[example1]

I won't respond to all of the frustration that this discussion as evoked. We won't find common agreement, and it's apparently a waste of time--since nobody agrees with me. Here.

EJ Dionne put it well today:

"Let's ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.: Is he as far outside the African American mainstream as many of us would like to think?

"Because Barack Obama's speech on race in America was so candid about both the legitimacy of black and white grievances--and the flaws in those grievances--it carries the risk of offending almost everyone

"The man who, by percentage, is half black and half white took it upon himself to explain each side's story to the other. Obama resembled no one so much as te conciliatory sibling in a large and boisterous family shouting: "Please, please, will you listen to each other for a sec?...

"Yes, black people say things about our country and its injustices to each other that they don't say to those of us who are white. Whites also say things about blacks privately that they don't say in front of their black friends or associates.

"One black leader who was capable of getting very angry indeed is one now being invoked against Wright. His name is the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war.... And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted tis response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power.

"If today's tecnology had existed back then, I would imagine the media playing quotations of that sort over and over. Right-wing commentators would use the material to argue tat King was anti-American and to discredit his call for racial and class justice. King certainly angered a lot of people at that time.

"I cite King not to justify Wright's damnation of America or his lunatic and pernicious theories, but to suggest that Obama's pastor and his curch are not so far outside the African American mainstream as many would now suggest. I would also ask my conservative friends who praise King so lavisly to search their consciences and wonder if they would have stood up for him back in 1968.

"These are realities that Obama has forced us to confront, and they are painful. Wright was operating within a long tradition of African American outrage, which is one reason Obama could not walk away from his old pastor in the name of political survival. Obama's personal closeness to Wright would ave made such a move craven in any event...

"Obama understands the anger of whites as well as blacks, but he's placed a bet on the other side of King's legacy that converted rage into the search for a beloved community. This does not prove that Obama deserves to be president. It does mean that he deserves to be judged on his own terms and not by the ravings of an angry preacer"


This is just about what I believe too. You can pick it apart, dismantle it, but I too feel through with this conversation.