Deeper and Deeper

 

By JAMES TARANTO
March 28, 2008

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Barack Obama said last week about his "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright. But now, CNN reports, Obama is changing his tune. Well, sort of:

In an interview scheduled to air Friday on ABC's "The View"--excerpts of which aired on CNN on Thursday night--Obama talks about Wright's reaction to the controversy.

"Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were [sic] inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church," the senator said.

Does this mean he would have left? Or does it mean he would have stayed but felt uncomfortable? And when did Wright apologize? Blogger Tom Maguire undertakes an extensive investigation, and the answer appears to be: Never. In fact, Obama came close to apologizing to Wright. CNN again:

Obama also said on the ABC talk show that he has spoken with Wright since the uproar over the pastor's comments.

"I think he's saddened by what's happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way and people haven't seen the broader aspect of him," Obama said.

And if Obama wouldn't now feel "comfortable" belonging to Wright's church, how does he feel about Wright's successor, Otis Moss? Fox News reports that in his Easter Sunday sermon, Moss delivered quite a spirited defense of Wright:

"No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching," Moss said.

"The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?" he continued.

The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point.

"If I was Ice Cube I'd say it a little differently--'You picked the wrong folk to mess with,' " Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled "How to Handle a Public Lynching."

The ABC News report on Obama's "View" appearance quotes the senator as calling Wright a "brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp." Quips blogress Jennifer Rubin: "So brilliant, apparently, that he has uncovered the plot by white America to kill African Americans."

Meanwhile, the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal reports on a seminar at Cornell University, where the Rev. Kenneth Clarke, who heads an interfaith campus organization, offered a defense of Wright:

Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work, defended sermons by Wright that caused the controversy leading to Obama's speech.

Clarke challenged the audience to go beyond the sound bites and listen to Wright's entire sermon from Sept. 16, 2001 where he criticizes America. Clarke compared Wright's criticism of America to commentary found in speeches by Fredrick Douglas [sic] and Martin Luther King Jr.

The critiques are not unpatriotic, Clarke said.

The statements "reflect a different style of patriotism to which the larger society is often not accustomed," he said. "It is a willingness to criticize the nation and its practices to help the nation, as Dr. King once said, 'to be true to what it has put on paper' in relation to the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution."

A charitable way of describing this is that it requires an Ivy League level of intellectual sophistication to rationalize anti-Americanism as "a different style of patriotism," as if the choice between "God bless America" and "God damn America" were the equivalent of wearing a flag pin or not.

To those of us who are not so sophisticated--or who have a modicum of common sense in addition to a facile intellect--Clarke's defense of Wright sounds either crazy or disingenuous.

ABC News quotes Obama:

"Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don't normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other."

And there's no question that Obama has promoted understanding between left-wing intellectuals and purveyors of resentment in the black community. That's not so hard, though. These groups have a natural affinity owing to their adversarial attitude toward America--sorry, "different style of patriotism." They are not, however, numerous enough to elect a president.

Explaining the Defections

Bart Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch responds to our item yesterday on why supporters of Hillary Clinton are considerably more likely to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama than Obama supporters are to defect if Mrs. Clinton gets the nod:

As Yale's Ebonya Washington found out in a study a couple of years ago, Democrats are considerably more likely to bolt their party to avoid voting for a black candidate than Republicans are. As Washington Post columnist Richard Morin summarized her findings in 2006, "White Republicans nationally are 25 percentage points more likely on average to vote for the Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP hopeful is black. . . . White Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black."

Democrats who harbor racial animus obviously have less reason to bolt the party if Clinton wins the nomination. That explanation would seem best suited to pass the Occam's Razor test. Don't sit on a hot stove waiting for the Democratic cheering section to consider that possibility, though.

While Hinkle's conclusion is certainly tempting, Morin's column, published in April 2006, illustrates the problem with drawing conclusions based on Washington's study (which is available here). Morin begins as follows:

Bad news for Michael S. Steele, the leading Maryland Republican candidate for Senate in November: The scuttling noise he hears on Election Day could be the sound of tens of thousands of white Republicans crossing over to vote for the Democrat.

Steele in fact got the nomination, but Morin's prediction was wrong. According to exit polls, only 6% of Republicans voted for his opponent, Ben Cardin. Steele did twice as well among Democrats as Cardin did among Republicans, getting 12% of their vote. Cardin won nonetheless, because Maryland is a heavily Democratic state and he outpolled Steele among independents.

Contrast this with another Senate campaign with a black Republican nominee--in Illinois in 2004. Exit polls there show that 40% of Republicans deserted their party to vote for Alan Keyes's Democratic opponent, a young up-and-comer called Barack Obama. Obama also outpolled Keyes among Democrats, 94% to 5%.

Did Republicans abandon Keyes because he was black, or because he was not a serious candidate? What would we do without rhetorical questions?

