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Was The Obama Speech Solipsism or Condescension?
By Michael Weiss / March 18, 2008
There were moments of eloquence in Obama's speech, but I can't decide if solipsism or condescension accounts for his thinking that the very limited scandal surrounding his toxic pastor Jeremiah Wright is related to America's greater and permanent stain of slavery. It is an insult to blacks, not to mention the civil rights movement, to claim that vitriol, hysteria and demagogy are endemic to a community that has, quite without the help of raving religious charlatans, already given us two Secretaries of State and two Supreme Court Justices.
By this reading, we're expected to accept that a little bit of Jeremiah — who thinks the government invented the AIDS virus, that 9/11 was a homegrown catastrophe — resides in anyone made to ride in the back of a bus. Is this really the kind of message he wishes to broadcast? Obama also errs in comparing his preacher to members of his own family. He can't have controlled who his grandmother was, but no one forced him to join the Trinity Church twenty years ago, much less to remain a congregant when he discovered the kind of spirituality being hawked from its pulpit. (It was in 1984 that Wright traveled with Louis Farrakhan to meet Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator responsible for bankrolling "Black September," the hostage-takers at the Munich Olympics, and just two years shy of facilitating the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in which many U.S. servicemen were killed.)
My own suspicion is that Obama only ever discovered this shambolic God that failed because, as a bright young atheist from Hawaii, he felt that a pew-pounding minority church was a convenient entree into local Chicago politics. The word for this is cynicism, or to put it in the mushy-headed language his supporters prefer, 'You are the idiots I've been waiting for.'
P.S. I had been thinking about the point Zbird makes below before I saw him make it. Consider this an addendum to the above:
It's not news that everyone contains contradictions and multitudes and has base moments.
"I am a racist," wrote Martin Amis once, accounting for the complicated psyche of his favorite poet and family friend Philip Larkin, then under mass literary indictment for what Larkin's biography and collected letters disclosed. "I am less racist than my father was, and my children will be less racist than I am." Good sense, in other words, is historical, rooted to what Peter Singer has called the ever-widening "moral circle" by which we grow more enlightened and humane as the centuries go by. Something like that.
Amis's point was refreshingly free of cant or homiletics, and it encompassed the kind of human frailty many believe Obama artfully addressed today. It also helped that Larkin had confined all of his racist, anti-Semitic filth to the realm of private correspondence — the poems, the stuff that mattered, were blessedly free of it, which shows that even bigots and reactionaries can exercise good judgment or aspire to be better than they are, or, if you like, than their generation has allowed them to be.
My problem with Obama's speech is that he is lowering the bar to the floor, apologizing not for a celebrated postwar poet of great depth and feeling, but for a vulgar merchant of populist sleaze. Jeremiah Wright was not caught committing his many betises in casual conversation or in the semi-exclusive confines of the neighborhood barbershop, or around the kitchen table. He was preaching them from a pulpit, before a large audience, loudly and repeatedly, for decades. Shall we say this is reflective of the broader black experience in America even at its most uninhibited or flippant? (One thinks here of Chris Rock's stand-up about the friendly-seeming old codger at work who calls his white colleagues "crackers" behind their backs but is the picture of servile minstrelsy to their faces.)
Let me phrase my grievance another way: If a Jewish candidate for high office attempted to convince me that a little bit of Meir Kahane resided in all of us, I'd condemn him roundly. Not in my name, big boy. And how dare you?
The high-minded response to this kind of discourse is to say that one is trafficking in "sweeping generalizations." The liberal-left pundits, all stricken with the vapors today by Obama's long and admittedly brilliant speech, have raced to credit him with loosing a deep, dark secret about some supposed racial collective conscious. Isn't this intrinsically presumptuous and offensive to those who would argue there is no such thing to begin with?
I know I'm expected to say here that I've no right to speak for insulted African-Americans because I'm not one myself. However, I don't think it is naive or callow to say that Obama's success thus far indicates that the country has indeed reached a point where it no longer has to think in such prefab, codified categories. If he becomes president, then he will not answer to a demographic, he will answer to all of us. And by that measure alone, he has failed me.
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Mike, notice what your critics are saying. 1) Everybody tolerates people like Jeremiah Wright. 2) Wright was justified.
But, in fact, Obama lied about his church not being controversial. How do I know? Because now he says that Wright's statements are controversial. And he also lied about not knowing about it. How do I know? Because now he admits that he did.
Why can'this supporters acknowledge this truth?
