Irony

January 2009 Headline: New Currency; Rice Trumps Dollar

"Who's your Benjamin now?"
--Uncle Ben

watching on PBS

I'll See Your Chickens and Raise You a Great Whore

Well, Hillary's non-church-goin' ways may come in handy after all as her two front-running opponents scramble to cover up their spiritual kins' view of the "Truth."

The NYT reports on Texas preacher Hagee, who would make no friend of the Pope I'll tell you, what with the Pontiff at the head of the Great Whore, which, in Hagee's view, has done little more than spill Jewish blood, from the Crusades to the Holocaust. Tit for Tat I always say.

Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled 'homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.'

If God's grave wasn't empty, he'd be turning over in it.

---

technorati tags: Dingleberry-in-Chief, Bush, Politics, India, U.S. Food Crisis, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Hell in a Handbasket

Oh I know, Let's Blame India: Bush Does New Math

It appears presidential-librarian-in-waiting George Bush is blaming soaring U.S. food prices on..... today's winner is India! Does the U.S. really deserve anything less from the man we let steal the top job in the country?

“There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population,” observed Mr Bush. ‘‘And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

Yes, according to Dingleberry-in-Chief, the fact that a box of Triscuits at Kroger now costs nearly $4.00 has nothing to do with the U.S.'s Trillions of dollars in deficit (courtesy of an unwinable war). Nor is it related to the falling value of the U.S. dollar that will soon be cheaper to use for wiping purposes than the toilet paper it buys.

The problem, as Bush sees it, is that India has a lot of people who aren't poor.

M.A. Nagvi, the vice president of the largest opposition force, the Bharatiya Janata Party, says President Bush is shifting from his earlier role of global "bomb inspector" to world "bread inspector."

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, a key national Communist leader, says the American president "has gone out of his mind."

Gone out of his mind? Heh. That Bush. He has all the answers.

---

technorati tags: Dingleberry-in-Chief, Bush, Politics, India, U.S. Food Crisis, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Hell in a Handbasket

Euphemism Day

Is Any Body ever going to say that calling Obama an "Elitist" is a euphemism for calling him an "Uppity Negro"? jebesus!

Q: What do you call a black presidential candidate with the most votes, delegates and primaries won?

A: Obama, the uppity nigger!

What a disgrace our politics have become.

Fifth Beatle Chocolate, Cluetrain, and Twitter

Received my Yummy Chocolate from non-twittering Rick Levine, Cluetrain co-author and chocolatier for Seth Ellis Chocolate in Boulder. This isn't your ordinary Dove Bar chocolate - this is the fine handmade homespun goodie-filled real dark deal. My Nestles-raised palate rebelled a bit at first, but by the second mint- delectable, I was all about the high-brow bon bons.

I scored the chocolate as part of RageBoy's social outreach (AKA email) which drew Rick out from hiding, and my big mouth into a dare whereby Rick would owe me if I could deliver a live body to his Boulder, Co address to deliver a message that used "RageBoy" and "Twitter" in the same sentence.

Michael O'Connor Clarke got involved on Twitter, pulling in Suw Charman of the chocolate and vodka blog (smelling a conspiracy theory are we?), who twittered a friend into going the one block from his house to Rick's chocolatey business and uttering the secret sentence. Rick obliged with a box for the messenger and a box for me, which arrived today via fed ex, complete with little freezer pack.

One more good deed signed, sealed, and delivered across the Interwebs.

Don't that just beat all?

--

technorati tags: chocolate, cluetrain, chocolatier than what, rick levine, business, advertising, marketing, CRM, VNP, Suw Charman, Twitter, MichaelOCC, marketing, boulder, yard leaving, bon bon, highbrow, an odd fancy high
del.icio.us tags: chocolate, cluetrain, chocolatier than what, rick levine, business, advertising, marketing, CRM, VNP, Suw Charman, Twitter, MichaelOCC, marketing, boulder, yard leaving, bon bon, highbrow, an odd fancy high

O the Humanity.

U.N. officials are estimating that the Darfur genocide has taken the lives of 50 percent more people than originally thought.

I am trying to parse that and it makes my bones hurt. I can't grasp it. What does this mean? Another half person dead for every person dead? I... can't. It's too big. It's too sad. It's too much.

What are we doing?
Who are we fooling?

In March, international figures, including U.N. data, put the death toll in Darfur at 200,000, with another 2.5 million people displaced.

But 300,000 are believed to have died in the tribal conflict in the past two years, said John Holmes, who also is the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.

Holmes said that sexual violence has increased and that food allotments for civilians affected by the civil war will be halved in a few days.

