Category Archives: Race

White people cheating in desperate bid to become a minority like everybody else

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You’ve heard the news that white people will no longer be a majority by 2042, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But when I read this part:

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process
has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority
residents, especially Hispanics…

I thought, Hey, wait a minute? Hispanics aren’t white? You mean, none of them are, not even those of Spanish extraction? Wasn’t there a time, not long ago, when Hispanics were considered white — or at least, some of them? Isn’t there a term that was used until fairly recently, something like "nonwhite Hispanics," suggesting that there were (as there are) white Hispanics?

I smell a conspiracy here, and it’s not about more and more whites seeing Hispanic as "aliens" — illegal or otherwise.

I think white people have cracked under peer pressure. They want to be a minority, because being a minority is, let’s face it, way cooler than being white. Come on, white people — if you’re honest you’ll admit this is true.

Growing up as a WASP, I always felt that I was missing out. So I did something about it — I became a Catholic, and starting talking more about my Celtic ancestors than my Anglo-Saxon ones. This made me a minority, and I’ve got to tell you, it made me feel a lot cooler. I started crossing myself whenever I thought white protestants might be looking at me, just so they’d know how much cooler I was than they — you know, like those Latin ballplayers in the Major Leagues when they come up to bat, and mafiosi at mob funerals. They’re cool, and so am I.

Anyway, after all the work I’ve gone to, I’m not going to sit still and watch while all white people suddenly rig the numbers and get declared a minority, without doing anything to earn it. I’ll bet they keep on eating white bread sandwiches and playing badminton and listening to Mantovani and stuff; just watch them. They will NEVER be cool, and I don’t think they should be able to cheat like this by throwing out the white Latinos.

Something must be done about this. Take away their birth control pills or something; I don’t know.

My remarks to the Capital City Club

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You may have read Clif LeBlanc’s story today about the Capital City Club’s 20th anniversary, and why that’s of some importance to our community.

As, in Hunter Howard’s words, "the unofficial chairman of the ‘Breakfast Club’" — and yes, I eat there most mornings, as Doug can attest from having been my guest — I was asked to comment on what I thought the club meant to the community. That meant showing up at 7:30 this morning (WAY before my usual time) to address the rather large crowd gathered there to mark the anniversary.

Some folks asked for copies of my remarks. In keeping with my standard policy of not wanting to spend time writing anything that doesn’t get shared with readers, I reproduce the speech below:

    So much has been said here this morning, but I suppose as usual it falls to the newspaper guy to bring the bad news:
    The Capital City Club is an exclusive club. By the very nature of being a club, of being a private entity, it is exclusive.
    There are those who are members, and those who are not. And even if you are a member, there are expectations that you meet certain standards. Just try being seated in the dining room without a jacket. And folks, in a country in which a recent poll found that only 6 percent of American men still wear a tie to work every day, a standard like that is pretty exclusive.
    But it is the glory of the Capital City Club that it changed, and changed for the better, what the word “exclusive” meant in Columbia, South Carolina.
    Once upon a time — and not all that long ago — “exclusive” had another meaning. It was a meaning that in one sense was fuzzy and ill-defined, but the net effect of that meaning was stark and obvious. And it was a meaning by no means confined to Columbia or to South Carolina.
    Its effect was that private clubs — the kinds of private clubs that were the gathering places for people who ran things, or decided how things would be run — did not have black members, or Jewish members, or women as members. Not that the clubs necessarily had any rules defining that sense of “exclusive.” It was as often as not what was called a “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” which was the title of a 1947 film about the phenomenon.
    Forty years after that film was released, good people in Columbia were distressed to look around them and see the effects of such agreements in our community. A black executive originally from Orangeburg, who thought he was going home when his company sent him here, was unable to do his job because he could not get into a private club. It was noticed that for the first time in recent history, a commanding general at Fort Jackson was not extended a courtesy membership by a local club. He was Jewish. More and more such facts were reported in the pages of The Columbia Record in the mid-’80s. The clips I’ve read were written by my colleague Clif LeBlanc, who is here this morning.
    These stories mostly ran before I came home to South Carolina to work at The State in April 1987, so I can claim no credit for them.
    As editorial page editor of The State, I can tell you that the unstated policies of private clubs are an unusual, and even uncomfortable, topic for journalists. The reason we write about government and politics so much is that we feel completely entitled and empowered to hold them fully accountable, and we have no problem saying they must do this, or they must not do that. But whether a private club votes to admit a particular private citizen or not is something else altogether. You can’t pass a state law or a local ordinance to address the problem, not in a country that enshrines freedom of association in its constitution. (I hope the attorneys present will back me up on that — we seem to have several in attendance.)
    But the Record did everything a newspaper could and should do — it shone a light on the problem. What happened next depended upon the private consciences of individuals.
     A group of such individuals decided that the only thing to do was to change the dynamic, by starting a new kind of club. One of those individuals was my predecessor at the newspaper, Tom McLean, who would be known to that new club as member number 13.
    I spoke to Tom just yesterday about what happened 20 years ago, and Tom was still Tom. He didn’t want anybody setting him up as some sort of plaster saint, or hero, or revolutionary.
    He wanted to make sure that he was not portrayed as some sort of crusader against the existing private clubs at the time. As he noted, he and other founders were members of some of those clubs.
    What he and the other founders did oppose — and he said this more than once, and I notice the statement made its way into Clif’s story this morning — was, and I quote:
    “Arbitrary, categorical exclusion based on race, religion or gender.”
    Yes, there was a moral imperative involved, but it was also common sense. It was also a matter of that hallowed value of the private club, personal preference. Tom, and Carl Brazell, and Shelvie Belser, and I.S. Leevy Johnson and Don Fowler and the rest all chose to be members of a club that did not practice the kind of arbitrary exclusion that they abhorred.
    And here’s the wonderful thing about that, what Tom wanted to make sure I understood was the main thing: By making this private, personal decision for themselves, they changed their community.
    Once one club became inclusive, other clubs quickly followed suit. Something that no law could have accomplished happened with amazing rapidity.
    The measure of the Capital City Club’s success is that the thing that initially set it apart became the norm.
    I’m like Tom in that I’m not here to say anything against those other clubs today, now that they are also inclusive. But the reason I was asked to speak to you this morning was to share with you the reason that if I’m going to belong to a club, this one will always be my choice:
    It’s the club that exists for the purpose of being inclusive, the club that changed our community for the better.
    I’m proud to be a member of the first club to look like South Carolina — like an unusually well dressed South Carolina, but South Carolina nevertheless.

