In March I wrote something at least close to that: "It would have been easier for him to repudiate Rev. Wright completely. Perhaps he should have. But he saw too much of value in him, for whatever reason, to reject him completely while repudiating his offensive statements. I respect that."

(Reply) (Thread)

The sound bites are outrageous. I have not heard the entire sermon, so I can't speak to the context. I have certainly heard reasonable sermons from reasonable people that contained deliberately-provocative parts (to draw people in and keep them listening); it is possible that Wright was doing that. Or not.

I think judging a candidate by the words of his pastor, teacher, childhood buddy, past employer, college roommate, or the like is ridiculous. I judge candidates by their own words and actions and by those of the people they engage as representatives. So what your campaign staff does is indicative (if you don't do something about it), but not what your ex- (or even current!) pastor says.

(Reply) (Thread)

When I decided I LOVED Obama's speech on race, I was, in effect, agreeing with both of the ideas above -- that it's possible to still accept someone in your life who believes things you completely disagree with. Because that is how real life is. I said it somewhere else -- if we held him to a higher standard than that, it implies we already hold ourselves to that higher standard. And yet, if we did, we'd all be incredibly lonely.

(Reply) (Thread)

I've not heard these supposedly outrageous soundbites, but I have read Wright's speech to the NAACP from Sunday and his speech and question-and-answer to the National press Club on Monday, in their entirety, and saw nothing outrageous. Certainly there's nothing in those speeches any crazier than the nonsense a typical American major party politician tries to get the public to swallow on a regular basis.

I've never felt less enthusiastic about my support for Obama than I have these past couple of days.

(Reply) (Thread)

What about the claim that AIDS was created to attack black people?

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

What about it? It's not true, but it's not obviously untrue to anybody who knows about the Tuskegee syphilis "experiment" and the US military's history of biological warfare experiments on the uninformed American populace and the way the Reagan and first Bush administration looked the other way and allowed Contra-linked drug networks to bring crack into American inner cities.

BTW, the book Wright cites as his source for the claim about AIDS, Leonard Horowitz's Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola: Nature, Accident or Intentional?, has been scanned and put on Scribed. Presumably without permission, but I could be wrong. I haven't read it, but if anyone else wants to give it a shot, go ahead.

My point is, it actually takes a good deal of work to come to a secure conclusion about whether Horowitz's claim about the origin of AIDS is true or not. And I haven't actually done that work. My own beliefs that Horowitz's hypothesis is wrong are based largely on culture -- I personally know people who work in the biological sciences, which predisposes to think that the general opinion of the scientific community is trustworthy. But on the other hand, I also know that there are scientists who are frauds, who take money from the government or big corporations to lie about the state of scientific belief. My belief that honest scientists are more common than dishonest ones, that the consensus scientific view is motivated by a search for truth, is a cultural belief, related to my having been brought up in a modern, middle-class white household, with parents from a culture that has a strong respect for learning and scholarly consensus. This biases me to accept as truth what authorities tell me, and it means that I'm more vulnerable to certain kinds of hoodwinking than someone who wasn't brought up as I was.

So, yeah, believing that the government has been covering up a nefarious truth about AIDS -- probably wrong, but not crazily, outrageously wrong.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Also: Less harmful and outrageous than plenty of crap politicians tell us all the time.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Actually, that would be me. I think Wright's sound bites were outrageous, and I think Obama shouldn't be judged by his clergy. After all, his clergy isn't the one running for President (thank goodness).

(Reply) (Thread)

favorited this one, bro

(Reply) (Thread)