BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US

25 Apr 08 - 08:12 AM (#2325215)
Subject: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Now that Clinton won another big one & the primaries are moving to the south again, the race and religion cards are flying all over the place.

NC TV stations are now censoring the Republican attack ad against Obama, just as many US TV stations censored MoveOn.org ads in 2004, and many MSM outlets censored the Dixie Chicks for remarks about Bush.

From the "undeclared" Obama leaning superdelegate camp, Representative James E. Clyburn, Democratic House Whip, has dredged up the Bill Clinton Jesse Jackson remarks made last January about the Obama win in SC (his state). Timing is everything in politics, as they say.

Rev. Wright is hot on the redemption interview trail, with appearances before at least two highly sympathetic audiences, Bill Moyers tonight & the NAACP this weekend.

So, while the ad about Rev. Wright has now handily been censored by the MSM, and no one but the MSM, Rev Wright will get free air time for Obama nationwide.

Quite the savvy race & religion card playing by the Obama camp. They just keep getting better and better at it.

The Clintons, OTOH, keep stumbling whenever and wherever the race and religion gotchas get 'em. This week, Bill was wagging his finger at a journalist in PA who tried to get him w/his remarks back in January that the Honorable Rep above was referring to, and the timing couldn't have been better (NYT front page, and all).

So now, non-surrogate surrogates are doing the deeds.

It's looking like a long, hot summer in the USA.

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25 Apr 08 - 08:42 AM (#2325255)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: theleveller

Race and Religion Cards. Sounds like a good game. Is it like Happy Families?

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25 Apr 08 - 08:43 AM (#2325256)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Apparently, the guy behind the censored anti-Obama ads (now I find out from Newsweek there are two of them), is none other than the guy who brought us the Willie Horton ads.

And he posted them on You Tube, to create the buzz he knew would generate MSM interest, which got the Wright ad played for free on a bazillion MSM news shows around the country, and raise the money to do an ad buy in NC.

Smart folks these venal types, aren't they?

The Newsweek story is here:

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/04/24/ad-hawk-welcome-to-the-n-c-b-ch.aspx

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25 Apr 08 - 08:48 AM (#2325262)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Yes, it is a LOT like Happy Families. We are all one big, race and religion card playing happy family here in the US of A.

(Cue Springsteen here)

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25 Apr 08 - 10:10 AM (#2325356)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

As long as that Wright character is going to keep coming back for more, this thing will never end. Obama needs to send him off to the South Seas on a vacation.

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25 Apr 08 - 10:23 AM (#2325376)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Bobert

Swift Boat Captains, start your engines...

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25 Apr 08 - 10:30 AM (#2325379)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Peace

And in this corner, wearing White trunks . . . .

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25 Apr 08 - 10:35 AM (#2325384)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Amos

Rig:

Why don't you take the time to find out the truth about Wright, instead of playing the patsy card for MSM?


A

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25 Apr 08 - 10:45 AM (#2325391)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Amos - The truth doesn't matter. The media outlets haven't cared about the truth since Walter Cronkite retired.

                      All I'm saying is, no matter what Wright says or does now, as long as he's in the spotlight, he will generate bad press for Obama. No matter how he comes off--now matter what he says--no matter how honest he is or how much integrity he brings to the issues. The damage has been done and I don't see any way to repair it.

                      Just knowing he's a preacher makes me suspicious, but like I said earlier, very few people see things that way, and I'm not looking for converts, so he doesn't have anything to worry about from the meager few who do.

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25 Apr 08 - 12:26 PM (#2325495)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Ebbie

Rig, it is cynical and exploitative people who promulgate and pass this stuff around. If, every time a person heard the nasty stuff, he or she would stop right there and link to the truth, the nasty stuff would die soon enough. Or if not, it wouldn't be difficult to see the quality of the people who keep on passing it around.

As Kendall said, why not go to the source?

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25 Apr 08 - 12:35 PM (#2325505)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: CarolC

"He was going to walk out in front of that bus anyway, so I figured a little nudge wouldn't cause any harm."

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25 Apr 08 - 12:49 PM (#2325516)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

All I'm saying is this: If Reverend Wright wanted to help Obama, at this point the best thing he could do would be to stay out of the limelight until the election is over.

             I didn't say anything good or bad about Reverend Wright, one way or the other.

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25 Apr 08 - 12:56 PM (#2325525)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: CarolC

I don't know if I can agree with that Riginslinger. I think it's possible that if people become more familiar with Rev. Wright and what he has to say about things, he might not be as easy for some people to use as a boogeyman. I think a lot of the concern people have with him comes more from ignorance of what he's really like than anything else.

