OK -- Last Post on Obama/Wright

I promise. Unless something really earth-shattering comes up.

I realize I've been spending a lot of time and words on what I consider a "non-story," but the thing does have resonances. And, in my own defense, please consider that I'm not actually commenting on Wright and Obama, but on the reaction to Wright and Obama. Please note the reference to "meta-blogging" in the subtitle of this site.

The mantra on the right is that Wright's comments and his association with Wright are going to hurt Obama among middle-Americans. And a lot of commentators are buying into the assumption that Americans don't have the patience or the abiity to assimilate a reasoned, nuanced discussion of any issue, particularly race. I'm not so sure. I realize it's anecdotal, but I bet scenes like this are happening a lot. The diarist's conclusions are what gives me hope:

I decided today that there are a lot of good people in the world. I decided that after all the slogans, after all the bumper stickers, and after all the excruciating hours of listening to Bill O'Reilly divide us, most folks don't hate most other folks. And when someone stands up, and explains the situation clearly, concisely, and directly, they can see that, yeah, we have issues to work through and that, yeah, we need to do something.

Today's speech wasn't about right or left, black or white, man or woman. Today Barack Obama gave a speech about basic human dignity, dignity that all of us deserve. And my brothers and sisters from OTP, many of them folks I would've considered culturally very, very different from me just yesterday, watched, listened, and saw with their hearts and minds what Barack Obama was saying. . . .

UPDATE II - A couple of folks have pointed out that Cobb County is not nearly as homogeneous as I described, and I'm going to expand on one of my responses here a bit. The Atlanta suburbs have a reputation of being lily white after the "white flight" from the city over the last few decades. But the suburbs are changing. They're becoming more diverse both racially, culturally, and otherwise. I didn't make this point explicitly, but it's a component of the story: Obama's speech and the effect that it had on folks was a challenge to me to examine my own assumptions about the people in my larger community.

That last sentence contains a key word: "challenge." Americans like challenges, at least insofar as they are part of our national mythology. That's what Americans do: we meet challenges. And Obama has handed us a real one. Contrast that with what's been handed us by the Bushites for the past seven years: a war that demands no sacrifices from the country as a whole, an economy that is doing wonders for the investor class (at least until the last couple of months), a government that keeps sending out press releases and statements that have nothing to do with the realities that most Americans are facing ("Everything's just fine.").

As a counter to this, see this post by BooMan. Aside from the fact that I think it is based on some false premises, I'm also much more of an optimist about people than BooMan seems to be. One glaring misstep (and an indication of how the bobbleheads like to define the issues according to their own priorities) is this quote from Michael Crowley, which BooMan calls "wise":

But the question is whether working class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania and West Virginia and elsewhere believe, particularly in a stalled economy, that racially perfecting the union really ought to be a central goal of the next president. I would like to believe so. I'm not convinced they do.

Excuse me -- who said that race relations were going to be one of Obama's central goals. This is an issue that's been pushed on him, and I think he's addressed it the best way anyone could. It's this habit of taking a facet of the process and making it the whole process that is one of the worst faults of the media and the punditocracy. And, if you'll excuse my French, it's just another bucket of bullshit. As we see from the post by socratic linked immediately above, people are listening -- and thinking.

Kevin Drum has compiled snippets of the reaction from The Corner, which I have habitually called "The Circle Jerk in the Corner," for reasons you can see if you read that post. One of Drum's commenters makes what I think is a key observation:

Whether Barack likes it or not he has created the perfect setup for the election: Is America ready for an honest, reasonable, leader who will speak to us like adults? We know the far right fades out when the discourse rises above junior high school level, but what about the other 75% of America? Are there enough Americans out there who will give him a chance and not take the low road? That's what it's about in 2008....

Lest I start sounding like a broken record (and how's that for a simile that shows my age?), let me point out once again: the reaction from The Corner, as well as reactions related by this reader at Daily Dish, demonstrates the poverty of the right's arsenal: they simply have no counter-argument. They have no interest in uniting the country -- division has worked too well for them over the past three decades -- but they have no vision to offer that is going to capture the hearts and minds of the majority. They've managed so far by lying through their teeth, and now the lies are coming home to roost. All they can do is fall back on their time-worn tactic of pointing their fingers and laughing. . And y'know what? It doesn't work any more. (For a clear explication of the right's mindset, see this post by Barbara O'Brien. It's all politics -- that's how truncated their vision has become. That's all they know any more. It's still all about motivating the base, with an angry black man in place of teh gays. )

(A note on Drum's post, tangentially, at least: It occurs to me that if Barack Obama had been an African-American, which is to say a black man who had grown up within the black community in this country, he could not possibly make a serious run for the presidency, because he would indeed be carrying all the baggage that the right is trying to saddle him with. The fact is that he's not -- he is uniquely positioned as a man of color who can bridge all those gaps, and probably the only person in America who could deliver the speech he delivered with any credibility. He is the only possible bridge between Jeremiah Wright and white America.)

Just to remind us that there are some honest conservatives out there, read these comments from Mike Huckabee. My respect for the man just went up a couple of notches, even though I still don't like what he stands for.

Update:

It's not just the rabid right that's turning a deaf ear, but the rabid left as well. Get this appalling screed from Rev. Irene Monroe at Bilerico Project. Time to play the victim card. To say that one's preconceptions can blind one to reality is understating the case, to put it as mildly as possible.