quote:

Do facts matter or is all you and HH got is this endless stream of linguistic diversions while never dealing with the actual facts of the situation?

"Facts? I don't got to show you no facts! We don't need no stinkin' facts! All we got to do is pull quotes off the stinkin' internet of conservatives talkin' to each uzzer!"
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BN, HighHopes and Markle are to intellectual to understand facts or have opinions. They only have hyperbole. Which is really just down talking.

They only have hyperbole. Which is really just down talking.

Yeah, Rico. It would seem that way. I'd just like someone to step up to the plate and defend Obama's votes, words, actions, associations, or even his golf score if that's all they want to address. But instead it seems like we're dealing with their idyllic image of Obama that they carry in their head. You can debate the former, but there's not much to be done with the latter. And, hey, if the defense of Obama is "But I like him!," I could accept that as legitimate. I like people who I probably shouldn't, who, on paper, don't make a lot of sense but I like anyway. But none of them are running for president of the United States and will have such power over my life.

I'd like a good, honest defense of leftism instead of this constant stream of name-calling, diversions, and odd departures and evasions. Want Obama? Then defend him instead of playing the leftist trick of trying to paint the critiquer as a "Massah" or whatever, not that I mind all that much. But, truth be told, I would have made a lousy slave owner. Democrats, on the other hand, love lording over people and running people's lives.

I just don't like frauds, and Obama is a fraud. I wish liberals like him would just be up-front about what they stood for. And I guess he's starting to come out with it. He wishes to spend our money for yet another attempt at the Great Society. Liberals never learn. And that's perhaps their greatest fault. There's nothing wrong with dreaming big, but you have to do reality checks on those dreams every once in a while instead of reaching for the fascist impulse to impugn the integrity of others who would point out your failures. Democrats know the game of bread and circuses well, though. They also would have made great Romans. Just dole out whatever it takes to feed the ravenous crowd who is made all the more ravenous by the last bunch of circuses and hand-outs.

I really do wish someone like Obama, on the Democratic side, would take up an honest discussion of race. I really don't think it's good or fair for anyone, black or white, to be filled with rage for this country or for whole races of people. And that's what I see the predatory relationship of the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world to be. They promise hope and reform but only ever deliver bitterness, hate, and unrest. We need to flush the political dialogue clean of these hucksters, and that's why it's a real shame that Obama proved to be such a fraud. I would laud, even a Democrat, if he or she (like Cosby or any number of other black leaders) would address some of the problems of the black community which, we should remember, is also part of our community. Unlike Reverend Wright, I don't believe we can just throw people overboard and blame all our problems on a scapegoat. We have to deal, and deal with the real. I think if we look truth straight in the eye and stop this demagoguing, we might indeed find some answers to our problems.

Last Night I saw this black reverend on Hannity and Colmes and, brother, was he a breath of fresh air. As Ann Coulter said, the legacy of slaver doesn't give anyone the right be permanently ill-mannered. And this black preacher showed how just being a nice, reasonable, loving person was the greatest balm of all. We need more like him. I don't remember what his name was, but he was on last night.

quote:

I just don't like frauds, and Obama is a fraud.

Of course. All non-right-wingers are frauds. It goes without saying. "Convince" you?? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
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Of course. All non-right-wingers are frauds. It goes without saying. "Convince" you?? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Weak evasion. I can be convinced. Show me Obama's voting record. Defend that record. Defend the political philosophy behind that record. Talk politics. Hey, it could turn out that every Saturday Obama would sit down and read a book by Newt Gingrich or Thomas Sowell. Maybe he isn't a philosophical leftist who believes that the answer to every problem is to redistribute the wealth from one set of people to another. Do you ever think about the actual ideas behind the politics, Markle? They are a very important thing. The politics of conservatism did indeed persuade me a long time ago of their veracity, but I wouldn't say that I remain blindly and forever convinced. I'm open to new evidence. I think both George Will and Michael Novak have given me, for example, a better appreciate for, and understanding of, some aspects of the welfare state and how, and why, they can be justified, at least some narrow aspects of it. But what do we learn from Obama? What principle or idea is he espousing? If all ya got are these constant deflections to George Bush and this idea that I am totally without ideas, that leads me to believe that another liberal trick is being pulled on me: The pot calling the kettle black. You give all indication and suggestion that I am devoid of substance and ideas, but no matter how detailed my analysis, no matter what evidence I lay on the table, it's always the equivalent of "Pfffft. Not even worth trying to convince you. You're just a stuck-in-the-mud conservative."

