He reminds me of that Faye Dunaway character in Chinatown who, gets slapped by Nicholson as she repeats, “my sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter . . .”.

Please explain to us how Obama reminds you of the mind-numbing shame of a fictional woman who was raped by her father and who has lived with that secret her entire adult life? I can’t help thinking (and I’m a person who sees linkages all over the place) that you have a very unique cerebral wiring system to find the remoteness connection there, but I’m open to hearing where you get it from.

Obama–born of a black and a white parental unit, has touted his blackness and Kenyan Granny Sarah–until this Rev Wright debacle. Now, suddenly, the image of Granny Honky has been raised to assuage the hurt feelings of us po white trash so we can make that all important (VOTING DAY) connection with His Milkchocolateness.

Whoa, Diana. All I hear — and it seems to be screaming out at us here — is your bitterness over something but it sure doesn’t seem to have any connection I can bear to Obama. He hasn’t “suddenly” done anything, so far as I can tell. He hasn’t thrown anybody under the bus (except — and I read the speech exactly the same way Weldon did — for the Palestinians in what struck me as Obama’s one unfortunate note, pandering as I read it to the Jewish vote here), not his Kenyan grandmother nor his Kansas one. He illustrated how flawed people are, of all stripes. He didn’t disparage any group of people, so this “po white trash” talk of yours comes across as your own chip on your shoulder that you project on to others. It sure ain’t in anything Obama said or has ever said that I know of. (Note: I didn’t vote for Obama in the primary, I voted for John Edwards.)

And your mocking of his biracial reality with “His Milkcholateness” is more of the same. What are you so bitter about? And you seriously don’t think you are demonstrating prejudice here????

Give us a freakin break.

And in your world now, in SAT format, this is what you are smoking?:

Goering: Hitler:: Obama: Wright ???

Wow, Diana. There have been a lot of folks tossing Hitler into American partisan political discourse in recent years but I think you’ve pushed the envelope.

Please explain to me how a man who wants America to wake up to its sins and be better than it is now, be truer to its stated ideals and honor them around the world, and everywhere at home, is “anti-American”? I don’t listen to the drivel that passes on CNN but I gather he’s stated some things very bluntly and rhetorically and crudely, but the content of his objections is that he wishes America were truer to its ideals. That bothers you?

Does it bother you that Wright “suggested that U.S. policies in the Middle East and elsewhere were partly responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington”? If so, I think you should study up on US policies in the Middle East, going back at least as far as our meddling overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, to institute a torturing regime of the Shah just so we could retain control of our oil company access and profits there.

Did you know this about Jeremiah Wright who you equate with Hitler?:

Quoting from theologian Martin Marty (and suggesting you read the whole article at http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i30/30b00101.htm):

In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.

Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago’s Divinity School focuses on what it calls “public ministry,” which includes both conventional pastoral roles and carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to serve then-struggling Trinity.

Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S’s charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don’t stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.

I’ve read lots of speeches. The ones that are written by the speaker, as Obama’s was (and Lincoln’s and FDR’s–don’t know about Kennedy), can give you a good sense of the quality of thought. And in the right circumstances, they can have consequences.

No some of us look like Grizzly Adams motherfuckers, which, paradoxically, is completely unthreatening.

It was a good speech, an extra paragraph maybe short of holding with the greats (but I can’t say I’ve ready any of those in their entirety either). Seems funny sometimes that we put so much value on teh things, but I suppose it’s an important part of the job.