Imagining Barack Abroad

Our heroic world traveller is meeting with Ahmadinejad of Iran.  Outside, with cameras rolling, crowds are chanting "Death to the Great Satan!"  Cut to Barack:

"This hatred of America has a long history.  And it is part of Iran - I could no more expect Ahmadinejad to disown it than I could expect him to disown the Iranian community, or his blessed grandmother.  Besides, I heard this stuff all the time in my church back in America, and I recognize it is a distraction form the real issue of better health care for all Iranians..."

OK, maybe not.

Comments

[Jane]

Poor Barack. He's toast!

And today is the day Hillary releases her WH schedule, or notes, or something we've been waiting for. Is she hoping all the attention to the Messiah will deflect that fact that she didn't bring peace to Northern Ireland? Will we suddenly realize she was home baking cookies and standing by her man? How many hours will go by before we realize that oh so many records are missing?

Or do we not even care cause the BO implosion is more fun to watch?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[kim]

Do you suppose he'll bring up 'perverse and hateful ideologies' during tea for two with Ahmadi-Nijad? Or with the right Reverend Jeremiah Wright?
===============================

[kim]

I'm waiting for Obama's grandmother to announce she is supporting Hillary.

And what about the bomber assembly plant in Leavenworth? I think he is dead wrong about that and I would like to be a fly on the wall when she next speaks to him. They assembled bombers in Wichita, because it was far from the coasts and already had endemic airplane manufacturing talent. Boeing is in Wichita, the Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth.
================================

[capitano]

Compare and contrast BO's statements regarding Don Imus:

"He didn't just cross the line," Obama said. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women -- who I hope will be athletes -- that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It's one that I'm not interested in supporting."

[Appalled Moderate]

Guys:

You are setting yourself up for this:

REPORTER: Did Barack tell you about his speech?

GRANDMOTHER: Oh yes. We talked about it. He is a fine man, isn't he? Gonna be President.

REPORTER: Ma'am, Senator Obama compared you to his pastor, who has said...

GRANDMOTHER: Pastor Willie, just last week, said we're all going to Hell. And he's such a nice man too.

I know, I said some things around Barry. I just didn't think. We talked about this 20 years ago. We came to an understanding. I never understood before. Folks my age don't always understand...

REPORTER: But he compared you....

GRANDMOTHER: What is your point young man? Barry is family. You want me to talk bad about family?

REPORTER: Well, some people think Obama

GRANDMOTHER: Senator Obama, young man..

REPORTER: Senator Obama talked bad about family...

GRANDMOTHER: He was speaking from the heart, young man, and he talked to me about it first. I don't mind. I was wrong, just like his pastor was wrong, but he still has a Chrstian love for us both. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?

REPORTER: But...

GRANDMOTHER: Young man, please leave. Your hairspray is making me want to sneeze. But please vote for Barry. OK?

[narciso]

Of course, Jericho, is in Kansas, although not so near Wichita. On the best 'troofer' serial, they threw a little spin, once one gets past the references to Jennings & Rall (Halliburton)and Ravenwood (BlackWater) to the British East India Company & "Hessian mercenaries"; and "it's not a country, it's a company, it turns the great atrocity was provoked by one of those earnest reformers/
whistleblowers and it didn't turn out quite like he thought, leaving the British East India Company in charge. Of course, now the race is on, to prevent the earnest reformer,
"Al Gore" who nuked the village in order to save it, from decapitating Cheyenne, and plunging America back into darkness.

[Neo]

Now there is the "Obama-Wright escape" clause for those embarrassing situations where you can now say .. "I can no more likely renounce him/her than Obama could renounce Rev. Wright."

Wow. Doesn't that make the world a better place ?

[Neo]

Or .. I would like to invoke my "Obama-Wright escape" clause rights.

Ranks right up there with the 5th amendment.

[Jane]

Sheesh that Hit just keeps getting his star hoisted. Clarice and my beloved, Mark Steyn, publishes him at the link under my name.

Ya gotta scroll down.

[Neo]

Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s bigotry amounts to too little too late. The time to stand up to him wasn’t now, when his association with Wright is sinking his hopes for the White House. The time to have stood up to Wright was when Obama was just another member of his church. If he truly believes in what he says he believes, he should have walked out of Wright’s church or grabbed Wright’s microphone and told his fellow churchgoers that Wright was wrong and that they mustn’t hate. In twenty years of attending Wright’s church, why didn’t Obama once stand before his fellow church members and tell them that they mustn’t hate their country and their fellow Americans?

