baldilocks

Shaky Ground

Read Belmont Club and Hugh Hewitt's interview with Mark Steyn. They're talking about you-know-who and his autobiography.

One observation--people who are afraid of be called "sell-out" are those who don't know who they are in the first place. Their 'self' is built on sand.

One more observation--Mark Steyn says the following:

Colin Powell and Barack Obama are both the children of British subjects. In Colin Powell’s case from the West Indies, in Obama’s case, from Kenya. And the advantage of that is that they’re not part, they’re not part of what we call now the African-American experience. They’re not part of the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton narrative.

I've read and heard several white people make statements like this--people whose opinions I normally respect--regarding the who is and isn't "legally"(????) an "African-American"* or who has and hasn't taken part in the "African-American experience." While I love Mark Steyn, he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about in this case, to put it politely as possible. Both men grew up black in America and, in General Powell's case, before the Civil Rights Era. And I'm sure that no one inclined to discriminate against either of them because of their race cared that one or both parents were born in some other country.

Back to the 'self' issue. Steyn says that Obama and Powell come from similar backgrounds. They only seem to. Steyn observes that the general is

very secure in his sense of himself. And clearly, Barack Obama isn’t. There’s a big hole. That hole, in part, was left by, I think, that hole inside him is in many ways the fault of his father.

And his mother. This is one of the myriad coping mechanisms that people use when they don't know who they are. And the only persons who can build that self are one's parents. Powell always had his. Obama's mother dragged him to a foreign country--where he was forever an outsider--and then abandoned him when he was old enough to know what was happening. Big difference. Crucial, even.

Okay enough hair-splitting. Go read.

*Here's the reason that I don't use the term "African-American" except with quotation marks/sneer quotes.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Barack Obama and his shape-shifting nature make him the perfect candidate for those who believe in the unconstrained vision of what humanity can become; who believe that humanity is perfectible instead of innately flawed.

Back to Africa Again

The airlift which brought my father--Philip Ochieng--and Barack Obama, Sr. to America is back in the news again. Originally discussed this time last year after Obama, Jr.'s Selma speech--which saw the senator curiously attribute some of the events surrounding his 1961 birth to the 1964 Selma march—Obama asserted that the airlift in question was due to the efforts of John F. Kennedy. Observers threw the BS flag on that as well since Obama had already been conceived by the time JFK was sworn in as POTUS.

However, when I found out that my father had been on the same plane as Obama Senior, I did some digging and discovered that JFK had indeed been responsible for an airlift of students from Kenya before he became president. An op-ed written by my father in 2004 seemed to confirm this.

Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities]. I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya's Nairobi office [Mboya was then the secretary general of the Kenya Federation of Labour]. Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years.

(Emphasis mine. That will be important in a moment.)

Note that my father calls the trip the ‘Tom Mboya Airlift.’ However, the 1960 article in TIME magazine calls it the ‘Kennedy Airlift.’ At first I chalked the difference up to cultural pride--of course, each nation would want to give their countryman the credit. After that, it seemed that the bit of history was settled. (Obama was on his own as far as the Selma issue went, however.)

Then, last week, I received an email from a gentleman named Gregory Gelembiuk who provided yet more info about the airlift. Mr. Gelembiuk contended that Senator Obama was deliberately lying about the Kennedy connection because the Ivy-educated senator was more used to doing in-depth research than I am, because he has access to more information than I do and because the senator has a history of, shall we say, selective recall. All are true but I was merely going by what my father had said.

Later in the week I received an email from the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs who asked about the same information, so I provided him with my father’s email address and at least one link, courtesy of Mr. Gelembiuk. I don’t know whether either was useful to Mr. Dobbs, but today’s Post contains his piece entitled “Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father.”

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960. [SNIP]

A more accurate version of the story would begin not with the Kennedys but with a Kenyan nationalist leader named Tom Mboya, who traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite. Mboya did not approach the Kennedys for financial support until Obama Sr. was already studying in Hawaii.

So the problem is that there was more than one sortie in the airlift and Obama--and Hot Air's Allahpundit and myself--got one of the Kennedy-funded trips confused with earlier ones which had different funding--an easy thing to do since none of us were born yet when the events in question occurred. Personally I didn't even know about the airlifts until Obama mentioned it last year and I asked my father about it afterward.

Compounding the confusion, my father innocently bunches all of the sorties together when telling of the endeavor in his 2004 column. He speaks of hundreds of students being the beneficiaries of Mboya’s idea rather than the eighty-one studentsin the singular year of 1959, among them himself and Obama Sr.