What a written speech doesn’t communicate is my efforts to punch up the recurring joke about the club’s dress code, such as my lame attempt to do the David Letterman shtick where he pulls on his lapels to make his tie wiggle. I did that when citing the Gallup poll. Then, on that last line, I looked around at the assembled audience, which was VERY well dressed. It was a way of saying, "Don’t y’all look nice," while at the same time gently teasing them about it.

After all, those of you who are in the 94 percent who have put the anachronistic practice of wearing neckties behind you probably think the whole thing is pretty silly — a bunch of suits getting together to congratulate themselves on how broadminded they are.

But you’re wrong to think that, because of the following: Such clubs exist. They existed in the past, and they will exist in the future. People who exercise political and economic power in the community gather there to make decisions. They have in the past, and will in the future. Until the Capital City Club came into being, blacks and Jews and women were not admitted to those gatherings. Now, thanks to what my former boss Tom and the others did, they are — at Cap City, and at other such clubs.

And that’s important.

Do you hang with people ‘like yourself’? (column version)

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    Yes, you’ve read this before, if you keep up with the blog. There are some editing changes, but it’s about as close as I’ll usually come to a direct copy-and-paste from the blog to the paper. I just post it here in keeping with the theory that some folks will come here looking for the blog version of my Sunday column, and I hate to disappoint.

    While this is an example of Dan Gillmors’ suggestion to  "Make the printed pages the
best-of" what’s been on the Web, it’s slightly more complicated than that. I was thinking "column" as I wrote this on Wednesday, and consciously made sure it had an ending that I thought would work in a column. Unconsciously, I also wrote it to precisely the length of a column, which is remarkable — particularly since, when I’m deliberately writing a column, I always initially write it 10-20 inches too long, and have to spend as much time trimming as I did on the initial writing.

    Obviously, this is a method I should employ more often — at least, I should do so when I don’t feel the duty to write something fresh, and something with added local value. I can let myself get away with musing and riffing off someone else’s column during the Dog Days, but once we pass Labor Day and start interviewing candidates and chugging toward the general election, I’ll feel obliged to do more with the columns.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
FIRST, READ this from a column by The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson, which ran on our op-ed page last week:

    People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the celebration of “diversity,” it’s sameness that dominates. Most people favor friendships with those who share similar backgrounds, interests and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is nearly universal. It’s human nature.

    Then ask yourself this question: Is this true for you?
    What Mr. Samuelson is saying is accepted as gospel, as an “of course,” by so many people. And you can find all sorts of evidence to back it up, from whitebread suburbs to Jeremiah Wright’s church to the book that inspired the column, The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.
    Here’s my problem with that: I don’t know any people “like me,” in the sense under discussion here. I don’t have a group of people who look and act and think like me with whom to identify, with the possible exception of my own close family, and in some respects that’s a stretch — we may look alike and in some cases have similar temperaments, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being alike in, say, political views.
    Oh, but you’re Catholic, you might say. Do you know what “catholic” means? It means “universal.” At the Mass I attend, we sometimes speak English, sometimes Spanish, and throw in bits of Greek and Latin here and there. The priest who often as not celebrates that Mass is from Africa. Parishioners live in something like 35 ZIP codes. There are black, white and brown people who either came from, or their parents came from, every continent and every major racial group on the planet. My impression, from casual conversations over time, is that you would find political views as varied as those in the general population. Sure, more of us are probably opposed to abortion than you generally find, but that’s not a predictor of what we think about, say, foreign policy.
    I may run into someone occasionally who shares my background as a military brat. But beyond a comparison of “were you ever stationed at …,” there’s not a lot to hang a sense of identity on.
I belong to the Rotary Club, which means I have lunch with 300 or so other people once a week. I can’t think of any attitude or opinion I have as a result of being a Rotarian; nor — to turn that around — did I join Rotary because of any attitude or opinion I held previously. Wait — there’s one thing that’s different: I started giving blood as a result of being in Rotary. But I don’t feel any particular identification with other people who give blood, or any particular alienation from others who don’t give blood, the selfish cowards (just kidding).
That’s not to say anything bad about Rotary, or anything good about it. It’s just not a predictor of my attitudes. I suppose people who have an objection to singing the National Anthem and “God Bless America” every week might stay away, but that still leaves a pretty broad spectrum. Rusty DePass, who worked hard for Rudy Giuliani last year, plays piano at Rotary. Jack Van Loan, longtime comrade and supporter of John McCain, is our immediate past president. Another prominent member is Jim Leventis, who is the godfather of Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, the filmmaker Alexandra. Not one of them is any more or less a Rotarian because of his political attitudes.
    Reaching for a generalization, I can point to superficial sameness at Rotary — a lot of members are among the 6 percent of American men who still wear a tie to work every day, although many are not. And the membership is notably whiter than South Carolina, but that seems to correlate demographically with the tie thing. In any case, this is a place where I spend one hour a week; it does not define me.
    Bottom line: I cannot think of five people not related to me, with whom I regularly congregate, who share my “backgrounds, interests and values” to any degree that would matter to me.
    This is a barrier for my understanding of people who do identify with large groups of people who look alike and/or think alike and/or have particular interests in common that bind them as a group and set them apart from others. I don’t see how they do it. If I tried to be a Democrat or a Republican, I’d quit the first day over at least a dozen policy positions that I couldn’t swallow. How do others manage this?
    Maybe I’m a misfit. But the ways in which I’m a misfit helped bring me to support John McCain (fellow Navy brat) and Barack Obama (who, like me, graduated from high school in the hyperdiverse ethnic climate of Hawaii) for their respective nominations. Sen. McCain is the Republican whom the doctrinaire Republicans love to hate. Sen. Obama is the Democrat who was uninterested in continuing the partisan warfare that was so viscerally important to the Clintonistas.
    Coming full circle, I guess I like these guys because they’re, well, like me. But not so most people would notice.
    It’s going to be interesting, and for me often distressing, to watch what happens as the media and party structures and political elites who do think in terms of groups that look, think and act alike sweep up these two misfit individuals in the tidal rush toward November. Will either of them have the strength of mind and will to remain the remarkably unique character that he is, or will both succumb to the irresistible force of Identity Politics? I’m rooting fervently for the former, but recent history and all the infrastructure of political expression are on the side of the latter.

