Another side of Obama, June 2007
Watch this video of Obama’s speech at a meeting of black reverends last June commemorating the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Notice his effusive praise of Jeremiah Wright, in which he makes him the most important and respected influence in his life. Notice his seeming justification for the riots. And notice the broad, black Southern accent he intermittantly puts on—something we’ve never heard from him before. Also notice his continually angry tone, appealing to and feeding on that inexhaustible core of fury that resides in the breast of many American blacks. This is not the new, beyond-race kind of black politician we’ve seen. This is a very familiar kind of black politician, the black politician of black resentment.
A few weeks ago I asked how a nice guy like Barack could get along with a perpetually angry, thoroughly unpleasant woman like Michelle. The mystery is solved. The man speaking in this video is Michelle’s husband. And it doesn’t matter which of Obama’s varying personas is “real” and which is not. This man is a superb actor and the most sinister figure in American politics in my lifetime.
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Adela Gereth writes:
Here’s another video dated April 2007 with Obama doing his blackcent.
You write:
“A few weeks ago I asked how a nice guy like Barack could get along with a perpetually angry, thoroughly unpleasant woman like Michelle. The mystery is solved. The man speaking in this video is Michelle’s husband.”
Yes, and the Reverend Wright’s congregant.
It all came together for me when I realized his grievance-mongering wife and his hate-filled pastor were two sides of the same coin. He may not be as angry as they are, but angry black people are obviously his preferred close companions. Even worse, he obviously believes they are justified in their anger.
Carl Simpson, who lives in Illinois, writes:
VFR continues to be the best place to go for insightful commentary—congratulations. I remember about a year ago you seemed taken aback somewhat by a characterization I made about our junior senator from this state of Soviet Obamaland as being essentially “evil.” I see from your latest post that you now are starting to share the misgivings I’ve had about this character for quite some time now.
“A few weeks ago I asked how a nice guy like Barack could get along with a perpetually angry, thoroughly unpleasant woman like Michelle. The mystery is solved. The man speaking in this video is Michelle’s husband. And it doesn’t matter which of Obama’s varying personas is “real” and which is not. This man is a superb actor and the most sinister figure in American politics in my lifetime.”
In the Senate race of 2004, thousands upon thousands of white, suburban nominally Republican voters in this state—even ardent Evangelical pro-lifers—voted for this wicked charlatan over Alan Keyes. Yes, Keyes was a ridiculous candidate who made all sorts of idiotic mistakes, starting with his acceptance of the Illinois Republican Party’s circus-like nomination after the liberal Jack Ryan went down in flames. Even so, Keyes’ record and decades-long positions on numerous issues, especially abortion, was clearly that of a mainstream pro-life conservative. No matter, white Evangelical Christian pro-lifers voted in droves for a man who is so completely pro-abortion that he voted against outlawing the practice of the outright slaughter any unfortunate infant who happened to survive a late-term abortion procedure (one of the few votes he actually cast in the Illinois Senate).
Obama has repeatedly demonstrated a near-demonic ability to appear as an angel of reason and moderation while advancing policies that would meet with the approval of an unreconstructed Stalinist like Saul Alinsky. That’s why I find a VFR reader’s description of him as “Robert Mugabe with a Howdy-Doody smile” to be completely apropos. He’d be a perfect dear leader for Mandela’s little rainbow utopia-gulag down on the southern tip of Africa. Ann Coulter’s right—Hillary is the most “conservative” candidate of the three major contenders.
Karen writes from England:
Congratulations. At last you have seen through this cunning, deceptive black revolutionary. I hope the rest of white America does too. Sinister is a good description of him.
Now that his long standing adoration of his anti-white racist pastor is being revealed, does it not show how contemptuous he is of white America that he thought he could get away with this and still be the next President of the USA? The pastor in action makes some Muslim extremists look peaceful.
In my experience of blacks in Africa and elsewhere, the greatest and incurable racial resentment of whites comes from the educated ones. The simple ones are too amiable and happy go lucky to care until they are stirred up by the educated ones into action.
Paul K. writes:
Obama uses a rhetorical device in this speech I find confusing. He tells the story of a baby born during the L.A. riots that had a bullet in its arm, and then proceeds to run through a litany of America’s racial problems, adding the refrain, “We can take the bullet out.” (Transcript here.)
He uses the word “bullet” 28 times, yet what it is meant to symbolize is not clear because the bullet which struck Elvira Evers of Compton was fired by some anonymous black man. The story in the LA Times on May 8, 1992, includes this: “Evers said she wishes that she could move away from her neighborhood, where ‘the gangbangers are real bad,’ and that this is the last violence her baby daughter would suffer.”
So Obama wants to “take the bullet out.” But isn’t it important to note which people are putting the bullet in? If Obama can’t figure out from which direction the bullets are coming, how is going to solve our problems?