Again, is that all you have? Is your best defense of Obama to simply stage-act and pretend just like he does?

Brad don't you understand it is all a right wing conspiracy to Markle. Markles right wing conspiracy got Senator Hussein to join a racist and bigoted church. Then Markles right wing conspiracy put the racist and bigoted sermons on DVD to sell them through the Church website. Senator Hussein was to busy helping the Chicago South side to realize he was being set up by Markles right wing conspiracy. Pastor Wright is just a right wing pinhead who carefully never gave a racist or bigoted sermon while Senator Hussein was attending mass to shield him form Markles right wing conspiracy.

When Senator Hussein made the first real statement about pastor wright he actually used the words Don't judge him through guilt by association. I said it earlier Senator Husseins guilt is from active participation in a church that is complacent in its racism and bigotry.

quote:

You give all indication and suggestion that I am devoid of substance and ideas, but no matter how detailed my analysis, no matter what evidence I lay on the table, it's always the equivalent of "Pfffft. Not even worth trying to convince you. You're just a stuck-in-the-mud conservative."

Brad, I would never say that YOU are devoid of substance and ideas, or that you would never look at any evidence presented to you. But you ARE an ideologue. You would find ways to dismiss, distinguish, spin, explain, doubt, suspect, pigeonhole, contradict, disbelieve, poke holes in, argue with, invalidate, interpret, snort at, disauthenticate, declare irrelevant, categorize, and otherwise question the probative value of any evidence that doesn't fit your world view. You would, in short, become a lawyer. Doesn't mean you're a bad person, you're certainly open-minded in your spiritual search, but your political belief system is very absolute.

I am not a partisan of Barack Obama. I wish we had more of a selection of candidates. I decline your suggestion of putting my life on hold to research and write a comprehensive brief on his voting record or whatever else you had in mind. MY motivation here is the viscious far-right rhetoric that follows the model of right-wing talk radio that snarls and insults anyone not on the right in language that says they're BAD PEOPLE. Think Bush lied us into Iraq, then fucked it up while Bin Laden is still on the loose? You're a TERRORIST SYMPATHIZER! And so on. And there's more of that sort of rhetoric here than there should be. You know who you are.
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But you ARE an ideologue. You would find ways to dismiss, distinguish, spin, explain, doubt, suspect, pigeonhole, contradict, disbelieve, poke holes in, argue with, invalidate, interpret, snort at, disauthenticate, declare irrelevant, categorize, and otherwise question the probative value of any evidence that doesn't fit your world view.

It seems to me the issue at hand is Obama and his many contradictions. I didn't make them up. Again, I may be a fuss-budgeting, stickling, snorteling, compunctious, irascible conservative who never takes an offramp to the port side because it says "Go Left," but that doesn't change the fact that Obama called for the firing of Don Imus while all along he was sitting in a church listening to racist, anti-American paranoid garbage.

MY motivation here is the viscious far-right rhetoric that follows the model of right-wing talk radio that snarls and insults anyone not on the right in language that says they're BAD PEOPLE.

Well, that motivation has turned you into little more than a Democratic apologist whose formula seems no more complex than "If a Democrat, then yes. If a Republican, then no." No doubt like many liberals you see Republicans, Christians, and Conservatives as barbarians at the gate. But who are the barbarians if the discussion of any issue is deflected and diverted to the barbarians argument while the underlying facts and issues are left untouched and dormant? Obama has said some very specific things, done some very specific things, and voted for some very specific things. He has a record. He has beliefs. They can be examined and talked about.

What Obama brings to the fore is whether or not we're going to continue to have this double-standard regarding race, where the Don Imuses of the world are castigated for fairly innocuous remarks (because he is white) while a black man can get on the pulpit and rave about AIDS being a plague on the black man that was intentionally perpetrated by the white man. I think it's about time that we stopped deflecting and excusing and treating black people like children and instead face these issues -- and even call it black racism where appropriate.

