South Carolina

Paul Bunyan sent me this after South Carolina.
> Watched Obama's victory (or whatever you call it) speech for South
> Carolina. Happened to catch it live. I was moved. I haven't had that
> reacation to a political speech in a long time. And it's been a long
> time since I saw a crowd for a national candidate look so into it, and
> so real. Wow.

and Paul is as big a cynic as I am. I think the only excuse not to vote for him is that it's too good to be true. But forget that. What's true is whatever we want to be true. I think this is the beginning of a new era in American Politics.

Dirty Money

Thereis a big issue being discussed in this presidential campaign, and it involves who candidates will and will not take money from.

The idea is that somehow, if you accept donations from a criminal, it rubs off on you. I think that's nuts. All you're doing if you take money from a bad guy is separate him from his money! There's no way that's why the criminal made his money illicitly to begin with, so you're not exactly supporting their life of crime. But once they got it, I say: Take it. Were I to be running, my motto would be: "I'll take money from anybody!"

Giving money is a different issue: that's where you have to screen where your energy goes. You need to vote with your dollars. But if money is energy, then why not separate money / energy from evil? If Exxon wants to give me a million bucks, I will take it.

Tit for Tat

This campaign is getting really interesting!

I love the current wrinkle, essentially amounting to whether Obama gets any play out of any response he can muster to the end of New Hampshire attacks that absolutely did hurt him.

His team did try to recoup, by pointing out that the attacks were a little bit racist, or unfair, and that got some play. But whether it translates depends on their response to Clinton's response.

Clinton responded by saying:

"I think that his story line is not accurate,” he said. “And in 15 debates, no one ever once bothered to ask Sen. Obama, ‘How can you say you were always against the war, and your judgment is better than theirs, and they were wrong to vote for that resolution which authorized force, when two years after you gave the anti-war speech in 2004, you, Sen. Obama, said you didn’t know how you would have voted on that anti-war resolution, number one, then two days later, you said there was no difference between you and President Bush on the war?’ ”

So for me now, the question is: what's Clinton talking about, and did Obama say those two things, or are they out of context? If Obama did say them, that was dumb, since it's the main thing that distinguishes him (the other two things are 1) I will talk to bad guys, and 2) I'm really going to fuck shit up and we all know it so I'm not going to say anything specific, which is what "change you can believe in" is code for.

I assume, in the Clinton quote, he's referring to the 2nd anti-war resolution, which Obama was absent for. But Clinton isn't being specific. And I'm not sure if it is that, that that makes Clinton's point that that means there's less of a difference, or how much less of a difference, between Hilary and Obama (I guess it's just going to be that for awhile: Hilary and Obama, unfair and sexist as using the female's first name and the male's last name is). But I really would be surprised to find substance behind the 2nd part of Clinton's quote, where he says the no difference thing. I just can't imagine. But again there's no reference.

Furthermore, Obama's side isn't responding so far. My feeling is that at this point they ought to. Barack (there, I used his first name) should very factually call Bill Clinton out and say what he meant in these two instances, especially if that meaning differs at all from how Clinton is portraying it. So my question is: does Barack respond?

Barack Obama's Church

I got an email from one of my right wing friends today. It said in part:

Barack Obama mentioned during his appearance with Oprah that he belongs to the Trinity Church of Christ. Below is a link to that church's web site.

Go to that site and read what is written there. This man wants to be president of the United States. On the first page of this site you will see that this congregation has a non-negotiable commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Also, notice what color you must be should you want to join.

Click here for Trinity Church of Christ web site:

www.tucc.org/about.htm

So that got me worried that all this racist stuff would come back to bite Barack. I emailed my old pal Paul Bunyan to see what he had to say, as he's pretty good at minority issues, being a giant and all (giants still don't have equal rights in this country). Paul told me the following:

Yeah that is his church, and it's a little controversial. God forbid black people get angry about anything.

This emailer is foaming at the mouth "No where is AMERICA even mentioned." In classic style.

This church is a big deal for Obama, it's how he came to religion from a non-religious childhood, and it's very heavy on black pride and as they put it, the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. There is a firebrand preacher guy at the head of it, and it's a gigantic Chicago congregation.

It's dangerous stuff in a way, and Obama has had to back off from forefronting this too much. The concept is, you can counteract 10 generations of oppression by staking a claim to prior freedom in one's land of origin. But then the Outraged Masses can say it's anti-american. And they can say it's blacks-only. And both claims are true in part, if you refuse to understand the subtleties.

It reminds me of the Pryor routine in which he goes to Africa and finds there are "no niggers," in his words. What he found there was the absence, not just of oppression of blacks by whites, but the absence of the *ghost* of oppression. It opened his eyes to the american situation. There is this bind that america is in, where the history of subjugation is always present, where a black guy is always dealing with it, either fighting it or becoming it or imagining it or wondering if he's imagining it, etc. It's as though every interaction between blacks and whites is tainted by this sin.

At the risk of saying something awful, I think one reason whites can accept Obama is that he comes from a recent immigrant black origin, not a slave-descendant family. I'm not reifying Pryor's self-hatred here, and I don't think slave-history taints black people. But it does hang over the *relationship* between black and white, and Obama is partly free from that. God help me, but I think this is what Biden was saying when he said he was "clean." The flip side is that he also seems to inhabit the african-american tradition, in his speech and manner. Much more than say, Tiger does.

But anyway, yeah, Obama belongs to this pretty radical Afro-centric Black-empowerment church, which is essentially, if not literally racially-exclusive. Plus its charismatic leader is a big mentor to him. I think there will be nothing too crazy in his theology. I only hope he stares this issue down head on, cause it could be a problem.