Jackson Free Press

The world is talking today about how poorly ABC's George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson handled themselves during last night's Democratic debate. Over on The Root, Marc Lamont Hill writes:

Is it me or was last night's ABC debate the most ridiculous one yet? Flag pins? Jeremiah Wright? Bosnia? If I didn't know better, I would have thought that the debate was moderated by Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter rather than Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous. Like me, many Americans turned on the debate expecting a respite from the stale political conversations that have been circulating since the Texas/Ohio primary. Instead of talking about substantive issues, however, the bulk of the debate time was spent rehashing the same foolishness that has fed the 24 hours cable news machine for the past five weeks.

Equally frustrating was the disproportionate amount of time spent challenging Barack Obama. It seemed as if the first 45 minutes of the debate were spent forcing him to explain (for the millionth time) his feelings about Jeremiah Wright and his "bitter" remarks about Pennsylvania voters. On the rare occasion when questions were asked of Hillary Clinton, they were in relation to Barack's sore spots: "What did you mean, Senator Clinton, when you said that Jeremiah Wright wouldn't have been your pastor?" While similar pile-ons have been committed against Clinton, like the NBC debate with Tim Russert and Brian Williams, such behavior is both unprofessional and unproductive.

And Greg Mitchell let loose in Editor & Publisher before the microphones were cold:

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

And one wonders why big media is so irrelevant; they are out of touch and sensationalistic. Adam said he heard Sean Hannity challenge Stephanopolous a couple days before to ask about the '60s radical—and he did. Remarkable, wacky, shameful stuff.

I miss Peter Jennings. The bar was low for national media, but he rose above it.

Previous Comments

ID

118724

Comment

I recorded the debate but I haven't finished watching it yet. However, I've seen the news coverage on it, and it makes me not want to watch the rest of the debate if it's just a rehash of stuff I've already heard about a million times.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2008-04-17T18:13:13-06:00

ID

118741

Comment

I think the debate was actually pretty fair. I mean come on, if these were Republicans being grilled by Stephanopolous and Gibson, ya'll would have been giddy about it. Those were the toughest questions either candidate faced. What's wrong with that? So, Obama is upset because they are asking about the company he keeps? And Hillary is upset because she lied about being under "sniper fire" in Bosnia? Gimme a break! Obama has been given a carte blanche until about a month ago, and now the media is finally digging into him a little. I don't see anything wrong with tough questions.

Author

LawClerk

Date

2008-04-18T13:08:32-06:00

ID

118742

Comment

if these were Republicans being grilled by Stephanopolous and Gibson, ya'll would have been giddy about it. Please don't speak for others, LawClerk. I wouldn't have been giddy if the media folks had pounded Republican with trivial stuff, rather than nailing them about the war, the economy, and so one. The point about "sniper fire" is that everyone knows it and that she lied, and it has hurt her. There was no reason wasting valuable debate time playing gotcha journalism. Put it in the paper and on the 24-hour TV news cycle. Which they did. And "digging in" on trivial matters is still "digging in" on trivial matters. Those weren't tough questions; they were cheap, sensationalistic questions.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-18T13:27:40-06:00

ID

118754

Comment

It was a Democrat debate that Fox News Channel and conservative talk radio could certainly appreciate. Despite a couple of good comebacks at Billary I don’t think Obama did well and he was clearly frustrated by the line of questioning. Still, it won’t hurt his chance of getting the nomination.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2008-04-19T13:12:40-06:00

ID

118767

Comment

ABC is getting hammered on its Web site continually about this mess. And this morning on "This Week," George, Cokie, Sam and George Will once again showed how out of touch they are with the American people. It was fun to see how shell-shocked from all the criticism they looked, though, especially George S. Also, see Frank Rich's column in the the Times. “THE crowd is turning on me,” said Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor, when the audience jeered him in the final moments of Wednesday night’s face-off between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I can’t remember a debate in which the only memorable moment was the audience’s heckling of a moderator. Then again, I can’t remember a debate that became such an instant national gag, earning reviews more appropriate to a slasher movie like “Prom Night” than a civic event held in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center: “Shoddy, despicable!” — The Washington Post “A tawdry affair!” — The Boston Globe “A televised train wreck!” — The Philadelphia Daily News [...] But viewers of all political persuasions were affronted by the moderators’ failure to ask about the mortgage crisis, health care, the environment, torture, education, China policy, the pending G.I. bill to aid veterans, or the war we’re losing in Afghanistan. Those minutes were devoted not just to recycling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bosnian sniper fire and another lame question about a possible “dream ticket” but to the unseemly number of intrusive commercials and network promos that prompted the jeering at the end. The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer’s periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-20T21:37:44-06:00

