OPINION

It's Not Compassion -- It's Wright-Wing Racism

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Most of the media and their fellow liberals were positively giddy over Barack Obama's speech Tuesday, all but comparing it to the Sermon on the Mount.

I won't deny it was a masterful piece of oratory -- the man can be spellbinding -- but when you stop to consider what Sen. Obama was really doing up there on the podium, invoking the specter of slavery and Jim Crow and the era of "whites only," it becomes clear that it was a con job designed to make the voters as giddy as he knew his worshippers in the submissive media would be.

The speech was meant to be an explanation and expiation of his guilt for his years of remaining mute in the face of the outrageous anti-Americanism spewed by his pastor and bosom buddy, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Until Tuesday, Barack Obama (you can't use his middle name, which has now become the "H-word," allegedly a code word for anti-Muslim rhetoric) had steadfastly denied he ever heard his friend and pastor make his hateful remarks. In the speech, however, he just kind of mentioned that. well, yes . he guesses he was aware of the Reverend Wright's offensive rhetoric after all. Mea Minima Culpa.

He then launched into a defense of his friendship with the man he credited for bringing him to Christianity, and helping to form his social and political philosophy and set him on the path to a life of public service. Admirably, while denouncing Wright's extremism, he refused to denounce the man himself.

Nobody expected him to declare Wright anathema and cast him into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth -- one simply doesn't do to that sort of thing to a longtime friend, benefactor and mentor even if he has been shown to have slipped the rails time after time.

What was not expected was Barack H. Obama's use of a litany of America's past racist offenses to justify not only Wright's blatant hatred of white America but his suggestion that it was a sentiment shared by most African Americans. And that is simply not true.

Nor was it true, as Obama charged, that the Reagan coalition was created out of white resentment for affirmative action or forced busing.

He charged that "anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime. talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

Poppycock! These are not only outright falsehoods, but echoes of what Obama learned at the feet of Jeremiah Wright and now preaches as his own beliefs. He learned his lessons well.

When he suggested that my father's coalition was based on anger over affirmative action and welfare he was peddling a blatant falsehood as egregious in its falsity as Wright's charge that whites created AIDS to wipe out the black population.

Everything Obama said was directed at suggesting that while Rev. Wright should not have used such inflammatory language, he was somehow justified because of America's white racism.

Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot claim the innocence of a lamb in his long years of worshipful association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He was either fully aware of the seething racial hatred that motivated Wright, or something of a blithering idiot who can't spot a racist hater when he spends years genuflecting at his feet.

Barack Obama is not an idiot. He is a brilliant orator who exudes charm and arouses near-worship from his host of giddy, hypnotized supporters. He is also a committed socialist and a talented salesman for his brand of Marxist snake oil.

Beware of camels bearing gifts, and politicians promising utopia.