Today Dyson, tomorrow who?

On Today Show today on NBC, Melinda Henneberger, once-NYT reporter, now Slate contributor, says Obama is helped by the preacher-friend controversy because it puts to rest the idea that he’s a Muslim.  He “answered an altar call 20 years ago.”

On same show, Michael Dyson, the itinerant Afro-studies prof once at DePaul U., refers to “so-called inflammatory rhetoric” of the preacher friend and backs him up in his analysis of American history AND is a fervent Obama supporter.

Meanwhile, are we to believe no white people are going to rethink their Obama commitment when he merely rejects certain sayings of this preacher but not the preacher himself, for whom the sayings reflect his fervent beliefs — unless we think these spiels were aberrations for him, which no one is saying.

Obama likes the guy, is obviously quite comfortable with him as an individual, even has a warm relationship, even as the guy is a race-baiter of the first water.  Four years coming up of the smooth-talking left-wing president whose friends we have to ignore?  God bless and save America.

Tags: , , , ,

A church for Barack

No other churches for Obama to pick?

At some point, in some venue, Mr. Obama is going to have to give a speech directly addressing his longtime pastor’s views and answering a simple question: Why didn’t he find another church that didn’t include a leader who so frequently engaged in such hate speech?

That’s John Fund in WSJ.com’s Political Diary, voicing my very thought in the matter.  It’s been 30 years (this month, in fact) since I regularly attended church on assignment.  But I must say that there have to be other South Side churches and preachers — black, white, and indifferent — that don’t demagogue the Gospel.

But O. found something he was looking for in this church that he could find in no other, we assume, and now he’s stuck with this wild-man preacher.

Look, even Catholics can pick and choose among Catholic churches.  As a Protestant, O. is part of a tradition where picking and choosing got its biggest boost religion-wise.

He did not know about the man’s oratorical proclivities, he says.  He wasn’t there when he said this or that.  But how many sermons did O. have to miss not to catch the drift of this man, who is not a crazy uncle he inherited but a spiritual father whom he chose?

He was surprised to hear the man talks this way, as “so contrary to my own life and beliefs.”  If only he had known.

And where did those worshipers come from pictured in the video cheering the pastor on?  Did they pop in knowing he would uncork something big and exciting that day?  Were they surprised when he talked that way?

Tags: ,

In politics we trust . . .

Is there something sad and mysterious about this release from St. Sabina Church?

March 13, 2008 Vince Clark – 773.483.4300
ANOTHER C.P.S. STUDENT DIES
RALLY AT STATE OF ILLINOIS BUILDING

On Wednesday, another Chicago Public School student, Channon Taylor, died. Channon [age 18] was shot Saturday afternoon in the 1800 block of South Lawndale and died Wednesday. On Friday, March 14, as was promised, Rev. Michael Pfleger and Chicago Public Schools will lead a rally from
11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at The State of Illinois Building, located at 100 West Randolph.

Rev. Pfleger said, “Every time a child [!] dies we will put it in the face of state government and demand ‘Common Sense Gun Laws!’”

Please invite anyone to attend.

Why sad?  Why mysterious?  Besides the obvious reasons about kids being shot down on the street? 

It’s that city and neighborhood leadership, in this case religious, clings so tenaciously to a legislative straw as the solution to their problems.  [Candidate Obama wants no part of it, by the way.]

Is it too much to ask for evidence of correlation between tighter gun control and reduced killing?  Or of successful enforcement of the laws we have or might have?

Newspapers don’t discuss this.  Who does?

These people do, for what’s it’s worth — here and here and here — to pick the first three sites shown by Google when you type “gun control.”

Tags: , ,

Bad stat not so bad after all . . .

Politically incorrect stuff hit the fan with the federal study of teenage girls that rang the alarm about sexually transmitted diseases and along the way found blacks more than twice as much affected or infected than whites, 50% to 20%.  Not to worry, however: the Center for Disease Control doc had an answer for this:

[Dr. John] Douglas said African-American girls are probably more vulnerable to STDs because of higher infection rates among blacks as a whole and less access to health care.

The numbers “[do] not mean African Americans are taking greater behavioral risks. In fact, research suggests the opposite,” he said.

OK.  For a minute there, we thought they caught more stuff because they did it more — were “taking greater behavioral risks,” as the doc said.

No.  Blacks in general are more infected, so sexual looseness is not to be suspected.  And they have “less access to health care.”

Hence the yawning chasm of difference.  Would the doctor please expand on that thesis?  More to the point, would somewhere in this land of ours a desk editor turn to the writer — in this case rewriter and Englisher of the AP copy — and ask her to give the doc a ring?

Times are hard, but a telephone call?  Is that too much to ask?

The writer did some calling, true.  She got this from the exec director of something called the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health:

“It’s a clear sign that something’s wrong in terms of the way we teach sex education, the way we talk about it, and the message we send to youth,” said Soo Ji Min . . .