ID

118768

Comment

More Rich, nailing that elitist yuck Cokie Roberts, who laughed on This Week today at the thought that any president could "change" Washington, referring to how long all of them had been covering it. (And this answers George Will's fallacious argument that the electorate is old and right of center, ignoring all the excitment among all sorts of people, especially young ones, that Obama is causing: In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because “they never have before” and “they’ll be tired.” However out of touch Mr. Obama is with “ordinary Americans,” many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible “YouTube young people” are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on “Meet the Press,” as she did last Sunday, it’s pure farce. It’s typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying “we don’t need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead.” Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he’s Harvard ’67. [...] The most revealing moment in Wednesday’s debate was a striking example of this media-populace disconnect. In Mr. Gibson’s only passionate query of the night, he tried to strong-arm both Democrats into forgoing any increases in the capital gains tax. The capital gains tax! That’s just the priority Americans are focusing on as they lose their houses and jobs, and as gas prices reach $4 a gallon (a subject that merited only a brief mention, in a lightning round of final questions). And this in a debate that took place on the same day we learned that the top 50 hedge fund managers made a total of $29 billion in 2007, some of them by betting against the mortgage market. At least Mr. Gibson is consistent. In the ABC debate in January, he upbraided Mrs. Clinton by suggesting that a typical New Hampshire “family of two professors” with a joint income “in the $200,000 category” would be unjustly penalized by her plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. He seemed oblivious not merely to typical academic salaries but to the fact that his hypothetical household would be among America’s wealthiest (only 3.4 percent earn more). [...]

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-20T21:43:46-06:00

ID

118769

Comment

A bit more Rich: The video of Mrs. Clinton knocking back drinks in an Indiana bar drowned out the scratchy audio of Mr. Obama’s wispy words in San Francisco. Her campaign didn’t seem to recognize that among the many consequences of the Bush backlash is a revulsion against such play acting. Americans belatedly learned the hard way that the brush-clearing cowboy of the Crawford “ranch” (it’s a country house, not a working ranch) was in reality an entitled Andover-Yale-Harvard oil brat whose arrogance has left us where we are now. Voters don’t want a rerun from a Wellesley-Yale alumna who served on the board of Wal-Mart. Privileged though they are, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama do want to shape policy to help the less well-heeled. Mr. McCain, who had a far more elite upbringing than either of them and whose wife’s estimated fortune exceeds the Clintons’, is not just condescending to working Americans but trying to hoodwink them. Next week, in a replay of the 2000 Bush campaign’s “compassionate conservative” photo ops among black schoolchildren, he will show he’s a “different kind of Republican” by visiting what he calls the “forgotten” America of Alabama’s “black belt” and the old steel town of Youngstown, Ohio. What he wants voters to forget is the inequity of his new economic plan. [...] That plan’s incoherent smorgasbord of items includes a cut from 35 percent to 25 percent in the corporate tax rate. For noncorporate taxpayers, Mr. McCain offers such thin gruel as a battle against federal pork (the notorious Alaskan “bridge to nowhere,” earmarked for $223 million in federal highway money, costs less than a day of the war in Iraq) and a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax (a saving of some $2.75 per 15-gallon tank). Now there’s a reason for voters to be bitter — assuming bloviators start publicizing and parsing Mr. McCain’s words as relentlessly as they do the Democrats’. That may be a big assumption. At an Associated Press luncheon for newspaper editors in Washington last week, Mr. McCain was given a standing ovation. (The other candidate who appeared, Mr. Obama, was not.) Cindy McCain, whose tax returns remain under wraps, has not received remotely the same scrutiny as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, except for her plagiarized recipes. The most damning proof of the press’s tilt toward Mr. McCain, though, is the lack of clamor for his complete health records, especially in the wake of his baffling serial factual confusions about Iraq, his No. 1 issue. Good stuff from Mr. Rich.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-20T21:44:10-06:00

ID

118770

Comment

Sorry was out of town... I don't think those matters are trivial. When Obama refuses to pledge allegiance to our flag, or Hillary knowing lies, or Obama is associating with known terrorists or pastors that want to GD America.... these aren't trivial matters. These go to the heart of the character of a person. You are the company you keep.

