Politics and Culture

Here for text.

It's easy to judge Obama's speeches, but it's hard to assess their impact. On the one hand, they're all about dressing up socialist wolves in moderate, practical clothing and the elevation of selfishness (free _____) to magnanimity. But, nobody would use disguises if they never worked.

The speech ambiguously condemns Wright while apologizing for him and making anybody who brings it up feel "divisive," the worst thing you can be in an Obama world-except when he himself is talking about corporations or "special interests."

It talks about his background which I find neither heroic nor interesting (I don't denigrate it, either- I just don't care more about his accomplishments than his circumstances.) and offers some middling America-loving talk, inaccurate history (No charitable interpretations there.), demonstrably wrong problem-sourcing (Not enough parks or police?), and his pretty face.

In the end, it's a speech about race which nobody(!) wants to think about. The vast majority of people outside of grammar and graduate schools have settled on a policy of benign neglect. They're not racists, but they won't be intimidated into wasting money or time. Most people feel that it's up to each community (each person, really) to improve its situation. Will people want to bother with four years of his macro-blame and middle class oblige. The first black president will probably be a conservative.

One moderate commentator on youtube disagrees with me, apparently:

When this speech, the greatest so far in this century, is taught in classrooms of the future, how do you think his opponents will be remembered? Thank you Barack for giving us the audacity of hope at this time of so many Bush-and-his-lockstep-Republican created crises!

Here's the only paragraph you need to see:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Divisive! Choosing between Jordan, Bird, or Magic is "divisive." Oh, well, Wright meant well.