Dismantling Obama


Today I'm watching the reaction to the Obama speech on race relations, and noticing what the Clinton and Republican talking points are. The first is distorting what Obama said to try and make it appear that he is dishonest. I saw this come up twice and both people began, "The speech had some problems," and then hit two points, both of them manipulative and very sly.

The first point they are bringing up is that Obama said he heard some controversial things from Jeremiah Wright, and then smoothly transitioning from that to his having said he was never in church when he heard the kind of rhetoric being constantly looped on the networks and the internet. Then this is followed with, "And he didn't go to him and take issue with these hateful things, didn't reject them ..." etc.

Obama did not say he heard things that he even disagreed with. He said he heard things that he knew were controversial. I remember listening to Martin Luther King speaking on Vietnam, and I knew he was saying things which were controversial. The word "controversial" does not mean, or necessarily even imply, that what was said was objectionable or hateful.

So this was seized on and twisted to try and damage Obama's integrity. Clinton didn't win the most delegates in Texas, and if the Republicans who voted for her in response to the right wing strategy of keeping the "Democrat" party ripping itself apart were subtracted from the totals, she didn't win the initial popular vote. She had stumbled into alliance with Rush Limbaugh, which is surreal but in some strange way karmic. "We have met the vast right wing conspiracy and it is us."

She refused to concede before Texas, for the good of the party, and now she's at the crossroads, doing a deal with the devil. A full twenty percent of Obama supporters are already so angry with this situation that they say they will sit out the election if Clinton does manage to manipulate the process.

The next talking point that is coming up is that he can't equate his grandmother with Wright, because Wright is a public figure. But they are the ones who are suggested he equated them. He did not do that himself, except perhaps to point out that you can't control your family, and that Wright is like family. I am personally proud of him for hating the sin but not the sinner. It bodes well, because it suggests he is mentally and emotionally healthy.

The difference between creative genius and neurosis, according to Bertrand Russell, is the ability to separate your ego from what you produce. We shouldn't then treat a selected negative sample of somebody's art as being their essence or their identity. After all, we don't judge the people who used blacks as laboratory animals in Tuskegee by that one piece of artistic endeavor. Why wouldn't blacks wonder if AIDS was some kind of government experiment? And why wouldn't they be good and pissed at the government?

I wasn't shocked by what Wright said. I expect that old black men feel that way and it doesn't bother me. It's how I'd feel if I'd lived their life. I don't take it personally. I know old white people, including my parents, who still say say "nigra" sometimes without any apparent animosity or even awareness that they should say Africa Americans or blacks. On the other hand at an individual level they are honestly gracious to anybody who is gracious with them, regardless of race.

I'm sure Wright is like that. The thing he said that shocked people was, "God damn America." That was difficult and it's going to be difficult, because it creates a visceral reaction. I didn't like it, but I do understand it. Sometimes you say something in the heat of the moment which, if you knew was going to be played on national television over and over, would be qualified: "God damn the people who own America."

Today I was listening to the Diane Rehm show, and there was a guest who said the dumbest thing I've ever heard. He said the average person in America is very well off, because if you take the total of the wealth and divide it by the population, the average is surprisingly high! Of course Rehm instantly reminded him that the wealth is not in fact distributed that way, but his audacity was astounding.

Diane Rehm is a smart woman and she nails this kind of thing quickly. But some of the suits on network television just let non sequiturs pass as if they are somehow logical. Obama was not "caught in a contradiction" by saying he has heard Wright say controversial things, and he was not being facile by talking about his white grandmother's being afraid of black men.

I remember reading a story by John Cheever years ago, called "The Worm in the Apple." It's been a long time, but as I recall the story was about a couple in a happy marriage. And the other couples kept looking for "the worm in the apple," wanting them to be as fractured and compromised as they were.

I think that's what's going down with Obama. The harpies have to be fed.

Posted: Tue - March 18, 2008 at 06:28 PM