On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:47:53 -0700, Huck Kennedy wrote
(in article
>):

> On Mar 18, 3:44*pm, Kathy Bush > wrote:
>> By Shailagh Murray
>> PHILADELPHIA -- Sen. Barack Obama sought to quell the political
>> firestorm stirred by his former pastor Jeremiah Wright with a deeply
>> personal speech about black anger, white anger, and the gulf that race
>> continues to represent in U.S. society.
>>
>> "Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore
>> right now," Obama asserted. "We would be making the same mistake that
>> Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to
>> simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it
>> distorts reality."
>>
>> The 37-minute speech had consumed Obama in recent days. For the first
>> time in a year, he was faced with a potentially lethal threat to his
>> candidacy that was only partly within his control. Wright's racially
>> charged rhetoric, a throwback the militant 1970s, threatened to
>> sabotage a campaign built around the ideas of unity and change. Obama
>> denounced Wright's comments when they surfaced on Friday, but he knew
>> interviews wouldn't be enough. And so he began crafting today's
>> speech, at once pained and unnerved by the task at hand.
>>
>> Obama spoke with a serious voice, reading each word carefully from the
>> teleprompter. The audience sat silently until halfway through the text
>> -- an eternity for an Obama event, where casual one-liners are often
>> met with a standing ovation.
>>
>> "I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from
>> Kansas," Obama declared to the hushed auditorium. "And for as long as
>> I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my
>> story even possible," he said.
>>
>> In his 20s, after years of struggling with his racial identity, Obama
>> began attending Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's
>> South Side. It provided him with a community and identity that was
>> missing in his itinerant upbringing. And after being raised by his
>> white grandparents, it also brought him deeper into the African
>> American fold.
>>
>> "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," said Obama
>> of Wright. "He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and
>> baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I
>> heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat
>> whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.
>> He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad --
>> of the community that he has served diligently for so many years."
>>
>> Obama again denounced the inflammatory statements that have dominated
>> cable news and talk radio coverage in recent days. "Reverend Wright's
>> comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we
>> need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together
>> to solve a set of monumental problems."
>>
>> But he added, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black
>> community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white
>> grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed
>> again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves
>> anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of
>> black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one
>> occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me
>> cringe."
>>
>> "These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this
>> country that I love."
>>
>> He tackled the rich subculture of the African American church
>> experience. "Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of
>> raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing,
>> and clapping, and screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the
>> untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty,
>> the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and
>> successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up
>> the black experience in America."
>>
>> There also is anger. And "that anger is not always productive," said
>> Obama. "But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it
>> away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to
>> widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."
>>
>> He added, "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the
>> white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't
>> feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race."
>>
>> Wright's mistake, said Obama, "is not that he spoke about racism in
>> our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no
>> progress has been made; as if this country -- a country that has made
>> it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office
>> in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and
>> Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a
>> tragic past."
>>
>> http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-t...ma_speech_conf...
>
> Wow. Nice speech.

He's a glib one, no doubt about it. Too bad is all bullshit.
--
Obama '08 = Osama '09