
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 21, 2008
/ 14 Adar II 5768
Throwing grandma over the side
By
Mona Charen
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's a mistake to try to pigeonhole Barack Obama. He is too smart and too agile to succumb to easy categorization. But the candidate's eloquence is often more of a curtain than a window to his soul and one is left to wonder where his heart truly lies. As George Burns said of acting, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
Discussing his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who asked God to "damn" America, who called this country the "No. 1 killer in the world," Obama's defense was subtle. Oh yes, he agreed, the rhetoric is "divisive … at a time when we need unity" and reflects "profoundly distorted views of this country" that "rightly offend both white and black." But there's so much more to the man. He serves his community, housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, serving those with HIV/AIDS, and so forth. He brought Obama to Christianity. And Obama can no more "disown him than he can disown the black community" and no more disown him than he can disown his own white grandmother.
Obama's white grandmother, according to the account in "Dreams from My Father," had once flinched before a black man on a public bus hoping that her husband would drive her to work the following day so that she could avoid him. On other occasions, he recounts, she had uttered "racial or ethnic stereotypes" that made Obama "cringe."
This is a false equivalence. In the first place, what pastor or congregational leader does not minister to the poor and unfortunate? Pastoral work in the community is the norm, not the exception. One can say the same of Louis Farrakhan and Hamas for that matter. It doesn't begin to excuse or justify stoking the flames of hatred and bitterness that Wright so flagrantly fired.
And wasn't it a bit of a cheap shot to take public aim at grandmother, who sacrificed so much for Obama, who served as his surrogate mother during his high school years? If she used racial and ethnic stereotypes, that was wrong. But the episode about the bus, as related in his book, is hardly a damning indictment of a secret racist. After Obama's grandmother confessed to having been harassed by an aggressive panhandler, Obama writes:
"He (Obama's grandfather) turned around and I saw now that he was shaking. 'It is a big deal. It's a big deal to me. She's been bothered by men before. You know why she's so scared this time? I'll tell you why. Before you came in she told me the fella was black.' He whispered the word. 'That's the real reason she's bothered. And I just don't think that's right.'
"It was like a fist to my stomach, and I wobbled to maintain my composure."
I don't claim to know Obama's grandmother and am in no position to judge her racial sentiments. But it does seem to an outsider that Obama's judgment upon his grandmother is as harsh as his tolerance of Wright is benign. It isn't as if he was raised in Trinity Baptist Church. He chose it as an adult. He chose those sermons he now calls "incendiary" and "inexcusable." He says now that Wright misses the dynamism of American society, yet when it came time to decide where his daughters would attend church, he chose Trinity, where they would "learn" that the U.S. government concocted the AIDS virus to wipe out the African-American population, that the U.S. would "plant" WMDs in Iraq, and that blacks harming other blacks are "fighting the wrong enemy." A beautifully delivered speech cannot overcome that history.
The solution, Obama asserts, to racial divisiveness, is to come together and say "Not this time." This time "we want to talk about "the crumbling schools ... to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem." This time, in other words, we can demonstrate our racial bona fides by, you guessed it, voting for Obama for president.
Barack is the new kid on the block, but surely he can recall the campaign of 2000. One of the candidates that year made education reform a keystone of his effort, more or less explicitly aiming at minority kids. He called his package No Child Left Behind and denounced the "soft bigotry of low expectations." One doesn't expect Obama, a very liberal Democrat, to endorse George W. Bush's programs. But it would be nice if he were not suggesting that by voting for something very similar, we are taking a bold step toward racial reconciliation and universal love.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Mona Charen's column by clicking here.
Mona Charen Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|