BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:31 PM

Oh, yeah. One other thing. I remember how y'all reacted when I railed against the 2000 DNC "free speech zone" and how I cheered for Rage Against the Machine getting in the face of the Dem elite in LA.

You didn't give a shit about the censorship and locking out of youth then, did you?

Nah, just like you don't give a shit about them now, except to use them so your boy will win.

Seen it all before here. Mudcat's True Blue Liberal colors are showing again, and man are they shoddy, threadbare, and worn the fuck out.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:32 PM

I'm guessing Jay Z got that phrase and gesture from the cultural milieu that Bobert has described. So who is to say where Obama got it? Nobody really can say for certain. And frankly, I don't really care. It's a good phrase and gesture, and if more people took that attitude in our political discourse, I think this country would be a better place.

I would say this regardless of whether or not I was voting for Obama.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:51 PM

Can Hip Hop Help Get Out the Vote?

Luring Young Voters to the Poll

Careful...you might have to actually listen in order to get the connection on NPR...

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:56 PM

I'm not at all surprised that Barack Obama is aware of various aspects of popular culture (I would be surprised, and perhaps a bit disappointed if he were not), but since he is a very intelligent person, I'm quite sure he doesn't derive the basis of his personal philosophical position from Hip-Hop/Rap. He's far more intelligent than that.

As to what GUEST,Fantasmagoofball is ranting and raving on about, to register on any meter at all, the level of my concern is measurable only in micro-give a shits.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: artbrooks
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:03 PM

OK, Senator Obama has the hip-hop vote, he has the urban black vote, he has the rural black vote, he has the educated youth vote, he has the young and middle-aged professional vote, he has the liberal military vote, he has the old folkie vote.   Can you say (or even spell) inclusive?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Amos
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:12 PM

Rig:

Your remark that Obama has proven himself to be shallow is indefensible and I must assume not genuinely believed even by you.

Your sense of humor really needs repair, pal.

Shallow, my royal Irish butt....

You are either woefully in the dark about the person you are maligning, or your colon has been forcing your head into a corkscrew sort of shape...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:17 PM

The young people that got me interested in Obama are string cheese incident fans. They rarely if ever listen to Hip Hop. Dave Matthews and Bruce Springsteen, Quincy Jones, Will.I.Am and Lenny Kavitz's daughter are making music nad drawing support for Obama. Their music is not "street". It is absurd to say that Obama's gains among youth are attributable to a single type of music.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:18 PM

Touche! there, Kat!

It's not surprising that GUEST,Fantasizing is unaware of what's on NPR. I guess she doesn't have a radio with her down there under the bed along with the dead spiders and dust-bunnies. Only an mp3 player.

I'm really amazed at how much time she has to devote to this.

And Amos. I think there's a lot of that going around. . . .


Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:20 PM

I think the Jeremia Wright thing, along with the staetment to leave the Office of Faith Based Initiatives open has shaped my view of Obama.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:26 PM

Riginslinger-

Real Men

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, 'Ask not what your country can do
for you, but what you can do for your country,' gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the
Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They
provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he
was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team,
and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery.

For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become
integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the
Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective
father.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments
to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political
leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love
of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was
ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Bobert
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:50 PM

I think, Fantz, that you over-generalizing about Obama's relationship to hip-hop/rap and over-generalizing about hip hop/rap as well...

Like I have pointed out, we live in a trivalized world with a long menu of products and entertainment... I appreciate some hip hop and some rap... My son, IMO, writes better that Z-Jay...

If Obama started re3ferring to Michelle Obama as his "Bitch" then I'll get off his bandwagon... If he starts referring to Condi Rice as a "Nappy headed ho" or other black men as "Niggas", I jump off the bandwagon...

You are trying to paint him into a corner of your choosing...

If I were to follow you around for a day ot two and record evertything you said and did ansd turned it over to a team of attack dogs they would surely find many non-starters with which to build a negative attack... Same with Clinton...

What you fail to realize is that Obama is doing not much more than counter=punching... He's not the one "getting off first" (boxing term) but defending himself...

These are non issues that you and yer buds Hillary and McNasty delight in bringing up...

It's old school politics...

