I don't follow your line of reasoning at all, Jim Lad.

How do you get that Obama "insulted" his grandmother? He simply told the truth about a good woman who was not perfect.

Let me illustrate with a story of my own. I had a grandfather who was an extremely kind and good man in almost every respect, and an honest and harmless man...but...he was tremendously prejudiced against Blacks, Indians, Asians...anyone who wasn't White, in fact.

This did not change the fact that in most respects he was an extremely good man, but if you can't understand that good people sometimes have flaws and blind spots in their thinking...then you will never understand people at all.

You have to look into why an essentially good and loving person carries prejudice. In my grandfather's case it was because he had grown up in an utterly different time and society than you or I did. He grew up in the upper classes of Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in a totally White-dominated society in which the kind of prejudices he had as his bedrock assumptions were, frankly, universal among his peers...and he simply carried those assumptions in an unthinking way for the rest of his life. He barely ever knew any non-European people or anyone who would have questioned his ignorant assumptions about race.

Does this mean he was evil? No. Does this mean that I would be insulting him by now telling the story of his life and mentioning in that story that he was prejudiced against non-Whites? No.

I would simply be telling an honest truth about a basically good man who was, as most people are, a product of the time, place, and circumstances that he grew up in.

Obama's statement was in no way an insult to his grandmother, it was an honest and truthful statement which ought to help people to see beyond their own narrow little vicious angle on things and to once...for gosh sakes...FORGIVE themselves and others for not being totally 100% PERFECT all the time in absolutely every way.

MOST people are racially prejudiced to some extent. Most (if not all) people are culturally prejudiced. ALL people are unreasonably prejudiced toward something or someone. If they would have the guts to face that imperfection in themselves, admit it, and then have some good will to try and deal with it....then I think they would spend a lot less time castigating other people for reflecting back to them their own inner garbage.

Obama has again shown that he is willing to look at both sides of an issue honestly and he is willing to RESPECT the people on both sides of the issue, and he's willing to RELATE to where they are coming from.

That is so rare in today's divisive and destructive political dialogues (which are usually just mutually competing monologues and exercises in accusation and condemnation) that I'm not surprised you can't believe him. It must sound like Martian or something to your ears.

People are just not normally respectful of one another in politics these days. Not one iota. They are out for the jugular. They intend to do harm. Their words indicate poorly concealed hatred. They despise one another, and they're proud of it. They believe in the White Hats vs the Black Hats, just like they've seen all their lives in stupid Hollywood movies and TV shows... they believe in stark divisions of humanity into "the good" and "the evil". Have you noticed?

Obama is not doing that. He is showing real insight into people's common problems and concerns and giving respect to what all of them have gone through on a personal basis. He is not demanding perfection of people out of one side of his mouth so he can then damn them out of the other side.