In 1959 Mboya coordinated an “airlift” of 81 Kenyan students to the United States to attend college, and shortly after attending the “Africa Freedom Dinner,” Mboya wrote [Dr. Martin Luther] King requesting financial assistance for a Kenyan student who was to enter Tuskegee Institute in the fall. In an 8 November 1959 letter to the New York Times Mboya explained: “Nothing constitutes a greater contribution to the struggle against poverty, disease and political subjection in Africa more than the contribution made towards our peoples’ educational advancement.” With the help of the African American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, and Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to cover the students’ travel expenses.

Believing that Africans and African Americans shared “a common struggle” against colonialism and segregation King took an active interest in the education of African students. He encouraged college presidents in the United States to expand financial aid options available to Africans. He arranged for the Montgomery Improvement Association and other Montgomery organizations to fund five Kenyan students to study at American universities and pledged the SCLC and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to fund the living expenses for Kenyan student, Nicholas Raballa, who was admitted to Tuskegee Institute.

(It is interesting to know that Mboya went to the black glitterati of the era for help and good to know that they came through. Upon discovering this new information, I briefly considered being nicer to Mr. Belafonte from now on, then discarded the notion. After all, who knows who else will be discovered to have been responsible for Obama's and my presence in this country?)

The bottom line is this: I dissent from Misters Gelembiuk, Dobbs and Morrissey in that I think the discrepancies in the airlift story are an innocent mistake on Obama's part. Of course I understand why they do not believe this-- they're thinking of all the not-so-innocent mistakes on topics large and small which the good senator has made. I, too, would have come to a similar conclusion if it weren't for the mitigating circumstances which I've highlighted. But "I ain't mad at" the above gentlemen if they're not convinced.

See, that's the problem with chronic dissembling. Even when you make an an honest-to-goodness oopsie, no one believes that it stems from honesty or goodness.

[Re-edited]

Outer Covering

So. Do you think I'll start "conversations" if I wear one of these t-shirts in public?

Yeah, I know. Certain people would wonder what else was new.

(Thanks to fellow brown person Michelle Malkin)

Just Stop

Negro, black man, white man, African, American, please! Give it up.

"Had the reverend [Jeremiah Wright] not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church," Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, "The View."

Don't you think it's time to learn when to shut up?

UPDATE: Oh yeah; remember when Obama said this?

I can no more disown him [Wright] than I can disown the black community.

If Obama can't disown Wright then why would he have left had Wright stayed? I'm smelling waffles.

Portlanders for Peace

But, but...I thought these creatures were against violence! /feigned surprise

Beth says "you first."

(Thanks to Ace)

A Democrat Party in Baghdad

Remember when former British MP George Galloway testified before the US Senate on his alleged complicity in the UN Oil-for-Food scandal? I recall that Galloway seemed rather hostile and smug toward his mild-mannered inquisitor, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN). Thinking about all the other occasions when I’ve seen Galloway interact with ideological opponents, I concluded that Galloway is generally an unpleasant person, that his interaction with Coleman was just “Gorgeous” George being himself.

Then again, Galloway’s smugness might have been due to his knowledge of this:

Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.

An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.

The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.

Al-Hanooti--a former CAIR official--has also been charged with being a spy for Saddam's Iraq.

Ed Morrissey finds out from the Weekly Standard that the three representatives even broadcasted from Baghdad—from right in Saddam’s lap basically—calling President Bush a liar.

[ABC's "This Week" host] George Stephanopoulos asked McDermott about his recent comment that “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.”

McDermott didn’t backpedal at all: “I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation. . . . It would not surprise me if they came out with some information that is not provable, and they, they shift it. First they said it was al-Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re going back to and saying it’s al Qaeda again.” When Stephanopoulos pressed McDermott about whether he had any evidence that Bush had lied, the congressman replied, “I think the president would mislead the American people.”

Word and deed allegedly funded by the Butcher of Baghdad.

No wonder George G. smirked his way through the entire senate proceeding back in 2005. I say that he knew that some of “ours” were no better than he is.

NOT REALLY RELATED: Detroit is just a hotbed of perfidy, ain't it? No pun intended.

Making BLT

By James Cone. It's the narcissism, Stupid!

(Thanks to Cobb)

What Do You People Want?

Earthly perfection is what 'you people' want. The white 'you people' want perfect absolution; the black 'you people' want perfect vengeance.