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25 Apr 08 - 01:38 PM (#2325567)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Well, I understand he is going to go on with Bill Moyers (if that hasn't happened already), and I'm sure he'll get an honest interview there. But the Fox News people and others, will pick up on something he says in Florida or anyplace, and then link it back to the video clips they already have. They will go off in a direction that you know Wright doesn't intend, and he has absolutely know control over it.

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25 Apr 08 - 01:48 PM (#2325578)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Amos

The ethical thing to do, under such circumstances, is to fight against the slander, the distortion of truth, and the poisoning of the well-spring of democracy by distortion and false reality.

You need to find the balls to break out of "Well, that's just the way it is..." apathy and speak up for what you honestly see instead of all this passive-aggressive melange of sardonic pessimism.


A

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25 Apr 08 - 02:11 PM (#2325598)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Amos - Yes, if you were dealing with an honorable adversary, that would be the thing to do. Wright and Obama are having to deal with Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Speedy Cheese.

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25 Apr 08 - 02:18 PM (#2325602)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: CarolC

That's an insult to cheese!!!

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25 Apr 08 - 02:19 PM (#2325603)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Amos

SPeaking truth to power is an individual choice, which you, Rig, have to make for yourself, including whether to be cowed by artificially inflated boojums like Hannity et al. You decide what you will do, yourself.

A

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25 Apr 08 - 02:51 PM (#2325624)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Well, I believe Wright has a legitimate ax to grind, but if he waited until after the election he would be doing more to help out Obama.

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25 Apr 08 - 04:45 PM (#2325705)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Mrrzy

I thought this was going to be about Hallmark... apparently the Health Department has made "Oh, Dear, I have Chlamydia, get yourself tested" cards, so what's next?

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25 Apr 08 - 09:27 PM (#2325878)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Yeah, I've never understood the "Card" angle of it either. I guess it's just something you can say without actually calling somebody a racist.

                   Religion cards, however, are a little different. They come in a stacked deck and the dealer always wins.

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26 Apr 08 - 09:42 AM (#2326176)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

I fell asleep during the Wright inteview on Moyers last night. However, I've just finished watching on the website & reading the last half of it (the controversial parts of the interview aren't on the website video, you have to read the transcript of it, which I did).

As I've said before, I agree with a lot of Wright's politics. But I disagree a whole lot with his black nationalist religious worldview, especially when you put Wright in the context that Frank Schaeffer does over at HuffPo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/obamas-minister-committe_b_91774.html

He points out that Wright is no different than the white nationalist hate mongerers of the Religious Right who have been ruling the roost in the Republican wing of the Republicrat party.

Which is yet one more reason, for me, a rabid secularist, to see him as just another political shyster hiding behind the preacher's cloth.

The black nationalist church goers are largely misogynist patriarch dominated institutions, just like the right wing white nationalist churches are, despite the claims to the contrary.

Where are the Trinity ministries reaching out to and healing poor women? It's all about the men and the boys.

Maybe god damned the girls and women?

Also, many Obama apologists love to tout Wright's academic credentials. For a guy who was educated at Howard & University of Chicago, I found him to be pretty shallow sounding, and not nearly as intelligent as I expected him to be. A black intellectual giant in the mold of King & Malcolm X, he ain't.

What is he? He is a good reverend. Reminds me very much of the ministers at the black nationalist leaning churches of St Paul, whom I've heard many times.

But I will give the man this. He has the guts and determination to stand up to injustices in the pulpit. How well that actually translates into action on the ground, I am in no position to judge, from the distance where I'm sitting.

He is very astute politically. He knows how to invoke the Palestinian and Native American causes, for instance, as a lead in to the black nationalist part of his sermons. Pretty typical black preaching rhetorical style.

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26 Apr 08 - 10:04 AM (#2326191)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

And you know, as a secularist, I'd like to know why the hell PBS is so friggin' pro-Christian?

I mean, we are bombarded by 'Christian thinkers' and 'Christian activists' and 'Christian theologians' and 'Christian intellectuals' and we NEVER get the same amount of programming from other religious traditions, and absolutely not from the secular traditions.

What is up with that?

I just want to scream "ENOUGH WITH ALL THIS RELIGION CRAP!" Take it back to your churches, where it belongs, and keep it out of the rest the world's face, PLEASE.