And, for the record, you still owe Obama an apology for your "Your boy won" comment... That was racist... You know it... I know it and everyone here knows it was racist... There's absolutely no wiggle room on that one... Hip hop or not it was racist...

BTW, Part Whatever, how can you justify using hip-hop, a "contemporaray" music form to justify "old school" politics...

And BTW, for the record I am also considered an "Indie artist"...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: artbrooks
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:51 PM

Rev. Wright's statements sound pretty egregious, when taken as sound bites, but they are much less objectionable (I won't say that they are entirely unobjectionable) if one takes the time to read the entire segments of his sermons from which they are taken. This is certainly inflammatory, but it is hardly an unconditional curse upon the United States:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:01 PM

Bad guess, CarolC. Jay Z is flippin' off the people who dare to criticize his brand of thuggery. Jay Z is the problem, NOT the solution for chrissake. Just like Oprah is the problem, and not the solution.

And you know what, artbrooks? Obama may well have all those folks in his back pocket.

But he doesn't have Maya Angelou's vote.

And people should be asking themselves why.

Maya Angelou isn't one of the Bill Cosby black conservatives steeped in the black nationalist separatist tradition of "segregation wasn't so bad".

She isn't one of the 70% of African Americans whom, in true conservative reactionary mode, regularly denounce rap and hip hop as a corrupting influence, the same way whites do.

She doesn't even issue blanket condemnations of hip hop from her high, lofty perch among the American literary giants.

Imagine that. One of the last living scions of a generation of the Black Arts Movement, one of the last living grande dames of the Civil Rights Era. And even though her family and friends are all voting for Obama, she is not.

Now, it isn't my intention to put her on a pedastal for that, not by a long shot. But to understand why she is making that choice, you need to know a bit about African American history. You have to know that black conservatism is a tradition that winds it's way back, and includes Bill Cosby and Obama, Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, Louis Farrakahn and Jeremiah Wright, back to Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Booker T. Washington.

But that those folks don't represent the black liberal integrationist philosophy, especially those of the other half of the 60s Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King, Ralph Ellison, and stretching back to W.E.B. DuBois.

Yet, Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, Ida B. Wells, and Sojourner Truth don't fit easily within either of those two male dominated pantheons of African American History. But Zora Neale Hurston quite comfortably does fit within the conservative Booker T. Washington/Bill Cosby on Pound Cake pantheon (though she wasn't a huge fan of Marcus Garvey's ability to pocket the peoples' monies in his own pocket).

What I, and I think Riginslinger too (and some others here, who have expressed reservations about him, but may yet vote for him) have recognized about Obama, is his brand of inclusivity is a mile wide and an inch deep. His political ideology seems more firmly rooted in the prevailing winds, than in any moral ground, much less the high one.

The Hip Hop Nation, such as it is, is every bit as complex and diverse as any other aspect of African American history. It is true many black nationalist conservatives, urban, suburban, and rural, have flocked to Obama. And why wouldn't they? He is one of them.

But some very thoughtful, wise, and intellectual powerhouses of the black intelligentsia have not leapt on board, and the train is pulling out of the station.

Why not dare take a look at what they have to say?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Bobert
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:10 PM

not "trivalized", though that almost works too... It was supposed to come out "tribalized", as in one big dysfuntional "tribe"... lol...

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:15 PM

Maya Angelou has said:

"Lyrical poetry is out for the time being, and something that is called rap or hip-hop is in. It is still poetry, and we can't live without it. We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we're capable of — to explain the pains and glory of our existence."

and then, she has also said...

[Disagreeing with Russell Simmons' comment that "comparing Don Imus' language with hip hop artists' artistic expression is misguided and inaccurate,"] Maya Angelou on the CBS Evening News also said:

    "It's all the same. All vulgarity is vulgarity. If you mean to demean a person, to make her or him less than whole — anyone could say it, you could say it from a robot — it means that this person is not worthy of my concern. But at last we're going to have a dialogue, I'm telling you. Nelly, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg — all of those men, who are very intelligent — and I include Dave Chappelle — for the first time we are going to sit down and see how have we come so late and lonely to this place. I would ask the hip hoppers, if you wanted to say something and see how powerful you are, use Ms. Laura Bush and call her one of those "b-" words — and see how long you will live. There wouldn't be enough rope to hang your butts. No. But black women, because we are last on the totem pole, everyone has a chance to take a chance on us. Well, not now."

