Sophisticates for Wright [Mark Steyn]
Lisa, Derb, some of the pronouncements in these parts as to the toastedness of Barack may prove a wee bit premature. Given the general squeamishness of Americans when it comes to discussion of race, it may yet be that enough of the nation decides to live with the absurd proposition that all this God-damn-America-the-government-invented-Aids-to-kill-black-people paranoia has been "taken out of context" or whatever. Still, if only for the sake of our public discourse, I hope the Senator comes up with something less risible than his present position, which reminds me of the Studio 54 proprietors back in the Seventies expressing disbelief after some or other police raid that all this cocaine-snorting was going on under their noses.
But, as things stand, Obama is damaged. If, as some folks are arguing, hanging with Uncle Jeremiah is simply the price of doing politics in black Chicago, that makes the Senator not the change you can believe in but just the same-old-same-old. And at least a sliver of the electorate will find it hard to accept that even the political realities of Illinois require a man to raise his daughters in a church led by a vulgar kook who makes humping motions from the pulpit when he discusses Bill and Monica. Jeremiah Wright is not most Americans' idea of a pastor, and the longer he's in the spotlight the more he distances Obama from the electorate. Accepting (as everyone assures us) that the candidate himself is not an Afrocentric liberation theologist who believes every crackpot conspiracy of the last 70 years, every other explanation as to why Barack Obama spent two decades in the company of a profane race-baiter leaves the Senator looking either weak or weird. If he can wriggle out of this tonight, he's some kind of genius.
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