Does Mr. Samuelson’s observation apply to you? Tell us all about it at
thestate.com/bradsblog/.

60 years of an integrated military

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Today is the 60th anniversary of the integration of the U.S. Armed Forces, a commemoration I would have missed without this release from the Pentagon:

    Secretary of Defense Robert Gates today celebrated the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of the armed forces and the federal civil service in a ceremony at the Pentagon.
    Executive Order 9980, which President Truman signed on July 26, 1948, created a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment. Executive Order 9981, signed the same day, began the process of eliminating segregated units and occupational specialties from the post-World War II military.   

Having grown up in the military (making it sort of like my real hometown), I’ve always taken pride in the fact that it was the first major institution in our country to integrate, far ahead of the schools and the rest of our society.

Perhaps that experience of being surrounded by a meritocracy that made a point of erasing unimportant divisions — everyone was alike, once they put on the uniform — had a lot to do with my having the attitude as an adult that the differences civilians still make so much of really don’t matter. Consequently, the way Democrats and Republicans — and all too many black people and white people — look at each other as alien seems unAmerican to me.

Do YOU hang with people “like yourself?”

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First, read this lead paragraph from Robert Samuelson’s column today:

    People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the
celebration of “diversity,” it’s sameness that dominates. Most people
favor friendships with those who share similar backgrounds, interests
and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations
and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is
nearly universal. It’s human nature.

Then share with us your answer to this question: Is this true for you?

I ask that because what Samuelson is saying is accepted as Gospel, as an "of course," by so many people. And you can find all sorts of evidence to back it up, from whitebread suburbs to Jeremiah Wright’s church to the book that inspired the column, The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.

The thing about this for me is this: I don’t know any people like me. I don’t have a group of people who look and act and think like me with whom to identify, with the possible exception of my own close family, and in some respects that’s a stretch — we may look alike and in some cases have similar temperaments, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being alike, say, in our political views.

Oh, but you’re Catholic, you might say. Yeah, do you know what "catholic" means? It means "universal." At the Mass I attend, we sometimes speak English, sometimes Spanish, and throw in bits of Greek and Latin here and there. The priest who often as not celebrates that Mass is from Africa. We live in, I seem to recall my pastor telling me, 35 zip codes. There are black, white and brown people who either came from, or their parents came from, every continent and every major racial group on the planet. My impression, from casual conversations over time, is that you would find political views as varied as those in the general population. Sure, more of us are probably opposed to abortion than you generally find, but that’s not a predictor of what we think, say, about foreign policy.

Yeah, I might run into someone occasionally who shares my background of having been a military brat. But beyond a comparison of whether you ever were stationed in the same places, there’s not a lot to hang a sense of identity on.

I belong to the Rotary Club, which means I go have lunch with 300 or so other people who also belong to that club once a week. I can’t think of any attitude or opinion I have as a result of being a Rotarian, nor — to turn that around — did I join Rotary because of any attitude or opinion I held previously. I joined Rotary because Jack Van Loan invited me to, and my boss — two publishers ago, now — said he wanted me to join. Wait — there’s one thing that’s different: I started giving blood as a result of being in Rotary. But I don’t feel any particular identification with other people who give blood, or any particular alienation from others who DON’T give blood, the selfish cowards (just kidding).

That’s not to say anything bad about Rotary, or anything good about it. It’s just not a predictor of my attitudes. I suppose people who have an objection to singing the National Anthem and "God Bless America" every week might stay away, but that still leaves a pretty broad spectrum of life here in the Columbia area. Rusty DePass, who worked hard for Rudy Giuliani last years, plays piano at Rotary. Jack, longtime comrade and supporter of John McCain, is our immediate past president. Another prominent member is Jim Leventis, who is the godfather of Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, the filmmaker Alexandra. No one of them is any more or less a Rotarian because of his political attitudes.

(I can think of one superficial way in which an outside observer might see sameness at Rotary — a lot of the men in the club are of the 6% of American men who still wear a suit to work every day, although plenty don’t. And it’s whiter than South Carolina, but that seems to go with the suit thing.)

I’m a South Carolinian, but I’m very much at home in Memphis, and have grown quite comfortable during frequent visits to central Pennsylvania, where the Civil War re-enactors wear blue uniforms.

I cannot think of five people not related to me, with whom I regularly congregate, who share my "backgrounds, interests
and values" to any degree worth noting.

Anyway, my point is that all of this is a barrier for me to understanding people who DO identify with large groups of people who look alike and/or think alike and/or have particular interests in common that bind them as a group and set them apart from others. If I tried to be a Democrat or a Republican, I’d quit the first day over at least a dozen policy positions that I couldn’t swallow. And I don’t see why others do.

Maybe I’m a misfit. But the ways in which I’m a misfit helped bring me to supporting John McCain (fellow Navy brat) and Barack Obama (who, like me, graduated from high school in the hyperdiverse ethnic climate of Hawaii). McCain is the "Republican" whom the doctrinaire Republicans love to hate. Obama is the Democrat who was uninterested in continuing the partisan warfare that was so viscerally important to the Clintonistas.

Coming full circle, I guess I like these guys because they’re, well, like me. But not so most people would notice.

It’s going to be interesting, and for me often distressing, to watch what happens as the media and party structures and political elites who DO identify themselves with groups that look, think and act alike sweep up these two misfit individuals in the tidal rush toward November. Will either of them have the strength of mind and will to remain the remarkably unique characters that they are, or will they succumb to the irresistible force of Identity Politics? I’m rooting fervently for the former, but recent history, and all the infrastructure of political expression, are on the side of the latter.

Obama’s Southern hopes

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A WashPost blog called "Behind the Numbers" has thrown cold water on an Associated Press projection "that if Barack Obama lives up to his pledge to boost African American
turnout by 30 percent, he would score big wins across the south."

I had heard of the AP analysis until I read this. I thought y’all might be interested — especially since Obama has indicated he wants to contest South Carolina — so I call it to your attention. An excerpt:

Taking Georgia as an example: George W. Bush beat John Kerry by 17
points in 2004, a massive margin, and better than his 12-point victory
in 2000. Average GOP advantage: 425,796 votes. But add in 1996 (when
Bob Dole beat Clinton by a single point) and 1992 (a narrow Clinton
win), and the average drops to 216,218 votes, a much lower threshold.
Using the CPS data further confounds the issue. The 2000 CPS estimate for black turnout in Georgia exceeds the total number of African American registered voters in the Georgia Secretary of State’s database by more than 27,000.

