n a t b s

I just read this article about Geraldine Ferraro’s faux-outrage at Obama’s speech. I wasn’t alive when she was vice presidential candidate, but wow, what a bitch. I say this without any intended hyperbole: Geraldine Ferraro is what’s wrong with America. People like her, who express faux-outrage for political purposes disgust me. They have no souls, no morals. What is it she said that’s gotten me so mad? Let’s start with this:

“To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,”

First of all, I’m pretty sure he didn’t equate her words to Wright’s words. He equated the reaction to her words to the reaction to Wright’s words. Secondly, and most importantly, dismissing Jeremiah Wright as merely “this racist bigot” is so small and dismissive and exactly the kind of characterization and attitude that Obama was trying to move us past in his speech.

From what I’ve heard of Wright’s sermons, he’s not a racist. He’s a justifiably angry black man who said some inflammatory things. And frankly they’re not even that inflammatory, like “the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard[re:9/11]. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” People are really going ape shit over that remark. Yet…it’s true. 9/11 was because of our foreign policy. It was about our troop presence in Muslim lands, specifically Saudi Arabia. I can only hope the people who are freaking out over this line are the same ones who pathetically believe that “they hate us for our freedom” because it would be a shame if reasonable adults got angry over it.

Back to Ferraro, she said “she had ‘no clue’ why Obama would include her in his speech.” Really? You have no idea why he would mention you in his speech about race and politics. Really? This woman is so phony she makes me sick. Also, apparently, “Ferraro also said she could not understand why Obama had called out his own white grandmother for using racial stereotypes that had made him cringe.” Maybe she’s just really stupid, but just for the record he “called out” his grandmother to demonstrate that we all have people in out lives who sometimes say awful things, and to make that point that “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” You can’t disown the people who have been so close to you. Obama is loyal and genuine. Geraldine Ferraro is a bitter phony shell of a woman.

And now for the coup de grâce: what did Ferraro think of the speech?

In sum, however, Ferraro said she thought the speech was “excellent,” and said she understood why Obama could not renounce his association with Wright.

Are you kidding me Geraldine? So you actually liked the speech? And you understand why he couldn’t renounce the Reverend? And the reason you think Obama couldn’t disown Wright is:

“They’re looking at their base. Their base is African-Americans. They’re looking at that and they’re trying to walk a very thin line. They don’t want to offend the African-Americans, and this is the way he did it.”

MOTHERFUCKER

For all those people out there who keep saying Obama is just words, and who keep asking what is this ambiguous “change” he keeps talking about, I point to his speech yesterday as the perfect example of that change. The change that he’s really been talking about is raising the discourse in this country. I don’t know if anyone noticed but our national media is on the level of 7th graders gossiping. He’s trying to rectify that. I think that to a certain extent that speech was directed straight at the media. For one thing, he gave it to a room full of reporters.

For days now the national press has been obsessing over the Wright comments. They’ve been insisting Obama throw him under the bus. They’ve been judging the Reverend on about 3 seconds of video. And Obama refused to get sucked in by it. He refused to disown his dear friend, but he still denounced his words. And then he challenged us to look at the bigger picture; how this really all relates to the stagnant and dysfunctional race relations in this country. And he did it without being patronizing.

Will it work politically? I don’t know, but in scanning the morning news the reactions seem generally positive. On the other hand I can just hear the attack ad now: Barack saying “He was like family to me” put together with Wright saying “GOD DAMN AMERICA!!” over and over. Will that sink him? We’ll have to wait and see. But if it does than that means we’re not ready for Barack Obama. He can’t make the change himself, all he can do is challenge us to change and hope that we follow. I’m with you Barack. I know a lot of other people who are too. I just hope it’s enough. I’m sick of being in 7th grade.

I just read the full text of Barack Obama’s “special speech on race.” I had to read it, not listen, because I’m at work. I’ll listen to it later just to hear his most-likely great delivery but the words themselves are very good. This kind of speech is exactly what he needs to be doing more of. Instead of attacking Hillary Clinton, this speech really demonstrates his ability to be a uniter. It’s intelligent, thoughtful, and right-on. Instead of denouncing one of his mentors and throwing him under the bus, he tries to clearly explain the racial divide in this country that has lead to this whole situation. It’s not the smartest political move by conventional wisdom, but it may work in today’s world. In today’s world people can go on youtube and watch the whole speech instead of just having it distilled to sound bites. Of course it will be distilled to sound bites. To wit: CNN’s headline, “Obama: Constitution ‘stained by sin of slavery’.” This is why I hate old media, especially CNN. I mean he did say that, and it’s true by the way, but distilling his entire speech into that one sentence is very misrepresentative of his remarks. It makes him seem like an angry black man, much like the Rev. Wright the media’s been criticizing all week.

Anyway, let me now do my own blog version of sound-biting the speech. Let’s start at the top, with the constitution remark:

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

So CNN took that and got one sentence out of it. I read that a see a lot of sense. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery (of course he’s forgetting the other original sin of this nation: genocide. But I’ll let that one slide). Yet the document itself held all the answers; that we are all equal, and have rights to freedom and liberty. It’s just that at first “people” or “men” were categorized as “white men.” If you weren’t white, or a man, in those days you weren’t really a person as far as the government was concerned. So yes, the constitution was stained by this hypocrisy and sin. Fortunately over the years we’ve come closer to the ideals laid out in our founding documents. I’d stress the word “closer” in that sentence because we’re still a long way off, and unfortunately at the moment I’d say we’re regressing. But I digress, back to the speech: