Rambi had a post earlier today about the latest charge against Obama from Stanley Kurtz about Chicago. Here's Matt Yglesias' reaction. Very helpful. If you're concerned.
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The Coverup»
Stanley Kurtz unleashes a self-described “October surprise”:
It took me a while to put the pieces together, but I think I’ve figured out what’s had the Obama camp so worried about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records. It goes way beyond Bill Ayers. In fact, it connects the dots between Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s own early radicalism. I lay out the details today in my new piece, “Wright 101.” The gist of what I found is that, from his position as board chair at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Jeremiah Wright. As I argue in today’s piece, this puts the Wright issue back in play in this campaign.”
Specifically, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on whose board Obama served gave a grant to an outfit called the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS). CIESS was “linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system” called the “South Shore African Village Collaborative.” According to Kurtz, this network which was linked to an organization which got a grant from a group on whose board Obama served, “was very much a part of the Afrocentric ‘rites of passage movement’” and also at time did events featuring guys named Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard. These two, in turn, seem to have held fringy opinions somewhat similar to some of Jeremiah Wright’s fringy opinions. Ergo, according to Kurtz, Wright is back on the table.
I’d say McCain’s in luck with this one! Obama’s doomed!
Seriously, though, is there anyone who could withstand this kind of guilt-by-association. Obama was on the board of an outfit that gave a grant to an outfit that was linked to another outfit that organized an event where some dude spoke, and thus Obama is responsible for the dude? Really? I spoke at the Heritage Foundation once. Does that make Heritage’s board members responsible for stuff on my blog? It doesn’t make any sense.
yglesias.thinkprogress.org |