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26 Apr 08 - 03:36 PM (#2326426)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Well, Fantasma, I can certainly agree with that, but I looked up Jeremiah Wright, and he got his degrees in divinitY, which is pretty much no degree at all as far as I'm concerned.

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26 Apr 08 - 03:48 PM (#2326433)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Credit where it's due, IMO. The University of Chicago is one of the top religious studies program in the nation, and Howard always is in the top 5 of any rankings of historically black colleges.

I'm just SO fed up with the religion card in American politics, I could scream.

I love Bill Moyers, but I am fed up listening to him go on and on and on, using one liberal religious guest after another to bludgeon the religious right with, you know what I mean?

I am not intolerant of religion by any stretch. I consider myself open to the best of all of them, but that doesn't include taking it to level of actually believing in deities. But there is much to be learned about human nature, and certainly politics, by taking religion into consideration.

But I'm still really, really yearning for life in a post-religious world.

Which is why I hate Obama so much. His use of the religion card all over the place. Makes me sick, the same way Dubya makes me sick with his use of the religion card. I see absolutely no difference between either one of them. I believe them to both be venal opportunistic politicians, using the hot button identity issues to get themselves elected president so they can be king of the world.

I'm REAL tired of the whole Wright/Hagee thing. I wish someone would lock them in their churches until the election is over, thank you very much.

The interview did NOTHING for me, except to weardown my respect for Moyers for going for the gotcha game of bagging the first interview.

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26 Apr 08 - 03:57 PM (#2326438)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: McGrath of Harlow

I see Riginslinger's "that Wright character" has become "I believe Wright has a legitimate ax to grind".

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26 Apr 08 - 05:43 PM (#2326516)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

"The University of Chicago is one of the top religious studies program in the nation,..."


                  And if they were offering a degree in alchemy, would we be praising that as well?

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26 Apr 08 - 06:04 PM (#2326529)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

No, but we do need to recognize it isn't just believers who have made the program what it is.

It is also one of the top programs in anthropology in the US, and only it and Berserkley have a high level humanities program. Both are related to the Divinity School in terms of the cross-disciplinary studies from a social science and humanities perspective, some of the work that comes out of the institution is pretty cool.

For instance, they have History of Religions and Anthropology and Sociology of Religion programs there, for instance--and the profs aren't studying theology, nor are they theologians, ministers, etc.

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26 Apr 08 - 10:24 PM (#2326637)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Okay, I don't have anything against the University of Chicago in general--except I think the school of economics is way off base (not enough time to go into)--and I can see studying the history of religion, and religious texts as literature, but why would we still be giving degrees in divinity?
          It seems to me like that is encouraging anti-education.

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27 Apr 08 - 09:05 AM (#2326820)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

It is, but then the title to anti-education truly belongs to the Schools of Education across the land that are "training" (ahem) our future teachers.

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27 Apr 08 - 10:32 AM (#2326850)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

I'll only mention the reality that the giving out of Divinty degrees simply encourages mentally blind folks to go forth and spread the poison of disinformation as fact, before going on to address you earlier comment.

                   Schools of Education:

                I can remember sitting down with a "How To" book when I got ready to write my first mystery novel, and discovering on the very first page this statement: Dashiell Hammett was the all time master of the hard boiled detective story.

                This, of course, generated the question: who in the hell was Dashiell Hammett?

                He never showed up in any of my public school text books, he wasn't discussed in any English classes that I knew of. So if he was such an important literary figure, why wouldn't I know about him?

                So I looked into it and discovered: Dashiell Hammett, after having served in both World War I, and World War II, was subsequently jailed and blacklisted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the early 1950's. His material was to be kept from the public, as much as possible, and certainly wouldn't show up in a public text book or discussed in a public classroom.

                Eventually, the government came to it senses and Hammett was buried, as the hero that he was, in Arlington National Cemetary. But he was lost to several generations of American school children.

                I guess my point is, if you are going to fix the system of educating teachers in America, you're going to have to fix something else first.

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27 Apr 08 - 10:52 AM (#2326857)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Greg F.

... using one liberal religious guest after another to bludgeon the religious right with, you know what I mean?

No, I don't.

Unless you mean Moyers is showing these fundagelical fanatics up for the mindless loonies they are?

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27 Apr 08 - 07:16 PM (#2327182)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Yes, pdq, I'm aware of Moyer's history in the Johnson administration.

But he has grown far beyond those limits professionally and, it appears to me, personally.

