Sometimes It's Better To Keep Your Mouth Shut....

The Washington Post ran an editorial by Gary MacDougal on race relations that gets off to a weak start:

It is easy to be outraged by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's abhorrent remarks, whether accusing our country of willfully spreading AIDS or being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Okay... so who's actually outraged by Jeremiah Wright's comments about AIDS? Did anybody thump their fist against the table, demanding to know, "How could he think such a thing?" Or did they have more or less the same reaction as to John McCain's woeful ignorance on vaccinations - which suggest that the government is knowingly spreading an "autism epidemic" and is covering up the facts. If you prefer, we can stick with AIDS - if you want to convince the world that your goal isn't to spread AIDS, perhaps you should do better than advancing abstinence education as the front-line AIDS prevention program for Africa, and supporting failed abstinence education policies in U.S. schools.

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

There are other Republicans who make McCain look informed on these subjects. If you listen to that type of claptrap and come away with the idea that the Republican Party doesn't care about the spread of AIDS, or is deliberately spreading misinformation that may contribute to the spread of AIDS, you're making the mistake of attributing to evil something that can be explained by stupidity. And yes, all of these statements - Wright's, McCain's and Senator Frist's, are outrageous, but Wright's AIDS comments seem peripheral to the outrage directed at him.

So what about "being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks"? Yes, there's been outrage over Wright's remarks. But fundamentally, they're no different from those of many white religious leaders - largely 'conservative'-branded religious leaders. Active voice versus passive voice.

Am I being unfair? MacDougal said, "It is easy to be outraged" - and it's always easy to be outraged. And if you're the sort who turns off your brain the moment you hear something that "outrages" you, perhaps you don't need to consider the comparably outrageous statements made by John McCain and the preachers he actively embraces in his bid for the White House.

But Wright has done more, and worse, than tarnish Obama's presidential campaign.

Consider the corrosive effect Wright and others like him have on their communities as they rob thousands of listeners of the American dream: hope that through their hard work they can have better lives.

While I have nothing against wearing your politics on your sleeve, two paragraphs into the editorial, is there any doubt remaining that the editorial was written by a rich white guy? The type of person who thinks that the entire African American community has some sort of hive mind, embracing victimhood based solely on the rhetoric of preachers? There's no sin in recognizing the corrosive effect of "race men". But when you elide the reasons why the words of the race men resonate, or suggest that but for words of negativity African Americans would realize "how good they really have it," well, you give yourself away.

Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn't want you, doesn't respect you and seeks to hold you back. Your spiritual leader has told you this, after all. With powerful rhetoric, Wright has asserted, for instance, that white America sees black women as useful only for their bodies. If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

Okay... so the reason that the "prominent black professionals" that attend Wright's church have achieved both educationally and professionally is... he's convinced them that there's no reason to go to work in the morning? Poor Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, totally stripped of ambition?

MacDougal also suggests that making statements about hurdles (real or imagined) imposed by society are the beginning and end of the story. I haven't delved into Wright's sermons, but I have heard about one of his more famous themes - "the audacity of hope". It's easy to caricature Wright based upon a few sound bites. But perhaps the reason so many successful African Americans attended Wright's services was because he inspired them to strive and succeed despite all obstacles.

Through my work with the Illinois governor's task force on human services reform and its efforts to reduce welfare dependency, I have encountered misguided community "leaders" like Wright who tell their followers, for example, that the job market is stacked against them and that the jobs that are available aren't good enough - that they are entitled to more. The underlying message: You can't win because of who you are, regardless of what you do.

Okay - my standard challenge: Name one. Just one. I won't hold my breath.

I have attended positively focused black church services, and I know that the Rev. Wright does not speak for a monolithic black church.

You figured that out all by yourself? You think that's something that needs to be explained?

But I also recall a conversation I had during a visit to the maximum-security prison in Joliet, Ill. As I sat in the library there, talking with three men about why they were incarcerated, one man said: "Look around this room - almost everybody here is black. This is white man's genocide. You put us in here to keep us down." Where would this 20-something black man, or other relatively uneducated young people, get such an idea? From the vitriol spewed by the Rev. Wrights of this world.

Good for MacDougal. He was in a prison, talking to a group of inmates, and didn't even notice that the prison population was largely African American until somebody pointed it out to him.

We're in Thomas Friedman "taxi driver" territory here - a dubious anecdote that is impossible to verify, that conveniently just happens to be 100% consistent with the author's argument. It's a safe bet that I've talked to a lot more African Americans tangled up in the criminal justice system than Mr. MacDougal, and I've not once heard a claim of "white man's genocide". Nor anything even slightly resembling a claim of "white man's genocide".

Now, that's not to say that I haven't heard claims that sentencing policies have had a disproportionate effect on the African American community, due to more severe sentencing for crack as compared to an equivalent quantity of powder cocaine. It's not to say that there isn't an argument that law enforcement is much more diligent about rounding up street dealers (who happen to be disproportionately African American) as opposed to drug dealers who work inside private parties or workplace settings, a population of drug dealers that is much more likely to be white. (The latter group is much harder to detect and catch, so this is a sensible use of limited manpower.) There's also an argument that law enforcement is not willing to put enough pressure on drug dealing in poor communities, often African American communities, to result in a shift of drug activity to other areas of the city. And there's the fact that the white guys from the suburbs who buy drugs are rarely picked up and prosecuted along with the street dealers. Should MacDougal ever find the time to engage these prisoners past the level of the sound bite, he will probably find a lot more nuance in their views than is convenient to his piece.