Be careful what you wish for.

Denied their blanket absolution, some whites mumble and even scream the n-word, as if it just dawned on them that some black people hate them; even though the Black version of Barack Obama's and Jeremiah Wright's Liberation Theology has existed for only a little less time than legislated federal Civil Rights and Voting Rights have--a small fraction of the lifespan of this country.

Denied their vengeance, some blacks say “yeah, we knew you hated us all along,” in spite of the fact that most whites manifestly don’t hate us and many have gone against their parents, friends and communities to stand up for what’s right; in spite of the fact that the ones who do hate blacks have conspired to keep some of us in a more refined form of bondage—also known as reproductive “choice” and subsidized indolence--with our own assistance. We're not hated by all or even most whites, in spite of how the progeny of the new slaves have preyed upon all—black, white and other.

All of the players in this game wanted to be the innocent party, the wronged party. All wanted to ignore reality and history.

Then along came Obama--the guy who talks post-racial and sleeps Black Power--and all the fronting ceases. All masks are dropped. And all the sh*t-fits commence.

You people wanted the Moon and all you got was merely another flawed human to project your higher hopes and lower fantasies onto. And now you're mad.

It's your own fault, though; your fault that you accepted an earthly savior.

[Re-edited]

Get Off My Lawn, Negroes

N-word controversies are so 2005, don't you think?

In the end we're all human--meaning, in need of salvation.

(Dedicated to the memory of Robert Smith)

UPDATE: We're all n-words now.

Happy Resurrection Day

I woke up this morning feeling as though there was a clamp on my right eye socket. But since today was Easter, there was very little which would have kept me out of church today, even one of my occasional migraines. Fortunately, an intermittent massage of a blood vessel on the same side of my neck tended to ease the pain. Since I've been back home, a couple of hours without wearing glasses and being horizontal seems to have done the trick. So I'm feeling blessed because the pain is gone and because...

Someone who loves me sent me this highbrow Easter well-wish.

And because another person who loves me has spent the day protecting the US from enemies foreign and domestic.

Life could be worse.

The New-Old Kenya

Kenya’s parliament has implemented the changes in the country’s constitution which (re)create the office of prime minister—a position designated for ODM’s Raila Odinga--and attendant deputies.

This week’s constitutional amendments partially redefined the structure of government and portrayed a nation in the mood for reforms when Parliament sealed the power-sharing deal between President Kibaki and Mr Odinga.

An entirely new constitution is in the offing within one year.

Meanwhile, down on the ground, old hurts are nursed and older battles continue. My father wonders whether his countrymen can give up the “social HIV called tribalism." No more than any other group of humans, Mzee--if the fact that it rages here in the ‘Land of the Free’ is an indication. We can only remain vigilant against personal bitterness.

BTW, for those who were following when I didn't know the terrestrial whereabouts of my progenitor--Philip Ochieng--during the height of the Kenya Crisis, I can tell you where he is now as then: near a modem and a cell phone.

Good Friday

As my regular readers can tell, I've been a bit busy for the last few days. But even if I hadn't been, I would have found the shear volume (mean in both senses) of response to Barack Obama's revealed racial attitudes overwhelming; too much so to respond with little more than a dumbfounded "WTF?"

The main thing that fascinates me about his attitudes is how they may have been shaped by Black Liberation Theology--an ideology whose outlines have been visible in the black community for the several decades of its existence, but one which is just now showing its face to the outside world via Obama's presidential candidacy.

So I'm reading and reading and reading. And the good thing about that is that, occasionally, one hits the jackpot.

You might recognize the author's name.

And a Good Friday to you all.

A German In Israel

If you're feeling cynical about race relations just now, the magnitude and symbolism of the following might help you to feel better.

Yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed Israel’s Knesset.

Expectations were high for the first-ever speech given by a chancellor before the Knesset. On Tuesday, Angela Merkel found the right tone, but she also carefully avoided any criticism of the Israelis' Middle East policies in her bid to deepen German-Israeli ties.

Angela Merkel had prepared long in advance, and she had carefully considered the move. "Madam President, thank you for allowing me to speak here today," the German chancellor read, in slightly awkward Hebrew, at 5:20 p.m. in Jerusalem's Knesset. "It is a great honor for me."

Then she reverted to German and began by expressing her appreciation for being allowed to address the Israeli parliament. The historic moment, which had triggered relatively minor debate in Israel in the days leading up to the event, had finally arrived. A German head of government was speaking before the Knesset -- in German, the "language of the murderers," as critics had noted.

