May 01, 2008

Obama’s Coming Disgrace

Many are discussing how Obama and Wright are setting back race relations in this country. From Roger L. Simon:

Al Sharpton criticizing Barack Obama for urging non-violence in the Sean Bell verdict protest puts into dramatic relief the major racial conflict of our time - and it is inside the African-American community, not outside. Outdated racial profiteers like Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and now the formerly obscure Reverend Jeremiah Wright are clinging for dear life to their reactionary views that have impeded progress in their own community for years.

Unfortunately for all of us, Obama - whose instincts should have been better on this matter - has found himself trapped between appeasing these race baiters (and their constituencies) and taking what is truly a progressive (note the use of the word) stand against them because of his twenty year association with Reverend Wright. The candidate's speech on racism, so lauded in the press, actually worsened the situation by implying an equivalency between the reverend's excrescences and his own grandmother's fear of being mugged. That Obama could even think this way makes us wonder about his ability to lead us out of these particular woods.

And woods they are indeed. The situation is close to tragic and this election year shows a real chance of running off the rails in a way few of us would have predicted. It has a potential for pushing race relations seriously backwards in a society that was already relatively open handed. People do not like being accused of racism when it is not there. The original attraction of the Obama campaign is that it was post-racial and now it is anything but.

Wright has made his own racism undeniable.

Obama has shown that he, Obama, also excuses racism:

• By his 20-year close association with Wright.
• The NY Post has a report that Wright is outraged that Obama claims that Obama never knew Wright's true views. "'After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn't know about Jeremiah's views during those years, that he wasn't familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn't hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal,' said the source, who has deep roots in Wright's Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter."
• By his "typical white person" statement.
• By his initial defense of, and excuses for, Wright's racism.
• From Victor Davis Hanson: "The ghosts of Howard Cossell and Jimmy the Greek, Don Imus, and Michael Richards apparently have now all been absolved by Barack Obama. Thanks to the bar he has lowered in reacting to racism, no one will ever be disowned for their racist remarks, but always contextualized and excused. Watch what follows as a consequence of what Obama has wrought."
• By his latest attempt to distance himself from Wright, in which he appeared to many to be complaining, not so much of Wright's racism, as of Wright's accusation that Obama was being cynically disingenuous:
  
• From PowerLine: "In Obama's eyes, the most serious wrongdoing in Wright's statements is their disrespect of Obama. From the revered father figure who could not be disowned, Wright has become the the father from whom separation must be achieved in favor of his own identity, or the boorish relative who cannot be tolerated. The adolescent grandiosity and adolescent pettiness of Obama's remarks are perhaps the most shocking revelations of this entire episode."

Will Obama and Wright set back race relations in this country?  I suggest that on the contrary, America's decades-long tradition of powerfully opposing any tendency towards racism, will win in the end, resulting in the disgrace of Obama.

Since Martin Luther King, America has moved in the direction of opposing and putting down all notions of racism. In just the past two years, we have seen striking examples of this in the cases of Don Imus, Michael Richards, and Duane "Dogg" Chapman. 

Obama's implied and explicit excuses for racism, are being powerfully rejected by the American public.  It appears that Obama's supporters are already finding him to be no longer acceptable. From Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal:

This week we learned the limit of a dream in American politics. At Barack Obama's darkest hour, not one prominent ally came forward to support him. Everyone abandoned Everyman.

No prominent black clergyman came forth to make even the simple point that Jeremiah Wright's notion of the "black church" is but one point on a spectrum of faith. Rev. Wright, now written off as a virtual nut case, got more support from black clergymen than did Obama.

Barack Obama was bleeding by Monday and needed cover. Where, when he could have used them, were Obama's oh-so-famous endorsers: Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?

Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp: Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon?

It isn't hard for big names to get on talk TV to make a point. Any major op-ed page would have stopped the presses to print a statement of support from Ted Kennedy or such for the senator. None appeared. Call it profiles in gopher-holing.

Are we really to believe that two individuals - Obama and Wright - are going to turn a nation away from a course it has been on for decades?

On the contrary.

Far from setting back race relations in America, there is a good chance that Obama and Wright will suffer a fate similar to that of Don Imus, Michael Richards, and Duane "Dogg" Chapman, and wil be - to a greater degree, a la Richards and Chapman, or to a lesser degree, a la Imus - disgraced.