After reading/listening to this speech you can't help feeling like this man genuinely cares about more than his own ass. I kept looking for the half step of modern politics, and i didn't see it.

That gives me hope.

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This is what got me:

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

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Sorry, but that he spent twenty years sitting in the pews week in and week out (and taking your kids too, no less) listening to inflammatory dreck and oddball conspiracy theories speaks more strongly to me than any post-hoc speech could. He did manage to get his jibes in at his grandmother and Geraldine Ferraro in the space of a few breaths though so I suppose I'm impressed.

Seriously though, if I walk into a church and the priest starts going on about the are to blame for this or that, man, I am so out of there. That Senator Obama steeped himself and his family in this sort of thing for 20 years belies, at the minimum, the sorts of choices he will make about those who he would surround himself with as president. No thanks.

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By that criteria you would have to disqualify at least half of the
population of the country. Lots of people goto church every Sunday, not
always because they believe the dreck. Their friends are there, it's part
their life in the community, etc.

Cf. L. Sprague deCamp's definition of religion versus cult (as told
by RAH in _Expanded Universe_).

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I had written a very different comment last night while I was getting ready for bed. This morning, it finally hit me what bothered me about this, so today I have a totally different response.

Your response is the most disingenuous response I could imagine. Who among us doesn't have a single friend, family member, or person in their life in some close capacity with uncomfortable politics? Raise your hand if you don't have a single person in your life with some viewpoints that raise your hackles. Look up. If your hand is up, congratulations, you're either a liar or a shut-in (or you bear the dubious distinction of having a political bent so skewed that nothing is crazy enough to make you uncomfortable).

Anecdotally speaking, for years I had a friend with whom I was very close... but he was a conspiracy nut. In all other respects he was a great guy... but EVERY wrong in the world was created or proliferated by some secret society or another. Everything was a conspiracy.

We still had family dinners together or hung out on the boat... and he genuinely seemed to be TRYING to keep his more insane views to himself, which was no doubt hard for him because, you see, to him, they WEREN'T insane. And, more than once, on the ride home my then-wife and I would discuss with the young children in the backseat why Uncle Jeremy (why are so many Jeremy's insane?) was misguided in whatever view he let slip that day.

I don't judge people by soundbites shown on the news anymore than I judge people by their lifestyle or religious preference. None of these things tell the whole story. I do just people by their ability to stand up, take ownership of the problem, and deal with it in a sincere and intelligent manner.

Barack did that.

So if Barack is to be condemned for sitting through what amounts to a handful of sermons that contain this sort of rhetoric (and again, I think that it likely was NOT the most common theme, judging by how few snippets can be found out of 25 years of sermons), what associations can we judge you by? Which of your friends can we evaluate YOUR character by?

And which candidate are you voting for? The one who remains married to a philanderer and perjurer? We all have associations through which we can be painted with an ugly brush. Using one such association to try to discredit a candidate is beneath you.

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Come on, you think Reverend Wright just randomly spilled out a few crazy statements once every few years and other than that, everything was strictly by the book? I don't think so. Heck - people know what was said because they sold DVDs of him saying just these things? What did they do, go back and say "let's only publish the really wacky sermons on DVD"? It is clear this guy's rhetoric was regularly racially motivated and inflammatory.

And this just wasn't some random friend or acquaintance. This was a man who had baptized his children, was his pastor for 15+ years, and someone whom he has listed as a spiritual mentor and advisor. If this was just some minister who he had perhaps gone to see speak a few times, I don't think that's any big deal. But Reverend Jeremiah Wright had a special position in the life of Barack Obama for an extended period of time. No amount of post-hoc speechifying is going to surmount that.

And if you can dig up any friends that go around in front of large congregations and talk about how some racial group are to blame for this or that and tell them to damn America, please let me know so I can disavow any friendship we might have had.

As for who I'm voting for, I don't actually know yet. For what it's worth though, I don't think US Senators are really cut out for presidency (they are too often deliberators rather than executives) so imagine where that leaves me.

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I hadn't read it until just now. I haven't watched the video at all. I am remarkably immune to media.

But having read it, I can't unread it. And it will take a lot to convince me that this man shouldn't be our next president.

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