"Man Overboard!": Obama turns away from a drowning friend

[katty]

more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19847.htm

"Man Overboard!": Obama turns away from a drowning friend
By Mike Whitney

30/04/08 "ICH" - -- Obama is "outraged".

After weeks of blistering attacks by the media, Barak Obama held a press conference yesterday and made it official; his friendship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is over, terminated, kaput. He would no longer associate with a man who believed that the United States of America could do horrible things to its people or that 9-11 might have been the result of US foreign policy. As Obama said, that's just "outrageous".

Obama"s press conference:

"I have spent my whole life trying to bridge the gap between different human beings.....That's who I am and that's what this campaign is all about. Yesterday we saw a very different kind of vision of America (Rev Wright's speech to the National Press Club) I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle. The Reverend Wright I saw yesterday was not the person I knew 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but they give comfort to those who prey on hate. They do not accurately portray my values and beliefs. If Reverend Wright thinks that is 'political posturing' than he does not know me very well. And based on his comments yesterday I may not know him as well as I thought either."

Blah. blah, blah. The media, of course, is elated with their victory; they've achieved their goal. They "persuaded" Obama to betray a friend. Mission accomplished. 1,816 articles appeared overnight on Google News celebrating the prodigals return to the fold; Barak is back. Hooray. Obama's capitulation may be the greatest media triumph since the shrewish Linda Tripp produced the blue dress with the incriminating splotch. It just doesn't get any better than this. Obama showed that he is not only willing to sacrifice his friends for his political ambitions, but that he's also willing to distance himself from the very traditions and movements which made his candidacy possible. What more could they want?

But this is just the beginning of Obama's political education and Wright is just one of many weapons that will be used to bludgeon the well-meaning candidate into submission. By inauguration day, he'll have been stripped of his dignity, his aspirations, and his identity as a black American. In other words, he should be primed and ready to accept his duties as the next President of the United States.

But Obama's travails haven't ended just because he ran up the white flag. Oh, no. In fact they're just beginning.

[guyanakoolaid]

1. Thanks, TahitiNut

Thanks, TahitiNut, you gave me the only response I'll ever need for this racism-by-proxy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5751295

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ampad]

4. LOL

They are just pissed that they cannot use this against Obama anymore. You know days ago it was "why won't Obama denounce the hateful man" now it's "how could he throw the man under the bus." As if any of them gave a rats ass about Rev. Wrights feelings.

[katty]

5. yeah, they can't use this against Obama anymore-he continues

to move on--showing his strength

[JoFerret]

9. How is quoting Obama's words at length

bigotry?

Get real here.

[cali]

14. gee, could it be that that's not the part of the OP that I'm

referring to? Why yes it could. And just for your edification Information Clearing house is not an accepted link at DU. I haven't bothered to alert, but now that I think of it....

[Political Heretic]

23. What's wrong with information clearing house?

[JoFerret]

26. Do you think Obama

is like an anthropologist?
Very cool, very analytic, very cerebral and on a search?

I do not think he is a hollow man. I think he believed he could do something that is not possible to do. He tried to bridge something (the divides) that is impossible to bridge at this time.

Maybe I will think something additional tomorrow.

[backscatter712]

16. ++ on this.

[MarjorieG]

3. Meaning he can do no right? Why else write if not to snipe? Wright was harmful.

And not deserving giving up the presidency for. But, yes, after weeks of media nbashing and Hill cheating at the polls, guess he'd have to criticize. (Meant Rendell suppressing the Philly vote, creating and using Naftagate, and how about the big states.

Obama tried to have a nuanced conversation about race, and that wasn't going to happen. So Hillary goes on TV criticizing Wright, since can't now to Obama, still keeping it alive.

[yourout]

6. Fastest ignore of the day.

Good riddance.

[high density]

7. If Wright is drowning, he jumped in under his own ability with lead weights on

Obama tried the nice way out in Philadelphia. Wright's actions at the National Press Club required Obama to revisit the issue and take it a different direction.

[JoFerret]

10. Quick change of tune here

A very short while back Wright was favored on many Obama supporters on DU as a man who spoke truth etc.

Bunch of turncoats.

[dragonlady]

8. Friendship goes both ways

Rev. Wright hasn't acted like a very good friend lately.

[Happyhippychick]

11. It's "Barack". Not "Barak".

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. And after that friend, Phil Collins, drowned, he wrote "I Can Feel It (in the Air Tonight)"

True story.

