baldilocks

Chocolate City

What's hapnin', CC?
Have you forgot me?

--George Clinton's Parliament, Mothership Connection (Star Child), circa 1974

Spike Lee's got his mouth open again.

Hundreds of Spike Lee fans began lining up as much as two hours before his appearance Thursday night at the Silverdocs film festival in Silver Spring. After running the gauntlet of cameras on the red carpet, Lee was treated to a montage of his own work before settling in to a chat with Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy.

An expert on Hurricane Katrina thanks to his film “When the Levees Broke,” Lee said the same problems are affecting Missouri right now.

“The money’s going to other things,” he said. “That’s going to change though.” As applause escalated, he added, in a clear reference to Barack Obama, “We’ll have a real chocolate city.”

And, as a result, the Washington Examiner runs this headline, "Obama would make D.C. a ‘chocolate city,’ Lee says." In turn, Glenn Reynolds (where I got the story from) links with this:

SPIKE LEE ON making Washington, D.C. a "chocolate city."

Folks, don't you think that you're being a little misleading? DC is already a "Chocolate City."

But when I read Glenn's blurb and the WT headline, I got visions of white people being turned out of Our Nation's Capital en masse, like thousands of Adams and Eves from the Garden of Eden.

R&B singers, bands and black people in general have been referring to DC as "CC" for quite some time--due to the racial composition of the city's population, outside of most of the politicians. And while I think that Spike Lee is a mediocre director and, generally, a poor excuse for a human being, I don't think he means anything by this other than the probability that even more black people would arrive in the city as a result of an Obama presidency.

Obama's chronic dissembling has some of my white brethren nervous about everything. But if you want to pick on something Lee said, pick on the idea that more black people in DC would mean better management of disaster preparedness. If that concept were true, there would be no whining about Katrina in the first place.

BTW, the American Red Cross needs your help in aiding the flood victims. The organization has less than 5 million dollars in its coffers.

Red Cross

Black Conservatives: Don't Fall For It

UPDATE: Joseph Phillips ended up not voting for Barack Obama.

ORIGINAL POST: One of today's Yahoo News headlines informs us that 'Black conservatives [are] conflicted on Obama campaign.' Armstrong Williams, Rep. J.C. Watts, General Colin Powell, Senator Edward Brooke and, sadly, my friend Joseph C. Phillips may be falling into the trap which I have repeatedly described--one lined with pride and with fear: pride of race and fear that Obama is the last chance for a black president to be elected. (GOPAC chairman Michael Steele isn't going for the okey doke, however; but that may be only due to his position.)

People say that women have problems thinking objectively and strategically. Well, I'm seeing a whole group of men who are having that problem. Friends, you're letting the nearness of a dream's seeming fulfillment blind you to what will likely come after that ephemeral happiness is dissipated, after the novelty has worn off: the nightmare.

And guess who will get blamed for that short-sightedness? Not just you.

With 90+ percent of black Americans voting Democrat regardless of who the candidate is, it will be bad enough as it is. But I, for one, expect you, black conservative Republican men to have enough balls to stand on principle, not on your emotions. You've shown your testicular fortitude by being publicly conservative against a tide of Identity Politics. Don't start behaving like castrati now.

Stop thinking selfishly. We're not choosing a President of Black American Dream Fulfillment; we're choosing a President of the United States.

UPDATE: Hi Lizards and Hot Airians!

The Meaning of Spike Lee's Words

Roger L. Simon says what we all could figure out about Spike Lee--especially after the latter's "plantation" remark to Clint Eastwood:

Like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, time has been passing Spike Lee by. His worldview comes from another era and he has never really sought to revise it, to open his eyes. Proof of that is that for more than a decade Spike has barely made a film any of us can remember. Compare that to Eastwood, who, although some twenty-seven years Lee’s senior, is at the top of his career, having scored big in 2003-2004 with Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

No wonder Spike’s jealous. So what does he do? He reaches back to an era when he was more successful. He plays the old identity/race card. Now we could all laugh and say this is just another case of an (prematurely) aging artist grasping for attention, but these times are more complex than that. We don’t know which way we are going - toward a post-racial future or back to a racist past.

Rumor has it that Hollywood is one of the most racist places in the country. Though I live in LA, I don't operate in that world, so I don't know first hand whether this is so; however, even if this is true, there was a time when Lee's career flourished, perhaps peaking with 1992's Malcolm X--something which may have been a function of Denzel Washington's Oscar-nominated performance.

Spike made a successful, vaunted career by making movies about race or with race as a backdrop. He was the go-to director for such a genre and perhaps that's the problem. When he tried to branch out and away from that racial strait-jacket, it became obvious that he really isn't that great of a director.

So now Lee does what he has to do to get attention for his new project, Miracle at St. Anna, even stooping to taking cheap racial shots at the far more successful (and old, white, male, Republican) Eastwood of all people. I hope that the actors, no one I've heard of except for John Turturro, don't suffer for his stupidity and short-sightedness. That's the only reason that I might go see the movie.

Roger wonders how Lee's tactic relates to the post-racial future allegedly on the horizon. Thinking about the tenets of James Cone's and Jeremiah Wright's and Barack Obama's Black Liberation Theology, I personally wonder what the term 'post-racial' means to the proponents of that religion and to the Spike Lees of the world. Post white-racial "dominance," perhaps, would be a more descriptive term.

The question remains, however: what would replace it?

PREVIOUSLY:

"You Not Ma Daddy!"
Lee Tries to Make Eastwood's Day

"You Not Ma Daddy!" (UPDATED)

After Clint Eastwood tells Spike Lee to "shut his face" regarding the lack of black characters in Eastwood's two World War II films, Lee responds in a mature, manly fashion.

Or not.

"First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either," he told ABCNEWS.com.

"I didn't personally attack him."

Lee implied that Eastwood was a racist. Twice. I'd call those personal attacks.

Regarding that 'father' thing, I am reminded of the infamous You Tube clip of Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers demonstrating her similar daddy issues.

These people can afford to pay for psychoanalysis. But I guess than one would have to be not-crazy to realize that a shrinking is needed.

I was considering going to see Lee's film when it came out. Now I'm not so sure.

UPDATED: Former Spook (no, not that kind) says that there were some extras who were black in Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers.

If Mr. Lee bothered to watch Flags, he would find black Marines in a cutaway shot early in the film, and in a historical photograph that appears during the closing credits. Saying there are no African-Americans in the film is simply incorrect.

So, why aren’t blacks featured more prominently in the film? According to Professor Latty (and USMC records), a total of 700 African-American Marines served on Iwo Jima during the battle. But her opinion piece omits an important point, those black Marines represented less than one percent of the 80,000 who fought to take the island from the Japanese.

And, because of segregation, they were delegated to support roles.

Spook also details the Bronze-Star awarded courage of a pair of black Marines (in their combat support roles) but notes that they were not a part of the unit which raised the flag at Iwo Jima.

The battalion and its subordinate companies were all white—another product of the segregated Marine Corps of World War II.

Eastwood was, of course, adhering to historical accuracy rather than PC.