But in the end only a handful of parliamentarians stayed away, because they perceived Merkel's appearance as "insensitive." The vast majority of the Israeli parliament, though, listened attentively and, after a final "Shalom!" gave the chancellor a standing ovation. [SNIP]

After recognizing the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, Merkel launched into an extensive discussion of Germany's past. "The Shoah is a source of great shame to Germans. I bow to the victims. I bow to the survivors and to all those who helped them survive," said the chancellor, who characterized the "fracture of civilization by the Shoah" as unprecedented. With a view to her own origins, she told her audience that she had spent the first 35 years of her life in East Germany, where Nazism had been viewed as a purely West German problem. It took 40 years, Merkel said, for all of Germany to own up to its responsibility to the State of Israel.

If these two groups of humans can reconcile, then any two can—hopefully long before something as unthinkable as any holocaust occurs.

(Thanks to Ed Morrissey)

Broken Hearts

Some of you folks are beginning to sound like jilted lovers. I kept telling you that Obama wasn't a Muslim but a Communist (okay, a Socialist). He may ally with known racists--and, hopefully, it will sink his candidacy--but BHO is a mere cipher; a vessel. As William Amos put it at Hot Air,

We were wondering if Barack was a Manchurian Candidate; I think the answer is yes. The only question is for who?

Obama coats his lack of self in Black Liberation Theology--an ego-based, God-as-Sugar-Daddy ideology. But it could have been any other ideology that was equally as metaphysically empty; he suited up in this one because it fit the best for obvious reasons.

Some of us are still trying to clue you all in as to the exact nature of Obama's fraud. So when you stop fretting over the fact that He Done You Wrong, when you stop letting your ego and your fear blind your judgment, pay attention to the big, hairy clues in the guy's background. (No. The other clues.)

They've been sitting there all along.

UPDATE: What Cobb said:

The great charade of this debacle is that critics and fans from the left and right have placed the burden on Obama to be their magic negro, to prove once and for all that Americans are capable of bridging racial gaps.

Just to Clarify

Again I say that Obama's speech was well done--for what it intended to do: lure back those who were beginning to slip out of the camp. Those of us who were never there in the first place remain unmoved or are pushed further away.

Obama's Speech (UPDATED)

Barack Obama is addressing the Wright controversy as I type this.

I have some things to take care of, but anyone who wants to comment on the speech, please do so here.

PRELIMINARY JUDGMENT: Well done, especially the part about his maternal grandmother. (The liberal bromides contained in the speech are less important and are to be expected.) More later.

UPDATE: From Drudge, the transcript.

UPDATE:
Allahpundit:

Now, with his ass in a sling, suddenly it’s time for the great conversation [on race]. If any other politician tried a move this transparently cynical, to nudge the conversation away from his own craven tolerance of racial hatred to some sort of redemption narrative by which to hold that against him is to be, in effect, objectively anti-progress, the media would vivisect him.

More from Shelby Steele regarding the Bargainer's Mask:

For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man.

Kyle-Anne Shiver at American Thinker:

Barack Obama maintains that even though his pastor and his wife have no pride in America, he himself has remained above all that division and strife, incredulously, because he never even knew about it. [SNIP]

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm getting a bit queasy at the thought of Barack Obama's tendency to know nothing about nothing when it comes to people and problems right under his nose. If he genuinely was not on to the racism of his own pastor, the guy who was like an "uncle" to him, how will he be able to see through the lying hypocrisy of IslamoFascists[?]

Chris Durang at Huffington Post:

I'm sorry -- I don't often get moved and inspired listening to a speaker. I think Barack Obama is brilliant, and he is a genuine healer. If we don't take our chances with him, we are doomed to more of this endless, idiot, non-constructive bickering deadlock that passes for governance in our stuck, stalled political landscape.

Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom:

It’s a movingly schmaltzy piece. It may do the trick for him.

Ann Althouse:

I'd say he did not do very much — other than to resist condemning Wright and to model his socially acceptable attitudes and generate a feeling — I'm sure you didn't all feel it — that we need unite behind this man if the terrible divisions over race are going to end.

UPDATE: And from my other political father:

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama’s voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology. [SNIP]

Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony.

