Gretta Van S. had a vote run during her program asking if the “O”s speech made them feel more favorable of him -
The NO’s came in at 87% -
that makes me feel safer
I think a lot us were uncomfortable with him (after saying last week that he had never heard or known of the Bullfrog's many, many incendiary sermons - and now admitting he did but..) equating the deep, wild and dangerous statements for decades, meant to whip up hatred of the 'rich white people' - he comes out and equates it to things we've all heard in our churches; to what Geraldine Ferraro said and then, for the first time in his campaign; acknowledges his white grandparents - by throwing his grandmother under the bus - couched in praise of her raising him and loving him and then labels her a racist - with an accusation that was, itself, only a half truth.
He said his grandmother was uncomfortable with being approached by black men on the street.
However, in his first book he writes it differently. He says she came home upset because while she was waiting for a bus, a large man, a panhandler ask her for money - and kept getting more aggressive about it. She said she was glad the bus came just then because she was afraid he might hit her on the head. Upon questioning by her husband, she described him as black.
Excuse me, but I would also have been afraid, whether the man was black or white or purple.
Bottom line is, "O" reminded me of a little kid who was been caught hanging with a hoodlum gang and making excuses for their action - and his excuse is, after first denying it but now confronted with proof, says, "OKay. I did it. I'm sorry. But what about all those other people who did something wrong. And, oh, by the way, I don't agree with the gang or the gang leader, but I'm gonna still hang out with them and the leader. They're my friends."
I surmise a psychiatrist would have a field day with this very conflicted young man. As he once said, after college, he went in search of his 'blackness'. He had a black father who deserted him when he was 2. Later, his mother left him for his white grandparents to raise.
So he went to Chicago and came under the influence of the Bullfrog - and seems to crawled under his wing, looking upon him as a surrogate father.
But no one along the way seemed to've taught him the proverb about: "Oh what tangled webs we weave when...."
Far from being presidential material