On Tuesday in Philadelphia, Barack Obama delivered the most articulate and profound speech on race in America since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, "I have a dream," in 1963.
It's too early to tell whether the speech will defuse the political firestorm that gave rise to it – the incendiary, anti-American remarks made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's friend and spiritual adviser. No doubt Wright's comments will continue to be amplified and distorted by talk radio demagogues, by commentators and politicians, black and white, who have built entire careers exploiting and stoking the fires of racial division.
But as the weeks have passed, Obama eventually renounced Jeremiah Wright and quit Trinity church, two major touchstones in the speech. But take a look how the Sacramento Bee praised the speech right after it was given.
Notice the Bee tried to run interference for Obama and Wright by saying any discussion about Wright after the speech is off-limits. That's a common technique by lefties on all controversial issues that work against Dem candidates, by the way.
Obama condemned Wright's words in unequivocal terms, calling them "not only wrong but divisive" and "racially charged." But he refused to abandon Wright, the man who he said "helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor."
Then, in a line which will be quoted endlessly in coming weeks, Obama said of his pastor, "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 ... but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
One day after the speech was given, and the Bee had already concluded this is some kind of defining speech. You gotta love the over-the-top emotionalism of the Obama supporters, right? But the editorial gets worse. Warning - do not read the next paragraph unless your barf bag is nearby. Ready to proceed?
This was not a campaign speech; it was Barack Obama speaking to the ages.Don't say I didn't warn you.
If Obama was speaking to the ages, maybe he should have started speaking to himself first. Obama eventually abandoned Jeremiah Wright on April 29, six weeks after the Philadelphia speech.
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Not mentioned in the Bee editorial is Obama's comment about Trinity church:
Why not join another church? ... I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.Barack Obama ditched Trinity Church May 31, ten weeks after laying out the reasons he is committed to it.
With the passage of just a few weeks, it's obvious the Bee was wrong. Obama's race speech doesn't belong in the same category as Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech. Today it looks more like an ineffective attempt by a one-term Senator with a meager record to establish himself as a transcendent figure.