But Lee has succeeded in publicizing his film--and probably in riling up those who probably don't even know that the military was segregated back then and that it was probably one of the first--if not the first--government institutions to desegregate, undoubtedly stemming from the performance of men like the afore-mentioned Marines, the Tuskegee airmen and the "Buffalo Soldiers" which will be portrayed in Lee's WWII movie. Too bad he is doing them such a disservice.

(Thanks to Phelps)

Lee Tries to Make Eastwood's Day

Director fight: Spike Lee tries to start some stuff by complaining about the dearth of black characters in Clint Eastwood's two World War Two era films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, but Clint isn't cowed.

Eastwood justified his choice of actors, saying that those black troops who did take part in the battle as part of a munitions company didn't raise the flag. The battle is known by the image of US marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.

"The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go: 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." Referring to Lee, he added: "A guy like him should shut his face."

Ouch!

Spike is promoting his own World War II film, Miracle at St. Anna, which featured the story of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Division--progeny of the Buffalo Soldiers of the 19th Century Indian conflicts--the only "colored" infantry division to engage in combat during World War II. They served in Italy. (The 24th Infantry Regiment--another "colored" unit--mopped up in the Pacific. The United States Armed Forces was desegregated in 1947.)

So if Spike knows that 92nd was the only black division to fight, that they engaged only in Europe and that Clint's two films are about the war in the Pacific, then what's he whining about? Oh yeah, I forgot. It's Spike Lee.

Clint goes on.

What are you going to do, you going to tell a f*ckin' story about that?" he said. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a movie and it's 90% black, like Bird, then I use 90% black people.

"He was complaining when I did Bird (the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker). Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else."

Double Ouch!! I think Spike was making Nike commercials with Michael Jordan.

Have a seat, Spike. Or better yet--let the quality of your work do the talking.

Congratulations?

Yesterday, when it became official that Barack Obama had acquired the number of superdelegates necessary to become the 2008 Democrat nominee for President of the United States, some perfectly nice and reasonable people--conservatives--were looking for people, specifically black Americans, to congratulate. I wondered why at first. After all, he's not my child or my spouse, so I've made no contribution to his achievement.

Then I realized that Identity Politics has become so pervasive that even conservatives sometimes practice it, albeit unconsciously. Therefore, even though I've actively opposed Obama's candidacy, even though I've deemed the specter of an Obama presidency to be frightening, I'm to be congratulated because not only do Obama and I share a race but also an ethnic group.

No. That's wrong.

Conservatives, we've talked about individualism before; it's a part of conservatism and either you believe in it or you don't. If you do, then the idea of sharing in Obama's achievement solely on the account of qualities like race and ethnicity should be an anathema. Send congratulations to someone who shares the senator's political and social values.

See also Bill Quick and Misha the Big Dog (language alert).

(Thanks to Instapundit)

Byrd Endorses Obama

Ahem. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) says, "yes Obama can":

"As people all across this great nation know, I have been one of the most outspoken opponents of the Bush administration's misguided war in Iraq and its saber rattling around the globe," Byrd said.

He said he had "no intention of involving myself in the Democratic campaign for President in the midst of West Virginia's primary election. But the stakes this November could not be higher."

Think about this: a man who in the 1940s served as the Exalted Cyclops in his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan fighting race-mixing (rather that serving in the military fighting fascism) and who in 2001 used the phrase "white n*ggers" without irony--remember what I said about that phrase--endorses for president a man who is the very embodiment of what Klansmen and the like-minded fear! And this occurs right after 67% of the Democrat voters in his overwhelmingly white state pick the white candidate over the mixed-raced one.

My head won't explode because I love stuff like this. But you might want to wrap yours up in duct tape.

(Thanks to Memeorandum)

Man Cannot Live on Pride Alone

Columnist Susan Estrich who worked for the spectacularly abortive 1988 presidential campaign of Governor Michael Dukakis (D-MA) rhetorically asks whether Barack Obama could be another Dukakis, then answers ‘no.’

[T]he most important difference between Obama and Dukakis has absolutely nothing to do with the two men, or their primary opponents, or the issues that did or did not get raised. It’s the difference between where the country was then, and where it is now. In June 1988, a majority of Americans thought the country was on the right track. Although the wrong track numbers had been higher earlier in the year, by the summer they turned around. Americans were pleased with the direction of the country. Today, the equivalent numbers are 80% wrong track. Ask any pollster and they’ll tell you that there is no better indication of which party will win an election than the right track-wrong track numbers. This should be a Democratic year. Obama, if he is the candidate, will face a negative machine. But in the end, that machine cannot change the way people feel about the direction the country is heading, or the party that is responsible for it.

There's much, much more to the differences than this.

I mean, come on. Dukakis had the Willie Horton issue.

Obama has…

• Jeremiah Wright
• Black Liberation Theology
• Michelle Obama’s attitude toward America
• William Ayers (Who?)
• Tony Resko (Who?)
• The Bitter, Clingy-ness of White People
• The Ignorance of American Presidential History and how such have deal with enemies
• The NAFTA oddity: being against it while being for it
• The Hamas connections
• The Commie connections

And...

• The possible Islam connections (Yes, I’m willing to allow a crack into my “no way has Obama been a Muslim” edifice, though I still scoff at the idea that Obama was, in some way involved in the Kenya crisis merely because of his blood relationship with (now) Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.) The alleged connections are interesting in light of
• The 57 states gaffe

"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon," Obama said. "Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

This one is extremely weird, until it is considered that there are 57 nation-states in the Organization of Islamic Conference.*

And there are probably all sorts of things that I'm forgetting or don't feel like looking up.

The answer to Estrich’s question is indeed ‘no,’ but not because of perceptions regarding the "direction of the nation." If that were so, Hillary Clinton would have won the nomination by now.

Look. The sheer weight of the baggage which Obama carries along with his chronic trifling dwarf Dukakis’s issues and should have been enough to sink his campaign months ago. But it hasn’t been. And that's because Obama has something which Dukakis doesn’t have--brown skin. But consider this: the fact that his skin color is what's keeping him comfortably afloat isn’t a mere indictment of racism against those who still want Obama to be president while being aware of all of the above listed short-comings--at least it's not an indictment from me.

And consider this: Obama's brown skin is a symbol, one which has been planted into the minds of the unguarded; one which takes the place of rational-thinking and long-term planning (assuming that either or both ever had a place); one which plays on a singular emotion. That emotion is called pride.

A brown-skinned POTUS, especially one of African descent, would be the crowning achievement for an America which prides itself in being the beacon to the world, one of equal opportunity for all comers of whatever color or background. And it would indeed be a breakthrough. Oh sure we can truthfully say that this is the greatest nation on Earth, but if we had a black president, Holy Cow! We can thumb our nose at the nay-sayers with abandon.

For a little while. And then such symbolism’s value would recede and the value of the individual man—the content of his character, judgment, alliances and allegiances—would come to the fore. A country cannot survive on pride and symbolism at the expense of substance; at the expense of the well-being of this nation. And that’s what I and many others are afraid of.

