Is Grandma Next Under The Bus?

Well, we've finally learned what upsets the usually unflappable Barack Obama - "But at a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me."

The trigger for this was Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks at the National Press Club, where he offered his opinion that Obama's increasing attempts to distance himself from the Rev.' s loony ideas was 'just what politicians have to do', i.e., an insincere ploy to lure the white simpletons into supporting him. Porcupine cannot help but observe that the decades of repeated disrespect to the Government, Nation, Italians, Caucasians, President, Jews, Etc. were not enough to push Obama over the edge, but disrespect to him was enough to repudiate the Rev.

Porcupine has long thought that Wright's remarks are not that unusual in 'liberation theology' circles, and that Obama's career as a community organizer may well have deafened him to how offensive these remarks are outside that charmed circle. There are facts, and there is Truth (with an aggressive capial 'T'). It may not be a fact that the Government developed AIDS as a means of decimating the black community, but it is a Truth that they would do something that vile. Hyperbole is routine in Community Activist cirlces, and after a while such rhetoric ceases to shock or offend. Obama is probably telling a sort of Truth when he says that he didn't hear Rev. Wright say such things while he sat in the pew at church - it may be a fact that he said such things, but the Truth is that is faded to buzz, religious Muzak, after a decade or so.

As recently as March 18, Obama spoke of Rev. Wright in these terms (full text of his speech HERE) - "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, 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". The politician in him managed a slam at Geraldine Ferraro as well.

If Barack Obama would be the President of the United States, he might have to disavow the segment of the black community which harbors attitudes just as racist as the attitudes he ascribes to his grandmother. The underside of Obama's bus could become a crowded place.