News flash: *I* never owned slaves. I have no white guilt. That's a ridiculous notion, as ridiculous as the idea of reparations. But that white guilt seems to fuel a lot of kid-gloving regarding the issue of race. But what we need are fewer apologists and knee-jerk party hacks and more discussions about the demagoguing that is being done in the name of racial justice. Justice is not what many people are pursuing. They are pursuing power and control for themselves over other people by constantly crying wolf about bigotry. At some point truth has to matter. Slavery from 150 years ago does not excuse giving an overt racist like Farrakhan an award. Hiding under one's skin color so that they can say and do the most outrageous things is a despicable and cowardly act. No decent person should belong to a church whose pastor once went on a fawning trip to see Khadafi. Markle, when you keep deflecting this issue back to the supposed hateful ravings of conservatives, you are giving a pass for this kind of stuff. You then become a dupe for the real hate.

quote:

Originally posted by Markle:
You would find ways to dismiss, distinguish, spin, explain, doubt, suspect, pigeonhole, contradict, disbelieve, poke holes in, argue with, invalidate, interpret, snort at, disauthenticate, declare irrelevant, categorize, and otherwise question the probative value of any evidence that doesn't fit your world view.

Sorry Brad. I have to agree with Markle here. There is no use in trying to convince you of anything political. I've given up trying. And I have tried. I threw in the towel in an earlier post. I said you are officially a middle-aged man stuck in his ways. Remember when you were a kid and you would talk with an older relative about ideas that were obvious, but that would be rejected out-of-hand because they did not fit into whatever framework the oldster had built into his mind? That's you. Sooner or later one must just give up and regretfully that's what I've had to do.

I've always wanted to have a rousing discussion with you about political philosophies and ideologies because I think you are a smart guy, but that's impossible because you know nothing about them. It is absolutely clear to me that you've never studied the subject in any serious way. You don't get even the most basic terms and ideas right. You mix them up like Archie Bunker mixes up his words. The difference is that you could tell by his context that Archie Bunker actually knew the meaning of the words he mispronounced. You don't. You mix up liberalism, socialism, conservatism, communism, "leftist" into some hazy stew where you pluck out ideas that reenforce you personal biases as being "conservative" and ones that don't as being "liberal" no matter where they originate. Not only is that the extent of your analysis, but the range of political ideas you actually know is severely limited.

Rico has it right. He's honest. You're not. Rico isn't trying to disguise what he's doing by dressing it up in a confused jumble of faux intellectualism. He is running down, smearing, name-calling, and ridiculing "Hussein" because he understands this guy is on the opposing team and that's what he thinks politics is about. You know and he knows I don't agree with him on this point, but it's what he believes. It could be he has never even heard of the guy until some months ago, but he has the word now and "Hussein" is the official enemy.

You do exactly the same thing, sometimes quite blatantly as in your recent 'Big Scary Negro' posts, but oftentimes you do it by pretending to a desire to be considered intellectual while you run down, smear, name-call, and ridicule. I enjoy reading Rico's posts. He is often original. You don't know what to think until you check with some bloviating pundit about what it is you are suppose to think. You use to read the crap and then type it up yourself. Lately you've even given up on that and removed yourself as the middleman altogether. Now you just cut and paste the crap or link to it directly in effect saying "here's what I think."

Jesus double-H Christ, I thought I had a superior condescending attitude, lol. At least mine is an act. You think Rico is going to take that downlooking lying down? I'm popping popcorn getting ready for this. One big happy family.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
Jesus double-H Christ, I thought I had a superior condescending attitude, lol. At least mine is an act. You think Rico is going to take that downlooking lying down? I'm popping popcorn getting ready for this. One big happy family.

Too harsh? I don't mean it that way. You can tell I've just had it. Look at what talk about politics has turned into. Nothing about policies. All about the candidates and their secret hidden personalities all the time. Name-calling and ridicule without end. Nothing about issues. I just despair. I read this crap and throw up my hands saying "look what they are doing! And these are smart guys, real smart guys." How can I have any hope if guys like this are convinced this shit is what they are supposed to be thinking and discussing. If this is what passes for political discussion here I have nothing but despair for what's going on with elsewhere with people who this site would not attract. There is no hope.

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
Show me Obama's voting record. Defend that record. Defend the political philosophy behind that record. Talk politics.

