Update II: History Or More Obama Hysteria?

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Media, Racism

I don’t know how much more of the elections coverage I can take.

With Obama on the verge of clinching the Democratic Party nomination, the accursed Cable Anchors are poised to cement their role in history by declaring this event an historical one. Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer, a disgrace to their profession, have dissolved in soggy sentimentality. (The MSNBC network has posted this quotidian demonstration of what I mean.)

Every American, vaporized Matthews, will remember where he was on this historical day, when a black man became the nominee of a major American political party.

All this because Barack Obama is African American (or sort of).

However, the American people have given Obama such support not because of his ancestry, but because they like him better than the other White House hopefuls. Moreover, the reason Americans haven’t elected a man or woman of color beforehand is that no decent candidate presented himself.

Are the media suggesting that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton’s bids for the office failed because of their color? I venture that their color was the least of their problems. Their characters: now that’s another matter entirely.

In Obama the American people see a viable candidate. The idea that Obama’s impending nomination is historical is an insult to Americans—it suggests that the barrier to the nomination of a Barack in years past was purely racial, rather than the absence of a strong black (or blackish) candidate.

Update I: Here is the text of Obama’s victory speech.

Update II (June 4): Sen. Clinton is the democratic choice; Obama the delegate’s choice. Democrats the country over elected Hillary; party delegates ratified Obama. Is Hillary angry that petty party rules trumped her popular appeal and stymied her bid for president? She should be. Clinton stopped short of conceding last night.

Updated: Beam Scotty (McClellan) Up

Iraq, Media, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

You mean there still is no consensus about the unconstitutional, unjust war an American government waged? That’s right; the “nation” is still litigating the invasion of Iraq. What’s more, the stakeholders are circling the wagons.

Here is something of the smorgasbord of McClellan coverage; it’s some of what you should take away from the publication of a stale, tell-all by a former low-level Bush administration functionary. Admonitions are in order for most members of the media who were right by Scotty’s side, whooping it up for war crimes. For or against Scott, send in some of the reviews you like (but take your pro-war crimes comments elsewhere):

• “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?”—Richard A. Clarke

• “It would have been nice if he had told us some of this at the time, back when it was his job to keep the public informed.”—Karen Tumulty, Time magazine [Not so fast Ms. Tumulty; it was YOUR job too to apprise the public.]

• “The memoir strikes me as the standard stuff: ‘I was an insider to a corrupt group but the head of the group and I weren’t corrupt; we were misled.’”—liberal blog called American Street

• “Bush displayed a ‘lack of inquisitiveness’; the administration operated in a ‘permanent campaign mode’; the Iraq war ‘was not necessary’–other than that McClellan’s chosen to reveal them. But is that even really that surprising?” And: “the book displays a calculating mind that was never much in evidence in the White House press room.”—Jason Zengerle, The New Republic

Update (June 3): After watching Scott McClellan handle the raging bull, Bill O’Reilly, I’ve changed my opinion. This young man was strong, courageous and filled with a certain conviction. He did well against the man who acted as an accomplice to the administration, and who sold the war to those who’d have to go out and fight it. This was Bush’s war, Blair’s war, Podhoretz’s war, and Billo’s war. Billo showed his discomfort by flaring his nostrils and pursing his lips. McClellan, who was calm and comfortable, got to the man.

McClellan’s ability to admit over and over again that he had been completely wrong in his judgment and ethics served as a good contrast to Billo, who was prepared to concede nothing of the kind.

Granted, McClellan is not opposing the war on the most solid of grounds: Implicit in the case he makes is that if Iraq had WMD—irrespective of it not threatening the US or having any ties to al-Qaida—the US would have had a case for war. McClellan implies that we had a right to enforce UN resolutions, be a global governor. (Suddenly the US is an arm of the UN). We don’t.

Still, I will buy McClellan’s role as a bellwether of sorts—another insider sounding a warning—when the evidence against this corrupt administration results in impeachments, disgrace, and loss of face. There are no signs of that so far.

Updated: More Pornographic Preaching From The Trinity Cesspit

Barack Obama, Christianity, Racism

Father Michael Pfleger’s mocking, sardonic, poisonous delivery at the pit in which Obama prays stands out for its repulsiveness.

The way Pfleger molds his voice and inflection to sound like a black man; the facial grimacing and exaggerated contempt-filled gestures—as repulsive as this style of preaching is, it is all the more off-putting when aped by a white man. At least he didn’t go completely tribal as did Wright at the pulpit when simulating sex to conjure Bill Clinton.

Afrikaans slang provides an alliterative direct expression stronger and way more sibilant than “Yuk:

“Sis man!”

The jamboree of media attention has not helped to focus matters. Media are satisfied that Obama has distanced himself from Rev. Revilo’s words and that their messiah was away from the pews at the time—this is the “exhaustive” criteria by which Obama’s ties to the Trinity United Church of the Anti-Christ are gauged.

As the nation’s cognoscenti have been parted from their critical faculties, let me ask once again: Is it not clear that this sort of preaching, down to the contempt-filled body language accompanying the damning of enemies, is anchored in a philosophy and a worldview espoused by Trinity?

Is it not plain that Obama can’t just “condemn” this immoral and pornographic preaching, without having to explain why he praises God in a cesspool promoting racism, eternal anti-white grievance, victimism, and hatred?

Obama must be put on the spot not for his presence or absence in the pews during sermons delivered by the pornographic preachers of the Trinity cesspit, but for his adopted philosophy of two decades.

(Please note that “pornographic” here is used in the sense of “lurid,” although undeniably, the preachers of Trinity galvanize their bodies and faces in obscene, improper gestures and grimaces.)

Update (May 31): Barack Obama has resigned from the Anti-Christ Trinity Church. This act of political expediency alters nothing in the case I’ve been making against the man. That’s the essence of a solid case: Temporal tweaking does little to explain loyalties that point toward a consistent, long-held belief system.

Wright as American as Idi Amin

Africa, America, Christian Right, History

“Hagee’s Hebraic bond goes back to John Winthrop and the New England Puritans. Revivalism, evangelicalism, the faith of happy-clappers—this branch of Protestantism, and its beliefs, is also as American as apple pie. The First and Second Great Awakenings were epochal events in early America, instrumental in the Revolution. And later in Abolition. …

The particularism of Afrocentrism, Wright’s creed, is as American as Idi Amin was. Both alien and idiotic is Wright’s fealty to ‘Black values’ and the Dark Continent—where everywhere black bodies are stacked up like firewood, to paraphrase the talented Keith Richburg, a black American journalist.”

The complete column: “Wright As American As Idi Amin.” Comments are welcome.