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Hope Versus Hate
By Derek Wallace | March 27, 2008
“Obama-mania is getting out of hand.”That’s the declaration of Brendan O’Neill in the Feb. 25th issue of The American Conservative, and one can’t blame him for his conclusion. In his article “Make the World Safe For Hope,” O’Neill documents some of the more extreme examples of what Joel Stein once dubbed “Obamaphilia” in the Los Angeles Times, which has taken hold of everyone from swooning media to starstruck college students to Hollywood actresses.
That was February, however. This month has brought a new challenge to Barack Obama’s campaign, one that threatens to put a quick end to what O’Neill calls “political hallucinations,” “blind hope” and “semi-religious hysteria” over the Illinois senator.
The last phrase is an ironic one considering Obama’s religious connections are the source of the current controversy. The controversy arose when video became public of Obama’s pastor—and former campaign advisor, and apparantly friend and mentor—ranting against such evils as the “U.S. of KKK A,” “rich white men,” “white arrogance” and the “racist United States of America” during post-9/11 sermons. The most well-known clip shows the Rev. Jeremiah Wright shouting “God damn America” to an approving audience. Wright has also accused the U.S. government of inventing the HIV virus as “a means of method of genocide against people of color.”
Why, beyond the obvious reasons, is this so damaging to Obama? Because Barack Obama was supposed to be the candidate of hope, of change; the candidate who could bridge the racial divide and bring American together. “They fantasize that he is pure and rightous,” wrote O’Neill, “a miracle-worker who … will overturn the conventions of neocon-ruled America.”
Various statements Obama’s wife Michelle has let slip the past several months raised suspicions the candidate was not necessarily what he’s built himself to be. Obama’s close relationship to an “Afrocentric” church and pastor confirms those suspicions. This past year Obama has built his campaign with lofty rhetoric about “hope” and “change” and “a new kind of politics,” but for years he and his family have attended and supported and donated to a church whose pastor regularly engages in a distinctly old—and left wing—kind of politics.
Obama himself reverted to that old kind of politics in his speech on race last week, playing shamelessly on liberal white guilt in an attempt to distract from the real issue at hand.
“Obama was supposed to be new,” wrote Charles Krauthammer in a National Review Online article. “He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.”
But why, as Krauthammer wonders, has Obama then exposed his own children to Wright’s racially-divisive vitrol? Why did he donate more than $22,000 two years ago to a church that promotes precisely what Obama claims to abhore?
While some liberals—eager college students especially—are willing to overlook this issue, and in fact might even agree with the sentiments Wright expresses, most Americans will not.
Brendan O’Neill can rest easy: Obama-mania is coming to an end.
Topics: Political Commentary, Volume 3, Issue 6 |
March 31st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Did I hear rightly that this Rev. Wright has since resigned?
I agree that Obama is not what he has built himself to be. I hope that this whole situation will force more people to see that, whether they want to or not.