Oh how far we have fallen from the 20 or so policy debates the Democratic candidates until now. Yesterday cable news pundits after pundits extolled all forms of moral indignation over Clinton's and Obama's supporters and their apparent racial or unpatriotic exclamations. Yes, I posted Ferraro's story and Oberrman's Countdown Special Comment and I am going to post Rev. Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory statements as well. There are two questions one has to ask through this new period: Why has this come about? And Who is this benefiting?
Yesterday on MSNBC as I was attempting to channel surf I came across Dan Abrams asking whether the press had fallen into a trap of discussing the minutia of controversial statements by those who support the candidates. Naturally the panel of other NBC/national press pundits agreed it had fallen into a bad state, but that they all thought it was fair game because , afterall the President is about "character" issues also. Their tack was how does a candidate respond to inflammatory statements. Now the hot potato was in Obama's lap over Rev. Wright's stuff and since Wright was on a ceremonial African-American spiritual guidance committee he had to be fired also. Furthermore Obama needed to be even more virulent in distancing himself from Wright, more than the CNN statement of:“Sen. Obama has said before that he profoundly disagrees with some of the statements and positions of Rev. Wright… Sen. Obama deplores divisive statements, whether they come from his supporters, the supporters of his opponent, talk radio or anywhere else.’’The controversial statements by Rev. Wright are:
"Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home, Barack was. Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary! Hillary can never know that. Hillary has never been called a n-----! Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person."The article continues with a sermon by Wright at Howard University were he blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president. The it quotes Wright on Jan. 15, 2006.
"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."
"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."
"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."
"We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."As a 50 year-old white guy, raised in a racial mixed but mostly segregated working class community north of Chicago and educated as a political scientist I cannot disagree with with the factual representations of what the Reverend made. To some whites I know they don't like to face the reality that their heritage is one of adjunct privilege compared to African-Americans, Latino's, or Asian-Americans, but institutional discrimination existed and even though it is waning, it still has its profound effect. Let me break this down point-by-point.
- There are more African-Americans in prison---10.4% of the entire U.S. population of Black-Americans; approximately 800,000 while 600,000 enrolled in college in 2000, (source--Infoplease) . Comparably speaking in 1980, 143,000 were in prison and 464,000 were enrolled in college. SO I ASK YOU WHAT IS MORE INFLAMMATORY...the speech or the statistics?
- Now you might not like Rev. Wright's interpretation or connection to this statistic and his world view of U.S.'s history but again it is factually correct, America was founded as a racially-based slave nation. As far as whether a bi-racial African-American person (Barack Obama) can be elected is to be determined this year.
- Literally speaking I am unsure as to whether the U.S. is the number one killer compared to Darfur, Rwanda, Nigeria, Congo, or what is going on in China, but it is now becoming accepted that the U.S. is responsible for up to 500,000 pre-mature deaths in Iraq as a consequence of an invasion of choice. It is also becoming known that the CIA induced greater illegal drug trade for nefarious purposes, and our recent history in my generation we did induce the carnage in Cambodia that killed over a million people and hundreds of thousands of politically motivated killings in Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile.
- As a young political scientist I did study under Professor Gwendolen Carter
at Indiana University where she was one of the world's scholars on South Africa's apartheid. The U.S. was complicit in that foreign policy and until it became a global disgrace did it change its policies. - Zionism is well-documented and albeit a seemingly global solution for one group of disadvantaged and ravaged ethnics the U.S. never addressed the fundamental unfairness and issues related to the Palestinians thereby allowing Israel to oppress and slaughter them without accountability.
- Regarding the "Third World" once only has to read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" to understand the economic empire the U.S. has engineered and reaps a daily harvest.
- As for Hillary not growing up in anything but a privileged home that is true and one's unique experiences does shape one's world views and thus outside his oratory style of confrontation what is so wrong with these statements?
So now back to the questions of why and who? The why is simple: The Clinton camp is dead set on tearing down the mantle of Obama, regardless of the cost they are going to do it because if they can't win this year, they look at 2012 as the rebound. If Obama is elected in 2008, she will not have the opportunity, she will 70-years old in 2016 and there will be a new political riser in the Democratic Party. In fact it will probably be a woman, Senator McCaskill or Governor Kathleen Sebelius or Michigan's, Arizona's, or Washington State's.
As I see it these are not spontaneous acts anymore; attacking Obama on race has been going on at each step, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Ohio/Texas, now Ferraro and finally this bushwhack
from NewsMax ( Farrakhan January 14th and FOX News's Hannity ) this weekend the 2+2+? is obvious. We know Clinton has been connected to Drudge one of the early rightwing[nuts] of the blogosphere where he dropped the Obama muslim garb picture. We know Limbaugh has been motivating crossovers to vote for Hillary and that Bill was on his radio program when Rush was curiously absent and now we have FOX News doing this hatchet job. NewMax is another rightwing online group. So Clinton continues to carry out this, scorched earth politics, what are you going to do about it?
No comments:
Post a Comment