Friday, May 09, 2008

Obama and “all-too-human transgressions.”

No, I’m not referring to Sen. Obama’s still-living grandmother whom he’s publicly criticized for transgressions he said were racist remarks she made to him in private. I'm leading into a short post by Victor Davis Hanson at NRO, after which I comment below the star line.

Hanson says - - -

Almost imperceptibly to the McCain campaign, I think Obama has already established quite new messianic rules of engagement that will be difficult to overturn: he talks about supposedly illiberal Pennsylvanians as a racial group or quips “typical white person”, associates with the racist Wright, and counts on a solid base that votes 90 percent along racial lines, and you are a racist for being disturbed by that Manichaeism.

He talks of hope/change, new politics, unity, and bipartisanship and you are cynical and hateful for not buying it and instead worrying that he has a serial propensity for distortion (“100 years”) and invective (“lost his bearings”).

The immediate advantage is that the nonbeliever is always ridiculed for his devilish skepticism; the eventual downside for Obama is that the loftier the prophet, the more transparent his all-too-human transgressions.

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Comments:

One of the most important dynamics of the almost certain McCain-Obama match-up involves the willingness of whites to accept the new racial double standard now operating in so many places in America.

Here in Durham, NC Sen. Obama, “the post racial candidate”, received the endorsement of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, the county’s most powerful political action committee.

The Durham Committee restricts membership based on race. It’s the only PAC in Durham to do so.

But neither of the two daily newspapers which circulate in Durham – the Herald Sun and the Raleigh News & Observer – called attention to that.

Early in 2007 when he was working to build support for himself as a “post racial” candidate, Obama called for a U. S. Department of Justice investigation of the attempted frame-up of three white Duke students later declared innocent by NC’s attorney general.

Obama campaigned often in Durham recently. He expressed his appreciation for the Durham Committee’s support and for the support of others who are defendants in civil rights violation suits brought by the three young white men wrongly indicted.

But Obama didn’t say anything about his 2007 call for a DOJ investigation of the frame-up attempt.

I was reminded of what I’ve just said here when I read Hanson’s last sentence: “The immediate advantage is that the nonbeliever is always ridiculed for his devilish skepticism; the eventual downside for Obama is that the loftier the prophet, the more transparent his all-too-human transgressions.”

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