The Obama speach...
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- molo0
no,no...ron paul is jesus
- Ron Paul's a delusional idiot.The_CCG
- so is the rest of the countryRodimus79
- Ron Paul is real change!!!!!
dan5382 - theres a line between delusional and ideologicalcannonball
- mtgentry0
I agree that its a good speech but why would he choose to have that guy as his pastor for 20+ yrs?
- well...i dunno...but i listened to that pastors sermon...what exactly did he get wrong?exador1
- because he is saying relevant things about the states. finally, someone not candy coating this fucking place.vanilla_cam
- uhh...the Pastor thinks the AIDS/HIV is a US government plot to kill black people.Mimio
- well, not everything.vanilla_cam
- ok..that one may be a bit off the mark...but can ya blame a guy?..the us gov. has tried everything else ;)exador1
- The main objection to the pastor is his support for Farrakhan.CyBrain
- agree with exadorblackspade
- Iggyboo0
Can you blame the guy for having a pastor that has different political views of his own. I mean it's obvious that the two would differ. As he stated he knew the guy like family in regards to the 20+ years comment from mtgentry.
- BonSeff0
cocaine is a helluva drug
- Randd0
and, oh yeah, he wrote it himself
"I spent the last five hours in my woodshop with a lathe and sandpaper and an awl, carving this beautiful oak chair that I now present to you.
I did it because you will need something to sit down on when the full measure of what Ambinder wrote crashes upon you like all the heavens and the stars above.
Let me repeat it.
Because it bears repeating.
That speech today? The one that has pundits--from the liberal David Corn at The Nation ("This is as sophisticated a discussion of race as any American politician has sought to present to the public") to the conservative Charles Murray, of National Review Online ("it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."), and those inbetween--noting the brilliance, sophistication, sincerity and candor of the words spoken by Obama? That speech?
He wrote it himself.
Once more, with feeling:
He wrote it. Himself.
Barack Obama did. He wrote it.
Now, if you are like me, and I pray for your soul you are not, you had the normal reaction to finding out this piece of information. You rushed right to the Library of Congress to determine exactly the last time that a President or a presidential candidate wrote a major speech alone, by himself or herself.
And, of course, what you discover is that other than the speeches Obama has written for himself, the last time a major speech was written without the aid of a speechwriter by a president or presidential candidate was Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" speech delivered on October 13, 1969.
Now that was a good speech. Evil, no doubt, to its very core, and designed to proliferate the feelings that allowed the great Southern Strategy success, but a good speech nevertheless.
In other words, not in my lifetime. And I am oldish. I have kids and wear dark socks with slippers and complain about the quality of my lawn and get hungover way too easily. But in the last 37 years there hasn't been a speech like this written by the man himself. Not like this.
Here is a chair. Regardless of who you support, or what you think of Obama, I want you to sit here, right here on this chair and consider something wonderful. To wit:
It is possible that we will have a President who not only will speak in full, complete sentences, but who will do so in a manner that is eloquent, and who will also be articulate and eloquent in delivering words he is intelligent enough to know, understand, and use in a speech he is capable of writing himself.
This chair, it is oak.
Sit and think about that.
After seven years of the worst crumble-bumblings of the nattering nabob from Crawford, think about that.
He wrote that speech. He wrote it. He, himself. "
- I think this is a really exciting possibility for the US, and thus, the rest of the world...MrOneHundred
- ...I just hope you guys don’t blow it. And I hope Obama doesn’t get assassinated.MrOneHundred
- Jaline0
I actually respect him more for having relationships with people who may not have the same beliefs as he does. It tells you something about him.
- OSFA0
Is there a summarized copy of this somewhere on the internets?
- Randd0
it's on youtube--just watched it--very moving to me
- PonyBoy0
- wtf, hahahahhaamrdobolina
- Doing the Lord's work....TheBlueOne
- This guy is a low life.sofakingzero
- 7340
seriously can anyone honestly say that they agree with every single opinion 100% that each an everyone of their friends has? its a rediculous idea. i am not political at all, but this was very well written
- 12xu0
who is this Obama you speak of?
http://www.andreaharner.com/arch…- that is, without a doubt, one of the saddest, yet funniest interviews ever.exador1
- me20
i am inspired!
- kelpie0
any justice in this world then that man is the definition of 'presidential' if the word carries anything like the meaning and gravitas I think it does. He's great; if I was Americanski I'd be voting for him. If we (that is the rest of the world) get stuck with McCain over Obama, I'll be mightily unimpressed (and buying a concrete bunker).
- rainman0
From Andrew Sullivan a CONSERVATIVE blogger and journalist:
"Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.
And it was a reflection of faith - deep, hopeful, transcending faith in the promises of the Gospels. And it was about America - its unique promise, its historic purpose, and our duty to take up the burden to perfect this union - today, in our time, in our way.
I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy - not this man, his candidacy - and what he can bring us to achieve - is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.
Bill Clinton once said that everything bad in America can be rectified by what is good in America. He was right - and Obama takes that to a new level. And does it with the deepest darkest wound in this country's history.
I love this country. I don't remember loving it or hoping more from it than today."
- Mimio0
Good speech. I'm always impressed by his willingness to be transparent and disarm the criticisms while not slinging any more mud.
