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The other Inside Washington panelists, Washington Post columnist Colbert King, NPR’s Nina Totenberg and columnist Mark Shields, do not agree. Shields argues that the Obama speech is a profound political statement, tackling complex social issues that other politicians would run from.
Several Washington political junkies with whom I have spoken since Obama made his speech, are of the opinion that for Obama to have cut his friend, former pastor and spiritual mentor loose after a relationship spanning more than two decades would have been an act of political cowardice.
“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother,” Obama said, “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama’s grandma gets a bad rap in that speech, that she never spread racial hatred as he alleges Rev. Wright did.
My question: Will Rev. Wright prove to be Barack Obama’s political Achilles heel? Even a cursory perusal of the internet on the subject reveals that there are those who are trying desperately to make it so.
If you haven’t seen or read the full speech click below to take you to the ABC News web site.
Obama does not have the childhood background of a typical African-American. Not only because of his mother and her parents who raised him, but also because his father came directly from Kenya. Africans from Africa don't have the same outlook on slavery as most Afr. Americans. They don't have the kind of chip on their shoulders that Rev. Wright has. Also far from American realities was Obama's step-father. Finally, we have listened to Obama for a year now. Isn't it common sense for anyone steeped in American realities that this guy is speaking out of the typical African American mold? Is it not what millions of American observers see? Is it not that originality itself which has been making the man attractive to American voters who know their country and its men? Could Jessie Jackson have lasted a year in an election campaign with that success?
It would be nice to hear CK, one day, without that morbid prism.
June
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