Author

LawClerk

Date

2008-04-21T05:55:38-06:00

ID

118771

Comment

More Rich, nailing that elitist yuck Cokie Roberts, who laughed on This Week today at the thought that any president could "change" Washington, referring to how long all of them had been covering it. She's right, elistist though she may be. President Obama will realize that within his 1st 2 years in office. But he will still be a breath of fresh air not felt in years.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2008-04-21T07:16:45-06:00

ID

118776

Comment

I assume you have a similar, simplistic distillation at the ready for the company that McCain, the Bush family, Haley Barbour and just about every politician in Washington and Mississippi keeps, right, LC? Interesting the issues you think are *most* important to the country. That's what this discussion is about, and you're smart enough to know it if you'll take take to think and listen and not just respond like the powers-that-be, and Hannity, et al., want you to. You're just spewing nothingness right now. That kind of kneejerk rhetoric is why this country is in the mess we're in. Funny, you're a huge fan of the Second Amendment, I assume, because you believe the government can run amok, right? Are you really that different from Rev. Wright? And bothered to understand, or care about, the work that Ayers does today? I don't agree with Roberts, or even you on this one, Jeff. Washington was changed dramatically for the worst, first under Clinton and then under Bush. A return to a place where the Justice Department isn't told by a top administration adviser to go after Democrats would be a major "change." Not lying repeatedly to the American people to take us to a personal war (or to wage attacks to distract us from sex scandals) would be a "change." Not being run by the most corrupt Captiol-K Street gang imaginable (Delay, et al) would be a "change." This is plenty of "change" that awaits under Obama. It's that change that terrifies people like Hannity and our own LawClerk, but that's part of the reason it's so exciting. That type has been at the controls for too many years now.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-21T08:28:59-06:00

ID

118778

Comment

The Supreme Court is the only true agent of change in this country.

Author

QB

Date

2008-04-21T09:01:54-06:00

ID

118780

Comment

I don't think those matters are trivial. When Obama refuses to pledge allegiance to our flag, or Hillary knowing lies, or Obama is associating with known terrorists or pastors that want to GD America.... these aren't trivial matters. These go to the heart of the character of a person. Such a typical white person's response, LC. Perhaps you should attend church more often for comfort. And be sure to keep your guns handy. ;)

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2008-04-21T09:09:58-06:00

ID

118782

Comment

Not suprised you don't agree, ladd. My observation is that the office of the POTUS is limited in its power to affect any change at all in domestic policy or the economy. The real culprit capable of affecting immediate and dramatic change in government is the US Congress in tandem with the courts. The POTUS can certainly issue executive orders and such, but the Congress has the power to legislate and fund his orders and mandates, and they hold the power to approve judicial nominees. But from what I can see down here in little ol’ Mississippi, the good old boy Washington government/media power structure isn’t interested in a fundamental change in how this country operates, be it Democrats or Republicans.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2008-04-21T09:31:12-06:00

ID

118784

Comment

Clearly, those things are true, Jeff. But the truth is that leadership is so much more than following the rules about the, er, POTUS can do. It sets a tone of cooperation, or kissing the feet of corporations, or allowing corruption, or of telling lies to the American people. It can also set a different tone. Truth is, I don't want a president or a Congress (or a Supreme Court) that operates without checks and gets whatever they want, even if I agree with their philosophy over all. A huge part of our problem of late is that we've had a situation where a small group of men thought they could pack/run the court system, the executive branch, as well as Congress. We need leadership right now that takes a radically different approach (which returning it to the status quo, even with its problems would be radically different). And we need a sea change in the belief that white men need to run America and through exclusive white-men lenses. I don't expect everyone here to comprehend that, but it is a change that is coming to this country. It has to; the alternative is going to drive us into the ground. That does not mean that women or black or multiracial or any one particular other group has all the answers, either. And it won't be good if any one non-white-male group gets the kind of power (and subsequent blinders) they have had when governing. What is needed is a much wider perspective in our leaders, and that change seems to be coming. There will be some white guys who aren't happy about it, and who continue to try to focus us on more trivial wedge issues to keep it from happening, but they just don't have the power they used to. Frank Rich was right: This isn't the same country that Lee Atwater (and Haley Barbour) manipulated with the southern race strategy in order to shift power to corporations back in the '80s. That's essentially why all those guys are going down. Barbour got out of D.C. just in time, unfortunately for us. But I doubt seriously he's going to be able to stay in front of the wave for that long. If we had better media here that didn't pander to him as much, the wave would have already caught up with him. But I digress. The point is that America is changing. Evangelicals are changing. Attitudes are changing, including many of white people. There are leftovers still trying to sing the same old tune, but their irrelevance is increasing by the day, regardless of their party. The Clintons are feeling it, the Bush cabal has been hit in the face with it, Congress is being sanitized of many of the old-way thinkers (and will be of more this fall), Rush-Hannity-FOX are becoming the laughing stock of the media (thanks in no small part to the brilliance of Colbert/Stewart); Christians are re-focusing on poverty and the environment and away from corporate Republicans' fake devotion to homosexuality and abortion; people's kids are influencing them to think differently; old racists are dying off, replaced by enlightened young people; media elitists are being challenged left and right; and so on. It's not fixed, or perfect, yet, but the country is slowly repairing itself from decades of greed and moral decadence in Washington. And, yes, change can most certainly come from that.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-21T09:43:05-06:00

