comment from a wise-ass radio commnetator: what's with all the flags when he's too patriotic to where one on his lapel?  

At first I wanted to post to emphasize various comments from Sunday regarding race and gender.  Then I saw the Obama speech.  The dude gives good speech.  No doubt about it.  I was a little troubled at some of what ended up being applause lines; one when he blamed part of Americas race problem on talk radio, and another when the audience could not contain their enthusiasm at the prospect of universal health care as a cure all for racism.  Good grief.  Nothing generates applause like giving away free stuff.  Certainly there is no problem too big for big government, headed up by the ever-so-enlightened, of course. 

To sum up, yes, my pastor said those things.  He said it because his generation is justifiably angry, and, by the way, some white folks are angry too.  You see we are ALL victims of the man.  blah blah blah.  He started out insisting, or dare I say hoping?, race wasn't an issue and now that reality reminds him otherwise the best he can come up with is the old victim playbook?  Call it what you want, but it ain't change. 

One question comes to mind ...
how is yelling "hate whitey" in crowded black church really all that different from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater?   

Anyway about the race and gender II

I gotta work on my headlines.  Maybe someday I'll come up with one like this:

Speech is Free — But Only If Politically Correct   

Wherein Jules Criitendon analyzes fallout from various PC infractions and boils it down to this...

The PC lesson of the day: The truth hurts. That’s why it must be avoided at all costs.

I wish I would of said that.  I guess I sorta did minus the economy of verbiage.

Thomas Sowell says...
Any American, regardless of party or race, has to find it heartening that the country has reached the point where a black candidate for President of the United States sweeps so many primaries in states where the overwhelming majority of the population is white.

fair enough, sort of what I was getting at the other day, it's cool a black guy can do this but not so cool it has to be this particular black guy...

and ...
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.

and closes with this salvo...

We don't need a President of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama's carefully crafted election year image. 

OUCH, and this from a brother!  RTWT  Race and Politics  

John Dickerson Slate comments... The Democrats' Pain Threshold

Both Obama and Clinton have developed durable and loyal constituencies... Because the loyalties map along gender and racial lines, the potential for volatility increases, as supporters interpret an attack on the candidate as an attack on themselves.

and explains the corner they painted themselves into I mentioned Sunday thusly..

Even if the candidates don't take it personally, their supporters do. The question that now attends each new feint and jab is this: What is the pain threshold for the two constituencies? How much bickering and fighting can each withstand before hard feelings lock in and supporters decide that no matter how many calls for unity they may hear, they will stay home on Election Day if their guy or gal loses—or perhaps even support John McCain.


Shelby Steele Wall Street Journal  The Obama Bargain

Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. 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. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

Clearly, I am not the only one, or hardly the first, to think Obamas biggest trump card is white guilt eh?  And this from a black guy. 

And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.

eeeouch! Man, the brothers can get nasty when the truth starts getting hurled about...
Shall we start a pool on when the black left starts calling Sowell and Steele Uncle Toms?  I pick tomorrow, if it didn't already happen today....