Greg F., Moyers has this tendency to bring on liberal Christians as a de facto form of rebuttal on the Bush administration.

I wish he would stick to what he does best, which is public interest journalism, like the FCC debacle, open access to the internet, and other stories MSM refuses to cover beyond a 30 second sound byte. He is really, really good at covering those topics.

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28 Apr 08 - 02:50 AM (#2327346)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Ebbie

Rig, in what age group are you, may I ask? Because I have been familiar with Dashiell Hammet for years. Along with Lillian Hellman.

I guess one has to read. *g

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28 Apr 08 - 08:38 AM (#2327507)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Greg F.

...a de facto form of rebuttal on the Bush administration.

And its a damned convincing rebuttal, too!

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28 Apr 08 - 09:43 AM (#2327573)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

"Rig, in what age group are you, may I ask?"


               I went to scholl during the Eisenhower Administration and can remember when they screwed up the Pledge Of Allegience.

               Of course if was possible to know about Dashiell Hammett, all one had to do was to read the credits on the movie, "The Maltese Falcon" very cafefully. All I'm saying is, he was kept out of the public schools--at least where I lived--and the way things were where at that time and place, if one didn't hear about him in school, one probably would never hear of him.

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28 Apr 08 - 09:44 AM (#2327574)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Really, it isn't that convincing if you aren't a Christian believer of the liberal sort who regularly tunes in to Bill Moyers Journal on PBS on Friday nights. Which is, in reality, a pretty small group.

If he did more to appeal to secularists and people of all religious backgrounds, I might agree with you. But he is pretty much stuck to his pew in Riverside Church these days.

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28 Apr 08 - 10:07 AM (#2327593)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Yes, at one time Moyers went to "Divinity School" himself, and there isn't a lot of evidence that he ever fully recovered.

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28 Apr 08 - 10:57 AM (#2327641)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Back to the topic though.

Rev Wright keeps invoking "black liberation theology" which is nothing more than 60s Black Power activists moving into conventional (read: socially conservative) African American churches to gain respectability, the same way many of them moved into conventional politics and the academy to gain MS and middle class acceptance and respectability.

When you look closely at the whole concept, you quickly discover it has absolutely no connection to the Latin American Catholic Church revolution, or the post Vatican II writings by Jesuit priest Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, or Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru--the "fathers" of liberation theology.

I have all five of the Maryknoll's series of his writings, translated as "A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity", and have read them all. I've also read Gutierrez's "A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation". (We have a Catholic relgious history scholar in the family who teaches at Xavier University in New Orleans.)

Those works still resonate deeply with me, though I'm not much of Catholic sojourner these days, needless to say. I have come to a place where I believe we all need to be artisans of a new humanity, but we desperately need to move well beyond the limits of conventional religion NOW. But those Catholic writings have had a lasting effect on my philosophy of life.

Thing is, the Rev Wright and his "godfather" of "black liberation theology", James Cone, don't seem to have read those writings. I find that hard to believe, but they don't ever invoke Segundo's work or the work of his spiritual community in the Peter Faber Center in Montevideo. Or Gutierrez. And both Wright and Cone should have hooked up with those guys, because they both have taught and lectured in the US, including at Harvard, Notre Dame, Catholic U & Union Theological Seminary.

So, I've always found their appropriation of the term "liberation theology" from the Latin American Catholic tradition of liberation, without ever referencing any of it's basic tenets, as pretty much of a political sham.

Now, I don't expect any one to agree with me or share my opinions about all of this, which are even more obscure in Christian theological terms than Bill Moyers & Riverside Church. But plenty of Catholic Latinos who do know who Segundo and Gutierrez are and what they represent to the Latin American church, look at these guys with more than a bit of suspicion. And I happen to agree with THEM, not the Rev Wright, Obama, and the so-called "black Christian religious tradition" et al.

Because those of us who know a little something about Christian traditions and US political history, know that Rev Wright's claims that he & Cone represent "THE" black Christian religious tradition (singular), aren't accurate, nor do they reflect the breadth and depth of the spiritual and religious traditions of black Americans, which hasn't been exclusively about the Middle Passage for nearly a century.

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28 Apr 08 - 11:09 AM (#2327653)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: wysiwyg

I've seen Wright today (Press Club) and last night (NAACP). I just find it disorienting to be addressed as if the dominant culture's view must surely be my own view, because it's not-- not by attitude, not by upbringing, not by perks, not by daily experience, and not by ignorance of other views. That disorientation gets in the way of hearing what would otherwise be a fascinating learning experience and, perhaps, some more tools for my own small effort in bridge-building work.