[Maine-ah]

13. I don't get it.

really. HRC supporters asked, screamed and yelled for Obama to do this, and now that he's done it, y'all are screaming how could he do it?

sheesh.

x(

[stray cat]

15. Somebody was trying to drown me and I swam away - should I have stayed and drowned?

[BlueIdaho]

Nope

The first rule of water safety for lifeguards is - never let the bastards take you to the bottom with them

[ElsewheresDaughter]

17. The O Bus hits the good Reverend Writght, backs up and hits him again

[Faygo Kid]

20. Your concern for Rev. Wright is heartwarming. Recent, but heartwarming.

Give us a break here, ElsewheresDaughter. You have used Rev. Wright however best he can be misused as a cudgel, so spare us the Faux concern for what happens to Rev. Wright.

This will end soon, and we will part ways. Suits me, suits you.

By the way, Writght doesn't have a t before the g.

[LisaM]

18. This reminded me a bit of an editorial by Cockburn a couple of weeks ago

Note that in this he admits that he prefers Obama to McCain and Clinton, but it's damning with faint praise at best.


~snip

The junior senator from Illinois is a master at drowning the floundering swimmer he purports to rescue while earning credit for extending a manly hand in solidarity. I noticed this the first time I wrote about Obama, back in the spring of 2006, when Ned Lamont was trying to make the disgusting political conduct of Senator Joseph Lieberman part of the national conversation, at least among Democrats. Obama hastened to a big political dinner in Connecticut to cut the conversation off and denounce any deviations from support of his mentor Lieberman.

Obama repeated his fake-rescue technique when Illinois's senior senator, Dick Durbin, got into trouble for likening conditions at Guantánamo to those in a Nazi or Stalin-era camp. This was one of Durbin's finer moments, as he read an FBI man's account of how he had entered an interview room "to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more."

~snip

Link to full article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/cockburn

I don't particularly LIKE Cockburn, but this was (to me) one of his more coherent pieces.

[jackson_dem]

19. Obama is willing to throw gays, his mentor, and even his granny under the bus for political gain

To believe he won't throw us under the bus takes some real "hope".

[Political Heretic]

22. No, we just look at the alternative and flee for our lives.

[TankLV]

24. shhhh - you're not suppose to rain on the "obamaunderground" saint obama parade!!!

[Political Heretic]

21. You're making the mistake I made - conflating the message with the messenger.

Part of the mistake I made with Rev. Wright was failing to appreciate there were two separate issues in play. The first, was question about the actual content of his messages. They were not perfect, but by and large when taken in context, they were correct. They were "unfavored truths" that while true, contradict the prevailing orthodoxy of the ruling elite, and this the media unleash the fury over it. And was sad and shameful.

However, the second issue was that of the character of the messenger. Unfortunately on that front, its become clear to me that Jeremiah Wright fails spectacularly. In his self-promoting media tour, he chose to stir up controversy by calling the media pile-on an attack on the black church as a whole. He chose to reassert even the most questionable of his comments - namely that the government invented AIDS to harm black people.

It's very disappointing, because I feel that what happened to Rev. Wright in the media was a disgrace. Having watched his entire sermons, there are some things I would have worded differently for the audiences I normally interact with. But the basic content was essentially true. Unfavored truths, but truths just the same. So I was very angry about the media reaction to Wright.

But now, I feel pretty let down by Wright. It seems clear now that in response to the media attack, he's put a personal vendetta for vindication above everything else. He either deliberately wants to hurt Obama, or he is so narcissistic that he doesn't care. He either resents his former congregation member's fame and fortune, or he cannot see beyond himself. Either way, it pains me to admit that every day Wright speaks he makes himself look worse and does a huge disservice to those of us who wanted to defend him.

It is a huge disappointment. This man had the opportunity to rise above what was truly an unfair media pile on, preserve is legacy and reputation, and turn the media's attempt to politicize race on its head. I watched his speech at the NAACP and I thought it was decent, but I wasn't prepared (though I should have been) for the media's response. When he continued on what has now obviously become a media speaking "tour" in promotion of his upcoming book, my sense of betrayal was complete.

It's a big disappointment, because I stuck up for this guy's right to speak when it was wildly unpopular. What I expected in return was for him to be worthy of that defense. He has not been. :(

[TankLV]

25. That's what you get when you try to defend and ASSHOLE...

go figure...

[Political Heretic]

27. mmm... no I don't think its that simple at all.

What happened to Wright in the media was disgraceful. It was a disgraceful because it was a total distortion of the content. At the same time, and not in contradiction with the first point, Wright himself has been a less than positive messenger.

[stevenleser]

28. *PLONK* YOU!