ID

118786

Comment

Oh, and I should add: It would be a sad thing indeed to be so cynical about the impossibility of change in Washington that you look right past the people who might be the very ones who could change it because you refuse to believe it's possible. I'm figuring that a whole lot of people were cynical in the U.S. about the possibility of slavery ending, or the federal government stepping in on Jim Crow laws. Fortunately for all of us, there were those who believed that immense change was possible.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-21T09:54:52-06:00

ID

118787

Comment

I love that 4-21-08 at 10:43 comment by Ladd. She's a smart woman. I bet she got that way after leaving Mississippi for a while. Maybe I'd learn something if I left for a while.

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-21T09:58:28-06:00

ID

118788

Comment

Thanks, Walt. I will say that everything that really matters to me and my way of thinking I learned right here in Mississippi, before I left and since I returned. Yes, I learned a lot of facts out there that were purposefully left out of my education here, and I learned to take time to think from a wider perspective once I left -- but not because I was hanging out with a bunch of smarter people elsewhere. The biggest thing I learned is how pervasive the lack of thinking is, not to mention racism and destructive white dominant thinking that leaves everything else out. That is everywhere in this country. In other words, I had to leave to appreciate what we have here, and can do here if we try. And to see what higher standards and confidence helps people elsewhere do -- and that we can do here if we get past our collective inferiority complex that allows people to throw any old trash our way and expect us to believe it and hawk it for them. We're smarter than that if we'll realize it, and act on it. We can lead, not follow. In many ways, we always have, but sadly we've let the demagogues lead us astray and take us to ugly, dark places. We don't have to stay there, though. All it takes is will. And good dialogue that leads to action, of course.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-21T10:13:08-06:00

ID

118805

Comment

"I assume you have a similar, simplistic distillation at the ready for the company that McCain, the Bush family, Haley Barbour and just about every politician in Washington and Mississippi keeps, right, LC" Yep. I do. You lie down with dogs, you get fleas. It seems a little disingenuous to call our Mayor out on it, yet completely overlook it for Obama. "You're just spewing nothingness right now. That kind of kneejerk rhetoric is why this country is in the mess we're in." Not quite, Ladd, but nice try. I'm "spewing" logic, and while it confuses some people, *some* get it. And I really can't quite make the leap to why my thinking has gotten this country in the mess we are in. "This is plenty of "change" that awaits under Obama. It's that change that terrifies people like Hannity and our own LawClerk, but that's part of the reason it's so exciting. That type has been at the controls for too many years now." Oh please. What change? Expand welfare? Tax people more? Ban my guns? Ladd, come on. You are smarter than that! I am not afraid of any government or edict or socialist or anything. Why should I be? "I" can take care of myself! I have the means necessary to protect myself. People with your line of thinking do not. I do not rely on someone else to be my "agent of change." I do not believe that a government can provide everything for me. And if you do, I feel very sorry for you. A government that can give you everything, can also take it away.

