"Snipergate" dogging Clinton

Snipergate has failed to intrigue me in the way that Wrightgate did and continues to. Who doesn't already know that the Clintons are pathological liars who will say whatever they think will help them win elections?

Nevertheless, the issue deservedly has legs. Because of my lack of interest in this issue, I give you the panel, which is way better than what I would write anyway:

Hitch on Wright

As usual, when Christopher Hitchens agrees with me, I am particularly drawn to his compelling logic. Last week I opined that the real problem with Jeremiah Wright's comments was not the racial undertones but rather the absurdity and irresponsibility of his calumnies. Hitch makes a similar point today in Slate. Wrights comments are not controversial; they are simply wrong. In Hitch's words,

Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been—and were—applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

Hitch goes on to recite his usual obsessive pablum about religion being the root cause of racism. Blah, blah, blah. One tolerates Hitch's myopic rants in order to enjoy gems like this one:

To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.

Krauthammer: A brilliant fraud

Charles Krauthammer finishes what he started:

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"

But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.

His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence and (b) white guilt.

Read it all.

Misdirected outrage

The Obama campaign calls the security breach at the State Department "outrageous." Barack Obama is capable of outrage? Really? One could be forgiven for doubting after Obama's limp-wristed response to the truly outrageous and incendiary rhetoric of Obama's advisor, Pastor Wright. Where was Obama's outrage when Wright slandered his government, the nation of Israel, his fellow Americans, his fellow blacks, and his non-black neighbors? Just a smidgen of outrage from the Obama camp would have gone a long way.

Perhaps Obama is fuzzy on the definition of the word. According to Merriam-Webster, "outrageous" means "going beyond all standards of what is right or decent ." State Department employees imprudently satisfying their curiosity is perhaps outrageous; the point is open to debate. But is there any doubt that Wright's comments are truly, fully, and indisputably outrageous, deserving of unequivocal opprobrium, and beyond all standards of what is right or decent?

Once again, the Obama campaign demonstrates little in the way of perspective.

The verdict is in, UPDATE: Krauthammer: A brilliantly conceived fauilure

The media love Obama's speech. In other news, the sun rose this morning in the east, expected to set in the west.



Saturday Night Live should have fun with this one.

UPDATE: Be sure not to miss Charles Krauthammer's take on this. "Rubbish" is his key word.



UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson - the tragedy of Obama's speech

Patronize blacks, lose black voters?

The Reverend Eugene Rivers is rocking the house on MSNBC right now. He rejects the notion that whites cannot judge Wright's statements. He rejects the notion that Wright speaks for blacks; blacks love Jesus and they love America. And he points out that liberals who defend Wright are patronizing blacks.

Is it possible? Could it be that blacks in America are starting to see the liberal movement for what it really is?

UPDATE (Titus): Here is Rivers from Scarborough's show this morning. I assume this is the video referred to. Really, really great stuff. Wouldn't it be a beautiful irony if the Wrightgate episode sparked a shift for blacks away from the patronizing liberal political establishment?



ANOTHER UPDATE (Discipulus): That is in fact the clip. I hope Rivers means what he says and is not merely playing against type. If he is being genuine, I think this speaks very well for him and for the possibility that blacks might soon reconsider their devotion to the liberal movement and the Democratic party.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE (Discipulus): Watching that clip again, I nearly laughed out loud watching Pat Buchanan try to comprehend Rivers. Was he simply unable to believe what Rivers was saying? Did he have something disagreeable for breakfast? Funny stuff.

Not about race

Forgive me for dissenting, but I dispute the premise underlying most, if not all, of the punditry in the last 24 hours concerning Obama's speech yesterday. Chris Matthews absurdly called the speech the best speech on the topic of race in American history. (Has he not read of Martin Luther King? Abraham Lincoln?) Commentators on the Left and Right have opined on Wright's racism, the reactions of black and white voters, whether Wright's vitriol is justified by racial injustice. Obama himself spoke of a racial stalemate, as if a black perspective and a white perspective have locked in irreconcilable conflict on the grand stage of American politics and he alone has the moral authority to serve as mediator.