Holmes gave the U.N. Security Council an update on conditions in the western Sudan region, revisiting a report he gave a year ago.

"I am sad to say that the humanitarian situation remains as grim today as it was then, if not more so," he said.

Meanwhile, Hillary's tough talk is downright stupid - yet another publicity stunt among many.

If the phone rings at 3 a.m. with her in office, I hope she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

---

When It's Time to Call A Spade Hillary Clinton

That lying sack of shit shillary. I found this incredibly interesting reading from people who actually KNOW the people involved, and are not afraid to take a stand.

Wow. I had no idea who Ayers was except how Hillary portrayed him in that debate. Is there not a single fact immune from twisting in this twisted race?

---

Doc, What'd They Put Girl Repellant In Your IV?

First this, then this.

Well if I didn't know any better, I might think there is a gender gap in technology, Virginia!

---

Ladies, What the Hell Is Up?

You know, I've been in this business of solo-web-practitioner for six years now, and a couple of decades on the agency and enterprise sides before that, and I've had my say about what's frustrating and wrong with the web 1.0 and 2.0 gender divide, and I've stood up and yelled foul when it was not in the best interest of my career to do so, and I've found myself in the middle of some of the biggest Internet dust-ups of all time, but I never thought I'd have to write a post asking what the hell is wrong with you?

Not all of the ladies; of course not.

I'm talking about the ones taking advantage of the other ones. And they are numerous.

I've already done the disinfecting; I'm well aware that I'm biting the hand that feeds me here. So let me continue.

Here goes the general, sweeping observation. You tell me if I'm wrong...

When men -- male CEOs or marketing heads or agency leads -- look for help on social media projects from women-owned businesses and/or consultants who happen to be women, they do not come looking to put us through sixteen hoops, a dozen or more what-SHOULD-HAVE-BEEN-billable hours, months of hemming and hawing, and eight attempts at trying it themselves only to come back and ask 'what do you think?' all before signing the statement of work.

They do not as a rule take the ideas you give them for free in the course of detailed proposal work and run off to implement them with a 'maybe later on we'll work together!' They generally do not expect, ask for, or anticipate freebies or unpaid time on our part simply because their project is the most super-coolest-omgzbbq that you have ever ever seen.

SO WHY THE HELL DO WOMEN expect these things of other women?

Why do women in these same roles -- women who know their female colleagues are trying to make a living -- ask something of them that they would never ask of a male consultant in the same business? The female CEO who expects free help from her sister consultants would not think of asking her brothers in business for those same freebies.

Why is that? Because she would get laughed at? Ignored? Turned away? Not taken seriously?

Really--tell me why?

Did I miss the secret handshake class?

Was I sick the day they taught that women in business should give away free to other women what they wouldn't to a man?

Is there a rule somewhere that says only the men I do business with understand that I need to get paid?

I'm telling you, I find it more infuriating and frustrating than ever in the techmeme world of gangs and bangs and winner take all, we can't depend on the women business owners who seek our services NOT to do us a disservice.



---

technorati tags: Women, Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, PR, New Media, Sales, Business
del.icio.us tags: Women, Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketing, Technology, PR, New Media, Sales, Business

I listen to the new sound of BBF!

George and I were strolling down AM radio memory lane from our home towns tonight - what a cool cool site for taking you baaaack. If you grew up in the northeast, you'll probably find your old favorite radio station here.

This one reminded me of the old radio FREE advertising tactic (okay maybe a couple of promo tickets to a concert, but no ad agency required) of getting the audience to answer their home phones with an ad. I remember when I spent a week or two answering our home phone "I listen to the new sound of BBF!" in hopes of winning something from WBBF. "You never know when we'll call, so answer your phone that way every time. If we call you, and you answer 'I listen to the new sound of BBF,' you win!"

Lots of radio stations in our area adopted this cheap WOM ad tactic, though few of the families in my neighborhood would dare answer the phone with anything other than a proper 'Hello?' Polite phone voices were the "in thing" before SMS.

BBF never called me. But I think that bringing back the retro ad tactic of answering your phone with a slogan is worth a try. SO the next time you call me, don't be surprised if I pick up the phone and say, "I'm voting for Obama!" And you know what I win... We all win.

---

that's what you gotta do.

brush yer shoulders offf.

Tom on Social Networks circa 2004

This:

"On an only slightly less naive level, software that is social could try to imagine what is involved in the development of a society. I don't think Social Man began when a bunch of australopithecines began swapping cave art faves around a dead moose."

not-so-interim tom matrullo.
once there, now here.

---

You KNOW You Know

--

Big Blogger News, Sez Me - SezWho Comes to Blogger!!

