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A Speech That Fell Short
Washington Post ^ | 3/19/08 | Michael Gerson

Posted on 03/19/2008 6:55:07 AM PDT by gridlock

Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.

(snip)

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of African Americans. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.

(snip)

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

(snip>

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: gerson; ihaveanexcusespeech; jeremiah; jeremiahwright; nobama; obama
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To: gridlock
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

And hangs out with ducks ...

We all know what "birds of a feather" do ...

As an Avian-American, I speak with some authority on the topic.

21 posted on 03/19/2008 7:06:15 AM PDT by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: gridlock

Obama violated “the bargain” -

He would not push past grievances in our faces, and we would not see him as threatening.

By not repudiating Wright and throwing his white grandmother under the bus, he’s keeping the grievances alive and violating the bargain.


22 posted on 03/19/2008 7:06:49 AM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: gridlock

I still can’t believe how he threw his grandmother under the bus. That’s pretty damn slimy.


23 posted on 03/19/2008 7:07:03 AM PDT by Niteranger68 (Where are they hiding Obama’s white half?)
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To: marktwain

I guess they couldn’t hold this one over for Saturday. Wierd, huh?


24 posted on 03/19/2008 7:07:39 AM PDT by gridlock (They don't call us "The Stupid Party" for nuthin'!)
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To: gridlock
There are 300,000,000 people in this country. 299,995,000 do not have long mentoring relationships to racist Pastors.

The trouble is that, of the three people who actually have a chance to be the next President, the only one who's part of the 299,995,000 (i.e. Her Heinous) is utterly unacceptable for other reasons.

25 posted on 03/19/2008 7:07:52 AM PDT by steve-b (Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. --RAH)
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To: RabidBartender

“Barack Obama is not a man who hates — but he chose to walk with a man who does.”

And how do we know he is not a man of hate ? Well, he just spent the last 20 years in a mad church who endorsed islam, antiamericanism, racism and Farrakhan’s antisemitism.

Liberals are fascist. Had Obama been the member of a neonazi party, they wouldn’t complain.

Obama is by far the most dangerous person that has ever been in a presidential election.


26 posted on 03/19/2008 7:08:12 AM PDT by drzz
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To: MizSterious

Gosh, when he achieved the power to impose his racism on the everyone else,

would it then be possible for blacks to be racist?

According to the left, it’s impossible for blacks to be racist because blacks lack the power to impose their racism.


27 posted on 03/19/2008 7:08:20 AM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: period end of story
Whoa! They absotively loved it on CNN. It was a “great speech”, and all that....

Yep, and the panel that Chrissy Matthews had loved it to. So did the New York Times. Comparison to JFK, MLK, Lincoln filled the airwaves and print media. I think the True Believers in Obama were brought to tears, but for most folks is was boring and lame just the same old same old.

28 posted on 03/19/2008 7:09:57 AM PDT by Always Right (Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?)
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To: MrB; Niteranger68

If he will throw his own Grandmother under the bus, how much worse will he treat you, for whom he has no particular love or loyalty?


29 posted on 03/19/2008 7:09:57 AM PDT by gridlock (They don't call us "The Stupid Party" for nuthin'!)
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To: MizSterious

I think it’s as likely as not that Obama is a man who hates, though I’ll never learn what he really believes from listening to his speeches. He was spiritually mentored by a man who hates for 20 years-that says something. How much, it’s hard to know. That’s one thing amongst others that’s dangerous about Obama-he has covered himslef in a blinding light of empty but ear-tickling rhetoric that never lets you see the man as he is or what he really believes, his core concrete principles and motivations. Besides being the usual ‘rat socialist, I could never want a man as President who has to go to these lengths to keep people from seeing who he is and knowing what he belives. All we have to go on are the peripherals and circumstancials, so to speak, and that’s his own fault (intent). Why? What is so controversial about what he really thinks and who he really is that he is making his whole campaign a blinding but empty “cult of personality” using a lot of pretty words but no detail at all? I know that no politician gives that much of themselves away or nails their flag to the mast that obviously, but he’s gone to greater lengths that any I’ve ever seen before.


30 posted on 03/19/2008 7:09:58 AM PDT by mrsmel
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To: gridlock

Comparing Wright to Obama’s white grandmother is also ridiculous. Obama’s white grandmother did not stand in a pulpit and spew anti-American racist propaganda.


31 posted on 03/19/2008 7:10:01 AM PDT by Brilliant
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To: gridlock

A lot of people (not me, probably not you either) assumed she’d just made a “gaffe”—but now everyone should realize that she was speaking directly from her racist, hate-filled heart. For the first time in her adult life, she was proud of her country, or at least tickled pink that so many had bought her husband’s flim flam act.


32 posted on 03/19/2008 7:10:14 AM PDT by MizSterious (The Republican Party is infected with the RINO-virus)
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To: steve-b
...(it just sounds like more of the same-old-same-old Clinton Slime Machine output).

Ain't THAT the truth.

33 posted on 03/19/2008 7:10:44 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Time is Nature's way of preventing everything from happening all at once.)
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To: Brilliant

Also, comparing Wright to McCain’s “spiritual advisor” is ridiculous.

I find it expository, though, of the leftist mindset.

Anti-Islamic rhetoric is equated with anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Jew rhetoric.

Shows what side they’re on.


34 posted on 03/19/2008 7:11:55 AM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: gridlock

Gotta promote that one to tag-line status...


35 posted on 03/19/2008 7:12:06 AM PDT by gridlock (If Obama will throw his own Grandma under the bus, how much worse will he treat you?)
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To: MizSterious
My guess is that Hussein thinks like Farrakan and Malcolm X.
36 posted on 03/19/2008 7:12:48 AM PDT by roses of sharon (Who will be McCain's maverick?)
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To: marktwain

Two other opinion pieces in the same edition called Obama’s speech a homerun. Both of those columnists are black. And the WP’s editorial called the speech extraordinary and squarely addressing the issue of race. Gerson’s piece was the lone exception in this morning”s paper.


37 posted on 03/19/2008 7:13:02 AM PDT by kabar
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To: steve-b
McCain's connection to John Hagee

What connection? This is no analogy, IMHO. I know that the MSM has tried to float it, but it sank fast. A real analogy is this: Al Qaeda endorses Obama; Chavez endorses Obama; so does Castro. Hagee endorses McCain. There is only passing association; no one is saddled with it in these cases.

38 posted on 03/19/2008 7:15:49 AM PDT by Migraine (Diversity is great...(until it happens to YOU).)
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To: kabar
Gerson’s piece was the lone exception in this morning”s paper.

But everybody knows that the other three are pro-forma fluff.

39 posted on 03/19/2008 7:15:57 AM PDT by gridlock (If Obama will throw his own Grandma under the bus, how much worse will he treat you?)
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To: gridlock

I think Sen. Obama and wife Michelle, as bitter as they have been recently, should seek counseling, or therapy, instead of high political office. Additionally, avid supporters of Mr. Obama should look at left wing politics as less salvation for the masses, and more like creeing socialism without the violence.


40 posted on 03/19/2008 7:16:14 AM PDT by mockinbird
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