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:19 PM

And bless her soul, she also said:

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:37 PM

Bad guess, CarolC. Jay Z is flippin' off the people who dare to criticize his brand of thuggery.

That may be so, but that doesn't tell us where he, himself got the phrase... only how he, himself, is using it. He probably got it from the same milieu as the one in which Bobert first heard it. Obama can just as easily have gotten it first from that milieu as well. We really have no way of knowing.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:43 PM

Thanks, Dick, for that background on Rev. Wright. An object lesson in how badly off the mark one can be by simply ignoring the entirity of a fellow human being's life and judging him or her by one comment they happen to have made.

Doing so shows how shallow some people are. Or in the current political context, how shallow the negative political manipulators hope other people are.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:43 PM

Ah, I see. Now Bobert is an expert folklorist in African and African American Culture? I must have missed his article in my last issue of Smithsonian.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:46 PM

Ah, I see. Now Bobert is an expert folklorist in African and African American Culture?

That's a straw man argument. He doesn't need to be an expert folklorist in African and African American culture to know and remember under what circumstances he first heard a phrase being used.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: pdq
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:51 PM

"...black conservatism is a tradition that winds it's way back, and includes Bill Cosby and Obama, Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, Louis Farrakahn and Jeremiah Wright, back to Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Booker T. Washington."

To the untrained eye, the comonality of these people is not readily obvious. Perhaps one might elucidate?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:52 PM

The day, Fanny, that you are as wise and insightful as Bobert is is the day I say something nice about you. Yoo, madam, are missing a few pegs.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:55 PM

No, you just prefer his rationalizing. He don't know jack about African American culture.

Here is a post from the Green Commons website (yes, THAT dirty, filthy Green Party that everyone here loves to hate), from African American Green Party blogger, Alex Walker. I saved it from last fall, because it rang so true to me, and it was posted just prior to my family being flooded out of our home--which just makes it personally memorable to me, of course.

Obama and Oprah -- As Far As You Can Get From South Central Los Angeles.

Submitted by AlexWalker on Tue, 09/11/2007 - 4:53pm.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama raised an estimated $3 million at a fund-raiser hosted by TV mogul, Oprah Winfrey last week. See below a description by Varsha Rao posted over the weekend on The Huffington Post. It is such a disgusting, nauseating celebration of capitalist wealth and celebrity it's enough to take your breath away. By the way, it is a measure of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of my fellow African-Americans that I have not found a single criticism of this decadent display on the usual Black-oriented web sites or blogs. Break out your handkerchiefs when you read the part where Oprah "with emotion" told the glitterati she feels "blessed to be living the dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. made possible."

Dear Friends: This is about as far as you can get from South Central Los Angeles or Brooklyn or Southside Chicago.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 07:09 PM

Read it again...the part that says "black conservative tradition..."

That is the common thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 07:20 PM

OK Dino girl,

You get back to teaching in your classroom, where I'm sure the kids look to you for urban culture guidance, what with you being so hip and everything and chill with them yeah?...

... And I'll go back to my extensive hip hop Crew, with roots going back nearly 20 years and with young kids coming through every day trying their luck as performers ... and tell them that our cover has been blown ...

The self appointed mudcat authority on Hip Hop has looked out of her classroom window and seen the truth about disconnected old folks ...

And she doesn't like me much or she would have acknowledged one of my posts by now.

Sorry, but you have been well and truly made a mockery of.

1. Somebody else got there first with the video and they explored this issue in more interesting depth than you.

2. you accuse us of not having it on our radar when it is there on record that you zipped straight over it when it was first posted whilst everyone else was checking it out.

3. You claim to be the one with the hip hop credentials when in reality you are a school teacher who is probably viewed as a dinosaur by her kids - While I have extensive experience in hip hop and am connected in the industry - hence I know what I'm talking about.

You have still not made a clear point.

I'm outta here guys - have fun with her.


Oh and ringinslinger - Lovely Irony that you should in turn post such a shallow view.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: pdq
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 07:23 PM

You seem to saying that

    "black integrationist philosophy = liberal

    black nationalist separatist tradition = conservative"

and I find that hard to support. Obama, Cosby, Oprah, Carver and others were/are quite well assimulated. Farrakan and Malcolm Little, not. I am not joining the attack on you at all, I just don't see the connection unless you simply call anyone you disrespect a conservative.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:17 PM

Quite the contrary, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Malcolm X. But not for Farrakahn.