[centralcal]

Jane: thanks for the link to Steyn, which then led me to go check out VIMH. I just love Hit's homage to Clarice with the photo of the world record carp!

[MayBee]

From Lynne Sweet at the Sun Times:

On Friday, Obama, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama said something different. “I'll be honest with you. I wasn't in church when any of those sermons were issued.”

A new kind of honesty.

[clarice]

A new kind , indeed. He's as crooked as Hit is funny. And you know I think Hit IS funny.

A little morning sherbet. (The Washington Post rather uniformly reports Obama's speech as something just slightly less fantastic than the Gettysburg Address or the Sermon on the Mount. (Pheh)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/its_time_to_call_the_democrats.html

[michaelt]

It depends on how you define "those."

[Neo]

NPR comfirms that the policies of the Bush Administration on global warming are working.

[anduril]

Jay Cost this morning provides a sympathetic reading of Obama's speech, as well as a critique. More than most commentaries I've seen it provides a springboard to further discussion of some of the profound issues involved:

On Obama's Speech

[Ranger]

I think this is an interesting question (imagining Obama abroad) because it gets to one of the core roles of the president, which is to speak for America to the world. Obama says he loves this country, but he won't wear a US Flag pin or put his hand over his heart when the national anthem is played. There are only two explanations for that which I can see.

1) He really isn't that proud of America.

Or

2) He is proud, but he is too embarrased of that pride to display it to his family and friends back home in Hyde Park and Kenwood.

If the answer is 1, then I don't see any way he can be an advoate for America to the world.

If the answer is 2, then I wonder how he can be an advocate for America to our true adversaries when he doesn't have the courage to be an advocate for America to his wife and friends.

[anduril]

Obama is imbued with a Marxist style of thought, for whom truth (and honesty) is what works at the moment.

[Jane]

I don't think it's about pride, or love of country or anything like that. I think Obama wants to be at one with the world. If that means we give in a little to sharia law, well that's for the good of one world. There should be no borders, and everyone in the world deserves to have a piece of its richness.

[anduril]

Robert Tracinski has another outstanding article, The Meaning of Obama's Speech on Race, this time with the bonus of a substantial quote from one of my favorite social commentators, Stanley Kurtz:

What is good about the speech is that it says the one thing Obama needed to say to differentiate himself from the Reverend Wright and to restore the basis for his support among many of his supporters.

In one key passage, Obama assures whites that he understands their resentment at constantly being vilified as racist and blamed for all of the ills suffered by blacks.

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience--as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch.... So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Equally important, Obama explicitly recognizes that America has made progress in rejecting racism. "The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is...that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made.... But what we know--what we have seen--is that America can change."

This is a bit of an understatement to describe a society that has transformed itself in 50 years--the span of an adult lifetime--from a country in which racial segregation was practiced openly and defiantly, to one in which even the suspicion of racial prejudice can ruin a man's career and reputation. Just as America once tore itself apart to end slavery, so in the past five decades it has turned itself upside down to exterminate racism. Obama's recognition is the smallest down payment he could possibly offer on the credit America is owed for its record on racism. But it is, I suppose, the best we've heard from a prominent black politician on the left.

At the same time that he offers this reassurance to whites, however, he offers an opposite reassurance for his black listeners, telling them that he will not entirely disown racial rabble rousers like Wright. The reverend's church, he explains, "contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America." Wright "contains within him the contradictions--the good and the bad--of the community that he has served diligently for so many years." And so therefore, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

And if his white audience is still uncomfortable with this, he subtly intimidates them with an insidious appeal to liberal white guilt, implying that "the fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons" shows that whites are disconnected from the legitimate grievances of blacks, and thus "to condemn [that anger] without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

And here you thought shouting "God damn America" and concocting slanderous conspiracy theories was unforgivable--and you didn't realize that when you thought that, you were widening the chasm of misunderstanding between the races. Don't you feel terrible? Perhaps it is safer just to keep your mouth shut from now on.

The upshot is described pretty accurately by Stanley Kurtz:

Wright's view of America is rejected as mistaken, and insufficiently hopeful about the country's potential to change. Yet in the end Wright is embraced, accepted, and even to a degree justified. Wright has some basis for what he says, yet also makes mistakes, we're told, and are then reminded that the same can be said for opponents of affirmative action or proponents of welfare reform....