- ukit0
This is an pretty interesting article in terms of understanding Obama vs. Wright
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/200…
Black Conservatives in Large and Small Caps
About a year ago, I penned a post entitled "Taking Thomas Seriously", about the particularly political ideology held by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In it, I noted that both liberals and conservatives misunderstood Thomas' orientation because they tried to map him onto "standard" (White) political categories. Thomas is a conservative, yes, but specifically he is a Black Conservative, which is a very particular philosophical tradition that does not perfectly align with plain old vanilla White conservatives.
Not all Black conservatives are Black Conservatives (that is, there are conservative Black people, such as Ward Connerly, who I would not identify as part of the Black Conservative tradition), and, more importantly, not all Black Conservatives are conservative (in that, on our "traditional" left/right axis, some would be placed on the left). However, because most people, particularly most Whites, aren't familiar with Black Conservative ideology, it leads to significant misunderstanding about where its adherents are coming from when they do show up on the national stage. All this is preface to point out that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he who has nearly derailed Obama's campaign, is a Black Conservative. To be sure, he's not a conservative (needless to say, capitalization matters in this post). But he's not a "liberal" either -- his political alignment doesn't comfortably fit onto models premised on White ideological positioning. Black Conservatism, like Black Liberalism, is not wholly divorced from "standard" Conservatism and Liberalism -- but at best they intersect at odd angles.
Black Conservatism essentially operates off the premise that racism is an ingrained and potentially permanent part of White-dominated institutions. As a result, Black Conservatives essentially tell Blacks they can only rely on themselves to get ahead in America -- counting on White people to be moral or "do the right thing" is a waste of time. Politically, this means building tight-knit communities that emphasize the patronizing of identifiably Black institutions, with the end result being social independence from White America. In this, it mixes at least partial voluntary self-segregation with a significant aversion to external dependency, with Whites and White institutions being defined as outsiders who can't be trusted. Every dollar that flows out of the Black community and into the hands of White America is a dollar that is in the control of a group that, at best, has a unique set of interests that can't be counted on to converge with those of Black people. Contained within this school are thinkers as far-ranging as Derrick Bell, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Clarence Thomas, Huey P. Newton, and Malcolm X. Black groups and leaders who were/are not Black Conservatives include W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, and yes, Barack Obama.
Black Conservatism holds obvious parallels with traditional paleo-conservatism (hence the name): the mistrust of outsiders, looking out for one's own people first (and concurrently, self-reliance over dependency), lack of faith in high-minded moralism and ideology. But since African-Americans are a minority people in the United States, some other qualities are grafted on which are less familiar to majoritarian conservatism: most notably, the nation is considered to be an outsider, making the ideology significantly less inclined towards patriotism than the average White conservative. The "anti-American" elements, normally associated as a far-left belief, actually are a closer relative to conservative xenophobia: the analogy would be White American Conservative: United Nations :: Black American Conservative : United States. Each represents a distant governmental body, run by outsiders, which represents a putative threat to group autonomy. The mistrust of authority, often characterized as a left-belief, becomes a right-ward belief once its conceptualized as mistrust of foreign authority -- within their own communities, Black Conservatives often create very rigid hierarchal models (particularly on gender issues). Ultimately, though, what Black Conservatives preach is independence: As Marcus Garvey, an key Black Conservative writer in the early 20th century put it, "No race is free until it has a strong nation of its own; its own system of government and its own order of society. Never give up this idea."
Virtually all the controversial statements said by Rev. Wright make the most sense as expositions on Black Conservative ideology. His disclaimer of the pursuit of "middle-class-ness" is a term of art; he's flaming Black people who are more concerned about looking good to White people than they are about insuring the health of their own community -- including those who haven't yet moved up the ladder. His extraordinarily grim predictions about the state of racism in America are textbook Black Conservative arguments, as are his efforts to break down the idea that America is a particularly moral government that can be trusted (rightly, when he notes that America too has engaged in state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America and supported it in South Africa; wrongly when he alleges that we infected Black folk with the AIDS virus).
I'm not saying I agree with all of his points -- I'm not a Black Conservative, and as I outlined in the Thomas post, I'm not sure that a White person can morally adopt the premises of Black Conservatism. But we can't understand what we're yelling about until we properly position it within its philosophical school. This is why I feel confident in asserting that Obama and Wright are not of a political kind -- they operate from totally different ends of the Black Conservative spectrum. Obama is an integrationist, the very act of running for President means that he believes that there is a space for Blacks in our hitherto White-dominated government, and all of his speeches, policies, and writings have indicated he believes that there is hope for an America that is not separated and divided on racial lines. All of these positions would be derided as doe-eyed idealism by a true Black Conservatism. And if there is one thing Obama can't be accused of, it's of being too much of a pessimist.
- harlequino0
youtube link anyone?
- it's in the Clinton threadRandd
- aha, thank you kind sirharlequino
- ukit0
And really, is this guy (his preacher so horrible)? He said "God damn America" for treating its citizens as less than human. That fact that people are so shocked by it is 90% because they are not used to hearing a black preacher deliver an angry sermon.
This is typical of how the media deals with stuff. They take one shocking quote and put it on a loop for 48 hours without analyzing the context. Obama did exactly what the media didn't do, he put Wright's anger in context, he said he doesn't agree with it, especially the paranoid parts about AIDS, but those are feelings that a lot of the older generation that grew up with segregation still holds.
Even if you disagree with Obama, you have to admit he doesn't insult your intelligence. He took the issue head on rather than going for the easy cop out.
If this is how he deals with other issues, I have to say he will make a great president.
- kalkal0
I'd love to hear Bush try and make it through this whole speech
- I’d love to hear Bush make through a whole sentence.MrOneHundred