most important speech on race since MLK

That's what the swooning talkers will tell you.

I'm here to ask one question, If this speech was so important and this dialog so essential to healing the race divide in America, why did it take a political crisis for Obama to make it. He is the one who supposedly transcends politics. MLK was great, he faced down death and offered no violence, and it was in a much harsher racial environment. Please don't compare Obama, a very good politician, with MLK. Before you ask, just watch any of the cable shows and read the blogs, that comparison is being made and implied.

Bill from ct

If sexism is so prevalent in our culture why hasnt Hillary made a speech denouncing it?

China 90's

bill from ct

very gutsy wouldn't you say

consider the setting

Bill from ct

Read the speech and you will discover that it was more about human rights, yes it touched on women's rights, but it wasn't the whole basis of the speech.

Here's another point, we as a country should be the last ones lecturing anyone else on ethics, whether it be sexism, racism, or any other ism for that matter. It's like Rush Limpballs lecturing someone on telling the truth.

It was very gutsy


I do agree with the last part of your post

Bill from ct

Obama's no Martin Luther King. He plays it too safe. I don't believe MLK ever belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations either.

Was there anything in that speech that was news to you?, because if there was, you need to pay more attention

Bill from ct

Give me quotes, then, from other politicians (like Hillary, for instance) that match Obama's speech.

only he could make that speech because of his race, just only she could make a speech about gender

perspective

Bill from ct

Then give me ANYTHING by Hillary, or any other modern politician, that compares to the reaction Obama's speech is having. 1.3 million views on YouTube in 22 hours - show me something that compares.

read my original post, I'm not pissed at Obama, it's the ridiculous hype that he is being given for giving at good political speech

it's way out of proportion

I'll tell you what, if Hillary tripped and fell on her face, how many youtube hits do you think that would get?

Bill from ct

Obama has not been in the street regarding equal rights, the war (military has large number of Afro-Americans), Patriot Acts...removal of Habeas Corpus, etc. I didn't see him outraged over Katrina. Or on the media that terrible weekend demanding they get help.

Granted he wasn't the only one. I called all the black political organizations on that terrible weekend when the citizens of NO were homeless, without food, dying but no one acted. The world was shocked. They had lawyers who could have demanded a court order to force FEMA, etc. to do their duty.

The Congress was on break and wouldn't come back during a disaster.

Obama unlike Maxine Walters, Conyers, etc. has never been in the streets...MLK was.

A good speech is not action.

(i would like to mention that Hillary has been a long supporter of civil rights and even attended a MLK speech)

"If this speech was so important and this dialog so essential to healing the race divide in America, why did it take a political crisis for Obama to make it"

Actually, King's speeches were motivated by political crises. I don't really understand your point.

That said, I think it's fairly clear that Obama was going to have to give this speech at some point or other. We all knew that his opponents were going to race-bait against him. Although we were expecting it to come in the GE.

Obama apparently just bumped it up a little earlier.

this was the speech he's been avoiding since day one

bill frokm ct

You can't think of a better one?

Apparently that's a question you've been dodging from post #1.

I've not avoided a single question

bill from ct

Then answer the question.

Yes or no. If yes, which?

not in this context,not in this kind of public setting, but that's not to say that much more in depth dialog on race doesn't take place every day, because I know it does.

Bill from ct

I'm glad you concede the original point.

my original point was comparing BO with MLK

it shouldn't be done, not until he does something to deserve the comparison

your point is meaningless,a straw man, no black man has been in his position until now

Bill from ct

You're contradicting yourself.

I'm answering ten questions at once

what exactly is your point, that I haven't addressed?

Bill from ct

I'm not sure.

thank you
Bill from ct

:sarcasm:

people here want to equate the Clintons that vile crap, and you know that's not true

Bill from ct

Promulgated by white racists.

created because he was black? Nope.

Kings speeches were motivated by injustice

bill from ct

injustice and political expedience is splitting hairs?

JC

Bill from ct

injustice to his political ambitions?

get real

Bill from ct

to black people, to white people, to Iraqis, to, pretty much, anybody who pays attention.

what injustice besides a political hit has BO suffered?

his entire campaign is above that, you all can't have both ways

bill from ct

If he had made this speech before the Wright issue had come up, would you have been in here criticizing him for trying to turn the campaign into a race issue?

I think I can guess the answer.

