JOLLY DAYS

Obama Explains His Pastor

When you try to sound like Lincoln you better pull it off. Obama's speech about his challenged pastor attempted to make him a normative figure, a simple product of history without personal responsibility; in the process, Obama patronized his audience, providing a lecture on “understanding” the history of race in the US. Obama diminished himself, making himself so average as to be anonymous.

To defend his pastor he uses his grandmother, his faith, comparisons with other religions and races, and his perception of a putative common indifference to nutcase ranting:

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Far from Lincoln, Obama rather sounds like someone who doesn't get it. What the public really wanted to hear was someone who currently is seen as untested standing up to his own constituency. You want to feel someone in an office of power has the flexibility to hear other voices — not rhetorically by being in the same room (“let's all just talk”) — but being open to changing course, and if necessary, by telling your supporters that they are wrong.

Obama doesn't think his pastor is wrong. He thinks his pastor needs excusing and those who don't excuse him are to blame — despite Obama's proactive attempt to diffuse that criticism. Instead of now “explaining” to Americans that things have changed he should have years ago explained those things to his pastor. Instead of mind-numbing euphemisms such as “fierce” and “controversial” for junk rhetoric about Israel being a “terrorist state” he should have told his pastor to discard such hate rants as the white community has disowned hate speech about African-Americans.

Obama joined that Church because it was the big one in town and Obama was interested in public office — that is the way it is done. No shame there. But when he heard the nonsense, if he didn't have the courage to try to change the leadership, he should have gotten up and walked out of the room. Sometimes that is how you bring people together, by showing you expect something of them — even the ones that like you.