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Audacity of Truth
Obama explains his comments about his white grandmother, makes matters worse (UPDATE 3: BO CAMPAIGN PLAYS THE “BLAME BUSH” GAME IN PASSPORT SCANDAL)
One of the lines from Obama’s “Lincoln-esque” race speech Tuesday that critics have seized on as one of his worst lines was the remark he made about his grandmother and alleged bigoted remarks she made about a black man who passed her on the street:
“I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] 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, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Those who weren’t salivating over his every word accused Obama of throwing his grandmother under the bus. When asked to clarify his comments, here’s what the O-man had to say:
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that’s pretty powerful stuff”
Tom Maguire notes a discrepancy:
“[S]omebody on the street that she doesn’t know”? Kidding? That special “somebody” was a black man in the original telling. So where are we – the “typical” white person reacts the wrong way when they see a black person on the street?
Steve Sailer, who has read and reviewed BO’s book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, provides some background on the incident BO was referring to. It’s a lengthy post, and you should read it in full, but Sailer posts a summary at the end (h/t: GP):
Well, no, according to Obama’s 1995 book, it is not at all true that she “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street.” Instead, she once confessed her fear of one aggressive black beggar who didn’t pass by her but instead confronted her, demanded money, and then gave her — an intelligent, level-headed woman who had worked her way up to a mid-level corporate management position — good reason to believe he would have violently mugged her if her bus hadn’t pulled up.
If this was some doofus politician like Bush or Biden who retold the story in a misleading fashion, you might view it as just their usual struggle with using the English language to get across what they really kind of, sort of mean. But Obama is so superb with words that it’s perfectly reasonable to hold him accountable for choosing to slander his own living grandmother for his political advantage.
I can’t add anything to that, but I do have one question to ask in response to this story: Can you imagine the outcry if Hillary Clinton or John McCain, or any other mainstream white candidate uttered the words “typical black person”?
Related: Nice speech. Too bad he didn’t deliver it years ago, from Pastor Wright’s pulpit.
Flashback: Bill Clinton meets Rev. Wright … in 1998.
Update 1 – 8:40 PM: What the heck?
Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for accessing passport records of Sen. Barack Obama “without a need to do so,” State Department officials confirmed to NBC News.
The three people who had access to Obama’s passport records were contract employees of the department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News has learned. The unauthorized activity concerning Obama’s passport information occurred in January.
“A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual” a department official told NBC News. “When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified.”
Enquiring minds want to know: why were they doing this? Political reasons, or just curiosity?
Update 2 – 9:32 PM: The State Dept. is saying it was just curiosity. Hmmm.
Update 3 – 10:38 PM: How’s this for shameless demagoguery?
“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes,” Burton said.
“This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach,” he said.
Got that? It’s the Bush administration’s fault, because in the past they’ve supposedly had “little regard” for security and privacy. Before accusing the Bush adminstration of doing this, why not wait for the facts? Because, like pLamegate, it’s better to throw the allegations out there from the get go to give the base some much-wanted red meat. Not only that, but the accusation will get people’s minds off of Rev. Wright.
Also, via Allah, I read that Jim Geraghty is speculating on whether or not the breach could be connected to Hillary, for reasons I was thinking about after I read about this happening. In light of the release of Hillary’s First Lady schedules, the Clinton campaign is being hit on charges that the schedules prove her claims of foreign policy experience have been vastly overstated, and Hillary and her supporters have been eager to show that Obama hasn’t visited overseas in any official capacity much at all during his time in the WH.
Liberal blogger Josh Marshall adds more fuel to the fire:
[... ] the breaches occurred Jan. 9th, Feb. 21st and March 14th.
That would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, the day of the Democratic debate in Texas and the day the Wright story really hit.