Substituting the 2000-2004 average for the 1992-2004 average and
using estimates of black voter turnout from the state government, shows
that black turnout would have to go up by 81 percent to put Obama over
the top; again assuming all else remained the same. Compared with 2004
alone, black turnout would have to about double (increase 96 percent)
to give Obama the state’s 15 Electoral College votes.

Well, it makes my head spin — but perhaps y’all will get something out of it.

Would Obama victory be ‘bad for black folks’?

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Obamawhitehouse

My attention was just drawn to this item by Lawrence Bobo on TheRoot.com, headlined, "President Obama: Monumental Success or Secret Setback?" An excerpt:

To hear some barbershop talk, it is as if the racial progress in
America that Obama’s success has helped to crystallize also brings with
it a death knell for true racial justice. If Obama becomes the
president, every remaining, powerfully felt black grievance and every
still deeply etched injustice will be cast out of the realm of polite
discourse. White folks will just stop listening.

A
black president means that America no longer has any race problem to
talk about! It would mean there is no longer any special debt to
African Americans to be repaid! Kiss that 40 acres and a mule goodbye,
my friends (or that BMer and a Rolex in modern reparations exchange
units)….

I have two thoughts about this piece, if it’s OK for a white guy to weigh in on this:

  1. Talk about what the election of Barack Obama as a black man means misses the point, since — as a lot of black folks asserted last year leading up to the primaries — Obama simply is not a "black man" in the sense that the phrase has meaning in American history, sociology and politics. I’ve got a column I’m planning on writing about that, after I read his autobiography on the subject. It will be headlined "Barack Like Me," and it will be rooted in the experiences he and I share spending part of our formative years in Hawaii (where race simply did not mean what it means here) and outside the United States — both in the Third World, in fact. None of these experiences are common to the sort of guy we describe when we say "black American." I hope to write that one before the summer is over.
  2. Because the popular narrative of this is that Obama IS a black man (despite all the evidence I see to the contrary), that’s the way an Obama victory will play in the public imagination. And that WILL be a death knell to the kind of black politics of resentment and grievance practiced by Jesse Jackson and (even more so by) Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright and to some extent by black politicos here in SC (such as Leon Howard, who said the former superintendent of Richland 1 had to go because "He catered to white folks").

Mr. Bobo agrees with me on the latter point, by the way:

"The politics of the perpetual outsiders demanding inclusion will finally end (read: Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will get less face time). And good riddance (perhaps). We’ve come too far over too many years for shrill protest to still be our main political posture today, no matter how necessary and relevant in the past…."

Wrightetal

Obama’s cutting out some nuts, all right…

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You’ve heard what Jesse Jackson said about Barack Obama (video above). But whether he said "out" or "off," it’s clear that Obama is cutting out (or off) the nuts who would drag his campaign down.

If Jesse Jackson wants to be counted in that number, along with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that’s up to him.

Jesse pere should take the advice of Jesse fils on this point:

“Reverend Jackson is my dad, and I’ll always love him,” the congressman said Wednesday evening in a statement. He added, “I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”

Such old party (and race) warriors as the Rev. Jackson and Bob Herbert of The New York Times need to realize that Barack Obama is not running to please them. He’s running to win, and to become the president of all Americans, not just of some political clique to which they believe he should be loyal and obedient.

A mixed day for democracy in the Midlands

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

TUESDAY’S primary runoffs produced encouraging results on the state level, but what happened in Richland County was downright disturbing.

    Voters in the Midlands soundly rejected the governor’s efforts, financed by out-of-state extremists, to use South Carolina as a lab rabbit to test their pet ideologies.

    That’s what was at stake in the runoffs between Sheri Few and David Herndon in the state House 79 Republican primary, and between Katrina Shealy and Jake Knotts in Senate District 23. It would be hard to imagine this newspaper endorsing Sen. Knotts under any other circumstances. But things being as they were, we did. We believed that if the governor and his allies managed to take him out as they were trying to do, it would have intimidated other lawmakers into doing their will — even though the lawmakers and their constituents know better. So the governor needed to lose this one. Fortunately, the voters agreed.

    That would lead me to say that Tuesday’s voting demonstrates the unmitigated wisdom inherent in our system of democracy — if not for what happened, on the same day, with the Richland County clerk of court and the same county’s council District 7.

    Of course, we have insisted for years that it makes little sense to elect the clerk of court — or auditor, or coroner, or any office that is highly technical and has nothing to do with setting policies. It would be far better to let county administrators — who report to the elected councils — hire people to do highly technical, ministerial jobs, based on experience and demonstrated competence.

    The result in the clerk’s race reinforces our point.

    In the primary on June 10, we endorsed incumbent Barbara Scott, since — and we saw no clear evidence to the contrary — she was doing an adequate job running the courthouse, collecting child support payments and overseeing the other routine duties of the office. She was judged clerk of the year by the S.C. chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, which surely knows more about the quality of her day-to-day work than we do.

    Before making that decision, we considered endorsing Gloria Montgomery — who had worked in the clerk’s office for years and seems to understand it thoroughly (certainly better than we or most voters do) — or Kendall Corley, who offered some interesting ideas for improving service.

    But we never for a moment considered endorsing Jeanette McBride. That’s not because Mrs. McBride is married to former state Rep. Frank McBride, whose political career ended in 1991 when he pleaded guilty to vote-selling in the Lost Trust scandal. We didn’t consider her because she offered us no reason whatsoever to believe that she would do a better job than Ms. Scott. She didn’t even try. She did not display any particular interest in what the clerk of court does at all.

    She said, quite simply, that she was running because she thought she could win. She did not explain what went into that calculation, but so what? She was right.

    Her victory will inevitably be compared to the defeat of Harry Huntley — regarded by many as the best auditor in the state — in Richland County in 2006. And it will be suggested that both of these incumbents were the victims of raw racial politics. Mr. Huntley and Ms. Scott are white; Ms. McBride and Paul Brawley are black. A candidate who can pick up most of the black votes in a Democratic primary is increasingly seen as having an advantage in the county.

