Time: What a Community Organizer Does

Joe Klein

Slowly, slowly, I am recovering from the extremely effective bilge festival staged by the Republicans last night. And while there is much to discuss, there was one item, in particular, that has to be considered infuriating: the attack on Barack Obama's service as a community organizer by the odious Rudy Giuliani--he's come to look like a villain in a Frank Capra movie, hasn't he?--and Sarah Palin.

(snip)

So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn't know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed--job training, help with housing and so forth--from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord's work--the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a "task from God.")

This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man's decision "to serve a cause greater than himself," in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate's favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service--the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other--as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.

Perhaps La Pasionaria of the Northern Slope didn't know this when she read the words they gave her. But Giuliani--a profoundly lapsed Catholic, who must have met more than a few religious folk toiling in the inner cities--should have known. ("I don't even know what that is," he sneered.") What a shameful performance.

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http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/what_a_community_organizer_doe.html

...over the past six months.

He's a hack. A hack with a good point today, I suppose.

I loved Jon Stewart's reaction to Palin's denigration to community service!!!

A fine read.

It's all over but the screaming.

This is Republicanism in America. What a shame.

Best article I've seen from Joe Klein.

made a horrible mistake mocking Obama's time as a community organizer.

Now...the whole world gets to hear EXACTLY what Obama did with that time. And appears to be...how do I say...very Christian-like.

Not to mention that they're going to piss off community organizers...AND all the people they've helped.

jesus was a community organizer.

The first thing Republicans say is "I don't even know what a community organizer does." I have heard this several times. What they are thinking is- it's somebody who works with welfare recipients- all those black people. Watch them sneer when they say the phrase "community organizer." These are the same people who think they are victims because they can't say the n-word in public- but black people can.