Margaret Carlson has written a fine article about Obama's "race" speech over at www.Bloomberg.com. She writes with respect and appreciation for what Barack said in his speech and the position he was in.
She stated:
"Obama's words this week may be the costliest any presidential candidate has ever uttered. In my time covering politics, I've never heard a candidate speak so honestly. It was shockingly candid, written in the middle of a breakneck campaign and delivered amid great turmoil, a trick not unlike trying to comb your hair in a wind tunnel."
She went on to contrast Obama's honesty and sincerity with that displayed by the Clinton's during what was once a critically important moment for them; the Gennifer Flowers affair. Some excerpts below:
"The last time a candidate had to confront an episode as perilous as this was Bill Clinton in 1992 after Gennifer Flowers came forward and said she'd had a relationship with him. The Clintons' response in a ``60 Minutes'' TV interview was billed as a totally candid exchange on the most delicate of matters. It fell far short of that.
Flowers was hardly an aberration. And Hillary, who denied any intent to stand by her man, suffering like Tammy Wynette, did just that. Still, the limited hangout worked well enough to propel Clinton through a dangerous moment in his candidacy."
Margaret Carlson then points out the Republicans have uniformly attacked Obama, including that serial adulterer Newt Gingrich who claimed the speech was, ``intellectually, fundamentally dishonest.''
All of the forgoing was informative but then she did something really special; she put Rev. Jeremiah Wright's accusations about the government planting AIDS in the African American community in both historical context and perspective when she wrote the following:
"When he said he cringed when his white grandmother who loved him more than anyone in the world made hurtful remarks about blacks, I cringed at the memory of remarks made within my own family.
That was a generation ago. Now, I live next door to an all- black church. Every Sunday a prosperous-looking group chats on the sidewalk outside, and then goes inside and shouts ``Amen'' to invocations of their struggles against injustice.
Owning Up
I asked a churchgoer about Wright's crackpot notion that the government had inflicted AIDS upon the black community. She scoffed but asked me to remember an accusation that once seemed equally farfetched: that the government had secretly withheld treatment for syphilis, while pretending to provide it, from 399 black men from 1932 to 1972 to further medical research.
The government didn't own up to the Tuskegee Experiment until forced to after it was exposed in 1975."
It's astonishing to recall that experiment lasted 40 years and only ended in 1972. That's just not that long ago. The government lied and denied. How many white people even know about the Tuskegee experiments? I wonder what white Americans would say if they had any experiences with the U.S. Government even remotely similar to what black Americans have had; Native Americans know of course
I hope those who've been made uncomfortable with Obama based on a few comments from one preacher can somehow gain some perspective and, in fact, hopefully their respect and admiration for Obama and all he's achieved will grow. He is the living American dream.