did obama get his "glow" back?
today i listened to barack obama's "redemption" speech along with the rest of the free world. if you want a transcript, you can get it here. and after mulling on it for a bit, i have a few random thoughts:
the more we learn about him, the more obama seems to be a rather opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. but as i've been saying for a while now, there's not much "audacity of hope" there. this is however calculating ambition coupled with hubris that attempts at great length to convince our nation that this campaign and this candidate are "different."
today's speech gave a good analysis of race relations and injustices from a broad perspective but obama simply failed to take responsibility for having an apparently close twenty-year relationship with a racist, anti-american pastor to whom hateful rhetoric from the pulpit appears second nature. obama seemed to claim in his speech that rev. wright's words were only sentiments of an earlier generation -- one that lived precariously through the civil rights era. if that were true why were there so many young people in all those clips whooping and clapping their approval during rev. wrights' rants?
the more we learn about him, the more obama seems to be a rather opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. but as i've been saying for a while now, there's not much "audacity of hope" there. this is however calculating ambition coupled with hubris that attempts at great length to convince our nation that this campaign and this candidate are "different."
today's speech gave a good analysis of race relations and injustices from a broad perspective but obama simply failed to take responsibility for having an apparently close twenty-year relationship with a racist, anti-american pastor to whom hateful rhetoric from the pulpit appears second nature. obama seemed to claim in his speech that rev. wright's words were only sentiments of an earlier generation -- one that lived precariously through the civil rights era. if that were true why were there so many young people in all those clips whooping and clapping their approval during rev. wrights' rants?
isn’t obama's platform one of taking responsibility to the next generation, to end that kind of rhetoric? if obama is a change agent and the candidate who wants to move us all beyond racism to a "one america," shouldn’t he have spoken out at his own church about rejecting the bitterness and racism of the past?
as obama lectured the nation today on race relations, how responsible or courageous was it of obama to remain silent for 20 years in his own community while this kind of hateful rhetoric was preached week after week to generation after generation including his own little children? he doesn't glow for me.
Jared
AZ (Comment this)
Sincerely, Camden (Comment this)
Marsha (Comment this)
Skeeter (Comment this)