Is Obama's pastor fair game?

[thatcrazycajun]

This column by Charles Krauthammer alleges that the mainstream media is "in the tank" for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Dr. K. complains that it has apparently become illegitimate to question Obama as to why he remained for two decades in the congregation of a pastor who charges the white establishment with creating AIDS/HIV to decimate the Afro-American community and says Kate Smith's old hymn should be revised to "God Damn America."

Is it in fact a fair question to a man who seeks to become our head of state, and who claims to "transcend" race? In a country still so torn by race issues 40 years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead by an angry white man, where Presidential policy can have a great effect on race relations, should we expect him to have tossed Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the proverbial bus years ago? Or is this just conservatives looking for any club they can find to bash a Democrat—and in particular, one who looks more and more like he could actually win by the day?

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Actually, what Krauthammer seems to be saying is that the media has no right to let it go after it has spent several weeks on the story, the candidate has addressed it, the voters have digested it, and folks have moved on. I can understand his frustration, given that this looked like it could really sink Obama's candidacy.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm... we're not talking about whether Obama throws Rev. Wright under the bus. We're talking about Krauthammer, a man with an agenda and no subtlety whatsoever. He likes literally psychoanalyzing people in his columns (not that they've ever had an office visit with him) and calling them various shades of clinically insane if they disagree with him. Like many other pundits of The Village, his own track record is pretty much Wrong On Everything. What I think he wants is to bring down Obama, because I think he fears that Obama may be able to emotionally connect with voters in a way that his style of pundit can't manipulate so easily.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think Obama answered that question rather well. Maybe the original columnist didn't bother going and actually listening to the gentleman from Illinois... one doesn't just chuck an old friend under the bus just because one is now running for president. I'm sure many of us have friends we don't see entirely eye-to-eye with on things... only Obama is choosing to handle the issue like a civilized, mature human being rather than that petulant three-year-old that's currently running the joint by stompy-foot-dance.

Oh, and for the record, King was not shot by James Earl Ray. Ray was incapable of making that shot; he was darn near drummed out of the Marines for being incapable of hitting the broad side of a barn from inside with the doors closed. Frank Regano (former Mafia lawyer) went on PBS about 20 years ago and admitted that Jack, Martin, and Bobby were all mob hits, and for the same reason: They were all messing in mob business.

And, yeah, the folks that call themselves the right are desperately looking for anything to use as a club to beat this uppity [CENSORED] with, since they're fresh out of legitimate ammo.... Meanwhile I'm hoping Obama is readying the 16-inch guns... I'd like to have this over with sooner rather than later.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Gee. What was Krauthammer's reaction to the revelation that the Bush Administration and GWB specifically lied repeatedly to permit them to declare a war that only they profited from? Essentially, and I paraphrase, "so what?"

This is a man whose brain -- such as it is -- is entirely turned toward benefiting his buddies, and whose opinions are both predictable and dismissable. Don't waste your time reading him, except in the "know thy enemy" sense.