It disturbed me to have heard people cheering his "wins" at the Press Club instead of a more reflective, contemplative response from the whole room. He divided that room-- because sadly, that says very clearly that on the emotional level, it's still very much about "sides."

"Mutual Assured Defensiveness."

That is the atmosphere we all have to work with at present. I hope for a better field for future generations to work, in their turn.

~Susan

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28 Apr 08 - 11:17 AM (#2327658)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

No Susan, we don't have to work with it, and many of us worked BEYOND the divisive black vs white race paradigm a long time ago.

Try going here:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.com/

Most of the US moved beyond those limitations of the Black Power identity movement (including most African American kids of the Gen Y and/or Millenial generation, who you often see describing themselves as 'post-civil rights' or 'post-black nationalist' or 'post-Black Power' kids. Their parents came of age during the civil rights era of the 60s for the most part (they are too young to be children of the 50s civil rights parents).

Which is why I hate what the Obama campaign is doing to American politics. Just like Bush/Cheney dragged us backwards, so too are the race politics of Obama, IMO.

And anyone who tries to claim today that Rev Wright ain't fair game in the election, is nuts. Wright has thrown down the gauntlet this weekend, with or without the Obama campaign's blessing and support.

We'll know if the Obama camp is behind Wright's choice to get in the faces of the MSM and the American electorate soon enough.

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28 Apr 08 - 11:23 AM (#2327666)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: wysiwyg

Yes, we do have to work in that atmosphere. We can change it as we work, of course, but it is there and it is a factor.

But so is Mississippi John Hurt's soft voice on my CD player. Which one of them will come along to the spirituals workshop I'll lead in June-- for a mostly-white-guily-middle-class room-- that's a no-brainer.

~S~

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28 Apr 08 - 11:24 AM (#2327668)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

Frankly, I find it hard to believe the Obama Campaign was in favor of Reverend Wright pushing his way back onto center stage. If the Indiana electorate is anything like Pennsylvaia's that could only hurt him.

                      Of course, it could help him in North Carolina, but...

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28 Apr 08 - 11:26 AM (#2327669)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Look, I'm not going to play tit for tat w/you Susan.

The US is far too diverse to be limited and constrained by the dying black left's political agenda to protect their job turf in the church, Congress and halls of academe, which is what this is all about.

If you can't be arsed to go the World Values Survey website, then you are intentionally choosing to remain living in your own self-inflicted ignorance of racial and cultural realities of life in the US in 2008.

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28 Apr 08 - 11:30 AM (#2327677)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

The reality that nobody seems to want to talk about is, corporate America--those guys that have stolen all the oxygen in the country--have started courting Latinos, both politically, socially and financially, and the blacks don't like playing second fiddle. I'm beginning to see a flash of panic in the eyes of Al Sharpton and others who depend on racial division for a living.

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28 Apr 08 - 11:31 AM (#2327678)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Hmmm, I dunno Riginslinger. Politically, it wouldn't seem very astute. But the Washington Post has an interesting article today about politicians and their narcissist ways that might explain them at least standing back and giving Wright the podium to fire back in ways Obama can't.

I mean really, is there anyone who truly believes Wright and Obama haven't had a little conversation or two about Wright hitting the campaign trail this weekend to 'explain' why he isn't what he really is?

Unless, of course, Wright feels he was thrown under the bus by Obama in the interest of saving his campaign from imploding in the wake of the sermon footage getting out.

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28 Apr 08 - 11:39 AM (#2327689)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Your last post is dead on. As Latino voters become the larger "racial minority" their numbers challenge the control of the African American electorate in the Democratic party.

But what makes the Latino vote so volatile are the rightward leaning socially conservative Catholic Latinos, who went for Bush by something like 40% in 2000, IIARC...

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28 Apr 08 - 11:50 AM (#2327698)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: pdq

Here is where the Black Panters and other Blabk liberation groups started:

"...California is confronting the demons of its prison system — a vast labyrinth of 98 facilities, 308,400 inmates and 54,000 employees — and its reform-minded Governator is issuing tautologies along the lines of 'The purpose of corrections should be to correct.' In 2004, a declaration of emergency was made to deal with the overcrowding that had been forcing jails to triple-bunk inmates in two-person cells. (It was the fifth state of emergency in eight years.) Five inmates were killed in seven months at the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Racial riots flared, including violent uprisings at Folsom State Prison in June 2004 and the privately run Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility on October 25, 2003 (where white, black and Latino inmates had 90 minutes to hack away at one another with knives and meat cleavers stolen from the kitchen while weaponless guards waited for armed backup from nearby state-run prisons). Just a few weeks ago, on January 10, 43-year-old guard Manuel A. Gonzalez Jr. was stabbed to death by gang-affiliated inmates at Chino..."

