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Friday, May 02, 2008
Charles Krauthammer :: Townhall.com Columnist
Obama's Changing Moral Equivalence
by Charles Krauthammer
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"I can no more disown him (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother."

-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18

WASHINGTON -- Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews.

Apparently there's been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative. Poor Geraldine Ferraro, thrice lashed by Obama in Philadelphia as the white equivalent of Wright's raving racism, is now off the hook.

These equivalences having been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were, Obama has now decided that the man he simply could not banish because he had become part of Obama himself is, mirabile dictu, surgically excised.

At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright's latest comments -- Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.

What were Obama's three citations? Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming 9/11 on American "terrorism."

But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context. Continued...
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About The Author

Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.

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Reply # 1
Date: Sep 30, 2008 - 3:28 PM EST
Fallacy of Guilt by Association
I imagine that no one will read what I have to say at this point, but I can't help pointing out Mr. Krauthammers' misinterpretation of the following part of Obama's argument: "In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed they were ever surprised by Wright's remarks: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning." I've gone back to that speech and cannot find a single implication by Obama that white people should be ashamed of their surprise at Wright's comments. On the contrary, Obama's reference to "Sunday morning segregation" refers to how out of touch both black and white Americans are with one another when it comes to racism. In other words, come Sunday morning, depending on the church you're attending, you're going to hear racism talked about with two entirely different groups fingered for the blame. That's the dichotomy in our racial debates; blacks and whites talk about, rather than to, one another about racism and we use the same backward, fallacious reasoning to do so. Those are the problems that Obama's comment about "Sunday morning segregation" are really pointing to.

But perhaps what's most disappointing and dangerous about Krauthammers' argument is that it remains premised on the rhetorical fallacy of "guilt by association." Both parties play this game, but what's more pathetic is how many votes will be based on it.
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Reply # 2
Date: May 31, 2008 - 8:47 PM EST
Obama a poltical deceiver
I have a theory about MR.Obama. I think he is a wolf in sheep's garb, a political chameleon. I hope American's see thru that veneer of presidential visage. All this talk of associations with left wing radicals I think reveals a more sinister side to the man, a politcal ruthlessness, oppurtunism, ambition, hypocrisy and at the extreme dishonesty. I don't trust him one bit. Sounds like I am being alarmist about Obama, but I think this time I am right, there is too much evidence of this, no other conclusion can be reached. If he were a true uniter, his voting record would have revealed that like it does with MR.McCain, and his associations would have revealed a broader spectrum of political opinions. It is not that he shares the views of the folks at the church, but that these views did not trouble him, if I were a true uniter I would have found these views disturbing and would have disassociated myself from them earlier, but he did not, until I see or hear otherwise the only reason why he did not is political ambition. These associations helped him become a senator and now a nominee, and potentially the president of the largest superpower on the planet. All this talk of change, it is Obama who is changing right in front of our very eyes, he is turning from a deep blue to a purple just like a chameleon. Whatever it takes to become president, I guess. He is no uniter, he is no proponent of change, he is just another dishonest and divisive left wing politician infact a ruthless one at it.
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