Author

LawClerk

Date

2008-04-21T19:04:13-06:00

ID

118806

Comment

LawClerk, first, pretending anyone wants "a government that can give you everything" is just a red herring -- and silly, to boot -- but I'm sure Donna will deal with that one. I'm still stuck on your original comment, wherein the masses were admonished to judge Obama's character by the "company he keeps," you giving, as examples, his former minister and, er, the pledge of allegiance. So are we to assume you approve of the company that McCain keeps? And, incidentally, the whole pledge of allegiance thing is RIDICULOUS. Absolutely ludicrous. Firstly...uh...not terribly Libertarian of you to require people to pledge fealty to symbols. (Just sayin'.) Second, the pledge was written by a socialist. And, third, the whole dust-up was over whether Obama put his hand over his heart while *singing the national anthem*, because the pledge of allegiance" charge is an *urban myth*.

Washington Post Awarded "The Scoundrel" Who Put The Obama/Pledge Of Allegiance Email Into Circulation "Four Pinocchios" On Its Fact Checking Scale, Which Classifies The Attack As A "Whopper." "Anonymous attacks by e-mail are, or at least should be, un-American. This particular one was also wrong on the facts: the ceremony in question had nothing to do with the pledge of the allegiance. We award the scoundrel who put the e-mail into circulation four Pinocchios." [Washington Post, 11/2/07]

So the question becomes...should you judge your politicians based on *true, observable fact*? Or based on chain e-mail fodder? That's using "logic"?

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2008-04-21T19:39:55-06:00

ID

118807

Comment

"Such a typical white person's response, LC. Perhaps you should attend church more often for comfort. And be sure to keep your guns handy. ;)" Maybe it is just because I am bitter??? Who knows. I do know that Glock magazines are increasing 40% on May 1st, so, go ahead and get those "high capacity" magazines while you still can! Oh, and if Obama can promise me that AR-15 ammunition will return to pre-Iraq levels of $75/1k, I might actually vote for him. Seriously.

Author

LawClerk

Date

2008-04-21T21:01:19-06:00

ID

118810

Comment

That's why I'm sticking w/ my Korea era M-1 Garand. Those little 8 round clips are cheap.

Author

bill_jackson

Date

2008-04-21T21:51:15-06:00

ID

118813

Comment

Maybe it is just because I am bitter??? Who knows. Yes, your posts did make you sound pretty bitter. Perhaps you should put your Bible and your guns down and just repeat the words "hope", "change", and "Yes We Can!" to help you with that problem.

Author

Jeff Lucas

Date

2008-04-22T08:09:46-06:00

ID

118816

Comment

As for dealing with LC's "red herring," there's nothing really to say. He has a bad habit of these kinds of nonsensical generalizations (like everything he doesn't agree with is "socialist"), Obviously, no one here—or Obama, for that matter—has said anything about wanting "a government that can give you everything." It's just a silly statement, and I "feel sorry" for him that he seems to have an inability, or lack of desire, to actually try to comprehend what other people are saying. He seems to live in a very paranoid, anti-government place. Intriguing, therefore, that he goes after someone like Rev. Wright for sharing some of the same concerns. Sounds a tad hypocritical, no?

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-22T10:33:07-06:00

ID

118818

Comment

Patriotism, jingoism, race, racism, loyalty at all cost and abiding overall blindness will play their ugly and familiar roles once again in living color today and later as elections wrap up. I just hope enough of us have seen the light to look beyond these. As far as I'm concerned Revern Wright only did what other ministers should have been doing for years. Had somebody done so earlier and more forcefully maybe we would realize that evil begets evil and no country is bigger or greater than the whole world or God's plan for the human race whatever that is. Obama handled the Wright situation correctly no matter the outcome of his presidency. He obviously has standards rooted in the real American dream, not the nightmare that is breeding us enemies hourly as a country. Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter and the rest can't tell me they haven't seen or heard anger, racism, prejudice, frustration and indignation preached in their churches, homes, social clubs, schools, etc. They heard it from somewhere. How else did they learn and perfect the haterism, racism and prejudice they preach so well?

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-22T11:02:24-06:00

ID

118821

Comment

It seems to me that Revern Wright might have been thinking that "the continued viability of racism demonstrates that racism is not simply an excrescence on a fundamentally healthy liberal democratic body, but is part of what shapes and energizes the the body. Under this view, liberal democracy and racism in the United States are historically, even inherently, reinforcing; American society as we know it exists only because of its foundation in racially based slavery, and thrives only because racial discrimination continues. It's an actual symbiosis, and the permanence of this symbiosis ensures that civil rights gains will only be temporary and setbacks inevitable." Hopefully the word liberal here won't throw anyone off, but I'm sure it will. It's a bad word in the abyss where some people reside.

