Obama blew it

[Up2Late]

(I don't always agree with Michael Meyers, but I think he's exactly right in this L.A. Times Op-Ed. Michael Meyers is the Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, link below.)

BLOWBACK

Obama blew it

What the candidate should have said about race.

By Michael Meyers
March 20, 2008

Tim Rutten's column, "Obama's Lincoln moment" and The Times editorial, "Obama on race" both miss the mark.

In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.

He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.

In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it....

(more at link)

<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oew-meyers20mar20,0,4038350.story>

<http://nycivilrights.org/about/director.jsp>

[easy_b94]

1. Nope.... America is going to blow it if they don't elect this man

[TankLV]

20. america will blow it if the allow him to get the NOMINATION...

wrong person at the wrong time...

[bpeale]

39. amerika is going to blow it if they do elect him. he's unworthy to attain that office.

[Carrieyazel]

41. It looks like they will blow it, then.

[Larkspur]

2. Wright had every right to be "angry" at the injustices this country

does in our names.

Denying that anger exists won't make it go away. It only makes it grow.

[TankLV]

19. wow - making excuses for the INDEFENSIBLE and that ASSHOLE preacher...

just - WOW...

[NedSchneebly]

36. Then you agree with Wright that we got what we deserved on 911?

[Karenina]

42. OF COURSE NOT!!!

It was just the tiniest taste of your own medicine. :evilgrin:

[NedSchneebly]

49. you just confirmed my point ...

"It was just the tiniest taste of your own medicine." That says it all!

I wonder how many Muslims, blacks, women, children the 911 terrorists killed on that day BECAUSE THEY SPECIFICALLY TARGETED INNOCENTS FOR THE PURPOSES OF TERROR.

We DON'T target innocents. This was NOT our own medicine.

[Karenina]

51. Book recommendation: Howard Zinn

"A People's History of the United States"

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

[NedSchneebly]

52. fair enough ...

[merwin]

3. Michael Meyers?

[Up2Late]

7. No, this Michael Meyers.

<http://nycivilrights.org/about/director.jsp>

"Michael Meyers is President and Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition (NYCRC), which he co-founded in 1986.

Meyers assumed the post of NYCRC Executive Director in 1991 from his senior staff position in the New Jersey Department of Higher Education, where he had served as Special Assistant to the Chancellor of Higher Education, T. Edward Hollander. Meyers took his B.A. from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH and his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law. He has spent his entire professional career working in the fields of civil rights, civil liberties, law and education, and urban affairs, and, as such, is regarded as an expert on civil rights matters and race relations. Born in Harlem, Michael Meyers knows first-hand the ghetto experience which, as he puts it, 'contributes to the defeat of the human spirit; the only way to end the ghetto is to get out of it....'"

[merwin]

22. Wow, he looks completely different without his mask

:evilgrin:

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

4. Seems like Mr. Meyers was listening to a different speech than I was

In my "considered judgement" Obama's speech was groundbreaking and he said exactly what needed to be said.

[Up2Late]

8. The difference is, he WAS listening...

...where you were waiting to hear what you wanted to hear. There is a difference.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

9. Oh, please.

What a load of crap.

[hifalutin]

10. Did you miss the part where

ALL the MSM is saying he 'threw his white grandma under the bus'?

[rch35]

15. god i hope you are being sarcastic nt

[hifalutin]

16. Exactly

!

[rAVES]

35. freerepublic.com.... go there.. have fun.

[TomBall Democrat]

45. 278 since the start of March is too many

you might want to interact with the living.

unless, of course you're on a mission to disrupt.

In either, :shrug:

[Warpy]

12. That was my take, as well

I read the speech to escape the charisma effect, and what I read was a statement of the facts with a prescription for reconciliation.

Apparently Mr. Meyers is one of those people who thinks if we stop mentioning the racism which people in this country are still experiencing, it will be all better.

In other words, he's an idiot and he hates to be reminded of uncomfortable truths.

[YOY]

5. "Fap-fap-fap-fap"

That's about all I could read and about all it's worth

[DS1]

6. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol

of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.



Funny, I could have sworn that's basically what he did.

[theredpen]

11. Are you going to argue with the psycho-killer from the Halloween movies?!

[DS1]

13. only if there's a very strong cage between us, and Tim Russert is moderating

while Tim Russert sits in Meyers's cage

[pollo poco]

17. That's what I heard too. n/t

[dmr]

27. Agree. Huge difference was Obama's inspiring grace

Funny how so many people think they know so much more about the shoes Obama walks in. Even if they did, they don't have the platform, and in all likelihood will never have the platform, nor the ability to attract the record breaking multitudes of people willing to listen.

I've heard more critique over Obama's speech, yet very, very little about this week's exaggerations and lies speech Bush* gave on the War's 5th anniversary, McCain's speech fuck-ups and Cheney's FU to Americans all put together! THAT is where the outrage should be.

