Not Too SWIFT of The Obama Team

Victor Davis Hanson has some cogent thoughts on the Wright debacle:

—The modified hang-out, and the modified modified hangout

Despite the serial profession of a new politics, there is something Nixonian about Obama's recent disclaimers over his racist pastor's diatribes. At first he tried to blame the messenger:

...Obama should have learned from Nixon that when there is something there, it is best to get out in front of it in a manner that anticipates more disturbing revelations.

And:

Race and the Democrats—Postmortem   [Victor Davis Hanson]

End of Story

The Wright scandal has now been clarified as much as it is going to be clarified: Obama senses that most (given the alternative of Hillary or the self-destruction of the nation’s first competitive black presidential candidate) want to believe him—and where there is a will, there is a way.

So Sen. Obama apparently is going to insist that either the racialism and hatred of America (“God damn America”) voiced by Rev. Wright are maliciously cherry-picked and taken out of context (despite the clear evidence of entire sermons delivered in toto on these topics and in this style); or he is going to stonewall by condemning only piecemeal each successive and more astounding venomous sound-bite that surfaces—while contextualizing them by claiming that Wright is retiring, that someone who raves about AIDs being created in the U.S. is a “scholar,” and that Wright was a Marine, etc. And don't dare raise the issue again, since you, not the Rev. Wright, are the problem, or as Obama proclaimed on Saturday, —"The forces of division have begun to raise their ugly head again." Again? Or as they have for 20 years at the Trinity Church?

The Dems are free to try and wish this away; I understand that Obama has a nomination to pursue, and persuading his own party to Move On from the topic of black churches and black anger shouldn't be too difficult.

However, those who do not understand history are doomed to make the rest of us laugh out loud while they repeat it.  Folks, especially Dems, may not remember that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first appeared in the spring of 2004 (May 4 press conference or this from April) but were roundly ignored.

But they weren't ignored when they came back in August.

This is far from over.

GLAD WE CLEARED THAT UP:   From the Weekly Standard, researching the origins of Barack's crowd-pleasing "We are the ones we've been waiting for" line:

Two years ago, before Obama even said he wanted to be president, the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker published a book of essays and called it We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For. Believe me: If the line had come from the Tribal Elders of the Hopi nation, Alice Walker would have been more than happy to say so. Instead she said it came from a poem published in 1980 by the left-wing-radical-feminist-bisexual poet June Jordan.

That spares me sitting through the second and third installments of The Matrix, so let me not stint in my praise.  But I am a bit sorry to have lost my excuse to research that phrase by replaying every Beatles album ever recorded... backwards.  I Am The Walrus.  Koo Koo Ka Choo.


 

 

Comments

[clarice]

Ooch ak ook ook?

[kim]

Why do I think of 'Rosemary's Baby'?
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[kim]

I'm proud to say I found the Swifties site in May of '04, and ashamed to say I roundly ignored them until the Guns of August.
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[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Ouch, this, from Mark Steyn, had to hurt:

The song the Rev. Wright won't sing is by Irving Berlin, a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, all the sophisticated rhymesters. But only Berlin could have written without embarrassment "God Bless America." He said it directly, unaffectedly, unashamedly – in seven words:

"God Bless America

Land that I love."

Berlin was a Jew, and he suffered slights: He grew up in the poverty of New York's Lower East Side. When he made his name and fortune, his marriage to a Park Avenue heiress resulted in her expulsion from the Social Register. In the Thirties, her sister moved in with a Nazi diplomat and proudly flaunted her diamond swastika to Irving. But Berlin spent his infancy in Temun, Siberia (until the Cossacks rode in and razed his village), and he understood the great gift he'd been given:

"God Bless America

Land that I love."

The Rev. Wright can't say those words. His shtick is:

"God damn America

Land that I loathe."

I understand the Ellis Island experience of Russian Jews was denied to blacks. But not to Obama. His experience surely isn't so different to Berlin's – except that Barack got to go to Harvard. Obama's father was a Kenyan, he spent his childhood in Indonesia, and he ought to thank his lucky stars that he's running for office in Washington rather than Nairobi or Jakarta.

Instead, his whiny wife, Michelle, says that her husband's election as president would be the first reason to have "pride" in America, and complains that this country is "downright mean" and that she's having difficulty finding money for their daughters' piano lessons and summer camp. Between them, Mr. and Mrs. Obama earn $480,000 a year (not including book royalties from "The Audacity Of Hype," but they're whining about how tough they have it to couples who earn 48 grand – or less. Yes, we can. But not on a lousy half-million bucks a year.

God has blessed America, and blessed the Obamas in America, and even blessed the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose bashing of his own country would be far less lucrative anywhere else on the planet.

[Neo]

I keep seeing "Samurai Night Fever" and Tony's brother (OJ) .. "I don't want to be black anymore .. it was cool in the 60's ..."

Obama keeps switching his "blackness" on and off like a light switch.

We'll know it's really bad when Obama starts talking about how he hangs around with (former ? KKK member) Robert Byrd.

[Karl]

I've always been more partial to "goo goo goo joob."

[Nuff Said McGreavey]

I don't agree with either but how was Wright's post 9/11 sermon any different than Robertson & Falwell remarks on 9/11? All 3 were using 9/11 to push their own agenda. I think they are all wrong but to be outraged at Wright and not at Falwell & Robertson is just pure hypocrisy. When the wingnuts disavow the religious right, then I'll listen to their opinions on what's un-American.

Comments from the Thursday, September 13, 2001 edition of the '700 Club.'

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

[KC]

Good round up. Hanson and Irving Berlin. Love it.

Here's what I got from the liberals defending Obama/Wright today:

The Reverend's pregnant-with-content sermons are rhetoric. Don't take them seriously.

BTW, BHO's speeches (devoid of content) should be taken very seriously. Hope, baby!

[KC]

Good round up. Hanson and Irving Berlin. Love it.

Here's what I got from the liberals defending Obama/Wright today:

The Reverend's pregnant-with-content sermons are rhetoric. Don't take them seriously.

BTW, BHO's speeches (devoid of content) should be taken very seriously. Hope, baby!

[Jane]

Don't worry, I'll fix it.

Nuff,

Mr. Right raised the same issue you do. Ask yourself what the democrats would do to a candidate who called Falwell his spiritual mentor.

[Jane]

I guess I didn't fix it.

[Cecil Turner]

When the wingnuts disavow the religious right, then I'll listen to their opinions on what's un-American.

The next time a GOP candidate donates thousands of dollars to Falwell, this'll be a cogent comparison. It'll still be a tu quoque fallacy, though.

[LogicalSC]

What we have learned this week is that the Democrats intend to nominate a racist black supremacist feminist who loves to read radical poems for policy ideas???

Lovely..

[CraigC]

I think you're getting your walruses mixed up with your Mrs. Robinsons.

[bgates]

Cecil, it's not even tu quoque, it's tu quamquam minor (You, but not as much.) Comparing Wright to Falwell is like defending Obama's Marxist ties by pointing out McCain has admitted to living in a Communist country for 5 1/2 years.

[cathyf]

...how was Wright's post 9/11 sermon any different than Robertson & Falwell remarks on 9/11?

Actually, as I remember it, the person whose post-9/11 sermonizing most resembled Robertson & Falwell was...

...William Jefferson Clinton.