Obama: Hate Preacher Just Like My Grandma

DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Barack Obama has given what supporters regard as a landmark speech on race in the United States. Unlike other such orations in American history, this one did not arise because of widespread voter intimidation in the South, the banning of blacks from universities or the lynching of agents for racial change in the backblocks of Mississippi. No, the sole purpose of the address was to neutralise the fallout of the Illinois senator's 20 year relationship with racist conspiracy theorist, Jeremiah Wright. Of the "preacher" - a man who believes the US government created AIDS - Obama refused to make a judgement, a la Martin Luther King Jr, on the content of his character. He is black, of a certain age and therefore a victim: "I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother." Nice - his grandmother is still alive. And she isn't a public demagogue.

How confused liberal thinking has become on Obama's skin colour is shown by the Sydney Morning Herald's article on the speech. Ignore for now that newspaper's trivialisation of Wright the poisonous hate-monger as merely "fiery." Second paragraph: "The Democratic Illinois senator, seeking to be the first African-American president..." Third paragraph: "Battling to lance a controversy that threatens to frame his candidacy in racial terms..." One lances a festering boil rather than a controversy but, in any case, the SMH is itself guilty of racialising Obama's significance. And that points to the broader problem. Obama has been attractive to a lot of white voters but exculpating Jeremiah Wright as a man bitterly acting black not only calls into question his judgement but may diminish his general appeal. Meanwhile, perhaps pursuant to the Perfect Storm, look whose rates are rising.