In working with the folks at SezWho over the last several months, I've been on pins and needles waiting for the free service to be available for Google's Blogger blogs.

Well w00t!! That day has arrived.

Today SezWho announced a bunch of very cool news as part of it's SezWho 2.0 launch, including support for Blogger blogs and Drupal blogs and discussion forums and phpBB bulletin boards, and open APIs all around.

SezWhosers can not only rate comments, but posts as well, and they can also remain anonymous or be authenticated by email or URL, which I think is TRES COOL, because in saying I AM COMMENTING AS JENEANE OF ALLIED, I'm building one part of my reputation, and maybe I want to build my reputation as a marketing renegade by engaging in some conversations based on my GonzoEngaged URL. AND sometimes I just want to be me.

I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out as far as what blogs I'll use SezWho on first, but I am very excited at the prospects of trying it out on Blog Sisters especially, because, as the OLDEST women's group blog, that community needs some new life, some new ways to engage contributors that not only write on Blog Sisters, but have homes across the social web. I need something to encourage the ladies to come and play.

It's hard to beat the business model mantra of BlogHer and other women's communities who have found ways to monetize and even pay their contributors for participation. But when money's not the main point, there are still rewards to be had in participating -- social rewards -- and the one I like the best is FUN. Blog Sisters remains an open forum, a place for women to write about what.ever without worrying about how it might affect ad dollars or elite sensibilities. SO I think having a community-based reputation and discussion tool over there that we can use as a springboard for participating elsewhere is just what's needed.

Bub.bliciou.us has more info on the news: "SezWho 2.0 closes the conversational loop, delivering value back to site hosts (in terms of page views and engagement) and to participants (in terms of reputation and expertise building). SezWho captures valuable information about the history and expertise of individual social media contributors, encourages more thoughtful commentary, and cultivates community engagement."

I really like what Sarah Perez says on her blog and over at RWW regarding fractured conversations and why we care. Her experience discussing the topic -- where, once again, the mighty many ended up depositing their thoughts and expertise directly into Scoble's blog comments with no thread to their larger participation across other social sites -- is an example of why services like SezWho are needed. Sarah points out that conversations belong to everyone. And while this is ideally the case, I think they CAN belong to everyone and STILL be connected and tied back to the contributor, but only through tools that enable cross-media, Intersite, distributed-but-connected conversations.

I'll keep you posted about how it goes and here it goes as I move from enthusiasm into action over on Blog Sisters soon.

p.s. Mixed with my excitement over SezWho is sadness and actual panic over Eric Case leaving Bloogle, being that Eric was my only bat phone connection to Google's Blogger, and if you don't have a bat phone connection, you are often SOL when it comes to Blogger. 1.) I'm scared. 2.) GOOD LUCK ERIC and thanks for everything.

Like, for putting up with me during the migration to the new servers. Even when I was a bitch. And when I gave your email to 10 of my closest Blogger friends. And when I yelled at you because I paid $180 for blogspot hosting in 2001 and doesn't that mean something. And when I tried to reach you on sabatical. And if you wouldn't mind giving me your home number that'd be SUPER...

Seriously, Good luck Eric. Lets rock the conversatiola folks.

---

on a need to know bassist

Yep.

Re:Favorite Electric Bass Players
Sunday, February 05 2006 @ 08:02 AM CST

In no particular order, my fave bass players:

Geddy Lee
Marcus Miller
Flea
Joel Johnson
George Sessum
Mark King

Mark King of Level 42 is awesome. Geddy Lee is going to be on most people's lists. Marcus Miller is maybe pound for pound the best, most versatile bass player ever. George Sessum is a jazz great who I used to see perform every weekend in the jazz group Cabo Frio. George is one of the best funk bass players EVER and I saw him in little clubs that I snuck into underage. He is unbelievable. Joel Johnson is a great bass player no one probably knows - I played with him in a band in college. And I include Flee because I love his playing - though I'm a casual fan - I only have two RHCP albums.

There are more players I like, but those are my faves.

Social Workgroup for Hire...

Oh. I remember when I had this idea! It's still ready to happen, isn't it? I bet in another couple years social workgroups will be spinning off and acquiring other socos (social companies). You'll see.

(that is if we're not all hovering next to a barrel full of wood kindling looking for scraps of food on the street post economic meltdown. I'm pretty sure it will go one way or the other. Stay tuned for details.)

Two years ago I thought it might simplify projects to work from social workgroups - something we'd been wanting to do with the gonzo engaged group since 2001. We're not quite there yet, are we guys? ;-)

--

technorati tags: gonzo engaged, gonzo enraged, work-a-day life, good idea outtakes, social workgroups, social software, social underwear

so there was this tea place near art camp...