    I hope voters had a better reason than that for turning out qualified candidates in favor of challengers who seemed to offer no actual qualifications. In fact, I’m wracking my brain trying to think of other explanations. Ms. McBride, in her interview, didn’t help with that. And Mr. Brawley didn’t even bother to talk to The State’s editorial board, so I have no idea what sort of case he made to voters. I hope he made some really compelling, defensible argument. I just haven’t heard it yet.

    In council District 7, race was not the factor. Both runoff candidates were black. That one seems to have been a pure demonstration of another poor reason to win an election: name recognition. Voters went with Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy, a name they’d heard before, over the young and unknown Kiba Anderson. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten that the reason they’d heard the name was that she was one of the council members they booted out of office after she wasted their tax money on a junket to Hawaii.

    In our interview, Ms. Kennedy was like Ms. McBride in one respect: For a former council member, she showed a startling lack of knowledge of, or interest in, issues before the council.

    Mr. Anderson was an unknown quantity, to be sure. But at least we didn’t know he would be a bad council member, which Ms. Kennedy was.

    The optimist in me says that the voters no doubt had some really great reason for sending her back to the council. It’s just escaping me so far.

    That’s the bad news out of the runoffs. I’ll end on a cheery note.

    Before I do, I’ll state as I always do that our endorsements most certainly are not an attempt to predict election outcomes. They are about who should win — and the reasons why — not who will win.

    But several election cycles back, I got tired of our detractors spreading the lie that “our” candidates generally lose, that we are out of touch with the voters, that our endorsement is the “kiss of death,” yadda-yadda. So I started reporting our endorsees’ “won-lost” record after each election.

    The results of the primaries, now that all the recounts and runoffs are done, were as follows: We endorsed 24 candidates. Of those, 19 won. That’s a batting average of .792. So there.

The ‘Jewish lobby’

22 Replies

Check this letter on today’s page:

Hollings speaks truth about Middle East
    I agree with former Sen. Ernest Hollings on his answer, as stated in the June 15 State, to James T. Hammond’s question, “How do you think our policy in the Middle East should change?” Sen. Hollings said, “Settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and 80 percent of the problems will disappear.”
    In order to solve a problem, all facts must be truthfully presented. As long as it is considered anti-Semitic to state true but politically incorrect facts about Israel, it is impossible to solve the Middle East problems. If we want to solve these problems, get rid of the Jewish lobby (the biggest lobby in Washington), and get the facts on the table.
HARRY L. NORTON SR.
Summerton

I bring it up to suggest that Mr. Norton should check out this piece in Foreign Affairs that I mentioned previously. It makes it pretty clear that U.S. support for Israel — whatever you may think of it — has long been based in widespread support among NON-Jews in this country. Argue that this nation should take a harder line on Israel if you like. But to complain about the "Jewish lobby" is to miss where most of the support of current policy is coming from.

Apparently, black folks don’t have ‘biographies’

23 Replies

Today, I went to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate I received for Father’s Day. Given the occasion, it seemed fitting to use it to buy a copy of a book I’ve been meaning to read, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.

Of course, I sought it under "biography." No dice. I scanned the shelf where the "O’s" would be repeatedly. I looked to see if it had been mistakenly placed under "New Biography." Nope. Then I looked to make sure it hadn’t been filed by "Barack." Nope. Not under the "B’s."

So I went to the "Current Affairs" section. No luck.

Finally, I did the thing I hate, and went to the information desk. The clerk made a beeline for the "Store Favorites" table, and handed me a copy. As one does under such circumstances, I felt constrained to explain why I had had to ask for help, muttering something about having searched and searched under "Biography."

The clerk told me it wouldn’t have been under "Biography." It would have been under "African-American."

You’ll note that on the Web site, it’s considered to be a biography. But apparently not in the store. In case you wondered, John McCain does appear under "biography." Yes, the subtitle of the book is "A Story of Race and Inheritance." I get that. But it’s still a biography — or, to be technical, and autobiography. If it was right to file this under "African-American" instead of "Biography," then the McCain books — which feature him as a Navy aviator on the cover — should have been under "military history." But they weren’t.

After I got home a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that I didn’t go check what the clerk had told me — I didn’t search the "African-American" section, assuming that such a section exists. I’ll try to remember to check next time. But I do know that there were no copies under "Biography."

Nothing like fan mail, is there?

10 Replies

After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to provide a little extra perspective on the Richland County Council runoff (stuff you couldn’t possibly get elsewhere, for whatever it’s worth), I decided I’d better check and see if there was anything urgent in my e-mail the last couple of days before dragging myself home late as usual. At that point I ran across this:

We can solve the financial problems of the city,
the transit problem, the big dig on Main St., etc.  Just hire relatives of Rep.
Clyburn.  Where is the indignation from the paper on the editorial pages? 
Between naming things for his legacy and money for "relatives of Jim" – seems
rather hypocritical.  Oh wait – he’s a democrat and black – must be
untouchable!  Larry

What do you say to someone that clueless? Basically, I say nothing. I just thought I’d share it with y’all as part of my usual campaign to let y’all know what goes on behind the scenes around here — and "fan mail" such as this is part of the gig.

Of course, if I did answer, it would be along the lines of:

  1. You’re kidding, right? You’re writing this ONE DAY after the news report (less than a day after I read it, since this was sent at 7:39 a.m.), and already all worked up about not seeing an editorial yet?
  2. What newspaper did you read it in? The paper reports it, and YOU think this is evidence that the paper is looking out for Jim Clyburn? It was, in fact, the lead story in Monday’s paper. Bet ol’ Jim appreciated that, huh?
  3. You want to see criticism of black Democrats (and obviously, this is what matters to you)? I don’t suppose the thing I just frickin’ finished typing (with video) counts, huh?

But just so you know, that missive from ol’ Larry wasn’t one of our more hostile or least-well-reasoned bits of fan mail. Here’s one of the bad ones. NOTE: Don’t read this if you’re easily offended — or even moderately sensitive, for that matter:

Sir:
Generic news reader/bureau chief/flesh-colored dildo Tim Russert is dead at 58.
Of all you awful people, he was possibly the most oleaginous — as unctuous to the
likes of Bush, Cheney and Madeline Albright as any human dildo could possibly be
. . . a real Uriah Heep, brought to life and plopped down like a steaming pile of
shit onto our television screens each Sunday to "interview" the powerful.
Good riddance, fathead.
You mediocrities at The State can lower your ass-licking tongues to half-mast.

