think that since the feminist movement theres been a sharp decline in family values, but i blame that on parents not being around and too tired from working all the time to be able to put their full attention into what the child is doing, hence tv becomes the parent.
i dont agree with abortion, but its such a fine line of whats alive and what isnt. ive seen lots of people actually use it as just another form of birth control, and i think thats kind of sickening. if its legal you might as well keep it that way because i think the back alley abortionist idea is something you dont want happening. ultimately then, i think that the issue is something that the person who options to have the abortion has to deal with themselves when their head hits the pillow, and i wont really push my opinion on them. 5 years ago i wouldve given a different answer, but my opinion changed over time. parenthood probably had something to do with it.
gays? i dont care what people do, and i dont really hold marriage sacred anyway. hell, both my parents have been married 3 times each. so, sure, you want to marry a girl, marry a girl, you want to marry a guy, marry a guy, you want to marry a horse…. alright thats pushing it. in the end its between you and your bank account. or half of it.
John said:Derrick, I’m curious to know what you think Obama and Clinton would do that would make you want to leave?
i didnt say i would leave if obama won. and havent you been catching my and kevins jabs at clinton this whole time?
Yeah, but, jabs is one thing. Leaving the country cause of Clinton (and not because of Bush or McCain), is another entirely.
i think you need to lighten up and maybe reread what i said….
except for the line he stole from dr. king.
that was an intentional cheep shot just meant as a joke by the way (the line im talking about “we gotta make a way out of no way”).
i wouldve just assumed he wrote it, since it was mostly like a mini autobiography, very personal.