I got an email from one of my right wing friends today. It said in part:

Barack Obama mentioned during his appearance with Oprah that he belongs to the Trinity Church of Christ. Below is a link to that church’s web site.

Go to that site and read what is written there. This man wants to be president of the United States. On the first page of this site you will see that this congregation has a non-negotiable commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Also, notice what color you must be should you want to join.

Click here for Trinity Church of Christ web site:

www.tucc.org/about.htm

So that got me worried that all this racist stuff would come back to bite Barack. I emailed my old pal Paul Bunyan to see what he had to say, as he’s pretty good at minority issues, being a giant and all (giants still don’t have equal rights in this country). Paul told me the following:

Yeah that is his church, and it’s a little controversial. God forbid black people get angry about anything.

This emailer is foaming at the mouth “No where is AMERICA even mentioned.” In classic style.

This church is a big deal for Obama, it’s how he came to religion from a non-religious childhood, and it’s very heavy on black pride and as they put it, the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. There is a firebrand preacher guy at the head of it, and it’s a gigantic Chicago congregation.

It’s dangerous stuff in a way, and Obama has had to back off from forefronting this too much. The concept is, you can counteract 10 generations of oppression by staking a claim to prior freedom in one’s land of origin. But then the Outraged Masses can say it’s anti-american. And they can say it’s blacks-only. And both claims are true in part, if you refuse to understand the subtleties.

It reminds me of the Pryor routine in which he goes to Africa and finds there are “no niggers,” in his words. What he found there was the absence, not just of oppression of blacks by whites, but the absence of the *ghost* of oppression. It opened his eyes to the american situation. There is this bind that america is in, where the history of subjugation is always present, where a black guy is always dealing with it, either fighting it or becoming it or imagining it or wondering if he’s imagining it, etc. It’s as though every interaction between blacks and whites is tainted by this sin.

At the risk of saying something awful, I think one reason whites can accept Obama is that he comes from a recent immigrant black origin, not a slave-descendant family. I’m not reifying Pryor’s self-hatred here, and I don’t think slave-history taints black people. But it does hang over the *relationship* between black and white, and Obama is partly free from that. God help me, but I think this is what Biden was saying when he said he was “clean.” The flip side is that he also seems to inhabit the african-american tradition, in his speech and manner. Much more than say, Tiger does.

But anyway, yeah, Obama belongs to this pretty radical Afro-centric Black-empowerment church, which is essentially, if not literally racially-exclusive. Plus its charismatic leader is a big mentor to him. I think there will be nothing too crazy in his theology. I only hope he stares this issue down head on, cause it could be a problem.

I wrote my old buddy, Babe the Blue Ox, recently, saying: Hilary loses to Huckabee or McCain in a heartbeat. But Obama can beat him.

Babe had some interesting things to say, so I share them with you here:

Huckabee—It’s interesting. I fear the Christ-power, but in most ways, he’s a weak candidate. I know that we have a born-again president right now, but this really is an aberration. The genius of the Bush branding strategy is that he won over %100 of the white trash evangelicals, while normal right-wingers missed the crazy christian stuff, and just saw the good-guy/frat-boy/cowboy act. The strength of Bush, such as it is, is that he truly is an empty vessel. He just never says anything, and his deepest bloody-jesus talk is all in code. Some people see him as hard and vengeful, some as charming and fun, some as a holy-blood-guzzling Christian, and all that and barricading black neighborhoods in Florida added up to just enough votes.

But with Huckabee, its all right out front and center. He and his whole family are white-trash monsters. He’s a crazy preacher who talks to god from the podium. His son is a glock-toting dog-killer, and looks like he may really be a sociopath.

I mean this is real christian stuff, cult of death and sexual inversion. This is not Alkie George grabbing the phony born-again lifeline cause it’s the only way to save his Yankee Yalie ass. There’s a lot of people who will be seriously repulsed by hick like Huckabee. Yeah I know Bill was a charming musician outsider hick from Arkansas, but I don’t think that lighting strikes twice

Still, Hillary could lose to anybody. Her campaign must have the same moles in it that Kerry’s did. I don’t know if she’s fucking up in oversight, or if it’s her idea, but her campaign is earning a reputation as petty, hyper-manipulative and vicious. I want to like her. I’m trying. But I don’t. I hate her.

Please let us have us Obama.

There was a story in the Post recently where it was very hard to tell if the Post was saying that Obama was a Muslim or saying that there was a rumor that he was a Muslim. The Editor, a guy named Hamilton (!), responded in a way that struck me as quite lame. There is not a single statement in the followup to the article that takes any ownership of what the Post did. You don’t really need to read the Post story to get it from the following, but Politico did a good job of following up. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7193.html

The paper’s intention, Hamilton said, was “to write a story about the kind of rumors that are out there,” and added that “saying something is a rumor is not saying it’s true.”

“We didn’t say it was a false rumor,” Hamilton added. “To me, a rumor is not true.”

In the Post article, the madrassa story is described as “an early rumor,” rather than a “false report,” which is how CNN summed it up in Jan. 2007.

“I don’t mean to be immune to criticism,” Hamilton said. “Obviously we did something that we should have been careful about.”

However, he added, “Not every imperfect story generates this type of controversy.”

Accepting internal criticism, Hamilton said that the Post “is a big family, and families have lots of disagreements.”

“We’re not a hierarchical organization that promotes message discipline,” he added.

Each of these sentences is empty. And the premise – that simply to say something is a rumor is to say it is false – is surely weak. If this kind of thinking or explanation from an editor at one of the world’s biggest newspapers is not ingenuine, it is at least unforgiveably naïve. The guy sounds like a putz.

Obama should say: “I hear people saying I don’t deserve being president because I haven’t served in Washington as long as some of my opponents. I reiterate: I view this, and I think the American people are ready to view this, as a competitive advantage at this stage in the game. And if you still want to say that I don’t have the experiencee, then I would only refer you to my opponent’s experience, and say that Affirmative Action is a better reason to vote for somebody than nepotism!