The big news of the day is Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia discussing race. In it’s lead up, it was compared to Kennedy’s speech on catholicism and Romney’s speech on mormonism. Though it was billed as a speech discussing race - it’s clear from those comparisons and the discussions regarding Obama’s pastor which prompted it, that’s it’s in many ways more about African American faith than about race. Just as in the case of Kennedy and Romney, people are understandably interested in how the candidate’s faith and church shape their character. Those are very fair questions and I’m glad Obama is addressing them.

There’s is an amazing double-standard going on here btw - as it comes to McCain’s religious advisors. McCain’s “pastors” have said things much more hateful and despicable but they are white and christian and the white christians know enough other white christains to realize those statements are aberrations among the faith.
White christians in America don’t have a lot of experience with fiery African American preachers to realize that the same five Pastor Wright clips - played with more frequency and zeal by the networks and pundits than the Howard Dean scream - don’t represent every Sunday churchgoing experience.

Those clips of Obama’s pastor aren’t news bites or sound clips, they’re ammo aimed as a candidate who - until now - had been bulletproof.

On the other side of this argument - which justifies the media coverage of this story - is that Obama’s character stands in sharp contrast to that of his pastor. And the pastor’s statements don’t meet the high standards Obama has set.

The reasoning why this story is such a big one, btw, I don’t ascribe to malice. It’s a loooong five weeks until Pennsylvania. For some context, Super Tuesday was only six weeks ago. The news networks are starved for content and until the Clinton tax returns or some other big event hits, this will be the big story.

I’m note sure if something like this will affect Obama in the polls one way or the other.

The one plus side I can see in this for Obama, is that everyone is discussing his christian pastor - though the media clearly prefer the clips of Wright in African dress just to reinforce how “alien” that faith is.

– Steve

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.