Ray Bickley

That was sent to me, by the way, at 6:44 p.m. on Friday, the very day Tim Russert died.

You can see why I just love e-mail.

Background on Beatty and his critics

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Folks, it occurs to me as I read comments back here that some of you might not fully understand how Judge Beatty has been targeted by these groups he’s talking about. You might want to go back and read some of what I wrote when he was elected to the court. As I said back then, he didn’t seem to me to be the best-qualified at all. But what I objected to was the grotesque campaign conducted against him, using some of the cheesiest, low-down tactics that have sullied our political branches in recent years.

If you will recall, these critics like to call him a "liberal" judge. They don’t provide evidence of this. What they do is show his picture. Get it? He’s black. Black equals liberal. Liberal equals black. He’s black, therefore he’s the kind of judge we don’t like. It’s moronic, and it’s racist.

To give you further perspective, I urge you to peruse this column of Cindi’s from last year. Yeah, you might think the judge’s rhetoric is over the top. But he sure as hell has had to put up with stuff he shouldn’t have been subjected to. Here’s the column:

THE STATE
ANTI-BEATTY CAMPAIGN A DISTURBING TURNING POINT IN JUDICIAL RACES
Published on: 06/06/2007
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: A6
Cindi Ross Scoppe
Associate Editor

THE PHONE message was from a long-time acquaintance who was simply beside himself because I as a woman wasn’t beside myself over the fact that a capable, talented woman wasn’t the odds-on favorite to be elevated to the state Supreme Court.

This wasn’t the only person who mistook my opposition to the below-the-belt attacks on Appeals Court Judge Don Beatty as support for his candidacy. Understandable, I suppose, since I didn’t pick a favorite in the three-way race between what looked to me like three capable judges.

Simply put, I don’t like to offer opinions unless I feel sure I know what I’m talking about, and I didn’t feel like I knew enough about the three would-be justices — only one of whom I had ever said more than "hello" to as far as I can recall — to make an informed choice.

As anyone who watched the circus that surrounded last month’s contest in the Legislature knows by now, others didn’t let their ignorance stand in the way. For the first time in S.C. history, several specialinterest groups not only took a position, and took to the airwaves with it; they demanded that legislators follow their orders — even when the basis for their position was at best flimsy and at worst fabricated.

What’s worse, that spectacle was likely only a taste of what’s to come as South Carolina’s judicial selection process takes on many of the corrupting and degrading influences of public elections.

Let’s get the hot-button stuff out of the way first: I’m not convinced that everybody who opposed the only African-American candidate in the race was doing so for racist reasons; I think much of the opposition to Justice-elect Beatty was a mindless, knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he had been a Democrat when he served in the House in the 1990s.

But the TV attack ad by a fringe group with a demonstrated absence of scruples: That was race-baiting. Not because it showed Mr. Beatty’s face; it would be strange not to show a picture of the person you’re attacking. What made it race-baiting was the way it managed to juxtapose his black face with the image of that extremely white young family just as it called for a judge with "South Carolina values." That, according to

my ad-savvy friends, is classic; anything more blatant would have been a turnoff to all but the most unreconstructed racists.

Distasteful as it was, though, the race-baiting isn’t what makes it important that we examine the ad campaign. There’s nothing new about using race in politics, and besides, we probably won’t see that again in a judicial race, since it’s unlikely that another African- American will be a serious contender for the high court for years to come.

The reason it’s important to examine the ad is that we almost certainly will see further attempts to turn judicial contests into the same kind of "our team vs. your team" contest that has come to define our actual elections. That’s bad enough when serious people are trying to figure out who would make the best governor or who should represent them in the Legislature — positions that are supposed to be filled by politicians. When it comes to judges — who if they have even an ounce of integrity rule based on the law, without conscious regard to their own personal, political preferences — the political language doesn’t even apply.

The ad, a $13,000 effort by Greenville-based "Conservatives in Action" that you can see at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v= T463tgvvrdg, centers on the same largely irrelevant charges about cherry-picked votes from Rep. Beatty’s legislative career that had been making the e-mail rounds among other interest groups. But it frames them in the context of federal judicial appointments. As the screen fills with a farcical picture of two plump tuxedo-clad men at what apparently is supposed to be their wedding, the announcer intones: "Liberal judges continue to wreak havoc on America, from banning prayer in schools to legalizing gay marriage to restricting property rights. Outof- control judges have hurt our country. So how come some South Carolina Republican legislators are supporting a left-wing politician for our state Supreme Court?"

The announcer is unperturbed by the fact that no one has been able to cite any such liberal lawmaking from the S.C. bench — and particularly not by Mr. Beatty. He informs us that "as a legislator, Beatty opposed a measure to prohibit public funding of abortion; he also voted against gun rights and opposed tax and spending cuts." And finally: "South Carolina doesn’t need an ultra-liberal Democrat partisan on the state Supreme Court. We need somebody who represents South Carolina values."

A spokesman for Conservatives in Action told The Greenville News that the group "very well may" air more TV spots "to educate the public" in future races.

If you’re trying to place that name, think back to those pink pigs that were stuffed into Midlands mailboxes in the days leading up to last year’s Republican primary. This is the secretive group — believed by many to be a front group for the voucher lobbying group SCRG — that failed rather spectacularly in its attempt to unseat Rep. Bill Cotty for the sin of not licking SCRG’s boots.

The Conservatives in Action spokesman said the group would be "watching" the legislators who voted for Judge Beatty. It would make more sense to watch Judge Beatty, to see whether he actually does morph into South Carolina’s first activist justice. But don’t hold your breath: There’s an awfully good chance that would require the group to admit it was wrong about him.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

All content © THE STATE and may not be republished without permission.

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History to be made tonight

39 Replies

Leave it to Samuel T., who gets really pumped about politics (and life in general), to put things in perspective, just when we’re on the brink of getting jaded:

    Tonight the western world , the white world is nominating an African-American for President of the United States of America !!!!!!!!!!!. Remember 1964 and how far have we come and how far we have to go ! Look how far Senator Obama had to go to get here from 5 months ago in Iowa. He was behind by 20 plus points ! Senator Obama’s victory tonight is a huge victory for all those who made the ultimate sacrifice for America to get here !
Mazel Tov America! Samuel 

That was a broadcast e-mail that Mr. Tenenbaum sent out to his list at 5:13 p.m. Seven minutes later, Luther Battiste III responded thusly:

    Well said. Using a NBA analogy, we have qualified for the finals. Now we have to win the ring. Yes, we can. Luther Battiste

Did Obama get the job done in denouncing Wright?