Remember when we were hearing about the need to purge Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd from the Democratic Party? Obama is the polar opposite of all that--and in a devilishly clever way.... There will be plenty of the most left-leaning appointees staffing the federal bureaucracy and set into judgeships under Obama, and all of it will be smoothed over by speeches about national healing and understanding pain....

Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism--all under the guise of achieving national unity.

I think this analysis does justice to the cleverness of the speech, but also illustrates why an Obama presidency would likely worsen race relations in the US--not because he's black but because he is the most extreme of liberals.

[MayBee]

The Washington Post rather uniformly reports Obama's speech as something just slightly less fantastic than the Gettysburg Address or the Sermon on the Mount.

Of course the WaPo likes it. Their idea of honest discussions about race has heretofore been ruminating whether George Allen was a closet racist or an outright racist for saying "macaca".

[Appalled Moderate]

Andruil:

Jay Cost this morning provides a sympathetic reading of Obama's speech, as well as a critique. More than most commentaries I've seen it provides a springboard to further discussion of some of the profound issues involved

Cost's piece was interesting, and it gets to an issue raised by TM here -- what has Obama done to advance his overarching theme of unity when he has had the opportunity to do so?

(TM -- Think you have a post idea here. Sure beats complaining that Obama is a meany who hates his granny.)

Obama is imbued with a Marxist style of thought, for whom truth (and honesty) is what works at the moment

Technically, I think you mean Leninist rather than Marxist. And I don't really agree that Obama is doing any lying in his speech. He has engaged in some adroit changes of subject around personally uncomfortable subjects -- but this is taught in Politician 101.

The intellectual construct of Obama's speech is indeed rather reminiscent of Marx. He propounds two separate lines of thought, and suggests a synthesis which is said to be better than both. Also, that little bit of populism (instead of concentrating on racial grivances, white folk shuld direct their fire at rich people) has a bit of a Daily Worker feel.

[anduril]

AM, while I understand your preference for "Leninism" as the mot juste, I'll still insist on "Marxist" and will offer as authority Eric Voegelin's marvelous short work Science, Politics and Gnosticism. I certainly didn't accuse Obama of lying--his Marxism is no doubt sincere as far as it goes. "Lying" would require a very different definition of truth than the Marxist one.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the article. I do think it's a good springboard for discussion.

[clarice]

Too many threads, anduril. I put my thoughts on it on the other of today's threads, I'm sorry to say.

[anduril]

Well, then, I'll concentrate on scare mongering.

[MikeS]

Barack Obama should have condemned the hatred embodied by the Reverend's remarks. He should have condemned the racism of those remarks. He should have condemned the demonization of whites encouraged by his pastor.

Instead, Obama condemned the intolerance of people who were offended by Rev. Wright?

[anduril]

At the risk of repeat posting, I'd like to share Steve Sailer's really excellent blog on the famous Throw Granny from the Train part of Obama's speech. Sailer, by referring to Obama's book, shows that he actually lies about Granny in his speech. Two interesting things here:

1. The role of Gramps--remember, he was the one who came up with that bar story where Papa Obama conned some evil racist out of money.

2. Notice the way Obama portrays himself so dramatically, like the young boy who grows up to be the hero--dare I say Messiah?--in later life.

Obama throws his own 85-year-old grandmother under the wheels of the BS Express

From Obama's Wright speech:

"I can no more disown [Rev. Dr. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

A careful look at this incident as Obama described it on pp. 88-91 of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance shows that Obama is slandering his elderly grandmother to make Rev. Dr. Wright look better. Obama's white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who was raising him and earning most of the money in the family while his own mother was off in Indonesia working on her 1067 page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing, rode the bus each morning to her job as a bank executive. One day, the 16-18 year old Obama wakes up to an argument between his grandmother and grandfather. She didn't want to ride the bus because she had been hassled by a bum at the bus stop. She tells him:

"Her lips pursed with irritation. 'He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn't come, I think he might have hit me over the head."