Filling the Space

Spengler at Asia Times gives a short overview of the Black Liberation Theology subscribed to by Jeremiah Wright's TUCC and, allegedly, by Barack Obama:

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Spengler writes of Cone's argument about God: that He should be a god who does what humans want, be a Metaphysical Sugar Daddy or He's worthless. Cone isn't exactly by himself in that postulation.

As for Jesus Christ, He is alleged to be the Savior of the Oppressed only--as is so with all types of 'Liberation theology,' a school of belief in which the identity of the Oppressed depends on who's asking. With Black Liberation theology, Jesus is the Savior of the black oppressed--and, from what I can gather, those white persons who are willing give up the "guise of the Oppressor." Let's just say that I have more homework to do.

A cursory conclusion: it is a religion of works (as opposed to faith), of grudge-holding and of promised vengeance for wrongs done--both real and perceived, both individual and collective. But, like Shelby Steele, Spengler wonders whether Obama has merely covered himself with the coating of Black Liberation theology for his own purposes.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

[SNIP]

It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Did the TUCC serve to simply allow Obama to check off “religion” on his particular “self” checklist? It seems to me that he "converted" to it without giving the matter too much thought--became a clay to be molded by humans; by his wife and by Wright. A shape-shifter.

Once people get over the outrage regarding the racism of it all, perhaps more will put together the musings of persons like Steele and Spengler in order to formulate this question: who is Obama really?

His “self” space remains yet unobserved.

(Thanks to One Cosmos)

Hole in His Soul (UPDATE: Interview Excerpt)

Shelby Steele’s 1991 book The Content of Our Character started me on my journey to conservatism. It was what first made me actively consider that being a Liberal or a Democrat were yea/nay choices rather than states of existence which were as fixed as my skin color. So I consider him one of my political fathers and have a tendency to pay attention when I see one of his essays or catch him on TV.

I did read Steele’s A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win--and I got his descriptions of the two personality masks that black people wear around white people and how few people—black or white—appreciate it when a black person takes off his/her mask. However, I didn’t really understand his description of Obama until this Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC)/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha began to heat up.

In January, Peter Robinson interviewed Steele on A Bound Man over at NRO TV’s Uncommon Knowledge. TUCC is discussed in the third part in the five parter, but the whole thing is interesting. Steele pretty much predicted how things have played out and says the same thing that I said here: that Obama's biracial-ness coupled with parental abandonment has wrecked havoc on how he sees himself and how he projects himself to others. Basically, Steele explains why there’s very little ‘there’ there.

An excerpt of that third part is needed to illustrate Steele's point, I think; a transcription of it is forthcoming.

UPDATE: Here are the most perceptive observations of the interview's third part.

SHELBY STEELE: He was abandoned by his African father at the age of two. So in one stroke he lost both a father and a racial identity. So here in this all white household is this little kid who is being held accountable in the world as a black—being raised by a mother who’s white, a grandmother who’s white [and] a grandfather who is white; almost no experience whatsoever with other blacks.

And so, as I talk about in the book, as there’s a longing to know the father in Barack Obama there’s also a longing to know himself as a black; to feel that he belongs, that simple sense that other blacks take for granted, where it’s not a question at all.

For him, it’s a life-long angst. And so he’s driven in that direction and ends up on the Southside of Chicago doing community organizing when he could have gone straight ahead to law school and so forth [after earning an undergrad from Columbia]. [SNIP]

PETER ROBINSON: In any event, from Columbia he could have gone to Wall Street if he wanted to.

SS: He could have gone…and did for a brief moment. And quite, can’t take it. Wants to…this call, it’s there. This need. And so he takes this job at…below minimum wage as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

PR: As we have this conversation and as I read A Bound Man, I’m evaluating this man as a candidate. There’s a fascinating story, merely as a matter of character study and what it says about the state of race in the United States; but he’s running for president. So this notion of seeking out a black identity—the way it struck me was understandable and even commendable. Does it strike you the same way? Or is it still too much race? He’s doing something because of race? How do you understand it? How do you evaluate it?

SS: I went through something of it myself. Again [I’m] from that kind of a background. [Steele's father is black and his mother is white. --Ed.] I was lucky [that] I had my father. So…and I grew up in segregation and that will give you a clear sense of identity. (laughs)

PR: He was raised in a white world.

SS: Yeah.

PR: But you were raised in a black world.

SS: An entirely black world.

PR: Alright.

