Stu & Takashi:

Barack Obama is a "sellout" in Stu\'s sense if and only if Obama at some stage in his life truly held a much different set of beliefs than we\'re able to discern Candidate Obama espousing these past 15 months.  To be honest, I doubt that this is true of Obama, the man.  (Though I invite everybody to show me otherwise.)

But Stu\'s deeper point, which is that Candidate Obama enjoys a certain reputation right now -- take a look at how the Candidate is treated on MSNBC-TV\'s Countdown show, for example, and especially in the hands of the quite silly Rachel Maddow (see below) -- that the flesh-and-blood individual in whose name the campaign is being conducted does not deserve is perfectly sound, I believe. -- Just remember that judgments like this are based, ultimately, on the kind of sources we rely upon for comparative purposes: The Black Agenda Report or MSNBC\'s Countdown?

Although I don\'t quite understand Takaski\'s point about Jesus (in Takashi\'s closing paragraph), I certainly appreciate Takashi\'s reception of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright\'s comment on the U.S. nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Basically, the excerpts from the Rev. Wright\'s sermons that have been placed in wide circulation since March 13 illustrate the kind of issues that bona fide candidates for public office in the United States would raise, were there a functioning democracy in this country, and had its citizens live and breathed it their entire lives, rather than been kept sequestered in the clinically anti-septic theaters moderated by legions of politicos and reporters and other members of the caste of real sellouts.   

The fact that an elementary truth such as "America\'s chickens are coming home to roost" has been met with such reflexive, near-universal resistance by the heavily-defended American Mind -- including within the Obama campaign -- hence Candidate Obama\'s March 18 speech in Philadelphia -- bodes ill for the lot of us.  Tragically so.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Excerpted from Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC - TV, March 18, 2008

Keith Olbermann: …. I`m just wondering, as complicated as this whole story is, did Obama bringing his own grandmothers prejudices into this thing suddenly make the whole issue amazingly simple?

Rachel Maddow: Yes, Keith, it`s probably exactly what it is. I think what he did was say, you know, there`s 1 million different or 300 million different stories to tell about race in America but really, there`s one American story about this. And that is that when we become a more perfect union part of that is that we (inaudible) racist. I mean, it was non-patronizing speech. It was not a pondering speech. He did not oversimplify. He actually brought down his rhetorical tone a notch so that this would be something that brought light and not heat to a subject on which there is so much heat, in order to say, you know, listen, we`ve got a political task at hand, we`ve had a leadership task at hand and that is to lead America toward becoming less divided by race.  And we are all part of that. Whether you are black, white, or both or neither, we are all part of that. We are all part of America`s struggle to become a better place.  And that means getting past what we`ve been through in race, with racism, and that means not lying to each other about what we`ve experiences. Not lying about our grievance, not lying about what we`ve been through and what we`ve feared and what we`ve worried about. If we can be honest about it, we can transcend this and actually move forward and not get stuck in the same racial stalemate we`ve been in for generations now.
…………
What I think he was trying to do was, take the race issue, acknowledge that as long as he`s in the race, race itself will be a topic of discussion and he was trying to own it a little bit. And say, you know what, let`s talk about it in hopeful terms that are talking about America`s advantages, our history and our inheritance from the founding fathers in terms of what it offers us for getting past this as a nation and moving forward. Let`s be hopeful, let`s talk about what`s right with America. In that sense, I think he`s trying to kind of own the issue and put it behind them. I think that it`s interesting that, you know, tomorrow and the next day, he`s going to pivot away from race as much as he can.

Barack Obama is such a sell-out piece of crap.

As a Japanese, it was nice to hear Rev. Jeremiah Wright speeking against those who bombed my people.

The statement  you quoted said, "he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe".

I think he was identifying himself with oppressed instead of establishedment.

And mysteriously it seem hard to identify myself with oppressed rather than established even though we are bombed.

Jesus does not bomb nor oppress those who he died for, and Jesus died for me and Jesus died for them, this should be easy, but we are delusioned very much.

Takashi Ano

Kelvin:

Good to hear from you. -- That great quip from Tony Benn merits rewriting for most every flat-earther under the sun.

Be grateful that you live in the little hegemon.  Life in the Big Hegemon grows darker by the day.

Witness this performance by a group of American citizens -- among the more dismal to be found anywhere:

"Americans Divided Over Mission, Scope, Future in Iraq," The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS - TV, March 19, 2008.

If more than one of these persons has a real clue (i.e., maybe the woman identified as Roberta Berthold), I sure didn\'t pick-it-up. 

All terribly disappointing. -- And everybody\'s supposed to take umbrage with the eminently reasonable former pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago?

Not me, man.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Hello David,

This reminds me of ex-British MP Tony Benn\'s quip that like the Church of England, which can only boast a handful of christians amongst its number, the old British labour party could only boast a handful of socialists.

A tiny minority of christians just won\'t read the gospels as they should, that is, as a blue-print for elite neo-liberal imperialist interests.

After all, there are many examples of Jesus coming unto oil spigots and thus speakiong to the masses that these spigots are the rightful resource domain of Washington hegemony, and he who considers the culturally and materially impoverished interests as paramount should be marginalised and demonised by the Jerusalem Post.