They can still say that everyone praises people who teach the public that the CIA invented AIDS and that on 9/11 the Americans had it coming. Also, that it's justified to teach these ideas to the general public.
I don't think it is fair for you to assume that people who lived
through those outrageous times should have gotten over it by now.
No literate person who read my post above could say that's a fair surmise of my position. One would think that my early mention of the "permanent stain of slavery" and the civil rights movement acknowledges the history you claim I ignore.
My point is that I don't like how Obama suggests blacks of the 60's generation all harbor at least the ghost of Jeremiah Wright's febrile, conspiracist and deeply illiberal worldview — or that we should, out of a sense of historical guilt, excuse those who do. A higher standard than this was one of the aims of MLK, and he lived through the "outrageous times." So too did a number of other great men (Bayard Rustin, for instance), whose biographies I can easily call up from the comfort of my armchair. And if you're looking for an elegant confession of residual race resentment, you can still do better than Obama's former pastor. Try James Baldwin.
Yet, how can racism be abolished if we condone racism in our churches? If we condone and fund through our personal donations racist blood libels that people like Wright preach, are we not poisoning yet another generation of racists? Someone needs to stand up and say enough, but Obama will not do that. In fact he is giving credibility to those that PREACH hatred and bigotry from the black side. Is it impossible to see where this will head? Obama wasted a prime chance to do the right thing, is it any wonder that some cannot trust him?
Mr. Weiss,
You must not be aware that the Civil Rights Act OF 1964 is just one generation removed from you. You must also be unaware that we needed a Supreme Court decision in 1967 to tell 16 States that banning interracial marriage is unconstitutional. It's surreal to think that we were so advanced a civilization that in 1969 we sent a man to the moon, yet just 2 years before that we had 16 States in which interracial marriage was illegal.
Thus, it seems overly convenient for you to speak on behalf of black Americans from the comfort of your armchair. Slavery may have been abolished by Lincoln, but racism has yet to be abolished, and institutional and legal racism was part of the fabric of our nation until just 40 years ago. I don't think it is fair for you to assume that people who lived through those outrageous times should have gotten over it by now. Barack's speech went to the heart of this matter like no other in recent memory, and your spin on it proves so many of the points he tried to make in that speech.
…Is that anyone believes that the politicians believe anything in regards to religion.
Is it anything more than a tool used to romance the masses when it is in the hands of the politician? I think not.
Just remember they are all men of God and we will be happy to tell you so to get your vote.
Anyone here heard of Billy Graham?
This is how correctives are made (in the comments).
It's much worse than that, Xopher. McCain has recently appeared on stage with the Rev. Rod Parsley, a conservative evangelical whose beliefs are as cartoonish as his name. What does the good minister say? That the United States was founded to destroy Islam! See David Corn's piece about this in Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
And how does the ever pliant maverick Republican refer to Parsley? As his "spiritual guide."
There's enough disgust and skepticism to go around.
(And by the way, Edward, I hope you don't think me any less compassionate to suggest that McCain is only talking like this to shore up Christian votes…)
Let me phrase my grievance another way: If a Jewish candidate
for high office attempted to convince me that a little bit of Meir
Kahane resided in all of us, I'd condemn him roundly. Not in my name, big boy. And how dare you?
Well, if you're serious about this, I think that your energy might be spent a little better by critiquing the love-fest between John Hagee, Joseph Lieberman, and Abe Foxman. To put it bluntly, it chaps my ass that everyone is rushing to make sure that Obama not only says that he disagrees with Jeremiah Wright, but that he really, really, really, REALLY disagrees with him — while giving Hagee and McCain a free pass. But even worse, despite Hagee's anti-semitism and apologies for the Holocaust, Lieberman is perfectly comfortable to stand up and compare him favorably with Moses:
I begin by thanking your founder, Pastor John Hagee. I would describe
Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an
"Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like
Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and
defense of Israel.
The multitude that Hagee leads, however, pretty much feels that the Jews got what they deserved in the Shoah, for having turned their back on the Messiah, and have serious theological hard-ons for the apocalypse which will lead the Jews to either convert or go to their appointed place in Hell. Hagee's version of Jewish history, as depicted in his book Jerusalem Showdown shows that he might think of them as God's children, but they're kind of the delinquent, misbehaving kids that need a good ass-kicking to make them see the light:
It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen
people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true
God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that
they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very
day….
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His
chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered
upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of
anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for
centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God uppon his
rebellious chosen people.
