Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

The Obama Question

Steve Chapman, the Chicago Tribune columnist, attended a large Obama rally in Indiana seeking an answer to the ?puzzle? of how

a youngish first-term senator with so many disadvantages ? a slight resume, a foreign-sounding name, an exotic background, a professorial manner, a thoroughly liberal voting record, and a skin color unlike any previous president ? has come so far, and even leads in national polls with less than two weeks to go?

And he found it. The answer, according to Chapman, is that Obama has returned to the theme that made him so popular in so many circles (even unlikely ones, such as here) when he burst onto the national scene with his ?One America? speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Much of Obama?s address in Indiana, Chapman writes, consisted of warmed over campaign boilerplate, but ...

But wait long enough, and you hear the indispensable passage, the one that transcends everything else he says. ?There are no real and fake parts of this country,? Obama declares. ?We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation ? we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from.? America?s veterans, he says, ?have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America ? they have served the United States of America.?

From the moment he vaulted into national consciousness with his inspiring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, this theme has lain at the heart of his approach and his appeal. ?We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don?t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States,? he reminded us then. ?We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we?ve got some gay friends in the Red States.?

Then Chapman, like so many pundits and normally skeptical journalists in the mainstream media, academics, liberals, and not a few conservatives, swoons, spellbound and mesmerized by the Obamessiah?s ?message of fundamental unity and good will....?

This explanation implies (or more) that those of us who have failed to get this message are either active or passive purveyors of hate, or at best that we have been duped by the ?strategy of fear and division? spewing from the atavistic, nativist, racist Right, a strategy that is failing, Chapman writes, primarily because ?Obama is not very scary and because the things that bind us together really are more powerful than the ones that push us apart.?

Baloney. With all due respect, I think Chapman has completely missed the real division in America. We doubters (or heathen, if you prefer) find Obama?s lack of experience, his record of extreme and unalloyed partisanship, and his history of friendship and assciation with a whole host of unsavory characters ? all of whom would have dumped him in a second if he had uttered these patriotic homilies during his pre-campaign career ? ?scary.? We are afraid that his revolting friends say more about who he is than his current, reassuring words. Words unsupported by past history or current action are, we believe, ?just words.? In short, we are not persuaded that Saint Barack believes his own homilies, in part because when he?s not on the pulpit platform he divisively describes many of us as ?bitter? and ?clinging? and racist (?antipathy to people who aren?t like them,? in his professorial phrase).

Thus the real division in this campaign, what divides the believers from the non-believers in Saint Barack, is not the message; it is the messenger.

Full post as published by Discriminations on October 26, 2008 (boomark / email).