. . . who could be on to something.  The message we send ignores the option of keeping one’s knickers in place, maybe?  We can only guess.  No one asked, apparently.

Tags: , ,

From evil comes good . . .

According to the ever-observant John Fund in the (dirt cheap) subscription-only WSJ.com’s Political Diary, Congr. Charlie Rangel of NY has his eye on the prize of a Gov. Spitzer resignation, if and when:

Should Mr. Spitzer resign, Mr. Rangel would . . . be in the catbird’s seat. Lt. Gov. David Paterson, a former state senator from Harlem, is a longtime protege of Mr. Rangel and would likely grant his mentor wide influence over patronage and fiscal issues. “Rangel could have instant access to Paterson anytime of the day or night,” is how one New York Democratic leader evaluates Mr. Rangel’s likely importance in a Patterson administration.

The ebullient Charlie smells the meat acookin’, to use the old Illinois expression. 

It’s how Paul Powell, who died with $800G in shoeboxes in his closet, put it.  Powell was one of the imprisoned former Ill. secretary of state (and governor) George Ryan’s predecessors in that office.

“A big old country boy , [he] could shake you down and make you like him,” per a boyhood friend.  That’s certainly a knack for government.

Tags: , , ,

McCain explains

In response to objections to his endorsement by televangelist John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system” and “the apostate church,” McCain offered a delayed response:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”

If? He’s not sure?

And he said this only after criticism by The Dreadful Pelosi, that eminent Defender of the Faith from San Francisco.

Running for office, he rejects “any comments that are made” but not the commenter. This is standard gobbledygook apology, of course, long since perfected by offenders awaiting sentencing.

On the other hand, “Minister” Farrakhan loves Obama, doesn’t he, but O.? What O. said about that briefly took wind from opponent’s sails in his recent debate with What’s-her-name, just after he had feinted and dodged some Tim Russert qq.

And Farrakhan tore into Catholicism a few years back, didn’t he? He was quizzed by Russert in 1997, who quoted him:

“We just got to tell the truth. Catholicism has been by white people, for white people, to subject black people to a white kind of theology that strips us of ourselves.” That was you in 1994 [said Russert].

And [Catholics] particularly took great offense to Khallid Muhammad, your former chief spokesman, who said [in 1993], “The old no-good Pope–you know that cracker, somebody needs to raise that dress up and see what’s really under there.” Do you understand why Catholics take offense and believe that you are bigoted towards them?

As for McCain and Hagee:

“We’ve had a dignified campaign, and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s. . . .

“I sent two of my children to Catholic school. I categorically reject and repudiate any statement that was made that was anti-Catholic, both in intent and nature. I categorically reject it, and I repudiate it,” McCain said.

Point is, does he recognize the Hagee quotes and does he go beyond a blanket repudiation? No, because he’s a politician running for office, like Mutt & Jeff on the other side, for neither of whom would I cast my vote for dogcatcher.

And speaking of politicians, note this well, that Rev. Michael Pfleger of Chicago has endorsed Farrakhan, to whom he has surrendered the pulpit of St. Sabina’s Church on the South Side and whom he has called “a gift from God to a sick, sick world.”

Tags: , , ,

Anything?

If Obama is a rock-star candidate, this babe, recently relieved of her duties as a key foreign-policy advisor for identifying Hillary as (that is, calling her) a monster, is a groupie:

In America, Miss [Samantha] Power has been compared to Condoleeza Rice.

“I’m nothing like her,” she says. “I don’t have any conventional political ambition.”

But if Mr Obama wins the Presidential race she is likely to remain a powerful force. “I’d do anything he asked me to do. It’s not about working for the next President of the United States, it’s Obama. If he ran General Motors I’d be working for him.”

He’s got her vote.

Tags: , ,

Laugh and the world laughs with you: SNL knows

The lemmings turned?

Over the last few days, the tone of the Democratic contest seems to have shifted, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign more buoyant and Senator Barack Obama’s more defensive.

That shift may be traceable in part to the “Saturday Night Live” show on Feb. 23, when, back from the writers’ strike, it mocked the news media for treating Mr. Obama more gently than it treated Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton amplified that view later in a debate, and her aides stoked it all week, practically browbeating reporters.

They are so little sure of themselves?  So much with finger to the wind?  The public press is a public trust and all that, but who can withstand Saturday Night Live?

Of course, this is NY Times reportage, ignoring Chicago newspaper coverage of B.O., which did not begin only this week to press him on important issues.

Tags: ,

Mrs. Crabby

Michelle Obama laid it on heavy in recent campaigning about how bad we have it.

In a New Yorker profile, she is quoted in a stump speech made throughout South Carolina as characterizing America as “just downright mean.”

She said the country is divided, life is not good, the people are “guided by fear” and cynicism.

“We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she told churchgoers in that primary state. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime.”

She ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Wait till the mainstream reporters really get warmed up with their Rezko qq.  Then she’ll really howl.

“Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America!” she exclaimed.

Especially when U. of Chi Hospitals are your option.  Lots of insurance needed to help cover her $316,952 salary there as an administrator — up from $121,910  once her man became a U.S. senator.

She’s — ahem — conflicted about her success, or was in 1985 when she wrote her undergraduate thesis, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” in which she makes a heartfelt cry:

Princeton both humiliated her and corrupted her, Michelle Vaughn Robinson complains in an undergraduate prose that is all the more touching for its clumsiness. By condescending to the young black woman from a Chicago working-class family, the liberal university made Michelle feel like an outsider. Worse, by giving her a ticket to financial success, Princeton caused her to feel that she was selling out to the institutions she most despised.

We call it guilt.  She’s made it big, and that ain’t bad, but she feels bad about it and wants us to feel bad too.  Grrrrrr.

Tags: ,

Seeing and believing: the light shines

“Fill your horn with oil,” God told Samuel.  He was sending him to Bethlehem, where one of Jesse’s sons was to be king. 

God didn’t leave such matters to chance.  In the story of his people, he was calling the shots — for their own good, needless to say.  He was a benevolent despot.  They had to learn to trust him. 

He was not capricious, however, demanding to be placated, not one to be feared, period.  We have to compare him to other gods of the day.  “Compared to what?” is the key question here, as in most other places.

This time Samuel, sent to find the new king, got a lesson in substance compared to mere appearance.

As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,
Samuel looked at Eliab [one of the sons] and thought,
“Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.”

He had to think again:

“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, [God said]
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”

So the pleasantly appearing hotshot is not necessarily the one.  It does not rule him out, however.  The son who is chosen is

ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance. The LORD said, “There-anoint him, for this is he!”

Go figure.  The lesson seems to be that we should look before leaping, hold our judgment in abeyance sometimes, wait for guidance, in this case divine.  I like that. 

This son — the youngest, called in from his sheep-tending after Samuel has seen the others — is the least likely candidate for anointing from that oil-filled horn.  Splendid appearance or not, he was chosen in apparently a judicious manner.  It was David, of course.

So much for the first (Old T) reading for this past Sunday, the 4th of Lent, A-cycle.  Now chimes in Paul in a snippet from his letter to the Ephesians about light (good) and darkness (bad), warning against the “fruitless works of darkness” which are “shameful even to mention.”

We may consider God here as one who “looks into the heart.”  Yes, that’s God, and that’s also the honest man or woman, who is implicitly urged here to take a second look, and a third, etc., in any case to avoid fooling himself or herself.

We may also consider “shameful,” which is a description that does not come easily to our lips, we being 21st-century Westerners.  “Have you no shame?” lawyer Welch asked Joe McCarthy 50–plus years ago, and his words reverberated in article, column, headline, TV news clip.

We learn morality by being shamed, argues Lee Harris in his Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West.  We are shamed into behavior required by the tribe or by the community that inevitably is part tribal.  This by Harris is one of two book-length essays on this general subject since our 9/11 catastrophe.

On to the 3rd reading, from John 9, which is surely what you heard about Sunday from the preacher if you heard a preacher.  It’s the story of the man blind from birth whom Jesus used as launch pad for a sharp rejoinder to the Pharisees: he’s not blind because the parents sinned, as they said.

“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

That’s a seminal, almost modernizing comment, lifting affliction from the realm of blameability — seminal because it tears us with ears to hear out of the ever-threatening superstitious approach to life.  A preacher could spend some time on this point, speaking up for reason as Jesus did and doing what he or she could to undercut un-reason. 

We don’t usually look to a miracle-worker for that, but miracles imply a discernible order in things, something to be investigated.  If there were no investigatable nature of things, it would be silly to claim a miracle; the word would have no meaning.

And of course, we can’t miss this light-darkness contrast, echoing Paul to Ephesians in the 2nd reading.  In a world of electrical appliance, we have no idea how impenetrable darkness can be.  My friend Charlie stood on a Himalayan high spot and saw moon and stars as if he could touch them.  He was living in a Nepali village in the course of his Jesuit missionary years.  With no city lights, even in the distance, he saw the dark, as it were, clearly.

That clay made of dirt and spittle to heal the blind man was a Sabbath violation.  Accused, Jesus lived up to another pivotal announcement, in Mark, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

My.  Again the modernizing statement, in its call for the second look, the inquiry, the reassessment.  It’s somewhat like God tutoring Samuel in his choice of a king from Jesse’s sons.  We are supposed to be thoughtful.

Ah, but all in all, it’s a great story, this blind man’s buffet of pictures and dialog, and more power to the preacher who can retell it lovingly — and thoughtfully, shedding light where there is at least semi-darkness.  That would be nice.

Tags: , , , , ,