There, I said it. I am afraid; for my country and my countrymen of all colors, but, most especially for my fellow black Americans. Because, while there are still a few people out there who believe in treating all others as individuals, there are not as many as I hoped, even on the Right. And, to be realistic, why should anyone extend the benefit of the doubt to a black American with regard to individualism when we all know that over 90% of black Americans will vote for Obama in the general election? (Yeah, I'm flip-flopping here. Sorta.)

If most black Americans aren't selling individualism, then how can our countrymen buy it? Then, when it becomes apparent that Obama is, at best, woefully under-qualified to be president, who will be blamed?

Live by the pride and the Group Identity Politics...

*(From my comments): Even I have a limit as to how many things--large and trivial--can be just a little bit off or greatly askew about one person before I cry "all foul." I guess Mr. Obama has reached it.

And something tells me that he isn't finished by a long shot.

Mildred Loving

Mildred Loving, who was one of the plaintiffs in Loving vs. Virginia, died on May 2nd. The other plaintiff was her husband, Richard, who died in 1975. From Wikipedia:

Mildred Loving (nee Mildred Delores Jeter, a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, 1939 - May 2, 2008)[2][3] and Richard Perry Loving (a white man, October 29, 1933 - June 1975), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and a black person (there was no law banning marriage with other ethnicities as they were not seen to represent a significant enough population to be a problem). Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples [consisting of one white person and one black person] from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which defined "miscegenation" as a felony punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.

The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia, and on November 6, 1963 they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the Wiki article, it is noted that several church hierarchies--from those which had centralized leadership--came forward to repudiate Bazile's ersatz race theology. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court unanimously determined that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

It would have been interesting to discover what Mrs. Loving thought of Barack Obama, Black Liberation Theology and how times and people have changed. However, she was probably just a regular woman ready to rest.

RIP, ma'am.

(Thanks to Clarence Page)

What I'm Reading, May 7, 2008

I hope that I don't have to explain who James Cone is again.

The copy of the book I have is the only one in the Los Angeles Public Library system and I was surprised to be able to get ahold of it so quickly. One might have thought that, after Jeremiah Wright's publicity tour last weekend people, would want to know more about Black Liberation Theology. But again I have overestimated human curiosity.

The book was originally published in 1969 but has a 1989 preface for that year's edition. In it, the author contends that the language used in the original version would be different than twenty years hence (and one assumes, an additional twenty years after that) to address contemporaneous problems faced by blacks--and to remedy perceived sexism of the author. One also assumes, however, that the basic ideas remain the same: that God is a partisan on the side of the "victims"--in this case, blacks--and that He will ensure that these victims have victory over the white oppressor.

We'll see.

One thing: a very interesting quote attributed to Cone and found on the web is said to appear in this book: "Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology." If it is in this book, the proper references, however, are improper--meaning they're wrong. Anyone have a page number?

Black Liberation Theology: Mainstream Myth

Unlike NRO's John Derbyshire, columnists Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom at did their homework on Black Liberation Theology and the "black church":

Most black churchgoers belong to congregations that are overwhelmingly African-American and are affiliated with one of the historically black religious denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or the National Baptist Convention. Rev. Wright's Trinity Church, on the other hand, is a predominantly black branch of a white denomination that is not part of "the African-American religious tradition." The United Church of Christ (known until 1957 as the Congregational Church) has a little over a million members; a mere 4 percent of them are black. Fewer than 50,000 blacks in the entire nation worship at a UCC church.

In contrast, 98 percent of the National Baptist Convention's 4 million members are African Americans. Add in black Methodists and Pentecostals, as well as other black Baptists, and the total comes to more than 14 million members of an organized, predominantly African-American church. These churches include a substantial majority of all black adults today. In terms of sheer demographic weight, they clearly represent the "African-American religious tradition"-as Rev. Wright's branch of a overwhelmingly white denomination does not. [SNIP]

Some of these churches are led by figures like Rev. Wright, an adherent of what is called black liberation theology, which rejects racial integration and stresses the experience of black bondage. But not many. C. Eric Lincoln's mid-1980s survey of the leaders of 2,150 black churches found that two-thirds of them said they had not been influenced by "any of the authors and thinkers of black liberation theology." Indeed, 63 percent did not believe that the black church had "a different mission from the white church." A third did not even think it was "important have black figures in [their] Sunday school literature."

I don't think that there was enough outrage at the cravenness of Jeremiah Wright when he held up other black people as his rhetorical shield against criticism of his lunacy. The Thernstroms wonder about this also and suggest that he may have convinced many whites that his beliefs are mainstream among blacks, a concern I share. If someone with Derbyshire's resources can't be bothered to find out this information, what about the average white Joe?

Wright was trying to do some bamboozling of his own. Like those who are trying to hasten a confrontation between Islam and Christianity by spread lies, I believe Wright and like-minded individuals are intentionally trying to stir up enmity between black and white.

Don't be fooled by those who feed on Discord, folks--or by the One who does.

Stop the Pander!

Or don't start it, Bill Kristol.

[Picking the 36-year-old Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal as vice-presidential candidate for the Republican ticket] might also be a way to confront the issue of [John] McCain’s age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: “You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief.” I would add that it was after McCain spent considerable time with Jindal in New Orleans recently, and reportedly found him, as he has before, personally engaging and intellectually impressive, that the campaign’s informal name-dropping of Jindal began.

Please. Even though Governor Jindal seems like the bright future of the GOP, one look at his smiling brown face and everyone knows why some are suggesting that he be added to John McCain's presidential ticket. It's the extra ingredient, if you will, besides Jindal's manifest competence. (Jindal's parents immigrated from India.)

Let's allow Governor Jindal to take care of the home front and leave the Identity Politicking to the Democrats.

No fighting Obama's brown with Jindal's brown, please. Thanks.

(Thanks to Mememorandum)

Derbyshire's Wrong

The Corner's John Derbyshire is dazzled by Jeremiah Wright's 'good works' and cites the following passage from the May 3 issue of The Economist:

[Wright] is far more than the blustering buffoon who was on the stage on Monday. He has presided over an increase in the size of his congregation from 87 when he arrived in 1972 to 8,000 today. Trinity is a welfare state in its own right, providing more than 70 welfare programmes for the poor, the unemployed, prisoners, and HIV patients.

Derbyshire's conclusion:

What has been the secret of his success? How did he do all that? By appealing to racial solidarity and pride, that's how. All that stuff that grates on our ears — the "black value system," loyalty to "the African motherland," "white folk's greed drives a world in need," and the rest — was an essential component of the Wright success package. Wright succeeded by tapping in to one of the deepest wells of human emotion and motivation: group solidarity, loyalty to the tribe, the gens.

Anyone want to tell me that Wright would have been just as sensationally successful if he had eschewed all the hate-whitey stuff and preached a message of universalism, color-blindness, and racial reconciliation?

Why, yes I'll tell you that, Mr. Derbyshire, because there are plenty of other Christian pastors who minister to majority black congregations and who have been highly successful at growing their congregations much larger and getting their larger congregations to provide the means with which to conduct such 'good works' without being racist demagogues, such as T.D. Jakes and Charles Blake to name only two off the top of my head--men you haven't heard of just like you hadn't heard of Wright before Obama came along.

