Well, good for Barack Obama. He has managed to not just respond to those who would equate his beliefs for those of Rev. Wright, but he managed to also deliver one of the most honest and eloquent and level-headed talks on race in the US that has ever been delivered.
The nit-pickers are already lining up to gauge the political shrewdness and success of yesterday’s Philadelphia speech. Those who already do not like Obama are struggling to mis-read his words in every possible way. And those who do not give a damn are blessedly silent.
It is easy to scoff at eloquence. It is easy to lament words rather than actions. But the United States has been built on words first and actions at an appropriate time. From the Constitution to Washington’s Inaugural Addresses to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, MacArthur’s farewell address at West Point, Jack Kennedy’s inaugural address, Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and tens of other spoken and written visions of the times, this country has done its best when led by language into acts of honor. Even in a country that has been largely anti-intellectual, words have somehow found a way into our brains and hearts.
Let’s hope we do not turn away from this so rare opportunity to re-discover the good in us that The Decider has torn and tossed away.
Dr. Wright taught Obama about the audacity to hope. * Let’s let BO teach it to us.
*(The context of the printing of this sermon is not friendly. It is offered as “blather” and the critic presenting the sermon finds delight in the info that the artist meant other than Wright finds in the painting.)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Tex // Mar 24, 2008 at 4:32 pm
The ‘impudence’ of hope authored by one Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not dissimilar to his message on discord that he has screamed from his pulpit for 20 years.
I really do not care to listen to BO if his goal is to extend his mentor’s capacity of ‘Liberation Theology’ concepts and the bitter years of his lost youth..or whatever ails the man.
Those of us who question the manner of the content of some of the dialogue of some black preachers are said that we just do not understand the way it is. Ahh well..I shall remain ignorant, thank you very much.
This entire sad drama has done great damage to racial relations..and we do not need that.
If we cannot go forward in a positive way..so be it!
2 admin // Mar 25, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Well, Tex, if you are determined not to read anything by Wright and rely simply on inflamatory crap played on tv and if you are determined not to even try to understand a view that you and I can never really understand—but we might try—we will have a difficult time carrying on a dialog. It can be quite an interesting exercise in balance to try to jump into another’s shoes. Join me?
3 Tex // Apr 2, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Gee…I must have missed the part where you jumped into the shoes of those of us that find Wright’s jihad against the white race and BO’s testaments to his greatness and importance to him as his mentor, his ‘uncle’, the man that married him and taught him the basics of the black Africa-Centrist church in keeping the separation of the races intact.
I am just an average southern born white guy and I do not claim to have all the answers as to how to fix all that is wrong in the world with the polarization of political ideology, religious and racial themes that continue to yank the scab off a wound that never heals!
What I do know is that I am overly tired of all the PC BS and the Jessie Jacksons et al, shouting extremism from the mountain tops that is supposed to make me feel guilty that I was born white and southern.
I am not going to give racial flame throwers the benefit of the doubt. You can if you choose..that is your free will choice.
It goes without saying that you and I are water and oil, gasoline and fire, matter and anti-matter…we simply are poles apart..always have been..always will be because we cannot change our spots. So be it.
Let us continue to agree to disagree…and still be amigos.
4 admin // Apr 3, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Amen. Still lots to learn, too.
5 Tex // Apr 30, 2008 at 8:26 am
Taking ‘Da Professor’s’ advice…I am sadly learning much more as to Rev. Wright’s master plan of defaming BO while building interest in his forthcoming book in order to earn the generous advance that will surely be paid him.
Rev. “Wacky-Doodle” is not a stupid man…he is a man with a plan and plundering BO’s attempt at becoming el presidente is the premise upon which he will achieve his immortality and fame.
I am sure Louis Farrakahn will do the foreward in the book while William Ayers, the American terriorist and BO’s neighbor, will go on book tour to former bomb sites of his illustrious past adventures.
What a country.
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