Pretty much every media response to Obama's speech:

[Orrex]

"This will backfire because America doesn't like being reminded, even by inference, that not everybody is white and middle class."

No critique I've heard has been more insightful than that.

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

1. You must be watching Faux.

:shrug:

[Orrex]

3. You take that back!

Well, on the other hand, Faux-staple Juan Williams was aamong the detractors...

[baldguy]

2. Insight is not a hallmark of American journalism.

[BadgerKid]

11. Their air of superiority is showing.

They don't speak for all Americans.

[mac2]

4. They all miss the point.

Obama's minister should not go because of his beliefs (right or wrong) but because he was part of the campaign. Religion does not belong in government. The apology should have included that.

Obama should have said, sorry...as a representative of the people I should not let my personal religious beliefs be part of my campaign. I am here to be elected President of the United States which requires I represent everyone even those not of my religion. The Constitution requires that. If I am elected I will take my oath of office seriously.

[Orrex]

5. Not a bad point, but...

I'll look for Obama to make that disclaimer after any other candidate does the same.

[mac2]

9. What they have their religious leader as part of their

campaign for President?

[Orrex]

10. Look--in my perfect world, we'd have a moratorium on all religious speech in politics

But that ain't going to happen any time soon.

Since every candidate is, by any practical measure, required to pass a religious test in order to have a chance at the election, we have to look for something beyond "which candidate courts the craziest cleric" and examine what the candidate otherwise has to offer.

[mac2]

13. If it's a Constitutional issue...I won't compromise.

[flor de jasmim]

6. HOGWASH -

Newspapers Weigh in on Obama's Speech
by MissLaura
Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 06:12:48 AM PDT
Reading responses to Obama's speech of yesterday, I've been struck that just about every commentator who makes any kind of pretense at seriousness has had to acknowledge the speech as exceptional. Not Obama's usual brand of exceptional, in which his trademark soaring delivery lifts up whatever he says, but exceptional in its depth, nuance, and forthrightness.

For some, no kind of disavowal of Wright would be enough, let alone one with any nuance. For committed Obama opponents, the speech is of course ground to be mined for offenses. But for the most part, the response has recognized this as an extraordinary moment in American politics.

New York Times editorial:

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

READ THE REST AT DAILY KOS, main page: http://www.dailykos.com/

[Orrex]

7. No need for such language!

And, anyway, I'm sure that someone here in GD;P told us just yesterday that Kos doesn't count as "real" media.
:sarcasm:


I would have hoped that my OP would be understood to entail a bit of rhetorical exaggeration, and I couldn't find the :hyperbole: smiley.

[flor de jasmim]

12. Well, there may be children reading this site ;-)

[femmedem]

8. My local paper ran a fantastic story from the NYT.

It's so glowing, it reads like an editorial. And I think it does a great job of laying out the substance of the speech.

It was an extraordinary moment — the first black candidate with a good chance at becoming a presidential nominee, in a country in which racial distrust runs deep and is often unspoken, embarking at a critical juncture in his campaign upon what may be the most significant public discussion of race in decades.

In a speech whose frankness about race many historians said could be likened only to speeches by Presidents Johnson, Kennedy and Lincoln, Sen. Barack Obama, speaking across the street from where the Constitution was written, traced the country's race problem back to not simply the country's “original sin of slavery” but the protections for it embedded in the Constitution.

Yet the speech was also hopeful, patriotic, quintessentially American — delivered against a blue backdrop and a phalanx of stars and stripes. Obama invoked the fundamental values of equality of opportunity, fairness, social justice. He confronted race head-on, then reached beyond it to talk sympathetically about the experiences of the white working class and the plight of workers stripped of jobs and pensions.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=c8f7422d-da69-45dd-a4cf-f1d63cf995b9

I hope this ran in newspapers across the country today. :)

[Ino]

14. Scarborough

This morning "Regular Joe" Scarborough kept saying he thought the speech was historic, exceptional, blah blah... BUT also thought "OMG, he just threw his grandmother under the bus to score a political point." Then he put HIS thought into the minds of Youngstown Ohioans.

Scarborough wants us to think HE's intelligent enough to get it but the REAL Regular Joe's are a bunch of knuckledraggers. Today I'm seeing this faux grandmother outrage all over DU from Clinton supporters, as if this one horrific remark negates the whole speech. Just like 3 remarks from decades of Wright's sermons & service negate the worth of the man.

Was Joe being insightful about how Regular Joe's think, or simply providing an EXCUSE for them (and himself) to indulge their prejudices?

Any of the backfire issues are issues only to those who wouldn't support Obama no way no how, who are looking for any "reason" to slam him.

Any time I hear a politician/pundit say "America thinks/feels/wants/etc" I assume that's what HE/SHE thinks/feels/wants, but is too cowardly to say so.

These are just random thoughts.