Talk politics? What have I been saying? Policies! Issues! That's politics. Reading a candidate's mind to discover his secret philosophy is just horseshit for the rubes to keep them busy while decisions about policies are being made for them by others.

I can't defend any politician's philosophy for two reasons. First, I don't think politicians are philosophers. The idea that they check with a philosopher before deciding an issue is just weak-minded nonsense. They respond to political pressure from those individuals or groups that hold political and/or monetary power. Second, I think the invitation itself is just another invite to engage in that candidate mind-reading trick that I already reject. Again and again, and it never stops, we are invited to talk about the candidate's characters', personalities', and unknowable private thoughts that we don't even know with people closest to us that we see every day. Imaginary delusions. No policies. No issues. It's the candidates and their personalities all the time without end. It never stops. They have some personal philosophy? Great! Dynamite! So do I. Now, about those issues they're working on that are going to affect us.

Politics is about who gets what. The academic subject of Political Philosophy is something arrived at after the fact by egghead intellectuals to give themselves employment and to give intellectual weight to who got what. (By the way, don't tell my wife that I said this. She is the Chair of the Political Science department of a university here in the Boston area)

I also must decline to defend Obama's voting record because what I know about it I don't agree with much of it. Because of his record, such as it is, I don't plan to vote for the guy.

quote:

Too harsh? I don't mean it that way. You can tell I've just had it.

No, I know. Believe me. That's politics for ya. Watching TV these days about any political issue gives my eye-rolling muscles such a workout, I have to try and change the channel to something like "Three's Company" to counteract the effects, by having my eyes roll the other way.

Politics is the art of, well, bullshit. The art of telling people WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. None of these guys, none of the pundits who make a living talking about them, would be where they are, without being champion grade-A bullshitters. Our job, is to try and cut through it. And I think we do that here on this site.

But we do it through discourse. It's a process. It's digesting what everyone says, and seeing what rings true. The trick is keeping one's rational mind involved, and seeing when your emotional strings are being pulled rhetorically.

What just seemed to happen, in my view, was that somehow Brad got under your skin. Hit too close to home with something. I had to go back and re-read to try and figure out what the hell it was, because you're usually so unflappable lol.

There just happens to be a lot of data coming in to parse right now. But it's becoming clear that most of us on thalo.net have reasoned our way through it, we're just adding our two cents as we always do.

Actually I think you and I have a very similar view about politics in general. While people WANT to believe that ideologies and convictions and straight-talking are involved, that's just a smokescreen for trying to raise money and for generally following the crowd to try and gain power.

It's very difficult to argue a minority position, or philosophy--whether it's the god's honest truth or not--and then try to get elected.

What political discussions end up doing, is outing the kind of pervasive social bullshit and dysfunctions that we've got going on. Barack didn't INVENT the racism that he tried to talk about in his speech... that speech was designed to make people who already feel that way feel better about themselves. It highlights and puts a microscope on a kind of societal ill, or widely-held bullshit. When the opposition comes along and holds the light of reason up to it, and challenges it... hey, sorry, they get the credit for finally calling it bullshit.

That's why thinkers and speakers on the conservative side are cleaning up when it comes to sounding more truthful and believable and even FAIR during any debate or discourse. Because instead of perpetuating the bullshit or making excuses for it, they're simply calling it bullshit and answering the challenge that we begin dealing with it.

The danger is, nobody WANTS to face this stuff. Nobody wants to hear things that are too true.

I was watching Bill Maher last night, and realized how I went from really respecting him, laughing at his jokes... to thinking that he's totally wrong when it comes to Iraq. And as far as I'm concerned, there's really not any more important issue in the presidential race than National Security and the war on Terror. This is a really dangerous war to fight.

In the same way that exposing our own bullshit is... uncomfortable, exposing the bullshit of THE WORLD when it comes to caving in to Islamic extremism is even worse. It's a major dysfunction on the planet. And we're leading an almost impossible fight, one where we have to not only stand up to it, when nobody else will, but we have to bear the brunt of all the fallout for exposing some of the darkest corners of human nature. Stuff that it would be MUCH easier to run away from, we're finally at long last dealing with.