SS: So I didn’t feel the pressure, I don’t think, in the way that he did. But it was there. I’m aware of it. There’s a vulnerability that you have that people can see. As Christopher Hitchens says there, “why is he really black?” So somebody who doesn’t know you can walk up and say, “well you’re not really who you seem to be.” And always along with that goes this suggestion that you’re a phony; that you’re a bit of a fraud because of your birthright…your fate.

So it’s a vulnerability and there’s this desire to resolve it. And that’s, I think, Obama’s compulsion really: to establish himself as an authentic black [and] failing all along.

PR: You write: He goes to the Illinois state legislature, he’s now a member of the United States Senate for the last couple of years. He affiliates himself with a specifically black church in Chicago called Trinity United Church of Christ. You write about it at some length. So, incidentally, does Christopher Hitchens.

Quote--Christopher now: “Run by the sort of minister that the press often guardedly describes as ‘flamboyant,’ this bizarre outfit the church describes itself as” now he’s quoting from their website, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian and speaks of a Chosen People whose nature we are allow to assume is afrocentric.” Operative sentence: “Nobody who wants to be taken seriously can possibly be associated with such a sub-standard and shade-oriented place.”

Now there’s a point there. This is a graduate of Columbia and of Harvard Law School who’s going to a place that it’s reasonable to suppose that, in one way or another, is intellectually beneath him. Right?

SS: Absolutely.

PR: So how…do we cut him slack because he needs this? How do you understand that one?

SS: That’s one of the questions that I think the press…he’s been in this what I call ‘White Guilt Bubble’ where they never ask him anything meaningful.

How is it that you go to an afrocentric, Black Nationalist church, where everything is black—morality, "black"; community, "black"; family values, "black"; a church that your mother would not be comfortable in, if she would be welcome at all—how do you reconcile…

Could you stand up in this church and say, “It wasn’t 'blackness' that created Barack Obama. It was the 'midwestern' values of my mother. That’s how it got done. So maybe the people in this church might spend a little more time talking about those values than about 'blackness.'” I don’t think that Obama is likely to do that. But, how does he resolve it? How does he reconcile?

[SNIP]

SS: When you are born as he was, you endure this abandonment and [it] leaves these wounds. And there is going to be—for anybody—an attempt to sort of fill up that void in some way or another.

The only way you can do it is through a thousand little self-betrayals; where you go to that church and you turn a blind eye to the fact that it’s beneath you intellectually, that it subscribes to an ideology that would exclude the loving family that you had. You betray yourself. You get used to self-betrayal as a survival mechanism, as a way of getting through the world, getting through society. And that’s where you pay the price, because when you’re doing that, you’re not developing a self. You’re not individuating.

And there clearly is some of that with Obama—this habit of self-betrayal.

For the first time, I feel a great deal of pity for Obama, along with empathy, of course since I grew up in a kind of a "mirror universe" in relation to his own. (I can't decide which one contains the bearded Spock.)

Be that as it may, Obama's background wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't seem as though his particular brand of neuroses played out in nearly every relationship that he has--personal and professional. His campaign is the very model of two-facedness and the absence of self which Steele points to. Obama isn't crazy but something more frightening--a vessel to be filled.

What kind of damage could such a president do?

"Inflammatory and Appalling"

...are Wright's statements, according to Senator Obama. Obama will presumably make this assertion this evening to Major Garrett on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes and on Greta van Susteren's show.

So you'll excuse me while I run some errands now in order to be back home in time to catch that live; not that it will be believable, but it will for sure be memorable.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

UPDATE: Wright, who had a role as a spiritual adviser in the senator's presidential campaign, takes his leave.

Rev. Wright is no longer serving on the African American Religious Leadership Committee.

I'm not familiar with Obama's campaign structure and I find the name of this committee curious. Something labeled for African Americans? Only? In a presidential campaign? A campaign for the US presidency?

This guy...

UPDATE: "Vehemently disagree, strongly condemn, categorically denounce and reject outright." But Jeremiah Wright "prophesied" that this would have to happen.

“If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Mr. Wright said with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

It's a miracle!

One of Obama's Real Problems: Jeremiah Wright

The racist rhetoric espoused by Senator Barack Obama’s pastor of twenty years and spiritual mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has finally come under the large-scale scrutiny that it deserves. Wright, the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, is overt in his condemnation of all things American and white.

The juxtaposition of Wright's words of condemnation for a largely Christian America spoken under a banner containing the name Christ is jarring. Wright’s version of Christ offers not redemption but damnation; damnation of America for her crimes—real and perceived—and damnation for whites as a collective. Rev. Wright’s statements are so inflammatory that one wonders whether he would siphon all of the Caucasian DNA out from himself if he could, to borrow a concept from Malcolm X.