Blogger Is Slow Again

it needs to stop that shit.

---

DEFinately the guy you want dealing with China, Korea, Japan...

"I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live."
--John McCain

My PTSD isn't as bad as this guy's, and you don't see me running for President.
--Jeneane

The doctors said McCain explained that while in solitary confinement he created for himself a fantasy world in which he lived. The doctors said McCain always heard the guards coming with his food, but "was often so much in his private world, that he strongly resented their coming around and bringing him back to reality by intruding. He was enjoying his fantasies so much."

Members of the two major POW/MIA family organizations know the "real" John McCain and they despise him. They have experienced firsthand his cruel, angry temperament.

In 1996, McCain encountered a group of POW/MIA family members outside a Senate hearing room. The family members were some of the same who worked tirelessly during the Vietnam War to make sure Hanoi released all U.S. POWs - including POW McCain.

McCain immediately began quarreling with the POW/MIA family members, who were eager to question him on the issue of what happened to their loved ones.

Instead showing courtesy and appropriate compassion by answering their questions, the Arizona senator pushed through the group, shoving them out of his way, nearly toppling the wheelchair of POW/MIA mother Jane Duke Gaylor. Her son, Charles Duke, a civilian worker in Vietnam, is among 2,300 American POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for by the communists.

The POW/MIA families, shocked at McCain's overly aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Gaylor, registered complaints with senate officials.

McCain's temper is legendary. Think this is why he is refusing to release medical records?

-

Toward 5,000 Posts - A Penny for My Thought

I haven't made the $10-per-post day-laborer blogging wage cited in the 'blogging and death' article that is making the rounds today, or I'd be celebrating $50K pretty soon. Now, have I made $50K through connections I've made at least partly through blogging? A case could be made that I have, over the last seven years, in fact benefited thusly. And that is something, isn't it?

But that's not the point of the article.

The point of the article, I guess, is to tell the world what stress the men of blogging are under as they seek to scoop one another in running the latest breaking news story on technology, the web, and sometimes even actual news.

Our fallen brethren are mentioned by name in the article - one that would probably have made their skin crawl in its light handling of a deep subject of life intertwined with Internet culture, and which one wins in the end.

It can be argued, can't it, on the day of Mr. Heston's death that blogs don't kill people; people kill people.

And mostly, bit by bit, we kill ourselves.

As I say goodbye yet again to Shelley, who it seems has posted a goodbye to weblogging -- something Shelley has done before and yet returned again to blog another day -- I wonder if this time she's gone from blogging for good.

I wouldn't blame her. I haven't even emailed her to ask. Because I think I already know her response.

I haven't been frequenting this place myself much these days, you see. For none of the reasons mentioned by the big boys of blogging in the NYT story, the blogscape doesn't appeal to me much anymore.

The blogosphere I once loved has become the Walmart of the net, always open, stocking shelves 24x7 with every non-original, mass-produced commodity anyone might think that they might want, everything known to man that he might, with half a brain and half-witted-attention, stumble upon and consume--quickly.

In other words - it's gotten pretty stupid around here.

We were once an agora of idea merchants, crafters of thought, offering tapestries of original wit, clay pots of humor. We came together here to barter, to banter, and to exercise our voice in the town square.

We came to rile one another up, not to scoop one another.

We came to make stories, not to report news.

And when all else failed, which it did often, we came to squeeze each others' melons.

I'm not here to wax anything, although I could go on. There are plenty of blog posts from elder bloggers telling the new headliners how it used to be.

Shelley and I aren't the only ones feeling like misfits. The news makers have been supplanted by the new stenographers. The story tellers have been run over by the reporters. The pros have taken the helm. Death of the amateur be not proud.

And that's ok.

Except that it's not.

But like everything else, the net is cyclical. So I'll wait. Round and round we go. One by one they'll go. And some of us will make it through to the other side.

Meet me at the melons.


--

Be Careful What You Ask For

You know, three years ago, when you blog something quirky and you don't think twice (because you are just such a funny little unit) and that something you blog about is free hamsters (because your hamsters have just had a second round of babies, having eaten the first dozen babies), and you title your post Free Hamsters (because, again, you are SOOO freakin funny) and then, because you are a blogger of some renown, Google makes sure your free hamsters post comes up on the FIRST PAGE of google search results for the term Free Hamsters, and that the image of your free hamster babies (who are now long since gone, as Google's memory long outlives a hamster's puny 2-3 year lifespan) will remain forever in the number one spot for Google image results, that you ask yourself: Why the hell did I do that?