Wright was only able to get these programs off the ground with one resource: money. And congregational monies are the life's blood of any church, especially one that want sto provide services other than the primary one: providing overhead for supplicants to hear the Word of God preached and interpreted.

Derbyshire tries to make it appear that the nature and quality of Wright's 'good works' are rare and that black people are more inclined give money to race-baiters. A cursory look at a good half dozen traditional Christian ministers of mega-churches with majority black congregations would have dispelled that notion. But I guess that it's more lucrative to keep those fires of Discord burning.

White Blacks (UPDATED: Director of 'War Room' Calls BS)

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has posted a video of a 1992 presidential election War Room meeting between long-time Clinton associates, George Stephanopulous, James Carville and Mickey Kantor during which the latter allegedly uses the phrase “white nigger"* in reference to working-class whites in Indiana. The video is producing the intended fallout for Hillary Clinton on both sides of the political divide. But Kantor and others say that the video has been altered. Here's the part that's clear:

Wait, wait, look at Indiana — 42-40. It doesn’t matter if we win. Those people are sh*t. Oh, excuse me …

Now here’s the disputed part. In the video at Hot Air, it sounds as though Kantor says

How would you like to be a worthless white n****r?

But the in the video at You Tube (start at 4:40) he says "how would you like to be :::mumble, mumble:::"--IOW I can’t decipher what Kantor says to Stephanopulous after that.

Kantor says that he wasn’t even talking about Indiana and, from the evidence, I’m inclined to believe him.

Kantor, on Friday, insisted that the latter part of his statement never took place and that it made no sense for him to use such language.

"Indiana was not even on our radar screen," he said, "And I was talking about the polling and not the people... If you look at The War Room, this is not the way Carville or George interpreted my statement. This is frankly libelous."

Kantor said he was in the process of contacting "the best" libel lawyers to approach YouTube.com about the process of removing the video from its site. He suggested that The Huffington Post, too, should not print even his defense, as it would be an advancement of a non-story.

"I don't need to be defended," he wrote. "When you write it, what you are doing is extended the libel."

Kantor also says that he would never say the n-word.

My parents would come from the grave and kill me if I used that word.

Is someone trying to deflect ire from the debacle of Barack Obama's Clinging-to-guns, etc. statement--Ed has another name for that gaffe which will get me in trouble--and from the fallout produced by Jeremiah Wright’s close-ups? Doctoring a video by putting words in the mouth of a loyal Clinton associate who is Jewish to boot would be a good way to do it.

But there’s something about this little tempest that’s stuck in my craw.

I’m not going to get into a row about black and non-black usage of “n****r." But in this specific instance, it is clear that the word is meant to be an insult to Indiana’s white population. Whether Kantor actually used the term or whether someone inserted those words in his mouth, the term's implications and the reaction to it require some fleshing out.

Every time I hear the term “white n****r” used, I always marvel at the lack of insight demonstrated by the user—and sometimes by the targets of the epithet. The user always tries to pretend that it isn’t a racial slur against blacks, because he/she is talking about white people, you see. He always forgets—if he ever knew—that even when the word used with a modifier, it is always about blacks.

Hey, my white brothers and sisters! Don’t you want to be a n****r or even called one? Why not? Because for some of you, as “low” as you may perceive yourselves to be, there’s always a group that’s “lower” than you: we actual n****rs, Version 1.0. The phrase, the insult, is intended to put working-class whites and blacks on the same "social level." And some of the former, the ones who still subconsciously buy into the notion that whites are on a higher social level than blacks and, therefore, who say in their heart-of-hearts “at least I’m not a n****r” will object to this phrase most strenuously.

Conversely, here’s a perceptive and humorous response to being called a “white n****r”:

A worthless white n****r? Hey mister…that’s worthless white African American, and don’t you forget it.

Hah! Exactly.

*I’m spelling out the word only in this instance. Reason it’s not usually done here: search engines.

UPDATE: (Via Ed again) Bravo Sierra says War Room director D.A. Pennebaker.

"He does not say that," said Pennebaker, after viewing the clip.

He said the initial expletive referred to the anticipated reaction in the Bush White House to the fact that Ross Perot's polling numbers were holding strong.

"What he says is he’s surprised Perot’s numbers are holding," said Pennebaker in a brief phone interview. "He says they must be shi**ing in the White House."

The second expletive, he said, appeared to have been entirely fabricated, with new audio dubbed onto the original movie.

Pennebaker appeared surprised and amused by the video.

"A thousand people saw that film in theaters and didn't think" the second expletive had been used, he said. "It's very clearly understandable. It's not like it was in Bulgarian."

Sounds far more logical than the opposite.

I still find it fascinating to contemplate the psyche that would conjure the notion of "white n****rs" and then put the words into someone's mouth.

Oh and Hot Air readers are always welcome here. Well, most of you. :-)

Taking "Dictation"

Mary Mitchell at the Chicago Sun-Times plays a recognizable game:

There is no institution in the black community more respected than the black church. And the notion that white pundits can dictate what constitutes unacceptable speech in the black church is repulsive to most black people.

This tactic is becoming old—pretending that criticism or disagreement is “dictating.” Mitchell wouldn’t know an actual dictator if Robert Mugabe walked up to her and introduced himself.

Yes, Ms. Mitchell, white pundits and any other pundit in this country can and will criticize what anyone one publicly declares, especially when the declaration is televised. (And since when did PBS studios, the Detroit chapter of the NAACP and the National Press Club or even Trinity United Church of “Christ” become the “black church?”) When any pundits start advocating that Reverend Wright be fined or confined for his words, then it’s time for you to start whining complaining. Not before. And if some black people are “repulsed,” that’s their problem. Grown folks expect criticism; children in adult bodies mistake criticism for being dictated to. "Don't tell me what to do!!! You're not my mama!!!"

As much as I want to see Obama make history by becoming the first black man to be elected president, I don't want to see a warrior like Wright denigrated to prove to white voters that Obama is not a radical.

When Obama denounced Wright's angry words but refused to disown him, it signaled that he understood the sensitive tightrope he is being forced to walk.

His "outrage" over Wright's latest remarks signals something quite different. With the gap narrowing, Obama advisers are obviously scrambling for every white vote.

But really, what more should blacks have to sacrifice? Their dignity?

Frankly, Obama and Wright risk becoming metaphors for the ongoing struggle of blacks to unite politically.

Obama shouldn't have held a press conference to deal with Wright.

He should have been able to pick up the phone.

Sigh.

My boyfriend and I concurred that Obama's nomination will split this country--even if he loses to McCain in the general election. Prior to a few months back, BF had not known about most of the senator's short-comings--my honey's a busy man--and, in spite of being a conservative, he had wanted his sons to see the example of a black man becoming POTUS in order to plant the idea that, perhaps, they could shoot for that goal as well. And he's not the only black man I've heard express this desire.

I think that too many Americans of all races--but especially black Americans--still don't know enough about Obama and, even if they do, are thinking selfishly about him and not thinking strategically.

They're not thinking about the job which Obama is applying for. Hint: not to be an example to anyone's children.