So why didn't Obama's lefty grandfather not want to drive his own wife to work? Because to help his wife avoid the hostile, dangerous panhandler would be morally wrong, because the potential mugger was ... Well, I'll let Sen. Obama tell the story:

"He turned around and I saw that he was shaking. 'It is a big deal. It's a big deal to me. She's been bothered by men before. You know why she's so scared this time. I'll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.' He whispered the word. 'That's the real reason why she's bothered. And I just don't think that right.'

"The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but reassured him that Toot's fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.

"We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and I thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers would still inspire their rawest fear."

Then Obama drives over for counseling to the house of his grandfather's friend Frank, an old black Communist Party USA member, who tells him:

"What I'm trying to tell you is, your grandma's right to be scared. She's at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That's just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it's not. So you might as well get used to it."

"Frank closed his eyes. His breathing slowed until he seemed to be asleep. I thought about waking him, then decided against it and walked back to the car. The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone."

Man, what a family full of drama queens! And now Obama is equating his own grandma, who was the main breadwinner in this dysfunctional family circus (and who is still alive, living in the Honolulu highrise where this scene took place), with Rev. Dr. God Damn America.

Classy.

The Washington Monthly's liberal blogger Kevin Drum, who voted for Obama, commented about this scene and others:

"Obama routinely describes himself feeling the deepest, most painful emotions imaginable (one event is like a "fist in my stomach," for example, and he "still burned with the memory" a full year after a minor incident in college), but these feelings seem to be all out of proportion to the actual events of his life, which are generally pretty pedestrian."

So, in summary, let's look at how Obama smeared his own elderly but very much alive grandmother, calling her:

"a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Well, no, according to Obama's 1995 book, it is not at all true that she "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street." Instead, she once confessed her fear of one aggressive black beggar who didn't pass by her but instead confronted her, demanded money, and then gave her -- an intelligent, level-headed woman who had worked her way up to a mid-level corporate management position -- good reason to believe he would have violently mugged her if her bus hadn't pulled up.

[Appalled Moderate]

andruil:

Sailer assumes that what Obama was referring to in this speech was only this incident. I don't see how that's a resonable assumption.

[anduril]

Wrong, AM. Read it again more closely. He focuses on the "black men passing incident" from his book, although there was only one, but notes the "more than once occasion" part, too. There is full disclosure. As in the bar incident, all this is seen through Gramps' prism.

[sbw]

I just read Obama's speech. It took several sittings, several paragraphs at a time, to be able to wade through it. Although I will compose a more thorough observation later, Obama's speech failed.

Obama didn't miss the point, the speech shows he doesn't SEE the point. He believes he can bridge the gap between cultures, doesn't know how to do it, but nevertheless believes he can. That is evident because nowhere does he show us he sees what needs to be seen.

Everyone lives in one society made of many cultures. That overriding society has few abiding considerations. Truth is one — and to help each other see it. Respect is another — to help each other and oneself.

His 20-year relationship with Wright and the church ignored the value of truth and respect, and nowhere in his speech did he acknowledge the importance of truth or respect.

To claim special ability to bridge a gap between one culture and another and, in so doing, ignore the abiding considerations necessary for all society is sad.

The platitudes of Obama's speech deflect, minimize, dissemble, and accuse. In the end, Obama doesn't give any answers because he doesn't understand the questions.

He doesn't know what is important and he doesn't know why.

[GMax]

By the way, in the book Obama after seeing his Gramps make a lefty ass of himself about Gramma being concerned about getting mugged at the bus stop goes and visits with a friend and mentor. Its all in the book.

Who is this guy Frank?

Apparently Frank Davis, known Communist Party USA member.

Apparently this guy is also touted as being a mentor to Barack during his formative years.

Sure seems to me to be a whole lot of Marxists rattling around in this guys attic. Momma Moonbat, lefty grampa, Frank Davis CPUSA member, William Ayers and another Weather member ( whose name escapes me ) who is an acknowledged CPUSA member and Rev Wright of Black Liberation Theology fame.

But socialism is really just communism without the violent revolution now isn't it?

[boris]

He doesn't know what is important and he doesn't know why.

True that. The fundamental essence of his blindmess is this:

"the fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons" shows that whites are disconnected from the legitimate grievances of blacks, and thus "to condemn [that anger] without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

No. I call BS on that. Cue Replay:

[Black voters] are 90% democrat, the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the party that pandered to white privilege, that party that NOW is the party that panders to minority entitlement. The party that blames rich people (white Republicans) for all that bad stuff.
Maybe the blacks who go for the minority entitlement pandering and shifting blame away from their new benefactors are not as bad as the whites who went for the white privilege and discrimination but putting up with being the target of anger shifted from others is unacceptable.