It may be too late, the cancer may have spread too far, and it will ALWAYS be unpopular to do the hardest, most thankless thing in the short term. It's friggin' WAR. War is not a comforting pleasant thing that will get lots of votes and make people feel good. I think it's imperative that we fight this war, and yet as I've said, it's really tough to run on that kind of a platform, unless we're all in agreement who the enemy is. To many americans, all muslims are savages, and to hell with all of them.

Certain factions of this culture kind of pay lip service to extremists out of sheer cowardice and an impulse to self-preservation. But it's really because they're afraid. They think that showing enmity with a government that's fighting the bad guys will protect them from the bad guys and bring peace to the world. These are the kind of people brother Rico doesn't make a distinction about... they are also terrorists.

Now along comes the racial issue, and it's been one of those long-standing problems in our culture. Suddenly compared to the war, it's like HEY! We can deal with this now, and elect a black president! Aren't we cool? Listen, I'm glad the dialog about racism has begun, but we have to expect that our BULLSHIT is going to have to be dealt with. And just as there's lip service to terror... from people who don't want to face and deal and grab the bull of the issue by the horns... so too are there those giving lip service to the very nonsense that perpetuates racism.

Obama WAS quick to throw his grandma under the bus. A lot of what he said DID ring hollow. Conservatives are having a field day with him, because his bullshit is pretty easy to spot. And it takes the heat off of some of THEIR bullshit. Nobody is willing to start dealing with the superstition and dysfunction of religion on either side. Racism? Bring it on. This might be one we can tackle. It's easier than the war on terror.

If we talk policies and issues about any candidate, none of them come off smelling like a rose. Clinton perhaps is the most involved of the Democrats, we'd know exactly what we'd be getting. McCain, while running on a pro-war conservative platform that I'm convinced we need, has a free-speech policy brain fart that actually SHOCKS me. Obama is a fine politician, in that he is good on camera and can speak well. But his policies don't show him to be a brilliant legislator. Right now he's just something new and different, he's exciting people who consider politics just a show, and he's holding out a kind of white-guilt olive branch that says America will be cool and multicultural if we vote for him. And hey, it would be cool. And maybe he would rise to the occasion. But what none of us ought to forget is that every politician is cut from the same cloth. They didn't get to where they were by telling the truth to a fault.

In a time of war, we want Reagan optimism and some sense of national identity. A "first" (woman, black) president will take our minds off of how terrible the situation with Islamic extremism is. Sorry, but I think that's the way it's going to go in the election. As much as I'd prefer a candidate with conservative secular principles, what I'm going to get as my president is a liberal Democrat.

But whoever's hand comes off the bible in January, it doesn't stop the dialog about the issues. Not unless WE stop it. Unfortunately, electing Barack isn't going to be the CURE for racism. Electing Hilary isn't going to be the CURE for women's rights... and electing McCain isn't going to be the CURE for Islamic extremism. There's just way too much work to do after that.

I guess that's politics to me. We have our vote for president, but the issues are there no matter who gets in the office. We HOPE that our candidate will do the best job, but it's really up to us to make SURE they do, through some kind of involvement in the issues (even if all that means to you is being an involved and responsible citizen) after the race is run.

There is no use in trying to convince you of anything political.

I haven’t seen either you or Markle try to convince me regarding Obama and Pastor Wright. In fact, you don’t go on the record at all one way or another. I’m the bad guy, and that saves both of you from thinking. You do lots of characterizing of me, but you keep pretty much hands-off the discussion at hand. You go to metadiscussiions of the discussion. And although I like those at times, it’s not much of a substitute for actually stating an opinion on things.

Rico has it right. He's honest. You're not. Rico isn't trying to disguise what he's doing by dressing it up in a confused jumble of faux intellectualism. He is running down, smearing, name-calling, and ridiculing "Hussein" because he understands this guy is on the opposing team and that's what he thinks politics is about. You know and he knows I don't agree with him on this point, but it's what he believes. It could be he has never even heard of the guy until some months ago, but he has the word now and "Hussein" is the official enemy.

I may be a son-of-a-bitch, and Rico may be an angel, but it’s not actually a defense or criticism of Obama and Pastor Wright to keep harping on about how I’m supposedly the bad guy. That’s just trying to shoot the messenger. Instead of rebutting what I’m saying, you play all these games of trying to discredit me. That could be a sign that you just don’t have a good argument.

