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by BClark_Archive
rick... why the focus on obama's pastor, and not the shady religious advisers of other candidates? (good call on pointing that out)
because, (paraphrasing what i read recently on these boards) obama is only appealing to the mainstream if he can be painted as a black man who is ready and willing to let the US off the hook for its past crimes (many of which are not in the distant past).
going from experience and the people i've known, most black people are not so eager to just "let the US off the hook" in this sense. furthermore, most black people i've known are simply not patriotic. neither am i, but it's even more understandable in their case because they have been categorically wronged by the US.
but as with any nation, a president must be (or at least appear to be) patriotic in order to be elected. such is the way of nationalism. you can't be some kind of level-headed person and approach the population of a country like the USA and say "listen, this country fucked up, bigtime, on many levels in many areas. and as such, i find it very hard to take pride in the nation. but i believe that we can make things right, let's get to it."
this is just one reason that a black presidential candidate is not very electable: i'd imagine that many black people aren't very patriotic. now obama actually seems to be very enthusiastic about america, mostly because he is convinced that he can make something really good (or at least better) out of it. but is it really any surprise that he is around people (his wife, his pastor) who aren't so patriotic, or even (gasp) "anti-american"?
why the focus on obama's pastor, and not the "spiritual advisers" of the other candidates? it's because he's black. no joke, it really is.
wasn't pat fucking robertson the spiritual adviser to bush? at the very least he was close to him. when you have nutcase politicians, their spiritual advisers are even more nuts (though i'd say obama is definitely not a nutcase, and i kind of like what his pastor has to say). even billy graham, who was PC enough to be loved by the mainstream, made all sorts of antisemitic remarks in those tapes with nixon.
i'm sure JFK had some election issues surrounding his spiritual advisers. he was catholic!
Last edited by
BClark_Archive on Sat Mar 22, 2008 2:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.