Somehow

Victor Davis Hanson

.... The speech and Obama's subsequent interviews neither explained his disastrous association with Wright, nor dared open up a true discussion of race -- which by needs would have to include, in addition to white racism, taboo subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-than-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music and unaddressed anti-Semitism.

.... Somehow Obama could not just say,

There is nothing to be offered for Rev. Wright except my deepest apologies for not speaking out against his venom far earlier. We in the African-American community know better than anyone the deleterious effects of racist speech, and so it is time for Rev. Wright and myself to part company, since we have profoundly different views of both present- and future-day America.

The more the pundits gushed about the speech, the more the average Americans thought, "Wait a minute -- did he just say what I thought he said?"

It's not lost on Joe Q. Public that Obama justified Wright's racism...

Miscellaneous factoid via the Chicago Tribune: At Howard University, Jeremiah Wright earned both BA and MA degrees in English with a focus on African spirituals, and then

"At the University of Chicago Divinity School, he earned another master's in the history of religions with a focus on Islam."

More Trivial Pursuit (& the Concept of Effects) in BtB archives - May 6, 2007.

And a question. How is it possible that the Associated Press reported

In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" ... The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator.

... but the New York Times in describing the very same event, does not even mention Obama once?

I'm just asking. How is that possible?

And one more question. That same New York Times article posits the Brooklyn imam, Siraj Wahhaj, as a possible successor to Louis Farrakahn, to lead the Nation of Islam:

[Wahhaj] quit the Nation years ago but came to the convention here to lead Friday prayers, urging Muslim unity in a sermon liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Koran in fluent Arabic.

In case you didn't know, Wahhaj has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

Alright now, tell me if I'm wrong. Obama will not renounce Wright and although he says he does not agree with Farrakhan's views, we know that Farrakhan praises Obama at great length.

We also know that [again, according to the New York Times] Jeremiah Wright traveled "to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan" in 1984 and we all know too that the Wright/Obama church honored Farrakhan with an award as recently as this past December. And now Wahhaj is in the wings, conceivably available for the same award some other year.

__

I must say, I agree with VDH that "a true discussion of race ... would have to include ... unaddressed antisemitism."

I don't mind breaking the ice, so let's begin.

Does it make anyone else at all nervous that our possible future president is less than six degrees of separation from one guy who publicly "damns" America, another who is an infamous and virulent antisemite and a third who is an unindicted co-conspirator in an attack on America?

I'm just curious.

Comments

[califindependent]

Just asking...Isn't Judaism a religion? Not a race? (You can convert, for example. Not something a black can do..even Michael Jackson.) Arabs are semitic after all, so a true anti-Semite would hate Arabs. All the anti-Mormon, anti-Romney rants on talk radio had far more similarity to anti-Semitism than Wright's sermons do.

[Yael]

I think the Jewish people are best described as a family (quite literally the sons of Jacob/Yaakov). Sometimes children who have been lost to us find their way back. I think of my own conversion more as a mutual adoption. As for antisemitism, look it up. The word is specifically designated for use in reference to JEW-hatred and has nothing whatsoever to do with Arabs (unless they happen to practice it).