[mitchtv]

14. How dare he

challenge the annointed One? Tweety will eat him alive, KO will nominate him for worst persons

[Preston120]

18. Sorry, but I think your wrong. It was a great speech.

If a person can't see why another is upset how can he be part of the solution? I think he gave a speech that could form a bridge between multi racial communities. You can always find something you can disagree with about another person or you can find something that you can support. It's your choice.

[Joshua N]

21. He's a NY Post columnist.

[Up2Late]

31. And yet he's right on this one, I know who he is, but as they say...

...even a broken clock is right twice every day.

Sometimes this guy gets a little crazy or uses logic that the average person does not understand, but mostly, I find, he's years ahead of the "conventional" or "accepted wisdom" in this country.

[avrdream]

23. Shoulda , coulda.

I agree, that this was one of those moments where Barack could have really done something good: showing a pathway out of the subtle racism that still exists in America.

To me, he was just making excuses. There is another thread on DU that says his speech is the most watched ever on Youtube. I truly believe that is because some of us Clinton supporters are really trying to HEAR what Obama has to say on the matter of racism. He, of anyone, should be able to come up with some answers. I didn't hear them in this speech, unfortunately.

Barack needs to look very closely at other areas where he might be vulnerable and come clean BEFORE anything blows up. I am not fond of Fox news but get little else down here in Australia and today Sean Hannity said there is lots more besides Rev. Wright. Many of the Fox News contributors said the same thing: why didn't Obama give this speech months or even weeks ago? It looks suspect that he only gave the speech once he was in trouble.

If there is more crap to find out about Barack, I want to know RIGHT NOW so that we can start figuring out a way to defend against it should he become our nominee. Barack needs to do a Patterson and admit all, up front.

[greyghost]

25. I'm sorry that Faux News is all you get, but I wouldn't believe their

weather report.

[Up2Late]

32. Exactly, what I got out of it, other than about 30 minutes of crushing boredom...

...was what felt like a lecture from an angry collage professor who was mad that he had been caught not really teaching anything, so he gives a speech without remorse or regret for his misdeeds, just anger. Yes, Obama is change, but not for the better.

He's what I call a Neo-Racist. A Neo-Racist talks a good game, claiming that Race no longer matters in America, yet the minute you challenge his empty rhetoric and point out that, as Gertrude Stein once said, "There is no there there," he, or more correctly, his campaign surrogates, quickly "play the race card" when it's politically convenient. The Obama campaign has already played the the race card several times and folks are beginning to figure out his game and they (we) don't like it.

He's finished, unfortunately his supporters here just haven't figured it out yet. They are to busy spreading their hate and agreeing with each other here. To paraphrase what Paul Simon says in the song "The Boxer," they "...hear what he want to hear, and disregard the rest...."

[classysassy]

48. A ship of fools

revisited,did you miss the boat or just waiting for the next ship.?

[BigBearJohn]

24. Obama's Shallow Credentials on National Security Are Dangerous for the Country

Joseph C. Wilson:

Claims of superior intuitive judgment by his campaign and by him are self-evidently disingenuous, especially in light of disclosures about his long associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. But his assertions of advanced judgment are also ludicrous when the question of what Obama has accomplished in his four years in the Senate is considered.

As the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee on Europe, he has not chaired a single substantive oversight hearing, even though the breakdown in our relations with Europe and NATO is harming our operations in Afghanistan. Nor did he take a single official trip to Europe as chairman. This is the sum total of his actions in the most important responsibility he has had in the Senate. What are his actual experiences that reassure us that when the phone rings at 3 a.m. he will know what to do, which levers of power to pull, or which world leaders he can count on?

Obama has stated that he will rely upon his advisers. But how will he know which ones to depend upon and how will he be able to evaluate what they say? Already, one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, has been compelled to resign for, among other indiscretions, honestly revealing on a British television program that Obama's public position on withdrawal from Iraq is not really his true position, nor does it reflect what he would do. Her gaffe exposed a vein of cynicism on national security. How confident can we be in his judgment? In fact, the hard truth is that he has no such experience.

Obama has tried to have it both ways on the issue of national security. On the one hand, he claims his intuition somehow would make him best equipped to handle the difficult challenges that face the next president. On the other hand, he tries to ridicule and dismiss as relatively insignificant the idea that actual experience with and intimate knowledge of foreign affairs and leaders, the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the intricacies of diplomacy matter. He has even suggested that talking about the problems of national security amounts to exploitation of "fear." One of Obama's fervent supporters, a Harvard professor named Orlando Patterson, who has no expertise in foreign policy, wrote absurdly in a New York Times op-ed that the 3 a.m. ad wasn't about national security at all, but really a subliminal racist attack. Delusions aside, sometimes a discussion about national security is about national security.