You do exactly the same thing, sometimes quite blatantly as in your recent 'Big Scary Negro' posts, but oftentimes you do it by pretending to a desire to be considered intellectual while you run down, smear, name-call, and ridicule.

HH, I don’t think you have much more in your argument aresenal than these ad hom characterizations and smears. Again, I’ll stand up on a pedastal in front of all the class and admit I’m a son-of-a-bitch, but the problem of Obama’s association with Pastor Wright remains.

What fucking horse did you broeders ride in on? To chastise broeder Brad on some notion that he reads which makes him unoriginal is truly calling the kettle black. I guess that makes broeders Markle and HighHopes opinions meaningless too. After all the two of them have attained their intellectual superiority by reading magical books and newspapers or listening to some news channel on TV not of course the bloviating pundit kind. The superior intellectual kind they only read. What breoder BN is accussed of you yourselves are completely guilty of the same offenses. You have no opinions of your own not one. All you have is some unwavering idea you have read in a book. How does this make one any different than the accusations being brought against broeder Nelson? The only thing broeders Markle and HighHopes have going over broeder Nelson is hubris.

Cult of personality. How is talking about the personality and background of a candidate irrelevant to policy? How isn't personality a conduct to governance. Example the serial killer Ted Bundy had a great affable personality. But it was to late for many women who met Bundy to realize oh wait this guy isn't really a nice person after all.

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Ah, Rico, it gives me a good sense of comfort and security to know that there are some things that are constant and reliable and predictable in this crazy world.

From another Democratic apologist, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan:

quote:

DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN

A Thinking Man's Speech
March 21, 2008, Wall Street Journal

I thought Barack Obama's speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that's what he wanted, and this is rare.

It seemed to me as honest a speech as one in his position could give within the limits imposed by politics. As such it was a contribution. We'll see if it was a success. The blowhard guild, proud member since 2000, praised it, and, in the biggest compliment, cable news shows came out of the speech not with jokes or jaded insiderism, but with thought. They started talking, pundits left and right, black and white, about what they'd experienced of race in America. It was kind of wonderful. I thought, Go, America, go, go.

You know what Mr. Obama said. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was wrong. His sermons were "incendiary," and they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Mr. Obama admitted that if all he knew of Mr. Wright were what he saw on the "endless loop . . . of YouTube," he wouldn't like him either. But he's known him 20 years as a man who taught him Christian faith, helped the poor, served as a Marine, and leads a community helping the homeless, needy and sick. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me." He would not renounce their friendship.

Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.

This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period.

* * *

The primary rhetorical virtue of the speech can be found in two words, endemic and Faulkner. Endemic is the kind of word political consultants don't let politicians use because 72% of Americans don't understand it. This lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, has long degraded American discourse. When Obama said Mr. Wright wrongly encouraged "a view that sees white racism as endemic," everyone understood. Because they're not, actually, stupid. As for Faulkner -- well, this was an American politician quoting William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." This is a thought, an interesting one, which means most current politicians would never share it.

The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.

Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line -- "And families in Michigan matter!" or "What I stand for is affordable quality health care!" -- and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.

Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

They should try it.

* * *

Here's what didn't work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn't summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?

This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches.

But most people didn't experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn't that way. Do the Obamas know it?

This is a lot of baggage to bring into the Executive Mansion.

Still, it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120604775960652829.html?mod=todays_columnists

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
I haven’t seen either you or Markle try to convince me regarding Obama and Pastor Wright. In fact, you don’t go on the record at all one way or another.

I explicitly did go on record. I told you that I don't care what he said. He's has a right to say what he wants. What am I suppose to do? Shoot the bastard?

Can you tell me why I should care? Wait, wait let me guess. Through some sort of postmodernist magic it has something to do with Obama's hidden personality and character? Is that it?

By the way, I never said you were a son-of-a bitch. I would never say that about you. That's not your style. Thalo can be son-of-a bitch. Intentionally, and with a sparkle in his eye. You? I generally regard you as earnest. Just an opinion.

quote:

News flash: *I* never owned slaves.

Oops. My mistake. Sorry.
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quote:

I haven’t seen either you or Markle try to convince me regarding Obama and Pastor Wright.