My guy and I talked a lot about the subject, but the bottom line is this: Obama isn't running just to be the president of black America or to be emblematic of black pride. (That he would be the latter is beside the point.) He's not running in order end the "ongoing struggle of blacks to unite politically." (Did you see my eyes roll just now?) He's running to be the leader of all Americans.

People like Mitchell can’t quite wrap their minds around this concept. That’s why she can speak approvingly of Wright, expect Obama to defer to him and expect whites to be silent about it all in the same op-ed.

Along with holding the subconscious notion that Obama should abide by the rules of black solidarity, many black Americans seem to be desperately clinging to Obama as if he’s the last best hope for a black American to become POTUS for the next hundred years. As if, among millions of other Americans who are black, there’s not one person who would be a likely candidate in the next few elections. No one. So “we” have to latch on to this one right now, regardless of what the rest of the country wants, regardless of the sparsity of the man’s political record and regardless of content of this man’s character and the demonstrable quality thereof.

• This man is for pulling out of Iraq and against it.
• This man is against NAFTA and for it.
• He barely knows Tony Resko but has financial dealings with him.
• He barely knows terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn but has been a guest in their home and has worked with the former.
• His pastor and spiritual adviser for 20 years—the same man who baptized him, performed his marriage ceremony and baptized his children—espouses a human-centered, racial supremacy (per)version of Christianity, but he never knew anything about it. And, suddenly, the man never was his spiritual adviser.

People like Mitchell want you to stop "dictating" to Obama and Wright and want you to roll over in the manner that a dog will do to show subservience to the "tide of history" and, interestingly enough, she wants Obama to do the same for Wright.

Trust me, the phrases “first black American POTUS” and “black pride” will ring hollow in the ears of us all if this Sower of Discord is nominated and it will even more so if he is elected. And only a fool—or a racist--would expect those who love this country to be silent about it.

(Thanks to Omnibus Driver)

View From Under The Bus (UPDATED)

20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
21Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
--Matthew 7:20-21 (KJV)

Finally, I’ve finished listening to all of the Moyers interview and the batty NAACP address by Barack Obama's pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright. And, in addition, I rewatched that display of ego, half-truths—aka falsehoods--and mundane bad manners from Fox that first ran live yesterday morning. And, of course, I listened to the original sermons which brought the reverend's teachings under large-scale public scrutiny. Could you have put up with Wright’s posturing in the pulpit for twenty years? Confidence and peacockery can be entertaining as long as you know and are consistently reminded of where the focal point is—or, in this case, Who it is.

I heard Wright—the self-proclaimed Christian, preacher of the Word—mention the actions and methods of Jesus Christ and those of some who purport to be his followers. (I also heard him claim that abortion was a right.) But what Wright did not talk about was the purpose of Jesus Christ and of course he wouldn't. Because that’s where Liberation Theologies and mainstream Christianity part company. That's a crucial fork in the road; one leads to Damnation while the other does not. But don’t take my word for it. You decide.

I'll tell you what: I've never heard such a long line of strawmen strung together and wrapped up in the Word of God in my life--someone at another site call it a 'Lie Burrito'--but I only have enough time to address a few items.

Excuse my English (and pardon the pun) but who gives a DAMN about skin color, type of clothing and style of music when it comes to the realm of saving souls and keeping them out of Hell? Why, Wright and BLT’s “founder” James Cone do. As a matter of fact they worship these things instead of the Creator. Wright rightfully claims that Christian missionaries of Europe fell into error and sin back when they were bent on converting the natives of all lands. Not by the act and desire of leading others to Christ, but by making Christianity about something other than Him, His Sacrifice, Resurrection and the purpose thereof. The missionaries bound up Christ in themselves and their own culture. But Wright now is mired that same error while condemning the missionaries for it out of the other side of his mouth. Beams and motes indeed.

Guys like Jeremiah Wright care about self-centric totems of race, culture and vengeance more than they care about leading their flocks down the straight and narrow path. They need these totems to fill the void of self-doubt and that need is filled by navel-gazing religions like Black Liberation Theology and one of its parents, the Nation of Islam. Yes, BLT is a progeny of the NOI, Christianity and Marxism—a bastard child, to be sure. It’s an I-deology all right and Wright has sacrificed the eternal souls of those who believe his lies and are grateful for his good works. He has sacrificed these upon the altar of race and culture. (My own pastor says that God has special plans for shepherds—pastors—who mislead their flocks.)

Wright's megalomania is such that he couldn’t even bring himself to hold his peace for Obama’s sake—that’s one of problems inherent in allying oneself with narcissists—and even had the nerve to be guarded by the Fruit of Islam, Daddy’s the Nation of Islam’s security force.

The most infuriating thing about Wright is his attempt to cover himself using other black people, black Christians, by saying that attacks on him weren’t really about him but about the ‘black church.' And then he wants to fling around epithets like "Uncle Tom."

Let's be clear. Neither blackness, African, American or European origin, American nationality or American allegiance need a defense because such a defense would inherently be just as erroneously-focused as Jeremiah Wright's jeremiad. Ethnic origins aren’t things to be defended, denigrated or repudiated or sworn allegiance to--my own heritage stems from this continent and two other continents--these things simply are; these facts are existential. Nationality is special: it’s existential but can also be voluntarily retained or released. And allegiance to any entity is entirely voluntary, but no one has to prove his/her allegiance to this country as part and parcel of a repudiation of an ethnicity or heritage. Those days went out with FDR.

Here’s what I do come to defend, to stand in defense of: Christianity and Christians who are black. Jeremiah Wright defames both and speaks for neither and little obscure me will not let him use either as fig leaf. Yes, our ancestors in this country and our kinsmen across the water fought to be just as Christian as other Christians—as Christian as our brothers who are white. And many of the latter stood for us and side-by-side with us—not because of us primarily but because of the One Who is Primary. Has that particular battle been won? I say yes, though the war continues. But Wright not only continues to fight the battle, he willfully misunderstands the nature of the War and identity of the Enemy. And by doing that, he becomes the tool of the Enemy. That’s his choice, but not mine and not that of those who focus on the Redemption offered by Christ instead of getting upon the Cross themselves.

To quote myself, there is no “black church.” There is only the Church.

Word to Obama: thanks a lot, "brotha." Nice pastor you have there.

UPDATE: Of course, just as I finish, Obama holds a press conference to distance himself from Wright.

Sorry, Senator. You can't shake off this Tar Baby that easily.

Ms. Malkin live-blogs it.

UPDATE: I'm getting an Everybody-lanche. Thanks. I just try to listen to the Holy Spirit.

BLT (Black Liberation Theology) in Action

UPDATE: I expanded the 'BLT' acronym because at least one reader didn't understand how the title and subject of this post and those of the subsequent one are related. However, at least one did.

During an interview with PBS’s Bill Moyers, retired Trinity United Church of Christ Pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright—Black Liberation Theologian and Senator Barack Obama’s pastor and mentor for two decades—says that his words were twisted when he asserted that God should damn America for its crimes; crimes both real and perceived.