And it isn't me who made it all up, pdq. Just like there are white social conservatives who vote for the Democratic party, and white social liberals, who vote their class interests with the Republicans, there is that same complexity among blacks too.

But nationalism is always traditionalist and conservative, whether it is black nationalist, British or Irish nationalist, or Chinese nationalist.

And yes, the American black separatists have historically been, for the most part, quite moralistic and socially conservative (the part I didn't like about Malcolm X). The American black integrationists a little less moralistic (? but maybe not), and more socially liberal. As a rule of thumb. But they are all individuals first.

Which is why individuals don't fit real well into stereotypes. Even guests of Mudcat who piss you off.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:23 PM

But, I should also have said, most, if not all of the people I mentioned, did/do see themselves as part and parcel of an American black intellectual/philosophical tradition of one sort or another.

Again though, I have to point out that many of the most influential American black women were often not included in the pantheon created by the American black male intelligentsia, and were often outcasts in what should have been their own natural community of intellectuals.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: pdq
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:24 PM

"Even guests of Mudcat who piss you off."

Please don't jump to conclusions on that point. I have never read a post of yours that would piss me off, believe it or not.

That said, I still don't see much commonality among the people mentioned, but such is life.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:32 PM

"But nationalism is always traditionalist and conservative" but quite frequently liberal at the same time. There is no intrinsic incompatibility between those attitudes.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Bobert
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:42 PM

Well, well, well (from the late R, L. Burnside, btw...Oh. how I hate givin' up my secrets...lol...)

In a way I am very much a folklorist of black history... Anyone who has seen me perform knows that because I talk alot about black history as I perform country blues... Almost all of my music was written a long time ago... My heros were black men tryin' to carve out little niche for themselves playing in juke joints and maybe be recorded by the local furniture builder (the first record makers, btw) or by Alan Lomax in the various penetenuries thru out the South...I have spent alot of time trying to learn as much as I can about the erra when my heros lives and I've spent alot of time on it...

But forget self-testimonials...

What this comes down to isn't whether Obama learned to shake the dust from a preacher or a hip hopper even tho I'd bet that the hip hopper learned it from his parents or grandparents... What matters is that it is a ********non issue********!!! Period...........

That's right.... It doesn't mean a rats ass to 45M people without health insurance... It doesn't mean rat's ass to the drastic redestrubution of wealth in America toward the wealthy, or tax codes that the corportists have had put in place to protect them....

The problem I have with Fantz is that she would rather keep distratcions front and center when it come to Obama... She claims to be an equal opportunity cnadidate hater but puts about 99% into hatin' Obama... Somehting wrong here that don't take the Wes Ginny Slide Rule to figure out...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:47 PM

Man. Fantasia, now you are quoting a blogger ("a failed computer programmer") and carefully not citing where he got his opinions. Varsha Rao, the one who wrote the account of the Obama fundraiser gave a different view of it. Ok, it was kind of ga ga but the fundraiser was legit. Oh, and the $3 million? The tickets for the fundraiser, according to Rao, were $2,300 which is/was estimated to have amounted to the 3 mil. I don't know if they passed the hat in addition.

Varsha Rao: At the Oprah/Obama fundraiser

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: artbrooks
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 08:50 PM

Liberal and conservative (in the non-UK sense, at least) are essentially meaningless labels. Those who use them about themselves rarely mean the same thing as those who use them as pointers for the things they denigrate, regardless of which end of the socio-political spectrum they may be. Most individuals have a mixture of positions on various topics, some of which may fall into one box or the other, but seldom are they completely one or the other. For example, most of the people here at Mudcat would consider themselves generally liberal, yet a very large number appear to favor individual ownership of firearms (as a Constitutional "right" or otherwise). Even progressives, which is what those on the right are really referring to when they say "liberal", are rarely pure.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 09:08 PM

Why pdq, what a refreshing admission!

I went searching through my Netvouz, and found the article I just read about the black conservative tradition. I thought it was a way old article, because it was talking about the Cosby speech but it ended up being the May 2008 issue of The Atlantic, given to me by a colleague. I get a lot of this sort of stuff across my desk, due to the 'achievement gap' thing.