What in the world makes you think I give a flying fuck about anything some loudmouth preacher says?
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How is talking about the personality and background of a candidate irrelevant to policy? How isn't personality a conduct to governance. Example the serial killer Ted Bundy had a great affable personality. But it was to late for many women who met Bundy to realize oh wait this guy isn't really a nice person after all.

That’s a good point, Rico. Character does matter. Now, I don’t expect a politician to NOT be a bullshitter. As thalo said, politics is the art of bullshitting and telling people what they want. But when they’re caught in a lie, they’re caught in a lie. I do somewhat understand the tightrope that Obama is walking. There’s the black constituency he must play to out there, even while he tries to play to Mr. and Mrs. Middle-Class White Voter. I think, in short, he’s trying to weave together something that is very difficult to weave together but that should be woven together. The problem is, Obama is as out of touch with the other side of the race story (the Sowell side, the Clarence Thomas side, or the Bill Cosby side) as I am with the Boys from the Hood side, probably more so. You can tell because right after Obama gave his big speech, in a subsequent interview he still uttered the rather stupid comment of his grandmother being a “typical white woman” and all that garbage about suggesting that white people are just automatically afraid of black people because us white people somehow have had that fear “bred into us.” Man, this guy doesn’t know the rule of holes. When you’re in one, stop digging.

And political philosophy is extremely important, just as economic philosophy is. There is a great deal of difference between free-market capitalism and communism, for example, just as there is a difference between conservatism and liberalism (leftism is actually what I’m addressing, which it seems describes most Democrats today). And there’s a huge tangible difference in the results that these things bring you.

Obama was caught being far different from the man who was portraying himself as a moderate, thoughtful, well-balanced, race-neutral individual. Instead, he was closely associated with one of the most race-baiting, prejudiced, noxious pastors you could imagine. And the best Obama has as a counter-argument is the “crazy uncle” one. But as others have said, we don’t choose our families, but we certainly do choose our churches.

And the truth is, I doubt that Obama is anywhere near as radical as Pastor Wright. I mean, geez, how could he be? That guy’s a maniac. But he did go there. And he didn’t leave after the many outrageous things that were said by his pastor. That’s implicit endorsement of those ideas. Oh, not if Pastor Whacko had one or two outbursts. But it wasn’t just an isolated outburst or two. This was who this guy was, and he apparently was this way for a very long time. He was a known quantity, and they were apparently even selling tapes of his sermons at the front door of his church. His repertoire of racism, anti-Americanism, and paranoia were not news to anyone who was a regular goer. It couldn’t have been. Pastor Wright is, if anything, a memorable speaker.

And in the explanation of his association with Pastor Wright, he throws his own mother under the bus and does a moral equivalency argument with the ravings of Pastor Wright. That’s truly a classless act. Obama is trying to walk a tightrope he’s just not prepared or smart enough to walk. He’s either got to stand up and say, “Yes, I belonged to that church. And it was because a lot of black people are very, very angry.” Of course, this would paint him as a Black Panther-liker radical and would turn a lot of people off. Or he could totally disavow the pastor (totally, not equivocally), and then risk losing support among blacks. Instead, he tries to walk that tightrope as best he can, denouncing his pastor’s comments, but saying he can’t disown family. And at first, he denies he ever heard or knew about the beliefs of his pastor. And then suddenly he remembered that he did. That’s another way of saying that he lied.

But, truth be told, if Obama went to that church for forty years and...

1) Planned on continuing the fight against Islamic terrorist, including manning the front lines of that battle in Iraq
2) Supported school vouchers so that families in run-down areas could go to better schools
3) Disavowed not Pastor Wright, but the idea that you can spend your way out of each and every social problem. The government can’t try to do everything, and very often makes worse whatever it touches.
4) Urged black leaders to stop fomenting racial hatred and instead associated himself with, and brought to the forefront, a cadre of peaceful, thoughtful, and magnanimous black leaders and preachers.
5) Allowed drilling in Alaska, and saner, less irrational, environmental policies. We need more oil and we need more refineries. Corn is not the answer, nor are windmills.
6) Would repeal McCain-Feingold
7) Would nominate strict constructionist Supreme Court Justices
8) Stop the flood of illegal aliens over our southern border

...I would vote for him. I could think of many other points, but that would be a sufficient start. What church he goes to pales in comparison with his policies. And his policies appear to be even worse than his choice of churches.