Anger at Southern Democrats would be "understandable". Forgiving today's benefactor Democrat party is "understandable". What is not understandable or acceptable is forgiving the Democrat party while white liberals stand in the presence of Jeremia's rage nodding their heads and pointing their fingers at the rest of us.

[GMax]

Scott Rasmussen reading tea leaves:

While the full impact of Obama’s speech will not be known for some time, early indications are that it may have helped Obama more in the Democratic Primary competition than in a potential General Election match-up.

Ya think?

[JB]

Ouch, ouch, ouch, Tom.

You've been beating the crap out of Obambi. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you weren't very fond of him.

YOU RACIST!!!!!

[boris]

may have helped Obama more in the Democratic Primary competition

Doubt it. Probably just skews the polls because BHO sez taking offence at Father Jeremia makes you a racist.

[Rick Ballard]

"Imagining Barack Abroad"

? You mean like The Crying Game? Metrosexual, sure, but he's a bit tall for the other isn't he? Plus the ears.

[boris]

A big wig would fix that up.

[Jane]

but he's a bit tall for the other isn't he? Plus the ears.

Amy says he looks like a Q-Tip.

[Other Tom]

Posting on the run, and in haste--this time from the computer of the dreaded mother-in-law in PA.

The first post on this thread (Jane's) had it right: the man is finished, and he cannot and will not be elected. Forget about his speech; only a sliver of the November electorate was watching anyway. A huge slice of the swing voters simply will not vote for a guy who sat in that church for twenty years. Forget about which particular sermons he heard--if he didn't know everything all of us now know about Preacer Wright long ago, he's a dunce.

McCain wins in November. Cut this one and save it. The election of 2008 is over, and your friend Other Tom told you who would win on March 19 (actually, the fine fellow did it a few days ago, but in the interest of modesty he will only claim March 19 as the Date of the Epiphany).

[Jane]

Harummph!

I beat you by 6 days. (well really a few hours before you proclaimed it on the 13th.) That's what you get for visiting the relatives. Stop stealing my thunder. (Altho it's possible I only proclaimed the demise of Obama and not the election of McCain. If so, I bow in homage.)

[sbw]

OT & Jane, and if you win bragging rights, why do you need 'em?

[Puncturing two big balloons with one pin. ;-) ]

[Soylent Red]

Jane and OT:

Never underestimate the stupidity (and cupidity) of an Oprahfied electorate.

Obama represents, on many levels, and escape from responsibility. And Americans are always up for that.

I will breathe easier in November, but not until.

[Soylent Red]

AN escape

[sbw]

The news reports say Obama wrote the speech mostly by himself. It shows. Everybody needs and editor.

[clarice]

sbw, that is--as usual--a very good analysis and so much more civil than mine. I just assumed he did know what the questions were and figured he could and would soft shoe it...and that seems to have worked on most of the media.

[sbw]

Example that everybody needs an editor: But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea...

"Seared, seared." Nobody in politics who doesn't want to associated with Kerry "remembering" Cambodia should use the word "seared."

[sbw]

and so much more civil than mine.

Thanks, Clarice, but I have no doubt your analysis -- did I overlook it on a thread -- would be much more powerful and entertaining.

[Sue]

sbw,

That is the first thing I thought when I heard him use the word seared.

[bgates]

Sailer assumes that what Obama was referring to in this speech was only this incident. I don't see how that's a reasonable assumption.
Sure. How can you expect him to cram all the details of his 46 1/2 years into the mere 1,051 pages of biography he's written? Probably he's saving up stuff for his epic, Remembrance of Things Racial Slights Past.

But don't think you have to vote against Obama because he slurred his grandmother. You can vote against him because he's a hypocrite (Wright vs Imus), because he's a liar (I never heard the statements at issue/of course I heard stuff like that), because he seeks out the company of angry black separatists, or because he seeks out unreformed terrorists, or because he is a typically dirty Chicago machine politician, or because he's a leftist, or because his resume is so thin....

Or you can do what the rest of us are doing and vote against him because he's black.

[GMax]

Date of the Epiphany

You would dare to blaspheme on this holy week? Watch out for lightning bolts.