“I felt it was unfair,” Mr. Wright said, according to excerpts of the interview released Thursday. “I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.”

In Mr. Wright’s sermons, he suggested that Americans bore some responsibility for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” He also blamed the government for the spread of AIDS among African-Americans, characterized the United States government as corrupt and referred to the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.”

He did not apologize or back away from his remarks in the interview, instead saying that people wanted to paint him as “some sort of fanatic.”

“It’s to paint me as something — ‘Something’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with this country … for its policies. We’re perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them,’” he said. “That’s not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.”

When asked what the people who aired the clips “wanted to communicate,” Mr. Wright said, “I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That’s what they wanted to communicate.”

Megalomaniacs—a special species of narcissist--want the right to say and do anything they wish, but will deem any criticism of what they say and do as “unfair” (or "evil," if they have some power over the critic). The criticism is never an honest difference of opinion or a mistake. And of course it is utterly impossible that the words, deeds and/or judgment of the narcissist are ever wrong. EVER. So it must be that those who oppose the narcissists words/deeds/judgment are willfully wrong and, therefore being unfair and unjust.

It is “unfair,” you see, to have a different opinion than Reverend Wright because, in his mind, any idea of his, especially one springing from his religion—a religion specially made for the self-indulgent--falls automatically in the realm of Good. Conversely, any opposing idea--specifically, opposing the idea that America is a whole-scale Oppressor, a Devil according to BLT--falls automatically under the rubric of the Enemy and will be judged as “unfair." (This is also how Left Orthodoxy determines Good and Evil which makes sense, since all Liberation Theologies are born of Marxism. Don't forget, both BLT and the Left are all about earthly justice. But don’t take my word for it.)

Mr. Wright, who has acted as Mr. Obama’s spiritual mentor and retired in February as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said that he has never heard Mr. Obama repeat any of his controversial statements.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Wright said. “I don’t talk to him about politics. And so he had a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the things of God.”

Mr. Obama publicly denounced Mr. Wright’s remarks, a reaction Mr. Wright said “went down very simply.”

“He’s a politician, I’m a pastor,” he said. “We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they’re two different worlds.”

He added, “I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician.”

Did the reverend just admit that he and his former acolyte were performing the “good-cop, bad-cop” routine--one seeming to represent a "post-racial" America while the other asserts the inherent evil of same? I think he did.

These two are trying to run a game on the white-guilt prone part of the Electorate and the Crazy “Uncle” spills the beans! I would say that the jig is up (RIP, Cleavon*), but the reality is…not enough of the Electorate is paying attention. Here's Hoping that will Change.

Fear not.

(Thanks to LGF)

*Faulty reference to Blazing Saddles. The 'jig' gag is from History of the World, Part I.

Africans and Americans, Part II

People who keep going on about Obama not "legally" being an "African-American" are cracking me up. Supposedly, a "legal African American" is someone who is the descendant of Africans brought to the US to be slaves--the definition of which excludes Obama, as if the concept made sense in the first place and meant something.

Here's a quandary for all you hair-splitters on things that don't matter: since my mother is an American descendant of Africans brought to the US to be slaves but my biological father is an African, does that make me "half African-American?"

Please tell me 'yes' so I can mock you.

Real Talk on Obama, Individualism and Being Fooled

If you take a position on the Iraq war or health care, you will attract reaction from people who say you’re crazy, but they will be responding to what you actually said and, more or less, to how you actually meant it. The same is not true of race. Text that deals with a difficult racial issue is like a Rorschach ink blot. People project onto that text—project their own experiences, anxieties, angers; all the emotions that go into thinking about race, which means all the emotions that exist. You can weigh every word of your text. You can rewrite it until you think there is absolutely no way that a fair-minded person can fail to understand what you said. And they will not only fail to understand it, they will accuse you of saying exactly the opposite of what you said.

--Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve

It’s a concept that is applied equally and leads in multiple directions.

Warning: when reading the following, please note the use of words and phrase like 'some,' 'sometimes,' 'not all,' etc.

Warning Two: if the rock didn't hit you, don't yelp.

Ever since some previously somnambulant people began to notice truths which were self-evident to the awake about presidential candidate Barack Obama, his mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and their adherence to Black Liberation Theology (in addition to the candidate's faithful adherence to classic socialism/communism, elitism and Identity Politics), one can notice the sense of blind outrage in the tone of some white observers, most curiously in the tone of those who are conservative. Sometimes that outrage is not only directed at the candidate, but at all black Americans. It’s as if black Americans had collectively sworn some Oath to forgive all white Americans--as if they needed forgiving--but because Obama, Wright and their ilk exist, that phantom Oath has been violated. To some, this ilk somehow represents all black Americans and in order for us—all black Americans, that is—to be trusted again, we must repudiate the haters and their ideology.

All over the conservative Internet, I’ve seen comments like this one:

I'm not giving [black Americans] a pass any more on anything. They have to rise up and demand Obama's refutation of the evil preacher. [SNIP] I will demand they act like adults and clean their own house of the hatred that we don't tolerate. If they don't dissociate themselves from Obama, the Apologist of hate, then they are throwing their lot in with him, and for that they will have lost my good-will.

Why was that individual giving any racial group of Americans as a single entity a pass on anything in the first place? And who died and made this individual or anybody else the giver of passes? That went out in 1863.

My citizenship is a right, not some privilege issued by anyone. I am allowed to love and hate whom I please as long as I don't step on another's toes. And I don't have to answer for anyone to whom I did not give birth. Tolerate this.

In turn, however, neither I nor any other person/group has the right to offer another person/group any absolution for the sins of their fathers--if those sins exist--nor make anyone feel guilty about sins not their own. Someone asked what my rant on principles was about; this was it. Some conservatives talk about individualism but when it comes time to apply the concept under adversity—under conditions where the concept of individualism isn’t reciprocated--it’s too damn hard. So when the Obamas and Wright and James Cone--who aren’t even conservatives--espouse Black Liberation Theology; when the relatively few other black supremacists, narcissists and conspiracy theorists spout their hatred, such people automatically become the responsibility of 30 million other Americans who happen to be black also. Why? Nobody serious asks white people to repudiate the darlings at places like Stormfront and Loose Change nor should they. (It's as if some of you thought that white people had a lock on lunacy. On the contrary, Crazy and Evil are equal opportunity employers.)

Haven’t conservatives been telling liberals to dispense with the Group Identity Politics, to embrace Individualism? Well, Conservatives, heal thyself! People who didn’t really buy into individualism or who found it easier to treat blacks as a monolith because most blacks themselves do so, bought Obama’s cover—the “good looks,” the stentorian, MLKish voice, the Harvard education, the Hope, the Change, the Post-Racial narrative—even when his autobiography told a different story. Those who believed the hype included a goodly portion of white conservatives, who “wouldn’t vote for him, but could hang out with the guy.” Hah! Obama wore Shelby Steele's mask of good guy; a black dude who didn’t seem to be angry at white people—if one was looking at the accouterments and not reading and listening too closely. But scratch his purty surface and he's all hugged-up with the bad guys.