LA replies:
He’s a high class rhetorician—and a high class racial hustler.
Has anyone ever expected sense from a racial hustler?
Mark K. writes:
You wrote, “This man is a superb actor.”
The following confirms this:
“Judith Klinghoffer at PoliticalMavens.com went back and found a little passage from Barack Obama’s book, autobiography. On pages 94-95, he describes an effective tactic to deal with white people: ‘It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.’”
He knows his tactics and strategy! “Another one of those tricks I had learned.”
LA replies:
Wow, he calls being courteous and smiling and making no sudden moves, i.e., normal, non-threatening social behavior, “a trick he had learned.” That is truly strange.
Mark K. replies:
Since he considers “being courteous” and “smiling” as tricks, I don’t believe this man is at peace with himself. He is a divided personality—and this came out in his address. He pretends to transcend the issue of race; instead he mires himself deeper in it.
He also stated in his speech that “Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety.” That is frightening! This is the church that was up on its feet rejoicing at Wright’s rants.
I’m beginning to see something tragic in the man—as if he has never come to terms with who he should be and he has been latching on to one stereotype after another (as offered by the Wrights of this world) and trying to project a different self based on the circumstances. The problem is that in trying to project the one self he wants others to see at any particular moment, the other selves come out in spite of his self-control. I first started noticing his shrewdness and opportunism in the Democratic debates. He would sit a few feet back of Hillary Clinton and size her up, his eyes measuring her from more than just a political perspective. There are times that I felt he had evaluated her and come to the conclusion that this was a dull woman not in his league and he would make it past her as she plodded on and on.
This is an intelligent man who I feel has been trying on different selves and to use one of Jesus’ phrases, he just doesn’t know who he is enough to “die to the old self.” In some respects, he’s almost counting on the American population to define his real self by electing him and thus projecting him “transracially.” In this respect the election becomes a self-affirmation for him. This is what frightens me about this election—that it becomes a psychological definition of a race and a man.
Richard b. writes:
If the intent of a good drama is to play on emotions and raise passions, then Mr. BHO should be called “ALL drama Obama”. I have listened to many of his speeches and they’re starting to sound like a formula. Do we want a guilt inflicting lecture with a Liberal history lesson every time he performs a public function? Do we really want to listen to this drone for years to come? He’s using the divide and conquer strategy with simple American minds. It’s double talk. Just like Islamic weasel talk. His idea of “uniting” means getting us all to believe the same lies! Too, I wish people would wake-up to the fact that Allah is not the same as the Christian God and the Black Liberation Theology God is not the same as the Christian God, and when Obama finds Jesus, he’s speaking of Black Jesus. A Black Jesus who will liberate Blacks from White oppression. How gullible does he think we are?
LA writes to KPA:
To return again to your early insight into Obama, in March 2007, all you saw was Obama keeping his head down and not saying anything when Michelle said the thing about blacks being in danger of white violence, and that was enough to key you into what was going on with him.
I’m pretty stunned by this whole thing. It’s like something in one of those “Left Behind” novels based on the Book of Revelation, when a slick humanitarian dude gains global power.
KPA replies:
I think it might be my visual arts background, and I’ve studied film-making where sequence of events if very important.
Obama had a jovial, upbeat demeanor throughout the interview, and was even teasing his wife at times.
When she said those words, he, in my eyes, literally deflated. It was so incongruous to his previous behavior, I noticed it as something significant. It was a turning point.
I personally think Obama wants to be a good person—he loves his family, his children, even his pastor. I think that is why we bought into him for so long. But he’s got a hold of evil (or evil has got a hold of him). I can see no way out for him.
LA replies:
Could you expand on what you mean by this?
KPA replies:
He could have avoided the whole Jeremiah Wright influence to get to his identity. I think there are blacks who have done that. I think his association with his church, joining it in the first place, was a political move. I would think that any church functions to bring us closer to God, not to raise our opportunities. But I think that is why he entered that church.
So, his purpose, underneath it all is to increase the power of the black community. But in order to do that, he must somehow squash the white community, on whose back he has to ride to get to his objectives.
So, his whole association with Christianity is to destroy, not to create. To harm, not to do right. Even if he does squash the whites, he would also destroy the blacks, since the American society is built and maintained by whites.
Maybe he thinks he has no other option, since he does love his black community. He feels responsible to bring them up.
I think that is why, in a moment of absolute truth, he reacted in such a dejected and impotent way when the contradiction hit him.
Who is the person who will shoot him going to the gas station, as his wife so violently expressed in the 60 minutes interview? It has to be a black man. He had nothing to say to that since any more words would have brought this truth out.
Somehow, he has lived with these contradictions. His strength of character has allowed it. But, layers keep peeling off at various moments.
I think this is dramatic and tragic.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 19, 2008 12:34 AM | Send