Anyway, since there are so many blogs and news outlets covering this I’ll just point to those which I think provide unique insight to the issues. But first...

Why did it take so long for the MSM and other observers to give this very important issue the scrutiny it deserves? There are two reasons.

1. The race-baiting of the Clintons coupled with the accusations of race baiting by Obama supporters, and,

2. The wild goose chases regarding Obama’s Kenyan Luo heritage, his visit there, his relationship to Raila Odinga, the mind-bogglingly distorted analyses of the origins of the conflict in that country, the ahistorical analyses of how mixed-raced persons have been identified in this country and the Obama-as-Muslim whisper campaign.

Under these headings have all too many commentators been willing to conjure and/or twist facts in order to further the aim of discrediting Obama. They wanted to get to the finish line without running the entire race. (I’ve seen authors write treatise after treatise on the Kenya situation, each postulating that it was some sort of Islam-Christianity death struggle, often accompanied by external scholarly or journalistic links which refuted what was being described. And forget about a link to an actual Kenyan blogger or news source; not unless the source served to affirm the pre-formulated conclusion, which amounted to--never.)

Basically, some of you Cried Wolf on some of Obama’s issues and, in the process, hindered the publicizing of real problems with an Obama candidacy. People get tired of separating the wheat from the chaff. Just be glad that this latest and very real Wolf is egotistical enough to sell his Wolf Tickets on camera.

Now on to Wright. From a 2006 speech at Howard University, here are the basics.

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," … "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."[SNIP]

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God." [SNIP]

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ." [SNIP]

"We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."

(That Wright used the pronoun ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ is about the only positive aspect of any of this.)

Shrunken down: Michael Bowen gives an excellent analogy on how some black people have dealt psychologically with racism and the symbolic role that Wright may play for Obama in this area.

If Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was an issue, is Barack Obama’s affiliation with this church and this pastor an issue? Or so asks Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Shay Riley has been to Obama’s church:

I found the church promoted a political agenda - it is definitely a Pan-Africanist church, which in itself is good although that church promotes a socialist version of Pan-Africanism that I don't support - to the exclusion of a spiritual one rooted in biblical teachings. Or as one of my uncles says, Trinity United Church of Christ is an Afrocentric and not a Christocentric (or even an Afrocentric-Christocentric) church. That fact will not help countering the claim that Sen. Obama is "an undercover Muslim" bent on destroying America from within by joining with anti-American forces.

Wright’s rhetoric has inspired Protein Wisdom’s Dan Collins to wax poetic.

Tom Maguire (via Thomas Lifson): “[W]hen does the reconciliation begin? Barack's wife is angry, his minister is foaming, yet we are supposed to elect Barack as Mr. Sunshine and Unity. Why aren't the people closest to him sunny and united?”

Ever the one to dig a little deeper is the Anchoress:

What is going on here is a profound slight-of-hand, or an illusionist’s expert misdirection. You are being told to think you’re seeing one thing, when you’re actually seeing another. Except for the fact that whoever released these tapes has played it, this sermon would not be an example of a “race card” being thrown. It’s a victim card. This is about the Primacy of Victimhood over all else. [SNIP]

[W]hile the victim card appeals to emotions, it tends to noisily set off rage in those who listen and perceive themselves as being identified as the “enemy.” So everyone gets emotional, everyone starts yelling, and no one is listening or making any sense.

The victim card is an odd card to play in a presidential race; victimhood in and of itself seems like a strange theme for either presidential candidate to embrace. “Vote for me; I’m the bigger victim and this qualifies me to…” what, exactly, lead the wailing?

Why can't Obama really distance himself from Wright and TUCC? It'd be like cutting off his arm.

No one - unless they are a brain-dead moron - would sit five minutes under Wright’s racist and anti-American rantings without walking out. Barak has sat there for twenty years. That’s...complicity.

There may be more.

(Thanks to Instapundit, to Hot Air and to Memeorandum)

UPDATE: A 'lanche is always good to come home to. Let's see what's up in the comments.

UPDATE: Say what?

Indeed, it is a lack of understanding of the black church that contributes to the blogosphere’s and MSM’s mistaking Rev. Wright for a hate-monger.

(Emphasis mine.)