His dissembling suggests the difference is only between the blacks who hate you and show it and the blacks who hate you and lie about it. Of course that's not the case, but the question then becomes how, exactly, do you tell which blacks hate you and which do not? If Obama is lying, then who isn't?

My answer:

You trust individuals after they have proven themselves. Anyone who trusted Obama--or trusts any other human--on faith is a fool.

(Sorry, WO. I'm not trying to pick on you, but your question was instructive and I think that you're getting it.)

Too many people used a different standard to judge Obama's character--perhaps a messianic one. To some Obama represented Group forgiveness. But not only does this demigod have Play-Dough feet, he's allied with the other side. That’s why the anger is so fierce in some of these quarters; it’s the anger of betrayal.

Error is spread around equally. As I said, a good deal of the black population views itself—and whites--as a monolith and will get mad at you and hurl epithets at you if you don't subscribe to this point of view. :::cough::: (And the odd thing with some of the black supporters of Obama is this: some behave as though no other black American will get a shot at the White House for a hundred years if Obama loses. I contend that the same could be true if Obama wins, but that's beside the point.) But if the principle of Group Innocence or Group Guilt is wrong, it’s wrong, no matter if it’s a majority view or not. Let them get mad. Do you conservatives believe in conservative principles? Then apply them to everyone without apology. Group Innocence and Group Guilt are not conservative concepts.

So when I tell some of you white conservatives that you haven't been following your conservative principles when judging this man, Barack Obama, could you do me a favor and not twist what I’m saying, not turning it into some cudgel of White Guilt that I’m allegedly beating you over the head with? I'm not looking for your apology because you don't have anything to apologize for. You've fallen short and missed your own mark. Welcome to the human race.

Now that you’ve been rudely awakened, perhaps those of you conservatives who actually have principles—rather than commodities—will revert to using them and start leading with your eyes open. That’s not a Black Thing or a White Thing. It’s called the Law of All Jungles. (Heh.)

And be thankful that you are awake. Some aren’t so lucky.

AFTERTHOUGHT: To those who thought Obama was a crypto-Muslim, I'm not all that mad at you anymore. You knew that some type of game was being played. You just didn't have enough experience to sniff out which one.

(Thanks to brotherbrown)

Making BLT

By James Cone. It's the narcissism, Stupid!

(Thanks to Cobb)

What Do You People Want?

Earthly perfection is what 'you people' want. The white 'you people' want perfect absolution; the black 'you people' want perfect vengeance.

Be careful what you wish for.

Denied their blanket absolution, some whites mumble and even scream the n-word, as if it just dawned on them that some black people hate them; even though the Black version of Barack Obama's and Jeremiah Wright's Liberation Theology has existed for only a little less time than legislated federal Civil Rights and Voting Rights have--a small fraction of the lifespan of this country.

Denied their vengeance, some blacks say “yeah, we knew you hated us all along,” in spite of the fact that most whites manifestly don’t hate us and many have gone against their parents, friends and communities to stand up for what’s right; in spite of the fact that the ones who do hate blacks have conspired to keep some of us in a more refined form of bondage—also known as reproductive “choice” and subsidized indolence--with our own assistance. We're not hated by all or even most whites, in spite of how the progeny of the new slaves have preyed upon all—black, white and other.

All of the players in this game wanted to be the innocent party, the wronged party. All wanted to ignore reality and history.

Then along came Obama--the guy who talks post-racial and sleeps Black Power--and all the fronting ceases. All masks are dropped. And all the sh*t-fits commence.

You people wanted the Moon and all you got was merely another flawed human to project your higher hopes and lower fantasies onto. And now you're mad.

It's your own fault, though; your fault that you accepted an earthly savior.

[Re-edited]

Broken Hearts

Some of you folks are beginning to sound like jilted lovers. I kept telling you that Obama wasn't a Muslim but a Communist (okay, a Socialist). He may ally with known racists--and, hopefully, it will sink his candidacy--but BHO is a mere cipher; a vessel. As William Amos put it at Hot Air,

We were wondering if Barack was a Manchurian Candidate; I think the answer is yes. The only question is for who?

Obama coats his lack of self in Black Liberation Theology--an ego-based, God-as-Sugar-Daddy ideology. But it could have been any other ideology that was equally as metaphysically empty; he suited up in this one because it fit the best for obvious reasons.

Some of us are still trying to clue you all in as to the exact nature of Obama's fraud. So when you stop fretting over the fact that He Done You Wrong, when you stop letting your ego and your fear blind your judgment, pay attention to the big, hairy clues in the guy's background. (No. The other clues.) They've been sitting there all along.

UPDATE: What Cobb said:

The great charade of this debacle is that critics and fans from the left and right have placed the burden on Obama to be their magic negro, to prove once and for all that Americans are capable of bridging racial gaps.

Obama's Speech (UPDATED)

Barack Obama is addressing the Wright controversy as I type this.

I have some things to take care of, but anyone who wants to comment on the speech, please do so here.

PRELIMINARY JUDGMENT: Well done, especially the part about his maternal grandmother. (The liberal bromides contained in the speech are less important and are to be expected.) More later.

UPDATE: From Drudge, the transcript.

UPDATE:
Allahpundit:

Now, with his ass in a sling, suddenly it’s time for the great conversation [on race]. If any other politician tried a move this transparently cynical, to nudge the conversation away from his own craven tolerance of racial hatred to some sort of redemption narrative by which to hold that against him is to be, in effect, objectively anti-progress, the media would vivisect him.

More from Shelby Steele regarding the Bargainer's Mask:

For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man.

Kyle-Anne Shiver at American Thinker:

Barack Obama maintains that even though his pastor and his wife have no pride in America, he himself has remained above all that division and strife, incredulously, because he never even knew about it. [SNIP]

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm getting a bit queasy at the thought of Barack Obama's tendency to know nothing about nothing when it comes to people and problems right under his nose. If he genuinely was not on to the racism of his own pastor, the guy who was like an "uncle" to him, how will he be able to see through the lying hypocrisy of IslamoFascists[?]

Chris Durang at Huffington Post:

I'm sorry -- I don't often get moved and inspired listening to a speaker. I think Barack Obama is brilliant, and he is a genuine healer. If we don't take our chances with him, we are doomed to more of this endless, idiot, non-constructive bickering deadlock that passes for governance in our stuck, stalled political landscape.

Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom:

It’s a movingly schmaltzy piece. It may do the trick for him.

Ann Althouse:

I'd say he did not do very much — other than to resist condemning Wright and to model his socially acceptable attitudes and generate a feeling — I'm sure you didn't all feel it — that we need unite behind this man if the terrible divisions over race are going to end.

UPDATE: And from my other political father:

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama’s voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology. [SNIP]

Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony.

Filling the Space

Spengler at Asia Times gives a short overview of the Black Liberation Theology subscribed to by Jeremiah Wright's TUCC and, allegedly, by Barack Obama:

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Spengler writes of Cone's argument about God: that He should be a god who does what humans want, be a Metaphysical Sugar Daddy or He's worthless. Cone isn't exactly by himself in that postulation.