Because I am not kidding you: I get a phone call and a couple of emails each week asking for free baby hamsters -- or even baby hamsters that cost money -- because of these posts.

No I am not kidding you. A near seven-year blogging legacy, and the most traction I've gotten on any one post -- even surpassing the kathy sierra death deal -- is my baby hamster post.

What does that tell you about the Internets? George says maybe we should be in the hamster business. I think it's smarter than being in the Web 2.0 Business.

But as of today, right now, this moment in this house: WE DON'T HAVE ANY BABY HAMSTERS!!!!

$10 a post? OMGZ BBQ Where's My Check?

"I haven't died yet."
-Mike Arrington

eh?

not fearing any man

i was just thinking

Wow, of all the April Fools posts, I wish this one were true the mostest!

Bin Laden Has Won

And its no April Fool's Joke...

November 2, 2004: Bin Laden's Goal is to Bankrupt the U.S. Economy

March 4, 2008: The $2 Trillion Nightmare



Bush - putting the "lame" in lame duck.

appropriate

the breck girl take 2

Not only did I LEARN something watching Chris' CNN segment today - i.e., that Safari is available for the PC - but I enjoyed watching his random meanderings prior to going live. He's no John Edwards, and that's probably a good thing.

Wrong and Wright

The conservative media and talk radio heads can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that a black man who survived the civil rights movement of the 60s, not to mention the segregation and dehumanization prior, might think that the AIDS virus was not some accidental species jump within the rain forest, but a man made bio-war tool. They can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that a black man who holds this belief could be anything other than racist. They are so deeply shallow that they see no reason for the Tuskegee Experiment generation to wonder if more tools of experimentation and genocide might have taken wing right here in the good old U.S. of A.

US Special Virus Program Chart Vindicates Maathai

In what appears to be a confirmation of Nobel Wangari Maathai's statement that Aids may be a man-made illness, Boyd E. Graves J.D. has published his research into the US government's “Special Virus” program on a site dedicated to the issue. According to his timeline, the research program goes back to the late 1800s. Graves charges that the program is specifically directed against Blacks with a view to reducing their population, both within the United States and across the African continent.

History will judge whether or not Graves' timeline was a crackpot or a truth. In my fourth decade, neither result would surprise me. That's what it's like to live in America under the last two administrations. You can just as easily believe your government would set out to kill you as not. Imagine, then how the rest of the world views this country. Never mind - we're bloggers. Our friends who don't live here have already told us. We trust them more than our own government. We know they are right.

I guess it won't make a difference that even McCain's spiritual advisor understands that this country is capable of genocide.

no, only conspiracy theorists believe that kind of crazy talk.

The Population Control Agenda

Political leaders accused of AIDS genocide

Is AIDS a Man-Made Virus?

As part of President Richard Nixon's "War on Cancer, " genetic engineering of viruses became an integral part of the now largely forgotten Special Virus Cancer Program, conducted under the auspices of the NCI. Nixon also transferred part of the Army's biological warfare unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over to the NCI, thereby allowing secret biowarfare experimentation to be carried out under cover of bona fide cancer research.

Crackpots. Clearly they are all leftist numnuts, conspiracy theorists. Or are they?

In 1999 I wrote a book, The River, which proposed the hypothesis that AIDS might be iatrogenic (caused by physicians), and that scientists might have unwittingly started the pandemic through an experimental oral polio vaccine (OPV) administered in central Africa in the 1950s. That book touched more buttons than I had anticipated, for it sparked a major cover-up among those who had been involved with making the vaccine, and among powerful interest groups within the medical community.

The die-hard white conservatives have no context for mistrust.

Their government has never secretly and intentionally experimented on them, or poisoned them with a deadly virus before.

The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . . clearly racist.
—President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997

Tuskegee Experiment's Legacy - A Lack of Trust

Ours is an unholy country.

For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.

NPR - Remembering Tuskegee

At the start of the study, there was no proven treatment for syphilis. But even after penicillin became a standard cure for the disease in 1947, the medicine was withheld from the men. The Tuskegee scientists wanted to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. The experiment lasted four decades, until public health workers leaked the story to the media.

"i don't know what they used us for. i ain't never understood..." -- a survivor

"They treated us like dumb pigs, like guinea pigs." -- a survivor

What is there to be so angry about?

technorati tags: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Race, Diversity, Blogging, Social Media, Facing the Truth, Aids, Genocide, Tuskegee, America

Tears to my eyes.

This made my month.

No I Can't.

I've tried three times to register to vote since December, to no avail.