There will, in fact, be 3 a.m. phone calls for the next president. They are not make believe. I have been there for such calls. The next president cannot be afraid or hesitant of handling the enormous national security crises that President Bush will leave behind. One thing is certain -- the calls will come. Obama has only an abdication of his chief senatorial responsibility as a basis for assessing what his judgment might be if and when the phone rings. Which of his shifting coterie of volatile advisers would he turn to? Will it be the one who repudiated his withdrawal plan, exposing his real intention, prior to being forced to resign? Or will it be those advisers who remained silent until politically convenient -- several years and several thousand lives after the shock and awe invasion, conquest and disastrous occupation of Iraq?

The calls are real and experience is real, too. The campaign might be treated as a game by the media, but those calls are serious, deadly serious.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/obamas-shallow-credentia_b_92586.html

[Triana]

26. Wrong. Michael Meyers blew it.

Obama DID present a pathway out of our racial boxes in that speech. He DID exactly what Meyers is claiming he didn't.

Meyer's is full of horse shit.

[PetraPooh]

28. Is posting this in Editorials a sneaky way to get around the 3/day limit?

Seems it should be in GD:Primaries like all the others.

[Up2Late]

29. No, this is an Opinion piece so it belongs in Editorials & Other..., this is where it should be!

:silly:
Btw, it IS also over there, just scroll down or do a search if you want to contribute further to the hate on this topic in GD-P.

[PetraPooh]

30. Well, I think you're just being sneaky, but we won't know for a while since the day just started.

[roscoeroscoe]

33. what a total freaking tool.

jealousy?

[mwb970]

34. Like everything else these days, The Speech has further divided us.

Look at the bitter comments from both sides on this thread alone. I happen to think it was a great speech, one of the best I've ever heard. But according to some of us, that makes me an idiot. Or a dupe. Yet these critics seem to me to be missing the point, sometimes seemingly willfully.

Has anyone read Needful Things by Stephen King? Purchases from a strangely malevolent novelty shop turn townspeople against each other in a murderous rage. This is what I see happening on this board, in America, and in the world. It's as if some strange force is dividing people from each other much more than usual. Whether it's road rage, school shootings, or terrorism, people are turning on each other more and more every day.

Have you heard about those experiments where they purposely put too many rats in a cage? The overpopulation of the cage makes the rats go crazy, attacking and killing each other until a more suitable population level is attained. Could this be what is happening to us?

[NedSchneebly]

37. color-blind? isn't that a misnomer ...

I mean if one is color-blind, all he sees is BLACK & WHITE. Don't we want to get to the point where we don't care what color one's skin is and see each other as equal individuals? :grouphug:

[Igel]

47. No, it's not a misnomer.

If one is color blind, one typically doesn't just see black and white. It means that you can't distinguish between two colors. Most commonly, between red and green, although orange and purple and blue and yellow are also "out there". It's the reason behind some of the sillier-seeming tests that optometrists give you (especially silly when you're 40, as if you wouldn't notice earlier that you're color blind).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness does a good job.

The metaphor taken over into race relations is this: Just as a man suffering from Daltonism (another word for color blindness) cannot distinguish on the basis of his sight between red and green or purple and orange, so a racially color-blind man will not distinguish based on his sight between black and white or "yellow" and "brown".

Monochromacy is not the basis for the metaphor.

Whether or not racial color-blindness achieves the result-oriented goal of equal outcome is beside the point and unclear (note that most people arguing for color-blindness use process-oriented metrics).

[NedSchneebly]

50. Thank you. I learned something today ...

[cloudythescribbler]

38. This Mike Meyers a long-standing sorehead in the NAACP nt

[vincenzoesq]

40. If we don't elect Barack Obama

abandon all hope. We are doomed to affirm the world's opinion as the crazies who elected Bush TWICE. And we will deserve it.

[Karenina]

43. The funniest part of this farce

is the notion that YOU get to "elect" anyone. :rofl:

[Carrieyazel]

44. Shrub wasn't elected the first time. But yeah, he got close enough for the 2000 theft.

It took a whole lot of events to simultaneously happen at once in that fateful, disastrous campaign. Monica blowback, Gore's crappy campaign, Florida state skullduggery, Fox News decision desk skullduggery, the butterfly ballot, Nader, media's shameful treatment of Gore and the free pass treatment of Shrub, etc.

But also remember this: no matter how low the Repukes sink, they will always have a minimum of 47% in any general election. Repuke voters do not care about anything except their own radical agenda.

[katty]

46. why did he blow it? Somebody has finally acknowledged these

real issues-and he just so happens to be running for President! This country is so stuffed up with political correctness it needs a massive, psychological high colonic to even get jump started into REALITY! and the entire world sees this fact-but U.S.?!