There is nothing the British press loves more than building some one up and then knocking them down again.
The Sunday Times was at it today.
First some elementary genetics. It is easy to assume that if black male marries a white female that the off spring will be light brown. In fact, it is possible for a child to be either black or white. Indeed, there may be one of each. Despite his white mother, Barack Obama looks like an African American. He chose to attend what the Sunday Times calls
...an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable.So what?
Obama might not have felt comfortable in a predominantly white church. Had he attended such a church he would probably now be being criticised for denying his black heritage. A no win situation.
Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk-show foghorn, expressed the popular view more succinctly: “No country wants a president who is a member of a church with this kind of radicalism as its mainstream.As Obama has made abundantly clear, his presence in the church and his friendship with the Reverend Wright does not mean he espouses Wright’s views. Most young men are radical. In the UK, Dennis Healy, one of our most moderate Chancellor of the Exchequers, and one of the best Prime Ministers we never had, was in his youth a member of the Communist Party. The Pope, no less, was a member of the Hitler Youth. Obama is no supporter of the Reverend Wright. As a young, black American he attented a black nationalist church.
So what?
The Sunday Times article starts with some breathtakingly naive knocking copy.
Long before Barack Obama launched his campaign for the White House, when he was considering a run for the US Senate in 2003, he paid an intriguing visit to a former Chicago sewers inspector who had risen to become one of the most influential African-American politicians in Illinois.
“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”
Note the careful use of words like “sewer” and “murky”. Just a little bit of subliminal innuendo. What is the Sunday Times really saying? It is saying that five years ago Barack Obama was an ambitious young man.
According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
Well, there’s a surprise.
13 comments:
Mind your own business. If we had such long transatlantic noses and tried to influence your elections, you'd be screaming bloody murder. The arrogance. The hubris. The presumptuousness. I can hear your crybabying now.
The anti-American propaganda and misinformation the governement funded BBC spreads throughout the world in 43 languages, especially to the ME, affects us. So, I guess by your reasoning, we have a right to say in YOUR elections. Right?
Get a life and mind your own business. Your arrogance is breathtaking. The European obsession with America is pathological.
To Anonymous,
The USA did not mind its own business across the world. Any country which does not follow the American views and interests is evil and has to be disciplined either by economical sanctions or invasion.
So, I am afraid, YOU mind YOUR own business first then we will mind ours!!! but for now I agree with Dr Crippen, Obama should win if the American people have any sense of decency.
To the first Anonymous,
In what way, precisely, are European people influencing your elections? We have no vote in your country, cannot stand for the Senate or any political post, and are wholeheartedly divorced from your political process. I think you mistake political analysis (something most of the big network prime-time shows do) for propaganda. There is no crime in a citizen of a foreign state (be that the UK, France, Germany, or anywhere else you please) expressing a preference for a political party in your country.
If anyone's arrogance is "breathtaking", it is yours, for attempting to discredit someone's view because they are a citizen of a foreign state, a state that has been up the arse of your country for 20 years.
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Crippen. The USA and the UK alike both need a refreshment of the political system, one where corporate lobbying and GOBSAT (Good Old Boys Sat Around a Table) is not tolerated.
To first anon: I was "screaming bloody murder" while the USA was supporting the IRA terrorists. Were you?
Back to Barack.... I'm not sure if having Emil Jones as a political backer is going to hurt Obama. Jones is not well known outside of Chicago and even inside Chicago I don't think he is seen as any more corrupt than the average politician. The overall impression of Obama himself is still that he is sincere and honest.
Annonymous @ 03:08 hrs,
Oooh who rattled your cage!
The argument Dr Crippen has given about WHY he is interested in Barack Obama and the US elections is surely enough. The US President is essentially the leader of the democratic world, of at least the nearest thing to such a leader. The President commands the military of the world's only current Superpower, and he has stewardship of the world's largest economy.
Given all of this, what happens in the US affects everywhere else - and not just politically. One has only to look at the knock-on effects world-wide of what happens in the US financial market. So people outside the US are legitimately interested in who is likely to be the next President. I also suspect many of those particularly following US political events have lived and worked in the US at some points, like me, and Dr C.
Americans take little interest in the domestic politics of, say, European countries, not out of manners, but because what goes on there doesn't matter to them. Crucial distinction.
The Guardian tried to influence the 2004 election with the Clark County project in Ohio.
I think it helped substantially to tilt Ohio to Bush that year.
"Audacity of Hope" came from one of Wright's sermons. So it's fair to say he has some influence over Obama. It may well be true that Obama's membership in this church and following the pastor was a "youthful indiscretion".
When Obama grows up he might become a good Presidential candidate.
The 2004 Guardian project was, in retrospect, a dumb move because of the way it was framed by the US media. If people in the US want to find out what Europeans think (and as I've said above, most don't and don't care), that's what the Web is for.
Re. Barack O, he is young and inexperienced, but you have to ask what the alternatives are.
Whatever you think about McCain's or Hilary's programs, both of them surely look like another circuit round one or another well-tried track - though from a (non-American European) viewpoint it is evident either would be an improvement on the current administration. Though McCain has been making some worrying (to liberal European eyes) gestures towards the religious right lately.
Back to Barack O, learning from your mistakes would seem to be a positive quality. The problem with many of our recent leaders (on both sides of the pond) is that their mistakes, even when most apparent, only reinforced their bedrock view that they were RIGHT and everyone else was WRONG. Personally I've had enough of those kind of politicians.
You have plenty to say about the religious right, but not much about the religious left. There is such a thing, after all. Wright is a perfect example.
Mitt Romney had more than ample experience and qualifications for President, yet his religion was a problem to many. More so to those across the Atlantic.
And yet Obama gets a pass because you go gaga over a speech. Doesn't take much, does it.
And no, the Guardian project was not a failure because of the way it was portrayed in the American media, it failed because it was an idiotic idea. Condescending supercilious foreigners sending unsolicited E-mail (SPAM) trying to influence an American election. The spam alone was a guarantee it would fail. Didn't matter how it made ME feel, it made the affected Ohioans vote Republican. Mostly the Guardian project did not get ANY attention in the US media outside of Ohio.
Remember most Americans came here to get away from the Old World, there's a reason they don't pay attention to it. They walked away, and for good reason.
It would be fine to say Obama learned from his mistakes, if you can show me any examples where he has actually done that.
The fact remains. If Obama were a white candidate, and he attended a church where the pastor said that sort of thing about blacks, he'd be finished in a microsecond.
Oh, and still waiting for some proof that the USA was supporting the IRA terrorists. It's hard to take US concern for the USA seriously when I read drivel like that.
Dr. Crippen, you lived in Chicago. You of all people should recognize that words like “sewer” and “murky” are perfect descriptions of Illinois politics.
it failed because it was an idiotic idea.
I agree. I'm a Guardian reader; I was so horrified by the scheme, I thought of signing up and using the access that would give me to apologise to the people in Clark County.
I do though also agree with phdscientist: of course we are interested in what happens in the US.
Of course foreign nationals have every right to be interested in the internal politics of the USA or China or Botswana or Brazil.
But when one reads "Obama should win if the American people have any sense of decency", it's pretty obvious that ignorance exists on both sides of the pond.
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