Call me Jeremiah Wright, but I'm beginning to wax conspiracy theory over here.

The first time I registered was at the Bartow County library when I joined (out-of-county residents pay a small fee for belonging, but it's a great library so it's worth it). The librarian asked me if I would like to register, back in December, and knowing I wanted to vote in the primary I said yes. For the first time in 28 years I would cast a vote!

Well voting day came and I spent hours, and several trips to several different locations, in my valiant effort to cast my vote.

I had to hand carry my ballot to a different location, and even visit the voter's registration office to get everything sorted out, and finally deposited it where I hoped it would make a difference.

I got something in the mail a couple of weeks later saying my vote didn't count.

They couldn't find my registration.

Well, thinking that my visit to the voter's registration office would finally get me entered into the system, I stopped worrying about it. But I still never received confirmation by mail that I was registered.

Then I went to my own county library a few weeks ago to renew my library card, and THEY asked me if I'd like to register to vote. SURE! I said, and again I registered my Democratic ass and handed it to the lady in hopes of finally getting registered.

Well, Senator McCain will be happy to know I still haven't made it into the system. No word from on high. No polling place. Just another lost Dem trying to do the right thing.

I'm not sure where to try next. Maybe I should just check the Republican box and see if it makes it through the process any faster.



Well at this point

the audacity to hope

I have traveled the blogosphere since the days when I vehemently disagreed with Andrew Sullivan, to days when I admired his courage for his public journey of private coming-to-terms with personal issues, to today when I again admire his daring to look beyond the surface of things and publish the full transcript of controversial pastor Jeremih Wright's Audacity to Hope sermon.

Putting context to the complexity of race in America is what Barack Obama did today. Kudos to Andrew for adding context to the issue from the thinking conservative (as opposed to the talk radio ditto head) side of things.

Sullivan wrote today:

For me, this is an epiphany of sorts. Not that I have changed my mind about the things I wrote in "The Conservative Soul." Not that I have stopped believing in limited government, individual freedom, personal responsibility, pragmatic change. But I have come to believe that large swathes of today's conservative movement truly are hateful.

He goes on to allow a reader to share their experience watching Obama's speech with the less than thoughtful.

He also provided the full text of Pastor Jeremiah Wright's "Audacity To Hope" sermon from 1990, which I'm including here:

Several years ago while I was in Richmond, the Lord allowed me to be in that city during the week of the annual convocation at Virginia Union University School of Theology. There I heard the preaching and teaching of Reverend Frederick G. Sampson of Detroit, Michigan. In one of his lectures, Dr. Sampson spoke of a painting I remembered studying in humanities courses back in the late '50s. In Dr. Sampson's powerful description of the picture, he spoke of it being a study in contradictions, because the title and the details on the canvas seem to be in direct opposition.

The painting's title is "Hope." It shows a woman sitting on top of the world, playing a harp. What more enviable position could one ever hope to achieve than being on top of the world with everyone dancing to your music?

As you look closer, the illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain. The world on which this woman sits, our world, is torn by war, destroyed by hate, decimated by despair, and devastated by distrust. The world on which she sits seems on the brink of destruction. Famine ravages millions of inhabitants in one hemisphere, while feasting and gluttony are enjoyed by inhabitants of another hemisphere. This world is a ticking time bomb, with apartheid in one hemisphere and apathy in the other. Scientists tell us there are enough nuclear warheads to wipe out all forms of life except cockroaches. That is the world on which the woman sits in Watt's painting.

Our world cares more about bombs for the enemy than about bread for the hungry. This world is still more concerned about the color of skin than it is about the content of character—a world more finicky about what's on the outside of your head than about the quality of your education or what's inside your head. That is the world on which this woman sits.

You and I think of being on top of the world as being in heaven. When you look at the woman in Watt's painting, you discover this woman is in hell. She is wearing rags. Her tattered clothes look as if the woman herself has come through Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Her head is bandaged, and blood seeps through the bandages. Scars and cuts are visible on her face, her arms, and her legs.

I. Illusion of Power vs. Reality of Pain

A closer look reveals all the harp strings but one are broken or ripped out. Even the instrument has been damaged by what she has been through, and she is the classic example of quiet despair. Yet the artist dares to entitle the painting Hope. The illusion of power—sitting on top of the world—gives way to the reality of pain.

And isn't it that way with many of us? We give the illusion of being in an enviable position on top of the world. Look closer, and our lives reveal the reality of pain too deep for the tongue to tell. For the woman in the painting, what looks like being in heaven is actually an existence in a quiet hell.