46 Replies

There was no question, as this day dawned, that Barack Obama was going to have to denounce his ex-pastor in unequivocal terms — no more of that, Well, you just have to understand about the black church stuff.

Right now, I’m trying to decide rather urgently — did he go far enough in what he said today? I don’t mean "far enough" to satisfy me, or even you, necessarily. I just mean, did he do what he had to to save his candidacy? Because there’s no question in my mind that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s statements of the last two days put the Obama campaign below water.

After failing with white middle-class voters in Pennsylvania — and not least of all because of what we’d already heard from the Wright pulpit — this latest stuff could not be allowed to stand.

Normally, I’d allow myself a little time to decide whether what Sen. Obama said today was enough. But at the moment, I’ve trying to decide whether it makes the Bob Herbert column I just put on tomorrow’s op-ed page too outdated.

We have this problem with The New York Times. While The Washington Post, for instance, gives us its opinion columnists in plenty of time for us to run them the same day that the Post does, The Times takes a far more self-centered approach, not moving its copy until it’s damned well good and ready — which is generally hours after our next day’s pages are done. Consequently, when we run columns by Herbert, Dowd, Brooks, et al., it’s generally a day later. Which is not usually a problem. A good opinion is a good opinion a day later.

Anyway, Bob Herbert had a strong column on the Wright situation this morning, and I picked it for tomorrow over — well, over a lot of things, but in the end, it was down to that or a Samuelson piece that’s embargoed until Wednesday. I chose the Herbert. But his column says, in part:

    For Senator Obama, the re-emergence of Rev. Wright has been devastating. The senator has been trying desperately to bolster his standing with skeptical and even hostile white working-class voters. When the story line of the campaign shifts almost entirely to the race-in-your-face antics of someone like Mr. Wright, Mr. Obama’s chances can only suffer.
    Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.
    Hillary Clinton is taunting Mr. Obama about his unwillingness to participate in another debate. Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race.
    Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Then today, Obama comes out swinging on the issue…

So right this moment, I’m trying to decide whether to run Herbert because he still makes good points, or ditch him because Obama has at least tried to do something Herbert says he needed to do.

Right now, I’m at the coin-toss stage…

Rev. Wright still fails to clarify

30 Replies

Just in case anyone was still confused, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright emerged over the last day or so to explain (I think) what I’ve already said about his sermons: He meant what he said the first time.

It seems he was being "descriptive," not "divisive."

Asked whether he thought some of the things he said might be less than "patriotic," he changed the subject — he mentioned his service in the Marine Corps in his youth, and mentioned that Dick Cheney never served. To which I say, "Huh?" To elaborate, thank you for your service, Reverend — I stand in awe of anyone who has been a Marine. But did you mean "God Damn America" or not? Were you being ironic, or stating a wish that was not your own, or was that "descriptive?" And how does that message square with Semper Fidelis?

I should mention that he also explained that if you take exception to his message, you’re a racist. Just so you know.

He also made the same argument that has been made in his behalf by others, that his remarks have been taken out of context — mere "soundbites." I’m still waiting to hear the context that makes "God Damn America" mean something else. Sadly, I’ve not heard it yet.

Poor Obama. With friends like this one…

Is Bill Clinton wagging his finger at us AGAIN?

1 Reply

Bill_clinton_wart

Speaking of The New York Times this morning, did you see how it described Bill Clinton’s reaction at being reminded of his attempt to ghetto-ize Obama back here in S.C.?

More Finger Wagging From a Miffed Bill Clinton
By KATE PHILLIPS
Published: April 23, 2008
WASHINGTON — Wagging his finger once again, former President Bill Clinton chided a reporter on Tuesday for what he deemed a misinterpretation of his remarks during a radio interview in which he said the Obama campaign “played the race card on me.”
    Mr. Clinton confronted the issue of race again on Monday when he was asked by an interviewer for WHYY radio in Philadelphia about his remarks earlier this year on the results of the South Carolina Democratic primary. At the time, he likened the victory of Senator Barack Obama to that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1998; Mr. Clinton’s comparison was denounced widely by black officials who believed he was marginalizing Mr. Obama’s victory with a racially tinged allusion to Mr. Jackson’s failed presidential bids…

What I’d like to know is, was he literally wagging his finger — you know, the way he did before? And if you don’t remember, the video is below.

Unfortunately, I have no video on the latest incident, so I’ll just have to assume the wagging was figurative this time. But we do have some nice, clear audio. Be sure to turn up your volume at the end so you can hear him say, "I don’t think I can take any s..t from anybody on that, do you?" (Some listeners hear it as "don’t think I should take any s..t," but I think it’s "can"…)

Now, having listened to that, do you feel chastened? Do you feel guilty for having thought less of our former president, even for a moment? Are you gonna stop giving him s–t now? Are you listening, you Obama supporters? Shame on anyone who would dare question Bill Clinton, as he makes clear in this other video…

Why Wright’s outrages don’t turn off Obama supporters

56 Replies

Moss Blachman sent me (and a bunch of others) a copy of a piece from The Jewish Week Web site that sorta, kinda expresses my attitude about Obama and his pastor — what Rev. Wright said was utterly beyond the pale, and yet it doesn’t turn me against Obama. An excerpt:

    The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime pastor, says
some things that really offend me.  As a passionate Zionist I take
offense at his cruel reference to an apartheid regime going on in
Israel. As a patriotic American I shake in disgust at the “God Damn
America” sermon he gave soon after the tragic events of 9/11. His
ongoing association with Louis Farrakhan troubles me deeply, since
Farrakhan is a bigot. Indeed, I once led a group of protesters into the
office of Anthony Williams, former mayor of Washington, D.C., and
begged him not stand with Farrakhan. 
    At the same time, I do not view Rev. Wright’s remarks as a reason not to vote for Barack Obama. I may or may not decide
to vote for him, but not on the basis of his longtime pastor’s politics.