Perhaps I am insufficiently sensitive to racial undertones, but as I listened to excerpts of Wright's sermons last week I was struck not by Wright's racism but rather by his manifest hatred of this great nation and his anti-semitism. The only way that race might conceivably be relevant to this sorry episode is if one first accepts the premise, which any reasonable person must necessarily reject, that Wright's screed has any basis in historical fact. If ending World War II with nuclear weapons were morally equivalent to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, if the United States government were giving narcotics to black youths, if Israel were persecuting Muslim Palestinians, then Wright's speech might raise questions of race and racial justice.

However, none of those things is true as a matter of fact. And by accepting Obama's premise that his cozy relationship with Wright implicates some racial impasse, are we not ceding to his conclusion that his relationship with Wright is understandable or even justifiable? (I do not disagree with Titus' assertion that Democracts are suffering the consequences of their own identity politics. I just don't think that this particular episode is about race).

This is the genius of the man: Obama turned the tables on his critics yesterday by invoking white guilt, thus deftly avoiding examination of his own indisputable guilt. The facts are that Obama has taken counsel from and supported financially a man who preaches anti-American and anti-semitic calumnies. Let's talk about those facts a little bit and leave the breathless invocations of episodic American racial reconciliation to Chris Matthews.

Race, identity politics ripping apart Democratic Party

The Democratic Party is flailing. What once looked to be a sure thing -- a Dem win in November -- now could be in doubt as the Party wrangles with the issue of race. A Pew Research media study shows that the race issue has dominated the headlines recently. Bizarrely, Spitzer's "Client 9" prostitution scandal has been the Democrats' only saving grace as it competed for national media attention with the race issue.

Even coverage of election results was racially tinged last week. A Chicago Tribune analysis of Obama's Mississippi victory, posted on Google News, noted that exit polls in that state revealed a "race-based resistance" to Obama, with "white Democrats there rejecting his candidacy 70 percent to 26 percent, while 9 of 10 blacks voted for him. It's a dramatic reflection of a recurrent pattern most pronounced in the South," The Tribune reported. Noting concerns that black voters were offended by Clinton's suggestion that Obama be her vice president, the March 13 Los Angeles Times reported on warnings that African-Americans could stay at home in November if Clinton won the nomination.

Against that backdrop came the Ferraro and Wright flare ups, which simmered for days. By mid-week, Clinton had repudiated Ferraro's remarks in front of a group of black newspaper publishers and had her surrogates spreading the message as well. During an Oct. 13 appearance on MSNBC, Congressman Gregory Meeks, an African-American Clinton supporter, told Tucker Carlson that "clearly the statements that Geraldine Ferraro made [are] a distraction and should not have been made. They're inaccurate."

Before the dust had settled came the Wright brouhaha. On March 14, Fox News' Hannity & Colmes aired video of Wright sermons that included remarks harshly critical of the U.S. and its treatment of blacks. (At one point, he described the country as "the U.S. of K.K.K.A..") Fox then aired an interview in which Obama said he had not been aware of many of those statements, and added that "I reject them completely. They are not ones that reflect my values or my ideals."

The study goes on to cite a NY Times story last week that highlights the growing anxiety of the Party's power brokers. "Lacking a clear route to the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee, the party's uncommitted superdelegates say they are growing increasingly concerned about the risks of a prolonged fight between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and perplexed about how to resolve the conflict," writes the Times.

The Democrat chickens are coming home to roost. After decades of playing the race card, the gender card and identity politics Democrats are getting a taste of their own medicine. And it is bitter indeed.

Two Sad Parts to the Wright Saga

The first, the political part, has been well-documented here and elsewhere. The second, the spiritual part, has been largerly overlooked. As an American I was obviously dismayed by Wright's comments about America, about white people, 9/11 conspiracy theories and the like. But the real tragedy here is Wright's abdication of his duty to the flock there in Chicago. As a pastor his duty is to preach Christ crucified, not to rail against America--which is, by the way, the very country which protects for him the freedom to preach the Gospel, were he so inclined.

Wright was on my mind when I read the following article by an African-American pastor about the decline of African-American theology. It is a sad tale:

...the decline in African American understandings of the doctrine of Christ positions many unsuspecting and sincere people to fall into idolatry. God does not exist — and Jesus did not tabernacle among men, suffer the agony of crucifixion, and was not raised from the grave — to affirm the ethnic sense of identity and self-worth of any single people. Nor does God so identify with a people, even his sovereignly elected people Israel or the Church, to the point that he becomes one with that people without regard for their holiness and proper worship.

