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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sr K who wrote (19470)	4/28/2008 11:30:16 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

I said that running for VP, even though you and I know is a joke, is not viewed the same way by the non-college educated crowd. They just understand things in a simple way. He has to strike a chord in the hearts of these folks. And the only way he can do this is repeat the same words that McCain used against Cunningham in Ohio. Barack needs to review the McCain tape and repeat those words and move on. He cannot wait for things to happen first. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is probably getting high on Starbucks coffee. They are Dukakised trying to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized because of the crowd. =========================================== Politics: The Wright stuff SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's defense of himself ought to be welcomed as an exercise of his rights. We have no idea how it will actually play into the campaign. But as pundits suggest, any mention of Sen. Barack Obama's pastor leads to the media's Pavlovian response: Run sensational video loops, check ratings, charge advertisers. Repeat. As predictable as that may be, it's up to voters to decide how to respond, especially in deciding what, if any, significance the whole overhyped subject has to the Democrats' primary battle. Most will never like the excerpts but many already view them in a wider context of African-American history, religious and civic. A wider acquaintance with Wright and his work may neutralize the discussion. We're certainly no experts on Wright, his congregation or Chicago. But the narrative of a wild, angry anti-American extremist doesn't ring true. As some have noted, Wright volunteered to join the Marines in the early 1960s, went on to become a Navy cardiopulmonary technician and earned letters of commendation for his White House service. A white congregant recently wrote about how Wright took hours to talk his African-American fiancée out of breaking their engagement over concerns about marrying outside her race. They've been married 25 some years. Over the course of a long public career, Wright has misspoken a time or two. Americans can listen to him directly address the criticisms and go on to have a presidential election that revolves around greater matters. seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: Sr K who wrote (19470)	4/28/2008 11:42:36 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

This guy Eugene is one of Barack's biggest supporters. There are many African-American that are mad today. Even Juan of FOX News is mad at Rev. Wright and not Obama. ========================================== Where Wright Goes Wrong By Eugene Robinson Tuesday, April 29, 2008; A17 We all have our crosses to bear. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has become Barack Obama's. I'm sorry, but I've had it with Wright. I would never try to diminish the service he performed as pastor of his Chicago megachurch, and it's obvious that he's a man of great charisma and faith. But this media tour he's conducting is doing a disservice that goes beyond any impact it might have on Obama's presidential campaign. The problem is that Wright insists on being seen as something he's not: an archetypal representative of the African American church. In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree. It's understandable, given how Wright has been treated, that he would want to attempt to set the record straight. No one would enjoy seeing his 36-year career reduced to a couple of radioactive sound bites. No preacher would want his entire philosophy to be assessed on the basis of a few rhetorical excesses committed in the heat of a passionate sermon. No former Marine would stomach having his love of country questioned by armchair patriots who have done far less to protect the United States from its enemies. Given Wright's long silence, I thought he had taken to heart Jesus's admonition to turn the other cheek. Obviously, I was wrong. I'm through with Wright not because he responded -- in similar circumstances, I certainly couldn't have kept silent -- but because his response was so egocentric. We get it, Rev. Wright: You're ready for your close-up. He made some good points yesterday when he entered the lion's den of the National Press Club. I especially liked this one: "My goddaughter's unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service while sending . . . over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie." But his basic point -- that any attack on him is an attack on the African American church and its traditions -- is just wrong. In making that argument, he buys into the fraudulent idea of a monolithic, monocultural black America -- one with his philosophy and theology at its center. In his speech Sunday at the NAACP dinner in Detroit, Wright spoke at length about how "different" does not mean "deficient." He talked of how European and African musical and rhetorical traditions are different, and how that doesn't mean that one is better than the other. The point was that there is no one way to preach the Gospel. In this, Wright is right. Where he overreaches is in claiming, as he did at the Press Club, that the criticism he has suffered "is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church" -- and in claiming that this episode "just might mean that the reality of the African American church will no longer be invisible." The reality of the African American church, of course, is as diverse as the African American community. I grew up in the Methodist church with pastors -- often active on the front lines of the civil rights movement -- whose sermons were rarely exciting enough to elicit more than a muttered "Amen." They were excitement itself, however, compared with the dry lectures delivered by the priest at the Catholic church around the corner. And what I heard every Sunday was nothing at all like the Bible-thumping, hellfire-and-damnation perorations that filled my Baptist friends with the Holy Ghost -- and even less like the spellbinding, singsong, jump-and-shout sermonizing that raised the roofs of Pentecostal sanctuaries across town. Wright claims to represent all these traditions and more, but he does not. He also claims universality for the political aspect of his ministry. It is true that the black church, writ large, has been an instrument of social and political change. But most black churches are far less political than Wright's -- and many concern themselves exclusively with salvation. I point all this out not to say that one tradition is better than another; as Wright said, different doesn't mean deficient. But what Wright did was to try to frame the issue in such a way that to question him or anything he has ever said was to question the long, storied tradition of African American religion. Historically and theologically, he was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus. Sadly, it's time for Obama to return the favor. washingtonpost.com