Of course, Obama’s relationship with this guy doesn’t help him with me, but it’s not a deal-killer, any more than it is for Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who wrote the piece.

Another thing I liked about the piece — and for me, this is a separate point from the whole Wright/Obama thing — was this statement:

A congregation should not identify itself with a specific political
party, but a religious leader should feel free to express himself on
issues that he deems of social and political significance.

As I wrote before, I was impressed at the political moral teaching I heard from the pulpit (is "pulpit" the right word?) at a synagogue up in Greenville several months back. Of course, the difference between that and the inexcusable stuff that comes from the Rev. Wright are very, very different.

Last-minute ploys in city council race

22 Replies

Kappaalpha

Since I haven’t decided what I think about it myself, let me ask you: What do you think of the last-minute attacks in the Columbia City Council at-large race?

Two examples of what I’m talking about: Cameron Runyan holds a press conference to claim that incumbent Daniel Rickenmann had a conflict-of-interest on recent tentative decision to approve a six-story development in Five Points. There was a story about that in the paper the other day.

Then, on Sunday, the above flier shows up on windshields outside Bethel AME Church. (This was reported on in today’s paper.) There is no date on the photo, and little explanatory information. But to describe it as simply as possible, it purports to show Mr. Rickenmann at what has all the marks of a Kappa Alpha fraternity party. But I suppose it could be just about anything. As to whether that’s Mr. Rickenmann, well … all those preppy white boys tend to look alike to me. As I said awhile back, I think Cameron Runyan looks like Daniel Rickenmann, so don’t go by me.

Here’s what today’s news story said:

The fliers showed a picture of Rickenmann at a fraternity party while
he was a student at USC. He and a group of fraternity brothers, some
dressed in Confederate uniforms, are posing in front of a Confederate
battle flag. In the picture, Rickenmann, dressed in a tuxedo, is
toasting the camera with a drink.

Or, you could just look at the picture above.

No one has taken responsibility for the flier — neither Hamas nor the Symbionese Liberation Army has come forward, and Mr. Runyan denies it outright.

Both of these attacks came after we had endorsed Mr. Runyan for the seat, and we had no interest in running anything about them in editorial. We don’t even have an editorial position on the (relative) high-rise in Five Points — I’m at odds with my three associates on that one — much less what role Mr. Rickenmann should or shouldn’t have played in the decision thus far.

As for the "Confederate" picture… even if we had raised it to denounce Mr. Runyan (or whoever distributed it; I don’t know who), it would have focused so much negative attention on Mr. Rickenmann that it would look like we, as Runyan supporters, were piling on. (Add to that our usual reluctance to air any new charges in the last day or two of an election, when it’s too late for the accused to give a fair answer.)

Anyway, it all came out in the end for Mr. Rickenmann, so congratulations to him and his supporters. I just provide this post as a place for y’all to discuss the last-minute stuff.

Wright context doesn’t change message

73 Replies

OK, I finally got around to watching one of those longer clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — specifically, one that contains the "God Damn America" part. I’ve been told many times that I just needed to get the context to understand that what he said shouldn’t be understood in the stark way that I have understood it.

The Rev. Joe Darby, in his op-ed piece on today’s page, suggested the same point:

… America is still focused on a few ten-second sound bites from Rev. Wright’s 30- or 40-minute sermons

Anyway, I watched this six-minute, 48-second clip — and it doesn’t change a thing. "God Damn America" still means "God Damn America." There’s no part in which he says, suggests or even hints that he didn’t really mean it, or that he thought America was in danger of damnation, and he wanted to save it. No, if anything, it’s clearer that he meant what he said.

But I think some of the well-meaning folks trying to explain all this to me are actually misunderstanding me. Start with the assumption that I somehow lack information. Aside from the above quote suggesting I need the context of the remark, the Rev. Darby also says:

Dr. Wright’s critics also need to learn more about the historically black church and its clergy…

I surely don’t claim to be an expert on the black church, especially in the presence of Joe Darby, who lives it. But no one has told me anything about the black church, in the course of "explaining" Mr. Wright to me, that I did not know. Sure, maybe something is lost in translation, but so far I’ve seen no indication that that’s what is at work this time.

But what Mr. Wright said is clear. The six-minutes-plus of context that went before "God Damn America" was exactly what I would have guessed went before it. Essentially, it was a review of history, mixed with a small dollop of political partisanship (the comparison of not-so-bad presidencies with the current one). Short version: The government has upheld oppression of black people during the course of American history.

Folks, I’m an American history major, and I’ve lived in this country for most of 54 years. What part of the rather sketchy overview in that sermon do you think I didn’t know already? If I’d been sermonizing, I could have added a lot to it — including the fact that the blood offering of the Civil War, as horrific as it was, seems to have been an inevitable sacrifice to expiate the sin of slavery. And I would have said the evil didn’t end there, nor could it, there being original sin in the world, and no one of us since Jesus Christ born free of it.

But I wouldn’t have said "God Damn America." Not in a million years. For me, the point of bringing up evil is to try to overcome it — as I believe two people Mr. Darby mentions (King and Bonhoeffer) were trying to do.

Sorry, but I can’t accept that the Rev. Wright was saying "things that challenge America to rise above its sins of prejudice and greed." No, if he’d said America was in danger of damnation, or headed straight thataway, rather as Jesus said to the Pharisees in the example cited by my colleague Warren Bolton this week, that might have been seen as a challenge, perhaps even a well-intentioned warning. (Personally, although he had more right, being God, than anyone else to do so, I don’t remember Jesus ever damning anything more sentient than a fig tree.)

But Mr. Wright didn’t call on us to do anything. Instead, he called on God to damn America.

One last point — Mr. Darby seems to assume, as have other writers, that those who say things like what I just said are against Obama. Well, I’m not. But just because I like a guy, I’m not going to sugarcoat a problem. As I said, Obama gave a brilliant speech, but he did not succeed in separating himself from what the Rev. Wright had said. He couldn’t. If he had disowned him at this point, it would have been crass opportunism, and beneath him.

So this guy I like — Obama — has a problem, one he can’t get rid of. Just as another guy I like, John McCain, is way old — nothing he can do about that, either.

I would suggest that if anyone out there supports a candidate and thinks that candidate is perfect, he should look a little harder. Nobody meeting that description has come along in two millennia. Thus endeth my sermon for today.