Janny Scott writes about Obama's Wright-wrong speech, "the moment was unlike virtually any in the more than 40 years since the triumphs of the civil rights struggle tore up party alignments of the past and tamped down explicit discussion of race by presidents and major-party candidates addressing the American people."

It's a shame this New Yorker profile of Cory Booker isn't available in full, it's a great microcosmic view of racial politics in this country.

Meanwhile, in the N&R, Ken Massey of GSO's First Baptist Church reacts to reactions to the Obama/Wright story.

UPDATE: More here, including this nugget: "The sense of threatened tribalism is at the root of movement conservatism."

Comments

[Danny Wright]

Interesting re Massey's piece is the last sentence of the note in italics -- good for him to be courageous enough to offer up publicly his opinion on such a (sadly) hot-button issue.

[RBM]

Wow !!
I'm an old fart who can see the same mode of 'gansta' dress on the mainstreet of the capital of ... Nebraska ?! ... on WHITE kids !

DrEyeBall,"sense of threatened tribalism"
That IMVHO is the broadest view of the socioculturalpolitical landscape.

IMV Race highlights my fellow man's shortcomings quite starkly.

My first best buddy was black at grade school age (early '60's) in Syracuse NY. Indeed my first prepubescent interest in the other gender was of one of best buddy's sisters.

As a high schooler ('67 - '71)in Papillion Ne I heard tons of racist comments from classmates directed at the ONLY black family
that lived in town.

Now attending a commuter college in corn country with of classmates of small town ag communities.

I'm still hearing trash about blacks all the way to other non-whites that I personally characterize as racist just as I would characterize Instapunk.

Were it only blue eyed people that were 'the other'.

[Spag]

That "nugget" is also ripe with double standards and an extremely poor premise- that is conservatism equates all American enemies as the "nigger" of the moment. I hope they aren't teaching that kind of stupidity in colleges these days. Under such logic, liberals opposed to Communism were simply opposed to Communism- but if you were to the Right, your opposition wasn't sincere, it was just paranoia.

Right.

Then this beauty:

"The belief that they are good and pure, yet subjected to unprecedented systematic unfairness and threatened by some lurking Evil Other against whom war must be waged (the Muslim, the Immigrant, the Terrorist, the Communist, the Liberal, the Welfare Queen) is the centerpiece of their ugly worldview."

That is hysterical considering victimization is the foundation of modern liberalism. To try and turn that against the Right cannot be taken seriously.

Further, modern liberalism is made up almost entirely of "tribalism" (read: special interests with their own agenda) and has just as many bogeyman as the Right which essentially made up of anyone who disagrees with them.

[David Wharton]

"The sense of threatened tribalism is at the root of movement conservatism."

I find that nugget a good example of what's wrong with our current political discourse.

It's wrong because it reduces a complex social and political movement to its basest elements. Pronouncements like those are comforting to those who say them because they give sayers them a false sense of superiority and at the same time excuse them from actually having to think about, much less constructively engage, their opponents' political ideas.

The "nugget" is also paradoxical, because it is itself an example of the kind of tribalism it decries. Its sole function is to rally followers to its side, not on the basis of argument or evidence, but merely by shouting, in so many words "them bad -- us good!"

I'm trying to figure out why you included it.

[Fred Gregory]

Roger Simon:

" Obama won over his base, he won over the American media. They loved that speech. "

Well not Charles Krauthammer who discects it as a

Brilliant Fraud

[Fred Gregory]

Sock puppet Greenwald:Those who are opposed to Obama's socialist policies are racist or ..are you ready for this ?.. racist lite ! What a dork

Thomas Sowell scrutinizes the speech:

"Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.

Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech -- a theatrical masterpiece -- will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now “move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory.

Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the “useful idiots” useful."

What Did He Know and when Did He Know It ?

[Dave Dobson]

Fred, I'd agree that Krauthammer is a fraud, but I can't agree that he's brilliant.

[Ed Cone]

DW, I included the nugget because it gets at something important about modern conservatism that I think is underdiscussed --it's sense of victimization and being under siege. I agree that the comment -- like much in a Greenwald piece -- tends toward the inflammatory, but I don't think the larger point is at all out of bounds.

Lex Alexander has written about this, I think, maybe I'll find it.

[Fec]

Shelby Steele is one of the authors David Mamet credits with his recent bent to conservatism.

[Jim Buie]

I've been impressed by the number of conservatives who have come to Obama's defense on the Rev. Wright controversy: Not just Mike Huckabee, but Jack Kemp and Chris Wallace have taken Fox News to task. Click.

[jaycee]

Yeah since the speech was intended to confuse the ignorant and gulible it worked to a certain degree except with inteligent black writers like Steele, Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell and former Washington Post columnist Juan Williams to name a few.