Eeeenteresting …
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His Grandmother should have kept her racist mouth shut and taken whatever medicine this so called black bum might give out. She is white and must pay for all the sins of whites from the past…………
Obama is a very interesting man. know’s what typical whites feel, throws his Gram under the bus…what’s next? I wonder if he would go ape nuts if some white dude said he knows what the typical black feels about all this stuff? What a country!
State Department eh? Sounds like Clinton-era appointees doing some digging for Hillary doesn’t it? State is lousy with liberal Democrats.
Anyone remember the 1993 release of 707 FBI files on Republican staffers to the Clinton White House? I don’t think we ever really got to the bottom of that one. Maybe we need a serious investigation of that one too.
Or we could just haul Sandy Burglar up to the hill and demand some answers from him. But that would require courage on the part of Republicans.
OMG Sev, You and I are thinking exactly the same.
I will give you money if this doesn’t hold some weight.
Also, a thought occurred to me, that I have been mulling over the last couple of days. I would not be surprised, if Hitlery and Co., isn’t going to somehow cast doubt about the citizenship of BO’s Dad. Hide and watch if they don’t bring up some “evidence” at the National Convention, about how BO’s Dad. Then there will be a landslide of votes by the super delegates toward Hitlary. – Lorica
It is astounding to see how unfairly and viciously some radio and TV commentators are reacting to Barack Obama’s speech on race. It is simply inexcusable to say, as they do, that Obama “threw his own [white] grandmother under the bus.”
Rather, contrary to what everyone expected, he didn’t throw ANYONE under the bus, neither his regrettably hate-filled pastor, nor his own partially prejudiced grandmother who herself admitted that she sometimes struggled with such feelings (as Obama makes clear in his book, “Dreams of My Father”). He didn’t throw racially resentful blue collar workers under the bus, nor did he throw angry unemployed black radicals, nor you or me under the bus.
Instead, he pointed out that we are all part of this wonderful but in some ways still flawed America , and that there are legitimate reasons for some of the hurtful black and white anger that divides us — anger which, nonetheless, we should all strive to overcome.
Never since Lincoln has a politician spoken to our nation with greater candor, dignity, and truthfulness. Obama stands tall above all the carping talk show hosts and Fox News commentators who — resentful at being confronted by a person so utterly sincere, honest and, quite simply, good — try in vain to pick him to pieces.
His speech will stand the test of time because it represents something new — not politics as usual, but something that lies at the root of all right-minded religion. I begin to wonder if America is worthy of this person of such uniqueness, stature, integrity, and amazing magnanimity.
Rev. Jim Boswell
Oh brother, I think we just ran plumb out of kool-aid after that huge draft.
Yes, yes!!
Let us all thank the mighty O for pointing out that there is racism in America! Thank goodness he told us otherwise, we might not have known.
I really like the “typical white person” comment.
Sorry Rev., but Obama has a grudge against this country. At first I wondered why he went out of his way to not wear an American flag pin, or put his hand over his heart at the pledge of allegiance. I wondered why his wife said things like “first time she’s been proud of her country” or “we’re just a mean country”.
Now it is becoming clearer and I for one, unlike the thousands of others, including the media, will not be snowed by one well written speech.
Indeed, because if one doesn’t agree or even, heaven forbid, dislike Obama they must be a closed minded, ignorant, person of low integrity, right?
I am sorry Reverend, but I will respectfully, and completely disagree with you. This man is just another Illinois politician that knows how to pander to the crowd. His words had nothing to do with unifying, and everything with covering himself. In this incident he has been caught lying with exactly what he knew about this pastor, and I am just unwilling to go thru another series of Clinton type scandals with these politicians on the left. Also, most polls clearly show that most on the left didn’t really like what he said. – Lorica
Obama isn’t worthy of America, not the other way around.
Geez louise, I mean, McCain isn’t a great candidate, but damn, both the Dems are orders of magnitude worse. I think even Kerry had more on the ball than Obama or Clinton, as scary as that is.
Sev, I was thinking the exact same thing. Scary, isn’t it?