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Krazy Kristof

Nicholas Kristof?s OpEd?s are almost useful barometers of which way the winds are blowing in liberal America (or at least liberal Manhattan, often but not always the same). Today?s column suggests that the biggest disagreements among liberals over Obama?s speech is whether it was the greatest oration since the Sermon on the Mount or only since Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream.? Kristof is a moderate on this question, saying that ?it was not a sound bite, but a symphony? and ?he best political speech since John Kennedy talked about his Catholicism in Houston in 1960.?

The only part of the Second Coming of Obama that Kristof rejects is what he regards as an error ?in an earlier speech ? the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention that catapulted him to fame.?

In that speech, Mr. Obama declared that ?there is not a black America and a white America... . There?s the United States of America.? That?s a beautiful aspiration, and we?re making progress toward it. But this last week has underscored that we?re not nearly there yet.

In other words, Kristof accepts the Obama vision of ?this gulf between white and black America,? including a virtually separate black nation where paranoid denunciations of a pervasively and endemically racist, 9/11-deserving, genocidal America are a commonplace, sung (along with ?God Damn America!?) from every pulpit on Sunday mornings.

As I?ve said here a number of times, I don?t believe this vision is true. But insofar as it is (James Taranto points to some supporting evidence for it here), it is clear that the leadership required to bridge this gulf will have to be considerably more robust than can be provided by a parishoner who listened passively to the anti-American paranoia for 20 years, even bringing up his daughters listening to it, while doing nothing to heal it until his own political ambitions required some comment.

Obama?s speech suggests to me that he is ideally qualified ? not to be president but to be the ambassador from black America ... once diplomatic relations are re-established.

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 20, 2008 (boomark / email).