As for Jesus Christ, He is alleged to be the Savior of the Oppressed only--as is so with all types of 'Liberation theology,' a school of belief in which the identity of the Oppressed depends on who's asking. With Black Liberation theology, Jesus is the Savior of the black oppressed--and, from what I can gather, those white persons who are willing give up the "guise of the Oppressor." Let's just say that I have more homework to do.

A cursory conclusion: it is a religion of works (as opposed to faith), of grudge-holding and of promised vengeance for wrongs done--both real and perceived, both individual and collective. But, like Shelby Steele, Spengler wonders whether Obama has merely covered himself with the coating of Black Liberation theology for his own purposes.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

[SNIP]

It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Did the TUCC serve to simply allow Obama to check off “religion” on his particular “self” checklist? It seems to me that he "converted" to it without giving the matter too much thought--became a clay to be molded by humans; by his wife and by Wright. A shape-shifter.

Once people get over the outrage regarding the racism of it all, perhaps more will put together the musings of persons like Steele and Spengler in order to formulate this question: who is Obama really?

His “self” space remains yet unobserved.

(Thanks to One Cosmos)

Hole in His Soul (UPDATE: Interview Excerpt)

Shelby Steele’s 1991 book The Content of Our Character started me on my journey to conservatism. It was what first made me actively consider that being a Liberal or a Democrat were yea/nay choices rather than states of existence which were as fixed as my skin color. So I consider him one of my political fathers and have a tendency to pay attention when I see one of his essays or catch him on TV.

I did read Steele’s A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win--and I got his descriptions of the two personality masks that black people wear around white people and how few people—black or white—appreciate it when a black person takes off his/her mask. However, I didn’t really understand his description of Obama until this Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC)/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha began to heat up.

In January, Peter Robinson interviewed Steele on A Bound Man over at NRO TV’s Uncommon Knowledge. TUCC is discussed in the third part in the five parter, but the whole thing is interesting. Steele pretty much predicted how things have played out and says the same thing that I said here: that Obama's biracial-ness coupled with parental abandonment has wrecked havoc on how he sees himself and how he projects himself to others. Basically, Steele explains why there’s very little ‘there’ there. An excerpt of that third part is needed to illustrate Steele's point, I think; a transcription of it is forthcoming.

UPDATE: Here are the most perceptive observations of the interview's third part.

SHELBY STEELE: He was abandoned by his African father at the age of two. So in one stroke he lost both a father and a racial identity. So here in this all white household is this little kid who is being held accountable in the world as a black—being raised by a mother who’s white, a grandmother who’s white [and] a grandfather who is white; almost no experience whatsoever with other blacks.

And so, as I talk about in the book, as there’s a longing to know the father in Barack Obama there’s also a longing to know himself as a black; to feel that he belongs, that simple sense that other blacks take for granted, where it’s not a question at all.

For him, it’s a life-long angst. And so he’s driven in that direction and ends up on the Southside of Chicago doing community organizing when he could have gone straight ahead to law school and so forth [after earning an undergrad from Columbia]. [SNIP]

PETER ROBINSON: In any event, from Columbia he could have gone to Wall Street if he wanted to.

SS: He could have gone…and did for a brief moment. And quite, can’t take it. Wants to…this call, it’s there. This need. And so he takes this job at…below minimum wage as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

PR: As we have this conversation and as I read A Bound Man, I’m evaluating this man as a candidate. There’s a fascinating story, merely as a matter of character study and what it says about the state of race in the United States; but he’s running for president. So this notion of seeking out a black identity—the way it struck me was understandable and even commendable. Does it strike you the same way? Or is it still too much race? He’s doing something because of race? How do you understand it? How do you evaluate it?

SS: I went through something of it myself. Again [I’m] from that kind of a background. [Steele's father is black and his mother is white. --Ed.] I was lucky [that] I had my father. So…and I grew up in segregation and that will give you a clear sense of identity. (laughs)

PR: He was raised in a white world.

SS: Yeah.

PR: But you were raised in a black world.

SS: An entirely black world.

PR: Alright.

SS: So I didn’t feel the pressure, I don’t think, in the way that he did. But it was there. I’m aware of it. There’s a vulnerability that you have that people can see. As Christopher Hitchens says there, “why is he really black?” So somebody who doesn’t know you can walk up and say, “well you’re not really who you seem to be.” And always along with that goes this suggestion that you’re a phony; that you’re a bit of a fraud because of your birthright…your fate.

So it’s a vulnerability and there’s this desire to resolve it. And that’s, I think, Obama’s compulsion really: to establish himself as an authentic black [and] failing all along.

PR: You write: He goes to the Illinois state legislature, he’s now a member of the United States Senate for the last couple of years. He affiliates himself with a specifically black church in Chicago called Trinity United Church of Christ. You write about it at some length. So, incidentally, does Christopher Hitchens.

Quote--Christopher now: “Run by the sort of minister that the press often guardedly describes as ‘flamboyant,’ this bizarre outfit the church describes itself as” now he’s quoting from their website, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian and speaks of a Chosen People whose nature we are allow to assume is afrocentric.” Operative sentence: “Nobody who wants to be taken seriously can possibly be associated with such a sub-standard and shade-oriented place.”

Now there’s a point there. This is a graduate of Columbia and of Harvard Law School who’s going to a place that it’s reasonable to suppose that, in one way or another, is intellectually beneath him. Right?

SS: Absolutely.

PR: So how…do we cut him slack because he needs this? How do you understand that one?

SS: That’s one of the questions that I think the press…he’s been in this what I call ‘White Guilt Bubble’ where they never ask him anything meaningful.

How is it that you go to an afrocentric, Black Nationalist church, where everything is black—morality, "black"; community, "black"; family values, "black"; a church that your mother would not be comfortable in, if she would be welcome at all—how do you reconcile…

Could you stand up in this church and say, “It wasn’t 'blackness' that created Barack Obama. It was the 'midwestern' values of my mother. That’s how it got done. So maybe the people in this church might spend a little more time talking about those values than about 'blackness.'” I don’t think that Obama is likely to do that. But, how does he resolve it? How does he reconcile? [SNIP]

SS: When you are born as he was, you endure this abandonment and [it] leaves these wounds. And there is going to be—for anybody—an attempt to sort of fill up that void in some way or another.

The only way you can do it is through a thousand little self-betrayals; where you go to that church and you turn a blind eye to the fact that it’s beneath you intellectually, that it subscribes to an ideology that would exclude the loving family that you had. You betray yourself. You get used to self-betrayal as a survival mechanism, as a way of getting through the world, getting through society. And that’s where you pay the price, because when you’re doing that, you’re not developing a self. You’re not individuating.

And there clearly is some of that with Obama—this habit of self-betrayal.

For the first time, I feel a great deal of pity for Obama, along with empathy, of course since I grew up in a kind of a "mirror universe" in relation to his own. (I can't decide which one contains the bearded Spock.)

Be that as it may, Obama's background wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't seem as though his particular brand of neuroses played out in nearly every relationship that he has--personal and professional. His campaign is the very model of two-facedness and the absence of self which Steele points to. Obama isn't crazy but something more frightening--a vessel to be filled.

What kind of damage could such a president do?