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28 Apr 08 - 11:53 AM (#2327701)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: wysiwyg

If you can't be arsed to go the World Values Survey website, then you are intentionally choosing to remain living in your own self-inflicted ignorance of racial and cultural realities of life in the US in 2008.

????? Did you Just lump me into what you called the "dying left"?!?!?


Fantasma,

We all have tools and processes and favored projects for eliminating racism, and I prefer to think that we can respect one another's efforts without lashing out in the assumption that any one approach is THE approach.... I happen to rely on the one I've seen work, but if you have another one, I'm happy for that-- not "can't be arsed" about it.

It's not a competition. If this is how you conduct a conversation with people who share what I think are your goals, I think I'll prioritize my time elsewhere, thanks! :~)

~S~

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28 Apr 08 - 12:41 PM (#2327740)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Yes, but some of us inform ourselves with legitimate study and research, while others just listen to gospel music and pontificate in web forums.

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28 Apr 08 - 01:01 PM (#2327762)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

I just got a chance to read Wright's NAACP speech transcript.

That dude is so ignorant of race and cultural differences it is downright scary.

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28 Apr 08 - 01:21 PM (#2327773)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

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28 Apr 08 - 01:23 PM (#2327776)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Oops! Sorry.

OK, now I have just finished reading the transcript of the NAACP speech by Wright, and seen major portions of the National Press Club speech online.

Rig had said "Frankly, I find it hard to believe the Obama Campaign was in favor of Reverend Wright pushing his way back onto center stage. If the Indiana electorate is anything like Pennsylvaia's that could only hurt him."

OK--you are absolutely correct. I am gobsmacked. It looks like Wright just slipped the knife into Obama's ribs.

That dude wants some serious revenge.

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28 Apr 08 - 01:46 PM (#2327805)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

I'm not sure if the blog is a National Press Club blog, but the NPC website is linking to this site for the transcript of Wright's speech (which wasn't so bad, but still pretty shallow in terms of the links between the Latin American church's liberation theology & Cone's black liberation theology). His Q & A is what the Obama camp is now going to have to go into overtime to distance itself from.

http://blog.press.org/?p=599

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28 Apr 08 - 01:55 PM (#2327815)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Holy shit! From the Washington Post, 31 minutes ago:

Obama's Pastor Reignites Race Controversy

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

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28 Apr 08 - 02:26 PM (#2327840)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: wysiwyg

... while others just listen to gospel music and pontificate in web forums....

Fantasma,

I don't know anyone who meets that description, and I think you don't, either. :~) I DO see someone leaping to conclusions about people they don't know, though.... and lashing out based on those conclusions....

who may be suffereing from....

Mutual Assured Defensiveness...

...with which (as I mentioned) we all have to deal.

Have a nice day!

~Susan

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28 Apr 08 - 04:06 PM (#2327936)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: dick greenhaus

I must have missed something..what office was Jeremiah Wright running for?

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28 Apr 08 - 04:19 PM (#2327946)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

According to his remarks today before the National Press Club, Barack Obama's vice president.

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28 Apr 08 - 04:31 PM (#2327954)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

Also, see title of Obama memoir "Audacity of Hope" stories, all over the web.

Come on. You can't be serious, dick. Are you really suggesting, even after Obama himself said the Wright controversy was fair game as long as critics didn't make a caricature out of Wright or their church (which we know they are and will do anyway)?

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28 Apr 08 - 10:15 PM (#2328258)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: Riginslinger

"Obama himself said the Wright controversy was fair game as long as critics didn't make a caricature out of Wright or their church (which we know they are and will do anyway)?"


                   Wright and Wright's church make caricatures out of themselves.

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29 Apr 08 - 07:39 AM (#2328469)
Subject: RE: BS: Race & Religion Cards & Censorship in US
From: GUEST,Fantasma

While that is most definitely true, Riginslinger, at least Jeremiah Wright has been able to do one thing we have not--silence the Obamamaniacs here for bit.

Apparently, when Obama is stabbed in the back by "one of his own" there just isn't the same level of virulent hate attacks as when it is Clinton or McCain.

Gee, I wonder why.

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