A Pew Research Center poll does find some evidence of retrograde racial views among the Democratic electorate:

White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating.

To be specific, 28% of white Democrats with an unfavorable view of Obama disapprove of interracial dating, as do 8% of those with a favorable view of him. On the question of whether "equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far," the figures are 45% and 19% respectively, though in our view the question is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. Also, we can't for the life of us find Obama's favorable/unfavorable numbers among white Democrats in the Pew report, so there's no way of knowing how these pairs of figures compare.

Also, unlike the Gallup poll we noted yesterday, Pew finds no significant difference between Obama's supporters and Mrs. Clinton's as to their stated propensity to defect and support McCain.

Gallup has some follow-up numbers, which show that among Clinton supporters, Democrat-leaning independents and conservative Democrats are the most likely to defect to McCain if Obama is the nominee, while blacks and liberal Democrats are the least likely to defect. But the same groups are also at the top and bottom of the list of Obama supporters who are most likely to defect if Mrs. Clinton is the nominee. So this would seem to tell us something about which Democrats are most loyal generally, rather than about supporters of one candidate or the other.

Don't Know Much Geography

The Web site of KATU-TV in Portland, Ore., features an Associated Press story headlined "Portland-Area Marine Dies in Africa":

Lance Cpl. Dustin L. Canham has died in what the Department of Defense called a "non-hostile incident" in Djibouti, a country in eastern Africa.

But look at the graphic the station chose to illustrate the story;

Apparently the guys at KATU think Africa is in Iraq.

The 'Traditional Muslim Behavior' Defense

From the Arab News:

Shoura Council Chairman Dr. Saleh Bin-Humaid has urged US authorities to review the case of Homaidan Al-Turki, a 37-year-old Saudi student who was found guilty in a Colorado state court of 12 counts of sexually assaulting his Indonesian maid. . . .

Al-Turki, a former Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, maintains that he did not sexually assault the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed due to the nature of the alleged crime, and has accused US officials of persecuting him for "traditional Muslim behavior." . . .

Al-Turki, who had been a graduate student in Colorado for nine years, was sentenced in August 2006 to 20 years for the rape charges and eight years for theft of the maid's wages.

Memo to our friends the Saudis: If you're trying to improve the image of Islam in the West, invoking "traditional Muslim behavior" to defend a rapist is probably not a good idea.

We Don't Believe This

"Just because something has appeared in a newspaper does not mean that is entirely accurate."--Washington Post, March 27

Not to Mention Her Like-a-Billy Problem

"Clinton Struggling With Her Likability Problem"--headline, CQ Politics, March 27

They Had Overstayed Their Welcome

"Clinton and Family Leave"--headline, Associated Press, March 28

U.S. Out of North America!

"Obama, Clinton respond to Bush's Speech on the War in Ohio"--headline, Time.com, March 27

Take That, Tom Friedman!

"I think that those people [global warming skeptics] are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat."--Al Gore, in an interview with "60 Minutes" to air March 30

We Blame Global Warming

"Thick Ice Hinders Controversial Seal Hunt"--headline, Reuters, March 28

The Competition Is Really Hurting

• "Tribune Reports $78 Million Loss"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, March 22
 
• "Sun-Times Media Group Warned Its Shares May Be Delisted"--headline, Chicago Tribune, March 27
 

'Mom, Don't You Know Who I Am?'

"U.S. Biathletes Crave Recognition at Home"--headline, Reuters, March 28

It's Almost Big Enough to Be a BUS
"Gunmen Hold 55 Children Abducted in CAR: U.N."--headline, Reuters, March 28

Breaking News From 1986

"Russia to US: Scrap Missile Defense"--headline, Associated Press, March 27

News You Can Use

"It's Fun to Imagine a Housing Turnaround"--headline, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, March 27

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Scalia Criticizes News Media"--headline, Associated Press, March 27
 
• "Clinton Tells Democrats: Don't Vote for McCain"--headline, CNN.com, March 27
 
• "Storm Brewing Over Southern Manitoba"--headline, CBC.ca, March 28
 

Cold, Undead Hands

BG News, student newspaper at Ohio's Bowling Green State University, reports on an assault against the Second Amendment:

The University might hamper the second round of BG Undead's game play after the announcement was made last week to place an immediate ban on the use of Nerf guns on campus.

The game, a version of Humans versus Zombies, is still going to be played but it's going to be more difficult for the humans to survive, said senior Atonn Smeltzer, the web administrator for the group.

Humans versus Zombies is a game played between two teams, the humans and the zombies.

The goal of the humans is to survive the zombie attack by not being "bitten" and turned into a zombie. The human's main form of defense used to come in the form of Nerf guns, but is now being downgraded to balled up socks and marshmallows.

The zombies win the game by turning all of the humans after placing both hands on a human's shoulders.

Don't they know? Nerf guns don't kill humans, zombies kill humans!