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-22T12:27:25-06:00

ID

118824

Comment

And maybe Revern Wright was thinking something along these lines: "The fact is that, despite what we designate as progress wrought through struggle over many generations, we remain what we were in the beginning: a dark and foreign presence, always designated as "other." Tolerated in good times, despised when things go wrong, as a people we are scapegoated and sacrificed as distraction or catalyst for compromise to facilitate resolution of political differences or relieve economic advesrity. We are now, as were our forbears when they were brought to the New World, objects of barter for those who, while profiting from our existence, deny our humanity."

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-22T12:42:06-06:00

ID

118827

Comment

Finally, the Right Revern Wright could have been thinking that "Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even the herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary peaks of progress, short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard-to-accept fact that all history verifies. We must acknowledge it, not as a sign of submission, but as an act of defiance." Perhaps Revern Wright was thinking about this fact combined the genocide and currnet plight of American Indians when he made the comments. Was he still wrong to say it? Was he really inaccurate or unpatriotic for doing so? If you can't speak the truth in church where can you?

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-22T13:42:36-06:00

ID

118828

Comment

And he is not afraid to speak his mind, so he probably said exactly what he was thinking and nothing more.

Author

BubbaT

Date

2008-04-22T14:07:31-06:00

ID

118830

Comment

Just a thought, Bubba. Most black preachers from Wright's generation measure what they say in the pulpit even if it seems loose to outsiders. The pulpit has an unequalled sacred tradition in many black churches or institutions. I nearly got beat down by an aunt once for just walking across it as a child. To this day, I won't stand behind it. I stand on the floor when asked to speak in church. Allowing Coulter, Hannity and/or Limbaugh tell anyone what Wright was doing or saying in that sermon is like having Charles Manson tell us what sanity is or why thou shall not kill. There is a reason our blues and jazz often sound distinct or so differently than others. And there is a reason our orators often speak with a different kind of sound and power. Too often, we have to come from a different place.

Author

Walt

Date

2008-04-22T14:36:38-06:00

ID

118837

Comment

Do you think he was measuring what he was saying?

Author

BubbaT

Date

2008-04-22T16:12:16-06:00

ID

118838

Comment

Who could possibly frackin' know? Are we really supposed to live in a world where no politican candidate of can be friends with, or attend the church of, someone we agree with sometime? And if so, are we going to apply the same standard to every politician? I'm so sick of this crap. However, it says good things about Obama that this is the best criticism that opponents can come up with. Go, Obama. Rock this country. It sure the hell needs it.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-04-22T16:35:08-06:00

ID

118839

Comment

"As for dealing with LC's "red herring," there's nothing really to say. He has a bad habit of these kinds of nonsensical generalizations (like everything he doesn't agree with is "socialist")," Hmmmm.... Hello pot, this is kettle! When something is socialist, Ladd, like say.... Socialized medicine??? (When it's in the title of the program, it's ok to call it what it is), I'm going to call it socialist! And when have I ever disagreed with something and called it socialism? Puh-lease. If it's socialistic, i'm going to call a spade a spade. Get it? "Obviously, no one here—or Obama, for that matter—has said anything about wanting "a government that can give you everything." Well, when I hear him speak, that is what I hear. He wants the government to give everyone whatever they want. Simplistic perhaps on my part because I have a day job and can't sit here and go point by point over what Obama wants to "give" to everyone. "It's just a silly statement, and I "feel sorry" for him that he seems to have an inability, or lack of desire, to actually try to comprehend what other people are saying. He seems to live in a very paranoid, anti-government place." Nah... The thing is, Ladd, is that I understand fully and completely what Obama is, and what he means to ya'll. And yeah, that scares me. If you thought Clinton is/was bad, then just wait for Obama. He'll be worse. Just for the record, you say I'm anti-government??? That's not a very fair assessment of me. I thought you would have known me better, but I digress. And if you think I'm paranoid, have you ever read the Patriot act? "Intriguing, therefore, that he goes after someone like Rev. Wright for sharing some of the same concerns. Sounds a tad hypocritical, no?" What? What same concerns do me and Wright share? Are you kidding me?

Author

LawClerk

Date

2008-04-22T17:23:14-06:00