The Pretender

By now everyone must have heard about Barack Obama and some vague mention about a former pastor of his. Even I have to admit that it’s hard to miss someone who pins the perpetuation of HIV on the white government in order to commit a genocide. It’s even harder to ignore someone who simulates Bill Clinton’s Oval Office gyrations, calls 9/11 "the chickens coming home to roost," and "God damn America."

Everyone on television seemed to be saying that Obama needed to distance himself from his pastor or denounce him altogether.

Obama apologists insisted that the candidate need not disown a supporter just because he privately holds radical views. David Duke, the well-known white supremacist, supported my candidate of choice, Ron Paul. However, to my knowledge neither Duke nor Paul know each other and I certainly have not met the Aryan mouthpiece. So, what’s the difference between Obama’s case and Paul’s?

Ron Paul does not pick his supporters and neither does Obama. Any candidate has probably had some unruly supporters. But Jeremiah Wright, the minister in question, was someone extraordinarily close to Obama personally and until recently held a prominent position in the Obama campaign. Again, you don’t pick your supporters, but you do pick your minister. (Another way to look at it is this: Can you pick your minister? Yes we can.) Millions of people have voted for or become enthusiastic to the point of fanaticism for Obama because he is young, polished, possesses beautiful rhetoric, and was considered to be a man of good character. But what man of good character encourages vitriol like what we’ve heard on television and the internet?

Obama is supposed to embody post-racial America. I would like to think that I live in a post-racial America. You’re an American on the inside, not the outside. Racial color is only skin-deep. After all, wasn’t it Dr. King who pled for a color-blind society? That all seems reasonable to me. But in his now-famous race speech, Obama spoke in deterministic tones: "I can no more renounce him than I can my white grandmother." Still, you don’t pick your grandmother but you do pick your pastor. If Obama really believes in this post-racial America that millions thinks he embodies, wouldn’t he want to worship in a place other than one that still thinks it’s the 1940's? If he believes in all these ideals why then does he expose his young children to this worldview? To be entirely honest, if one attempted to find a church which corresponded with Obama’s rhetoric, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago should really be the last place anyone would look. Comparing Obama’s platform versus his place of worship really does remind one of the saying, "The biggest lies are wrapped in the most beautiful packages."

Other Obama apologists also claim that that is simply a typical black church. There’s nothing unusual about it, and it’s mostly a cultural phenomenon, so there’s no big deal. However, according to this youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0nNf8ZGmzY you will also see that that may not be the case.

So, what does this tell us about Obama, the man who would be president. Is our first viable black candidate for president really harboring racist sentiments? It’s not unreasonable to think that a politician with an intoxicating personality will tell crowds the exact opposite of what he really means. Barack Obama has had crowds that might have rivaled those that met Christ in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. People faint over the man, Chris Matthews of MSNBC claimed to have felt shivers down his leg while listening to the senator talk, and even sworn racists such as Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan flock to Obama. All of this begs one to not ask the question, "Can Obama save this country," but "Is Obama secretly some sort of black supremacist with dictatorial implications?" I bring that last point up because the man has such an enthusiastic following. Any person who attracts that sort of devotion is dangerous, especially when people know so little about the man. And any person who might hide this sort of racial hypocrisy and supremacy reeks of tyranny. While I do fear a McCain or second Clinton White House, I am perhaps more fearful of an Obama White House.

Although, some of Obama’s more prominent supporters might insist it is the Black House.