Subscribeand for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
I am the son of a black man from Nigeria and a white woman from Bristol. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Churchill's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in Grenwich while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in England and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black Jamaican who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
I 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.I'm not certain how that could be construed as 'real cheap politicking'. Care to elaborate?
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
Cortex will probably delete this post, but nevertheless he can not silence the amazing phenomena which is Obama.That was a joke, right? Because I can't seem to tell anymore given the adoration I have been seeing.
Another suprising defender of Obama this morning on MSNBC — Gov. Mike Huckabee:I think it's premature in the immediate 24 hours following the speech to speculate on its historicality. But from its rich resonance across many unusual corners of the political landscape (including the many personal anecdotes in this thread and elsewhere), it's undeniable that Obama's speech was, in a very literal sense, quite remarkable. His speech was a salient moment in American political discourse, just as his 2004 convention speech was, but with a wholly different tenor. And any rhetorician would've given their left nut to have delivered one, never mind both of these speeches.
He was impressed by the speech and how Obama is handling the race issue. He brought up Jerry Falwell, and said that Falwell said plenty of things that his parishoners would likely not agree with, and that we shouldn’t hold someone accountable for every statment of their pastor. Lastly, he said that he grew up in the segregated south, and that a guy like Wright who has been discriminated against for most of his life, would rightfully have a “chip on his shoulder.”
[...]
Huckabee also said that had he gone through what he saw blacks go through he would probably be even more resentful.
Chicago Times: "The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances."
In this reviewer's opinion, the only really coherent position on the abortion issue is one that is both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.
Argument: As of 4 March 1999, the question of defining human life in utero is hopelessly vexed. That is, given our best present medical and philosophical understandings of what makes something not just a living organism but a person, there is no way to establish at just what point during gestation a fertilized ovum becomes a human being. This conundrum, together with the basically inarguable soundness of the principle "When in irresolvable doubt about whether something is a human or not, it is better not to kill it," appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Life. At the same time, however, the principle "When in irresolvable doubt about something, I have neither the legal nor the moral right to tell another person what to do about it, especially if that person feels that s/he is not in doubt" is an unassailable part of the Democratic pact we Americans all make with one another, a pact in which each adult citizen gets to be an autonomous moral agent; and this principle appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Choice.
This reviewer is thus, as a private citizen and an autonomous agent, both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. It is not an easy or comfortable position to maintain. Every time someone I know decides to terminate a pregnancy, I am required to believe simultaneously that she is doing the wrong thing and that she has every right to do it. Plus, of course, I have both to believe that a Pro-Life + Pro-Choice stance is the only really coherent one and to restrain myself from trying to force that position on other people whose ideological or religious convictions seem (to me) to override reason and yield a (in my opinion) wacko dogmatic position. This restraint has to be maintained even when somebody's (to me) wacko dogmatic position appears (to me) to reject the very Democratic tolerance that is keeping me from trying to force my position on him/her; it requires me not to press or argue or retaliate even when somebody calls me Satan's Minion or Just Another Shithead Male, which forbearance represents the really outer and tooth-grinding limits of my own personal Democratic Spirit.
I guess it's probably because they're mostly under 40, or have never voted in a general electionGo fuck yourself.
I'm starting to become more and more convinced that Jim Webb needs to be his running mate.As attractive as this is, Webb has always struck me as a "party above self" guy, and it's undeniable that him leaving his seat would put the Democrats in a bind. Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see it, too, but the plain fact is that Webb put up a hell of a fight to win that seat, with a lot of activist help on the ground, and he undoubtedly feels like he has a duty to those people and that district. Does anyone know what would happen if Webb actually did this, in terms of special elections or replacement?
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"To hear it from the mouth of a white football coach, that's interesting. To hear it from an African-American man in the middle of one of the most contested presidential campaigns in generations, that's incredible. And only he can give it. Bill, Hillary, McCain, Kerry, Edwards, it's an interesting speech, but it's coming from the majority. Obama is speaking from the minority, downtrodden and beaten down, enslaved, lynched, discriminated, and ignored. He's saying to White America, of course we're angry, but it's time for all of us to move on.
It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.So I'd say that comes close at least.
Is there any other politician who could quote Faulkner and mention Youtube in the same speech?
it won't just go back to chaosGo back to?
Does no one else think that Obama is going to have a problem with running on a platform of constant and immediate troop withdrawal from Day 1 when he is running against a hawk like McCain?
In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right
But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Well, since we're comparing.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war... testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated... can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate... we cannot consecrate... we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be here dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us... that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom... and that this government of the people... by the people... for the people... shall not perish from the earth.
November 19, 1863
posted by Artw at 9:35 PM on March 18, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]