He made the speech when it needed to be made.

he never would have chosen to give this speech, he had no choice, and it's substance was old hat

haven't you talked about all of these issues, how old are you people

bill from ct

...he was forced to make race a central issue by his opponents, but once they forced his hand, he went all out. That was personal, and candid, and historical. No other current politician can make that speech...

BO is the one throwing around those accusations

bill from ct

have ever heard it, the destructiveness of the current racial climate on both blacks and whites, and the exploitation/perpetuation of that by politicians (read Hillary Clinton).

in his speech he spoke mostly the truth, in general terms, most of it obvious to anyone that cares

some of what he said I believe to be fiction, hard to verify

Bill from ct

I have a hard time seeing his Gram being scared by the big black bad guys in the 40's and 50's in Kansas where she lived, or in Hawaii ever.

can't be proven

Bill from ct

"Yesterday, while I was sitting on a panel at the 2nd Annual Take Back America Conference, I missed something spectacular. I was told that I missed the most refreshing dose of truth in politics in decades. I was told that I missed Senator Barack Obama make the presidency more than a possibility -- he made it a probability."

so maybe obvious to everyone, but refreshing, rare...

he hasn't done much in his committee since becoming chairman, like impeachment

Bill from ct

you have no point

Bill from ct

I just don't respond to insults btw.

the right reverend, he was one saying those vile things, in front of BO and his family

"Bill clinton was doin us just like he was doin Monica"

Now I might think that's pretty clever, but that's hardly something I'd want to explain to my kids

Bill from ct

using different verbiage of course.

we are talking about a speech that was made necessary because of the things the reverend said

a speech blown way out of proportion, for both motive and long term effect

Bill from ct

One word he has been using in relation to healing the divide. When he talks change, he talks about change. Get it?

beside McCain who hasn't talked change

Bill from ct

BO is being canonized not vilified

Bill from ct

Obama took MLK's speech and lived the dream and is continuing this with change in the divide.

I just think his motives are not as pure and he risks much less. I think highly of Obama, but in the context of a politician.

Bill from ct

was not running for public office when he gave his speech. It was an act of pure, selfless courage and a great moment in the battle for civil rights.

Obama's speech was motivated by political necessity, to save his campaign.

In his speech, Obama reversed his previous denials that he had ever heard Rev. Wright engage in inflammatory rhetoric of the anti-American variety. I don't personally care whether he did or did not hear the good Reverand's rhetoric (most of which is rooted in truth and only "wrong" by Wright's propensity for hyperbole and flame language). I do prefer, however, that political candidates get their stories straight. It's hard to have confidence in politicians who exhibit a sliding scale of truth, as in the case of Bill Clinton's responses when the Lewinsky affair first came to light.

The speech was undoubtedly well-written and well-delivered. Obama's fans were enthralled. Did he put the issue to rest? Not in the slightest.

Here's an excerpt from an article written by Jeff Jacoby for the Boston Globe, in one of the nation's most liberal states:

"In Philadelphia yesterday, Obama gave a graceful speech on the theme of race and unity in American life. Much of what he said was eloquent and stirring, not least his opening paean to the Founders and the Constitution - a document "stained by the nation's original sin of slavery," as he said, yet also one "that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time." There was an echo there of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his great "I Have a Dream" speech extolled "the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence" as "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."

The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long embraced, is a devotee not of King, - who in that same speech warned against "drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" - but of the poisonous hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously supported is a disciple not of King but of James Cone, founder of a "black liberation" theology that teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium.

When Don Imus uttered his infamous slur on the radio last year, Obama cut him no slack. Imus should be fired, he said. "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group."

When it came to Wright, however, he wasn't nearly so categorical. Oh, he's "like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," Obama indulgently explained to one interviewer. He's just "trying to be provocative," he told another." Far from severing his ties to Wright, Obama made him a member of his Religious Leadership Committee -- a tie he finally cut only four days ago."

Such a clanging double standard raises doubts about Obama's character and judgment, and about his fitness for the role of race-transcending healer. Yesterday's speech was finely crafted, but it leaves some troubling questions unanswered."

very, very well said
Thank you

Bill from ct

If he made the speech 6 months ago, that's all his campaign would have been about. Because he's been such a stellar candidate, he now has the credibility to address the issue to everyone, not just black voters.

Great timing, great speech.

boy are you an easy sell

I do have some nice property just outside of New Orleans if your interested

Bill from ct