BCT Editorial – 3/23/08

This page was last updated on March 24, 2008.

Our true genius; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 23, 2008.

This editorial subtitle is “Americans must recognize the nation has always strived to live up to founding ideals.”

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this editorial, but is this an effort to help support Mr. Obama? Could a Times endorsement of Mr. Obama be in the near future, or will the Times try to play both sides?

Let’s look at two paragraphs.

“In last week’s major speech on race, which also dealt with the Illinois senator’s effort to put his pastor’s inflammatory remarks behind him, Obama said that ‘America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.’

“Will we dwell on the outrageous remarks of Obama’s minister, or will we focus on fixing what is wrong in America? Which past will we repeat, the one of hope or the one of despair?”

First, Jeremiah Wright is not simply “Obama’s minister.” From his own mouth Mr. Obama has referred to Mr. Wright as his mentor, spiritual adviser, and friend for the past 20 years. Before Mr. Obama rescinded the invitation at the last moment, he asked Mr. Wright to lead an invocation when Mr. Obama announced he would run for president. Mr. Wright was a member of the Obama campaign’s African American Religious Leadership Committee.

Second, the speech was no more about race than it was about growing corn. The sole reason for the speech was political necessity. Other than Obama disciples, no one was buying Mr. Obama’s various spins on the issue. If you recall, Mr. Obama initially said he never personally heard Mr. Wright make these comments or anything similar. Most people recognized the careful wording and didn’t buy for one minute that Mr. Obama didn’t know what was being preached in his own church of 20 years by his mentor, spiritual adviser, and friend. Eventually, even Mr. Obama realized his comment strained credulity and in his speech conceded he heard Mr. Wright “make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church.”

I also thought it was tacky how Mr. Obama “threw his grandma under the bus” in order to excuse Mr. Wright. In case you missed it, Mr. Obama said, “I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can 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 by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

There are at least two problems with this portrayal of Mr. Obama’s grandmother. First, Mr. Obama equates his grandmother privately uttering “racial or ethnic stereotypes” with Mr. Wright preaching his venom week in and week out from a church pulpit. Second, Mr. Obama dumped on his grandmother because she “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street.” Mr. Obama failed to mention some black men have expressed similar feelings. Jesse Jackson (yes, that Jesse Jackson) once confessed, “I hate to admit it, but I have reached a stage in my life that if I am walking down a dark street late at night and I see that the person behind me is white, I subconsciously feel relieved.”

The issue never was “the outrageous remarks of Obama’s minister.” The issue was how Mr. Obama reacted to them, telling us something about his character and judgment. If you knew your minister, priest, et cetera preached the same things as Mr. Wright, would you have stayed silent and/or not changed parishes? And what about exposing your kids to this stuff? I believe there are only two logical reasons why Mr. Obama stayed with his church. First, it’s possible this church was “the church” to belong to in Chicago for a black politician with serious aspirations. In other words, it’s possible Mr. Obama didn’t agree with Mr. Wright’s teachings, but stayed in the church to help achieve his political goals. Second, it’s possible Mr. Obama believes and supports the teachings of Mr. Wright, but Mr. Obama knows admitting this would be political suicide. In either case it doesn’t speak well of Mr. Obama.

If you recall, just before the Wright controversy hit the news, Michelle Obama was taken to task for saying, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” This is exactly the kind of comment you would expect to hear from a follower of Mr. Wright.

Finally, what is with the effort to link Mr. Obama and Abraham Lincoln? It appears to have started with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the day of the speech and now has spread to the Times and at least one letter-to-the-editor author.