Which of these two people is really scarier, for Americans at large or for Jews? McCain actively went after Hagee's endorsement; Wright is just some guy that Obabma happened to be associated with. And why does Obama deserve such microscopic scrutiny while Hagee (never mind the Jewish leaders sucking up to him) escapes more than a few casual mentions?
I'll stick with "two utterly different versions of reality," thanks. In your version, as I understand it, Obama joined the church as "a convenient entree into local Chicago politics." In your version, Obama "automatically" described Wright's "thoughts and motives" in a particular way. In my much less cynical version, Obama thinks carefully and insightfully and, yes, compassionately about what he does and says.
But, hey, we do agree that today's speech was "brilliant," and maybe that means there's a chance for a less than abortive conversation some other time. Until then, I'll hope that one of these days you hear a campaign speech that's as powerful and impressive to you as Obama's Philly speech was to me.
I think our conversation would be abortive for other, definitional reasons:
"We'd be talking about two utterly different versions of reality; you'd argue for yours and I'd argue for mine."
No, I think you mean two different opinions. We weren't watching The Matrix, we were watching a political spectacle, an attempt at exculpation and apologia by a candidate for president. Solipsism and condescension were not my "boundaries," they were my conclusions.
"In your terms, it would be like trying to understand where a person
like Meir Kahane came from, and then we might be able better to
understand why Kahane believed what he believed. The action of
attempting to understand another person is different from agreeing with
that person. It's an action some would call compassion."
Do some belong to your or my "reality"? I wouldn't call it that; I'd call it an attempt to understand a vile human being and what may have contributed to his vileness, an act that strikes me as one of fairly routine intellectual curiosity. Compassion would be not to automatically attribute his motives and thoughts to the people he purports to represent because I, too, know how hard it is to face down sham representatives who make my own people look bad.
What recent speech by a political candidate of any party in this
country has resonated for you the way this one resonated for me (put me
in the James Fallows camp, in case you were wondering: "This was as
good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as
impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long
time")?
None has, I'm sorry to say. I might go further and add that none attempting to serve as an ebb-tide that would wash away the polluting effects of religion in political discourse will likely ever do.
Well, if "solipsism" and "condescension" mark the boundaries of your attempt to interpret Obama's speech, then it's difficult actually to have a conversation. We'd be talking about two utterly different versions of reality; you'd argue for yours and I'd argue for mine. Also difficult to have a conversation if you believe that a sentence like "My own suspicion is that Obama only ever discovered this shambolic God that failed because…he felt that a pew-pounding minority church was a convenient entree into local Chicago politics" belongs in any piece purporting to offer useful analysis.
And your Meir Kahane analogy: a more accurate analogy would point out that what Obama did in his speech was attempt to understand and describe a complex, at times frustrating human being. In your terms, it would be like trying to understand where a person like Meir Kahane came from, and then we might be able better to understand why Kahane believed what he believed. The action of attempting to understand another person is different from agreeing with that person. It's an action some would call compassion.
But, alas, compassionate as we no doubt are, I'm guessing that for the moment our realities will continue not to coincide, so let's postpone that particular conversation for now. I'll ask a question instead: What recent speech by a political candidate of any party in this country has resonated for you the way this one resonated for me (put me in the James Fallows camp, in case you were wondering: "This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time")?
"By this reading, we're expected to accept that a little bit of Jeremiah
– who thinks the government invented the AIDS virus, that 9/11 was a
homegrown catastrophe — resides in anyone made to ride in the back of
a bus"
I think that's an accurate description of Obama's point, and I also think it happens to be true. The point is not that the experience of discrimination will force people to think in particular ways–human beings have an amazing ability to think for themselves and transcend their background and experience. But it would be completely naive to think that we our history does not exert a pull on our psyche in one way or another–that we aren't influenced by internal "little Jeremiahs" or "little Ferraros.". In my experience, people who experience severe discrimination, poverty, or suffering–no matter their race–tend to view the world suspiciously and are prone to paranoid conspiracy theories. Â
What Obama is saying is that we can dismiss the conspiracy theories for what they are, but that we shouldn't dismiss the people who hold those views, because their complaints are legitimate even if their philosophies are insane.
–Z
Obama is much the modern scoundrel. He is trying to pull a Nixon, knowing that his shills will spin this to his benefit. He really had nothing to say that would really work to ease the situation, so he goes to the well once again, for empty rhetoric and hopes for the best. If ever there were a man with no clothes…
Yet, reading the media accounts, he placed his faith in the right place. He now will be allowed to have Wright preach at his rallies, and the media will say naught. Â
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