Monday, April 28, 2008

It's Official

Obama's "Reverened" Wright problem has reached "shit-storm" proportions.

Where to start? Well, there is Andrew Sullivan's stunning reversal on Obama/Wright.

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright's views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era's obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright's massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

We need a speech or statement from Obama in which he utterly repudiates this poison, however personally difficult that may be, however damaging the impact will be.

Or there is the hysterical resurrection of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy over at HuffPo.

Or then there is this from the AP:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going after his critics on an incendiary tour that is doing his one-time congregant, Barack Obama, little good.

After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington press corps Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."

Wright's tour couldn't come at a much worse time for Obama, who is campaigning for white working class voters in Indiana and North Carolina. Many of Wright's most controversial comments are angry condemnations of the United States for its treatments of blacks — thoughts that were applauded by the black church leaders in his audience Monday but risk offending white voters.

This is merely the tip of a very large iceberg that is sinking the SS Obama.

I wonder if he notices?

2 comments:

Simon said...

I can't deny a touch of schadenfreude over the last few months at seeing David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan et al desperately spinning the wheel and ordering the starboard propeller reversed. Oh no! It turns out he's a sea monster not a mermaid! Who could have seen that coming...

Rich Horton said...

Yeah, myopia was the order of the day for a lot of the chattering classes. Obviously idiotic Maoist inspired "liberation" talk doesn't seem out of place to them.