…

This is no victimless crime. Materialism and black nationalism masquerading as Christology overthrow the faith of many — shrouding the cross of Jesus in the temporal affairs of this world, which in turn choke the seeds of the Gospel.

Like most people who follow politics, the Wright saga has about made my blood boil. But after reading this article I was struck that maybe I should be more concerned with the fates of our African-American brothers and sisters who sit in pews every Sunday but who nevertheless may not hear the true Gospel.

These sentiments won't help end Wrightgate

This is totally anecdotal, but if reporters scour Obama audiences and find more reactions like the one Byron York found, Wrightgate will continue to have legs. Here is York interviewing an Obama supporter today at the big speech on race. York probed where most MSM'ers probably won't, and what he finds is scary:

“It was amazing,” Gregory Davis, a financial adviser and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, told me. “I think he addressed the issue, and if that does not address the issue, I don’t know what else can be said about it. That was just awesome oratory.”

I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, “God damn America,” called the United States the “U.S. of KKK A,” and said that 9/11 was “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” “As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn’t surprised,” Davis told me. “I wasn’t offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct…. The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that’s how it’s said.”

UPDATE: Conn Carroll adds:

The real news out of Obama’s speech is not that he is a gifted speaker; we already knew that. No, the real stories are that Obama changed his story yet again about his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and what Obama’s long association with him says about his judgment.

Read Conn's whole post. He explains himself well.

Sufficient

Though I agree that Obama's speech begs more questions than it answers, I doubt most people are going to ask the questions that the speech begs. The simple fact is that the man has the gift of rhetoric. His speech was patronizing, and insulting, and ironic, and... enough. It was enough to quell the riots. It was enough to stop the negative news cycles. And it was enough, I suspect, to satisfy the average voter. Even Mrs. Discipulus (no bleeding heart, she) called the speech "very good" and opined that Obama "got himself out of it."

Alas, I think she is correct.

Obama's race speech

Here is a video of Obama's much-ballyhooed speech today.



After the warm fuzzy glow wears off, read Allahpundit's total evisceration of the remarks.

This passage from the speech in particular annoyed me:

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

OK, so let me get this straight. If I am bothered by the fact that Obama planted his rear in the pews of a church whose pastor spews hatred and ignorance for two decades then I am against solving problems in this country? If I let my mind wonder why Obama never left this church or spoke out publicly against Wright's incendiary rhetoric -- or if I think that this lack of action on Obama's behalf speaks to his character, then I am against more jobs for Americans? I don't want to solve the health care crisis? I am for the status quo education system? Talk about a guilt trip!

Shouldn't Obama be the one who feels guilty about all this? Not us?

Obama the "bargainer"

In this morning's Wall Street Journal Shelby Steele argues that Barack Obama is a "bargainer." "Bargaining," according to Steele, enables white Americans to feel at ease -- absolved even -- with regard to America's past sin. Barack the "bargainer" wears a mask that comforts many. "Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him," writes Steele. "And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence."

More Steele:

Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

Wrightgate approaching Nixonian levels of evasion

Victor Davis Hanson's post today on this issue is a must read:

Wrightgate is more and more becoming Nixonian.

Now we hear that Rev. Wright considers Israel a "dirty word". I don't want to sound like a broken-record, but we are back to 1973-4 when almost every day a new disclosure helped doom the stonewalling Nixon.

The gamut of Wright's hatred is amazingly extensive—Israel, whites, rich people, the United States, the American conduct of World War II, moderate blacks, middleclassness, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice—to such a degree that he seems consumed with hatred and simply fills in the target spontaneously at any given moment.

As long as Sen. Obama remains in that extremist church, and as long as he continues to offer these reprehensible mea culpas for Wright ("scholar," "not particularly controversial," "cherry-pick," "Uncle," etc.), and the more the massive Wright corpus is disseminated, the more Nixonian Obama becomes, as he scrambles to devise a new modified hangout, while allowing the last failed one to become 'inoperative.'

Read it all if you have time. It's no wonder that Hillary is hanging around, much to the dismay of the Hoperoots.