Throw grandma under the bus, part 2
Yesterday I referred to the false equivalencies in Obama's extenuation of, and attempt to change the subject from, the fulsome Jeremiah Wright. I focused on the false equivalence Obama drew between his grandmother and Wright. Mickey Kaus meticulously teases out a number of other false equivalencies in the speech. Steve Sailer contrasts Obama's account of his grandmother in Dreams From My Father with the account in his speech. Sailer concludes that Obama threw his grandmother "under the wheels of the BS express." Jim Hoft has compiled a Grandma Dunham roundup. (Thanks to reader Julian Biggs for the tip to Sailer's post.)
PAUL adds: All of these links are very much worth following, and Sailer's is indispensable. According to Sailer, in yesterday's speech, Obama distorted the facts surrounding his grandmother's comment about being afraid of black men. In the speech, the black men she was afraid of merely passed her in the street; in the book a black man panhandled her very aggressively at a bus stop.
It's bad enough, as Scott has said, to speak unfavorably about grandma (the one person in his family who consistently attended to Obama) in order to use her as a political prop. To cast her in a false light for that purpose is very low, indeed.
Fortunately, Sailer's post contains comic relief, albeit dark, in the form of grandpa's response to grandma's distress and young Barack's effort to obtain guidance from the local African-American Communist party member.
UPDATE: I see that James Taranto elaborated on the false equivalence between Wright and Grandma Dunham yesterday afternoon in his Best of the Web Today column.
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Posted by Scott
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