Barack Obama disowns his white grandmother
In the Janus-faced world of politics, there's a 180 degree course of things. It works like this:
0 degrees - get confronted with a controversy
45 degrees - mull response to controversy
90 degrees - attack controversy head on by attempting to persuade people that what they think is bad is good
135 degrees - sweat it out, increasingly becoming convinced that your attempt to persuade the public failed
180 degrees - do something that doesn't quite admit you were wrong but signals in your own mind that you have good judgment, and back away slowly from whatever was controversial in the hopes that people will just let it go
Senator Obama has completed the cycle on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Sure it took two weeks, but he's done it. Today, he said the following on The View:
Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church.
It's good old "woulda" politics. "Had I been confronted with this scenario, I woulda done something that woulda made the people like me." It's so insincere. It's such a depature from the senator bravely saying he could no more disown his pastor than he could his white grandmother.
And to boot, this doesn't even protect the senator from the trouble he perceives himself to be in. The Trinity United Church of Christ still exists in Chicago. There are still pastors preaching on Sunday morning, and all it takes is a few reporters or oppo researchers sneaking in with video cameras and recording the things they say that don't play well in Peoria, and we're right back where we started. The premise of the attack from the get go was after all: "Why does Barack Obama worship with all these crazy black people who hate America?"
And the problem is that BO doesn't seem to get the real problem with his lumbering approach. More from The View:
I'm not vetting my pastor...I didn't have a research team during the course of 20 years to go pull every sermon he's given and see if there's something offensive that he's said.
Fine, *you* didn't have a research team vetting your pastor. But Hillary Clinton does, and John McCain does, and the Republican National Committee does, and every two-bit right-wing consultant with a 527 group is out to say you are a crazy, unhinged black man. Show us how you're not. How do you do that? Get a research team to vet your church, and tell America what a great church it is, how much it's done for its community, and how much praise it has won from people who pay attention to churches.
If he did that, Obama would be standing by the bravery he showed in his speech on "A More Perfect Union." Pastors across America say things that provoke, and outrage some people, and always have. But most of these religious institutions do good work for the people they serve. And that's what the message should be.
Unfortunately, it's not. By saying that he would have left the church during an election year, the senator is pandering to an audience that isn't going to take him at his word. And that's diasappointing.