I've been a pastor for seventeen years. I've seen too many of these cases not to know what I'm talking about. I've seen married couples where the husband has a girlfriend in addition to his wife. It's something nobody talks about. The wife smiles and pretends not to hear the whispers and the gossip. She has the legal papers but knows he would rather try to buy Fort Knox than divorce her. That's a living hell.

I've seen married couples where the wife had discovered that somebody else cares for her as a person and not just as cook, maid jitney service, and call girl all wrapped into one. But there's the scandal: What would folks say? What about the children? That's a living hell.

I've seen divorcees whose dreams have been blown to bits, families broken up beyond repair, and lives somehow slipping through their fingers. They've lost control. That's a living hell.

I've seen college students who give the illusion of being on top of the world—designer clothes, all the sex that they want, all the cocaine or marijuana or drugs, all the trappings of having it all together on the outside—but empty and shallow and hurting and lonely and afraid on the inside. Many times what looks good on the outside—the illusion of being in power, of sitting on top of the world—with a closer look is actually existence in a quiet hell.

That is exactly where Hannah is in 1 Samuel 1 :1-18. Hannah is top dog in this three-way relationship between herself, Elkanah, and Peninnah. Her husband loves Hannah more than he loves his other wife and their children. Elkanah tells Hannah he loves her. A lot of husbands don't do that. He shows Hannah that he loves her, and many husbands never get around to doing that. In fact, it is his attention and devotion to Hannah that causes Peninnah to be so angry and to stay on Hannah's case constantly. Jealous! Jealousy will get hold of you, and you can't let it go because it won't let you go. Peninnah stayed on Hannah, like we say, "as white on rice." She constantly picked at Hannah, making her cry, taking her appetite away.

At first glance Hannah's position seems enviable. She had all the rights and none of the responsibilities—no diapers to change, no beds to sit beside at night, no noses to wipe, nothing else to wipe either, no babies draining you of your milk and demanding feeding. Hannah was top dog. No baby portions to fix at meal times. Her man loved her; everybody knew he loved her. He loved her more than anything or anybody. That's why Peninnah hated her so much.

Now, except for the second-wife bit, which was legal back then, Hannah was sitting on top of the world, until you look closer. When you look closer, what looked like being in heaven was actually existing in a quiet hell.

Hannah had the pain of a bitter woman to contend with, for verse 7 says that nonstop, Peninnah stayed with her. Hannah suffered the pain of living with a bitter woman. And she suffered another pain—the pain of a barren womb. You will remember the story of the widow in 2 Kings 4 who had no child. The story of a woman with no children was a story of deep pathos and despair in biblical days.

Do you remember the story of Sarah and what she did in Genesis 16 because of her barren womb—before the three heavenly visitors stopped by their tent? Do you remember the story of Elizabeth and her husband in Luke I? Back in Bible days, the story of a woman with a barren womb was a story of deep pathos. And Hannah was afflicted with the pain of a bitter woman on the one hand and the pain of a barren womb on the other.

Hannah's world was flawed, flaky. Her garments of respectability were tattered and torn, and her heart was bruised and bleeding from the constant attacks of a jealous woman. The scars and scratches on her psyche are almost visible as you look at this passage, where she cries, refusing to eat anything. Just like the woman in Watt's painting, what looks like being in heaven is actually existence in a quiet hell.

Now I want to share briefly with you about Hannah—the lady and the Lord. While I do so, I want you to be thinking about where you live and your own particular pain predicament. Think about it for a moment.

Dr. Sampson said he wanted to quarrel with the artist for having the gall to name that painting Hope when all he could see in the picture was hell—a quiet desperation. But then Dr. Sampson said he noticed that he had been looking only at the horizontal dimensions and relationships and how this woman was hooked up with that world on which she sat. He had failed to take into account her vertical relationships. He had not looked above her head. And when he looked over her head, he found some small notes of music moving joyfully and playfully toward heaven.

II. The Audacity to Hope

Then, Dr. Sampson began to understand why the artist titled the painting "Hope." In spite of being in a world torn by war, in spite of being on a world destroyed by hate and decimated by distrust, in spite of being on a world where famine and greed are uneasy bed partners, in spite of being on a world where apartheid and apathy feed the fires of racism and hatred, in spite of being on a world where nuclear nightmare draws closer with each second, in spite of being on a ticking time bomb, with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God. The vertical dimension balanced out what was going on in the horizontal dimension.

