First of all, to paraphrase Nixon, “this was a great speech”. I don’t quite know if forensics students will be repeating it in a decade, but the guy is an amazing orator. <\/p>\n
Two things struck me negatively about the content of the speech.Obama said:<\/p>\n
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Two percent<\/b> of the US population died in the Civil War. It seems at best callous of him to slight that very real sacrifice paid in blood by Americans to clean the moral slate of slavery.<\/p>\n
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.<\/p>\n
\nI can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.<\/p>\n
\nThese people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think the missing piece here is the explanation of how his values intersect those of Rev. Wright. I think that it is legitimate for Obama to state that those values aren’t the same, and that other things that the church brought him made it possible for him to overcome his discomfort with the “…remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church…” <\/p>\n
I think he should have talked less about Ashley and more about that. because if people understood that – understood the real values Obama is trying to realize in his life and his policies, I think they would be better able to judge from something other than blind devotion to him or equally blind revulsion.<\/p>\n
One of the things I like the most about the speech is the fact that in it, Obama embraces moral ambiguity – and hence embraces the morality of the real world. I am profoundly uncomfortable with people comfortable in the moral certainty of the world that exists in their words or their imaginations.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure it’s enough politically, and I’m still a wobbly supporter, but liked what the speech said and who it showed. Now we need to see that that man is really who Obama is.<\/p>\n
Conservative parents often raise radical children – and vice versa. I’m not panicked by Obama’s relationship with a radical. Let’s see more of the substance of who he is and what he wants to do with the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First of all, to paraphrase Nixon, “this was a great speech”. I don’t quite know if forensics students will be repeating it in a decade, but the guy is an amazing orator. Two things struck me negatively about the content of the speech.Obama said: And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}