So here is the article, which is titled "'This Is How We Lost to the White Man"

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/cosby

Everything I said above isn't in this article, but it does give a quick once over to that "tradition of black conservative thought" I am so inarticulately trying to describe here.

Hope it helps.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasm
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 09:11 PM

Riginslinger, I too am deeply disturbed by and mistrustful of the faith based initiative crap.

We just got another directive from the home office (also known as the district supt) last week to "reach out" to area churches as partners in closing the achievement gap.

My ass, I will.

I'm happy to hook the boys up with more stuff to read by Jorge Diaz, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 09:14 PM

And to hook up the girls w/some Sister Souljah and Ntozake Shange.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: pdq
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 09:44 PM

Bill Cosby gave a speech to the graduating class of Howard University back in 1996. The speech runs 59 minutes and can be found in VHS format in most college libraries. He uses the phrase "are you dead?" several times to describe the debased culture that was growing in his community. He even calls SnoopDogg E Dog (or whatever the jerk was called at the time) "Snoop Eats Dog Poop". Great speech. I have not seen the video portion, but the audio was quite powerful. Here is a description:

""As part of a Howard University leadership seminar, Bill Cosby spoke to the students about taking responsibility in their lives. He spoke about rock music lyrics, gangs, drugs, sex, values, leadership and action. He continuously urged students not to be passive in response to the music, words and actions of those to whom they listen. He asked rhetorically: "Are you dead?" His talk contained many humorous and mocking references to current political and cultural figures." Notes: Broadcast at Howard University on 4/8/96. Produced by Purdue Research Foundation and C-SPAN."
 

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 10:12 PM

Dick-

Belated thanks for posting some background information with regard to Rev. Wright. It's a lot easier now to see him as a real person rather than some caricature.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 10:15 PM

This was another speech he gave, also infamous, and is the source of my pound cake reference. The Atlantic article is partly about a speech he gave last summer, that the article's author attended.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 10:16 PM

"We just got another directive from the home office (also known as the district supt) last week to "reach out" to area churches as partners in closing the achievement gap."


                     Fantasm - Are you mandated to bring them out of the dark ages, and how much time are you allotted to do that?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,Fantasma
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 10:42 PM

;)

There is, of course, absolutely no evidence whatsoever that these partnerships do a damn thing for student achievement. Because despite the few studies anyone has bothered to conduct that are credible, what they show is nobody has a fucking clue what works.

And mostly, nothing has worked to close the achievement gap.

But I'm sure the Lord and Jesus will be getting around to it one of these days, aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Ron Davies
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 10:56 PM

As has been pointed out, it's a lovely irony that both Janet and Rig think Obama is "shallow".

It's perfect projection.   To find the essence of shallowness, all Janet and/or Rig have to do is look in the mirror.

As they have most wonderfully proven.

It is certainly too bad that their basic philosophy prohibits actually thinking before hitting "send".

But it's obviously not worth my time--or probably anybody else's-- to try to instruct them--though they are obviously in dire need of it.

Janet--please tell us when you open your website for raging, impotent, more-feminist than-thou idiots. Even though its membership may be limited to just you and the president of the NY chapter of NOW. With perhaps a guest appearance once in a while by Carville.

Sleep tight.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 11:10 PM

I've crossed the boredom threshhold. Time to move on to other things.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:46 AM

Ditto...

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:49 AM

...or better put, think I'll "brush the dirt" off my shoulders...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: mg
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 11:24 AM

Wouldn't it more likely be dandruff on your shoulders than dirt? Unless you are an arborist or coal miner, you probably would not have much dirt on your shoulders...mg

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: Riginslinger
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:24 PM

I don't know. If you were hanging around with Jeremia Wright it could be pigeon droppings :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:09 PM

I think we should be far more concerned that Obama flipped Hillary the bird just a few moments before brushing his shoulder. Go watch the video, and you will see it!

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:35 PM

Surely the shoulder dirt is a matter of incontinent pigeons. So the bird fits in.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama Brushes Dirt Off His Shoulders
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 03:50 PM

He didn't flip her the bird. He scratched his face (with two fingers).