And that is what the audacity to hope will do for you. The apostle Paul said the same thing. "You have troubles? Glory in your trouble. We glory in tribulation." That's the horizontal dimension. We glory in tribulation because, he says, "Tribulation works patience. And patience works experience. And experience works hope. (That's the vertical dimension.) And hope makes us not ashamed." The vertical dimension balances out what is going on in the horizontal dimension. That is the real story here in the first chapter of 1 Samuel. Not the condition of Hannah's body, but the condition of Hannah's soul—her vertical dimension. She had the audacity to keep on hoping and praying when there was no visible sign on the horizontal level that what she was praying for, hoping for, and waiting for would ever be answered in the affirmative.

What Hannah wanted most out of life had been denied to her. Think about that. Yet in spite of that, she kept on hoping. The gloating of Peninnah did not make her bitter. She kept on hoping. When the family made its pilgrimage to the sanctuary at Shiloh, she renewed her petition there, pouring out her heart to God. She may have been barren, but that's a horizontal dimension. She was fertile in her spirit, her vertical dimension. She prayed and she prayed and she prayed and she kept on praying year after year. With no answer, she kept on praying. She prayed so fervently in this passage that Eli thought she had to be drunk. There was no visible sign on the horizontal level to indicate to Hannah that her praying would ever be answered. Yet, she kept on praying.

And Paul said something about that, too. No visible sign? He says, "Hope is what saves us, for we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man sees, why does he have hope for it? But if we hope for that which we see not (no visible sign), then do we with patience wait for it."

That's almost an echo of what the prophet Isaiah said: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." The vertical dimension balances out what is going on in the horizontal dimension.

There may not be any visible sign of a change in your individual situation, whatever your private hell is. But that's just the horizontal level. Keep the vertical level intact, like Hannah. You may, like the African slaves, be able to sing, "Over my head I hear music in the air. Over my head I hear music in the air. Over my head I hear music in the air. There must be a God somewhere."

Keep the vertical dimension intact like Hannah. Have the audacity to hope for that child of yours. Have the audacity to hope for that home of yours. Have the audacity to hope for that church of yours. Whatever it is you've been praying for, keep on praying, and you may find, like my grandmother sings, "There's a bright side somewhere; there is a bright side somewhere. Don't you rest until you find it, for there is a bright side somewhere."

III. Persistence of Hope

The real lesson Hannah gives us from this chapter—the most important word God would have us hear—is how to hope when the love of God is not plainly evident. It's easy to hope when there are evidences all around of how good God is. But to have the audacity to hope when that love is not evident—you don't know where that somewhere is that my grandmother sang about, or if there will ever be that brighter day—that is a true test of a Hannah-type faith. To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope—make music and praise God on and with whatever it is you've got left, even though you can't see what God is going to do—that's the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt's painting.

There's a true-life illustration that demonstrates the principles portrayed so powerfully in this periscope. And I close with it. My mom and my dad used to sing a song that I've not been able to find in any of the published hymnals. It's an old song out of the black religious tradition called "Thank you, Jesus." It's a very simple song. Some of you have heard it. It's simply goes, "Thank you Jesus. I thank you Jesus. I thank you Jesus. I thank you Lord." To me they always sang that song at the strangest times—when the money got low, or when the food was running out. When I was getting in trouble, they would start singing that song. And I never understood it, because as a child it seemed to me they were thanking God that we didn't have any money, or thanking God that we had no food, or thanking God that I was making a fool out of myself as a kid.

Conclusion: Hope is What Saves Us

But I was only looking at the horizontal level. I did not understand nor could I see back then the vertical hookup that my mother and my father had. I did not know then that they were thanking him in advance for all they dared to hope he would do one day to their son, in their son, and through their son. That's why they prayed. That's why they hoped. That's why they kept on praying with no visible sign on the horizon. And I thank God I had praying parents, because now some thirty-five years later, when I look at what God has done in my life, I understand clearly why Hannah had the audacity to hope. Why my parents had the audacity to hope.

And that's why I say to you, hope is what saves us. Keep on hoping; keep on praying. God does hear and answer prayer.

historic.

Listen to it Here.

Transcript of Obama Race Speech....

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Like Right on Wright

To understand Dr. Wright's rhetoric and the reactions to it one has to explore the ways in which the white and black churches came into existence in this country. For the most part the white church in this country has roots in debating whether Black people even had souls. But the Black church grew out of the horrors of slavery and looked to God as a deliverer The Black church grew out of the horrors of slavery and looked to God as a deliverer from the perversions of that institution and later racialist social systems.



While the world has changed somewhat, as exemplified by the viable candidacy of Senator Obama, the effects of slavery continue to influence our society and our views of the function of religion in our daily lives. Thus, one should not be surprised there are different traditions of preaching and seeing the work of God in the life of the nation.

...more