This was no mistake, Mr. Miniter, and Wright's assertions come from no church that I recognize. And by the way, there is no "black church." There is only the Church.

What about the 9/11 and HIV stuff?

There isn’t any video of Rev. Wright’s sermons on those topics [sic], but I am prepared to believe he said something along those lines. More than a third of politically active blacks believe that the HIV virus is man-made and most likely spread by the CIA, surveys show. That’s obvious nonsense, but it tells us more about the state of the black community that about Rev. Wright. He is simply echoing their paranoia. Should have risen above it and said the problems of AIDS and drug abuse are self-inflicted? Should he have called on his flock to heal itself through self-discipline and encouraged them every step of the way? Yes. But his church is not the only weak institution in this country, the only citadel that refuses impart hard truths and love toughly. [SNIP]

So don’t blame Rev. Wright. He is simply the victim of ideological disease, doing the best that he can to help others in his somewhat incapacitated state.

A commenter at Pajamas Media answers this nonsense quite effectively:

Your apologia is almost as contemptible as Rev. Wright's comments. So the po' darkies are too (oppressed? weak? slow?) to rise above this kind of garbage? [SNIP]

Giving blacks like Rev. Wright a pass is just another form of bigotry.

That pass is equivalent to treating blacks like children. I, for one, have had enough of it.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

Did you ever notice that most of life's woes and problems--large or small--are initiated by, fueled by, or exacerbated by envy or jealousy?

Short Take on Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro's problem wasn't that she wasn't telling the truth about Obama. Heck, even he knows that his blackness is an added ingredient to his general appeal as a candidate--at least for the Democrat Party.

Unfortunately, too many of Obama's critics--and his acolytes--are unable to separate his qualities/short-comings as a candidate from his personal aspects. To them, his name, color, ethnicity and background cannot be separated from his policies. So when Ferraro stated an obvious truth, the hue (sorry) and cries of racism were to be expected--especially coming out of the mouth of a white female Clinton ally--especially one who seems too arrogant to take into account the politics of it all without taking things personally. And what she said in her own defense--that anytime he's criticized the race card is played--wasn't even true: his Iraq policies and general hard Leftism are criticized all the time without the shouts of racism being heard. So basically she lost her temper and made matters worse.

I hope the McCain camp is taking notes--for their own sake.

How "Blackness" Came To Be

Regarding my post “Is Obama Black or White? Yes,” reader Salt Lick has a few questions—the answers of which I think would be useful for all to see. For clarity’s sake, the lines from the original post are block-quoted, Salt Lick’s questions or comments are in bold and my answers/comments are in normal font. Let’s have at it, shall we?

Hello Baldi --

I've been reading and rereading your post for over a half-hour, trying to understand your central point. It seems to me that you are not defending Sinbad's attitude so much as asking his critics to consider the reasons underlying it. You are mostly annoyed that "some" people are saying Obama's race shouldn't matter because it's convenient for them, not because they really want to ignore his race (whatever that is). Am I right?

Yes. I do think that some whites feel slighted because Obama calls himself black--either because they "love" him so much and view the self-ID as exclusionary from them. Or it's another straw for the camel's back, as it were (more about this in the next post). I've seen some say that he's racist for calling himself 'black.' On the contrary, he's merely following tradition--not an obscure seldom-seen one, but one one that's in practice everyday in 2008 among black Americans without any second thought.

I'm still not sure, however, I understand some of your specific points:

Glenn Reynolds adds this point from one of his readers:

"Let me see if I've got this straight: a white man is not allowed to portray a half-white man (Barack Obama) on SNL, but a black man is?"

Glenn’s other reader must not have been paying attention to the racial conventions in this country; conventions which have existed since the country has existed.

But a reader could be quite familiar with those conventions and still ask the question, right? Regardless of history, the question can stand by itself.

On the contrary, a question like that cannot be separated from the history of how race is thought of by those who were upset—like Sinbad--that Obama was portrayed by a white man. They were upset because to them, Obama is not a white man, but a black one. (His partial whiteness makes no difference to them because almost all black Americans have some white ancestry.) To see why this is so, the history must be spelled out and considered.

As for question posed by Glenn’s reader, implicit in it is the erroneous assumption that Barack Obama—or others like him--would be considered white just as often as he would be considered black. The fact that he/she makes that assumption says to me that he/she is unfamiliar with how racial conventions have gone in this country for generations (as I said) or is ignoring it. The person can certainly ask the question, however, and I can critique it--which certainly doesn't hinder