But really, "Where would ... relatively uneducated young people, get such an idea?" MacDougal thinks the problem is that they're spending too much time in church? It isn't possible that he looked around his own community, saw the violence, crime level, poverty, and de facto segregation, and drew a few inferences from that?

The black middle class has grown in recent decades, enabling more and more African Americans to move out of cities and into the suburbs. This exodus in pursuit of better schools and crime-free neighborhoods is understandable; in many areas, though, inner cities have been left with a shortage of middle-class role models and community leaders.

That's another argument that bothers me. That somehow, African Americans who succeed "owe it to their communities" to live in impoverished areas and serve as role models. You would think MacDougal was unaware that many successful African Americans have never lived in the inner city. Why is it only African American communities that have this dire need for "middle-class role models and community leaders"? I don't think MacDougal would have any great difficulty finding and moving into an impoverished white community to serve as a "role model" - when should I expect his "change of address" card?

In the old days, Chicago's South Side, called Bronzeville, was a vibrant community anchored by black doctors, lawyers and businesses. It produced entertainers such as Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington.

Ah, yes... The good old days. What could possibly have changed between "the old days" and the present that might have resulted in wealthy, successful African Americans moving out of de jure segregated communities and into the suburbs? Well, Dinah Washington died in 1963, and Nat King Cole died in 1965... so maybe, just maybe, something happened right around 1964 that affected where African Americans worked and lived.

Today, the South Side is a place where some Chicagoans refuse to venture at night. Productive employment is sorely lacking, and on many streets, drug dealing and loitering still abound.

So roll in a sufficient police presence to get that "drug dealing and loitering" off the street. Or is it that you don't actually want the drug dealing to move out of that community (and into another).

In cities across America, blacks have been left behind in dangerous neighborhoods with poor schools. Often, they must leave their neighborhoods to achieve economic self-sufficiency but face barriers to successful employment.

Okay, so after leaving their communities, African Americans "face barriers to successful employment"? MacDougal's response:

This challenge has not gone unnoticed. Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars - specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid, the earned-income tax credit, job training and food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share.

So the status quo is the solution? And if not for the rhetoric of certain African American preachers, everything would be coming up roses?

We need to work together to help people move from dependency to self-sufficiency.

But we should be clear that this "working together" thing won't involve the dedication of any additional financial resources?

I have encountered negative messages in many states. A community "leader" in Miami's Overtown neighborhood, for instance, told me that he counseled unemployed people not to work on nearby construction projects because racist employers abused them. Pressed for an example of such abuse, he cited an employer's failure to pay overtime for Saturday work.

We're up to a conspiracy of two? Reverend Wright and an unnamed "community 'leader'" who dares to suggest that African Americans should only work for employers who pay them what they earn? Is the message he hopes to send to the African American community, "Your only hope is to take any job you can get, even if your employer is cheating you"? Is that the message he carries to his children's school on "career day"?

Two blocks away, more than a dozen homeless men were camped out under a bridge. Yet a man who was supposed to be guiding people was counseling against working.

Color me skeptical. A "man" who was "supposed to be guiding people" - what's this person's job title? And this guidance session was taking place under a bridge, with Mr. MacDougal listening in?

Something that occurs to me, but perhaps is beneath MacDougal's attention, is the high correlation between homelessness and mental illness. While Mr. MacDougal's advice to the homeless apparently begins and ends with, "Get a job, any job, even if you're cheated on your wages," somebody who knows what he's talking about might recognize that a homeless, mentally ill person might lose Social Security disability benefits and jeopardize Medicaid eligibility by "getting a job" - even assuming a significant population of employers at all interested in employing the homeless, and a significant population of homeless people capable of holding those jobs.

Life isn't fair for people of any skin color.

Life isn't fair to anybody, but it's more fair to some people than it is to others. But why bring race into it? Ah, perhaps MacDougal is reminiscing about the times he was pulled over for "driving while white" through an affluent neighborhood. Or got passed over for a job interview because his name sounded too ethnic. Or showed up to tour an apartment and was told, "Sorry, we just rented the last one." Yup, take it from me, it's tough to be a white guy.

Positive thinking isn't going to solve America's race problems.

It took you long enough to admit that. So what will?

Oh... you're out of space? How unfortunate. Maybe next time....

"They're All Happy Campers"

Remember years ago, when Dan Quayle visited American Samoa?

You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.

Exceptionally patronizing and condescending, right? Well, maybe not. Because if you read the likes of Michael Gerson, it's "patronizing" to suggest that blocks of voters are anything but happy campers.

The roots of Gerson's thesis, of course, are the wishes of his Republican masters to expand upon Barack Obama's "bitter/cling" comments, and advance the idea that he is "elitist" for generalizing in any way, whatsoever, about any group of people. Well, no, scratch that - as far as his masters are concerned, it's fine to generalize about blocs of voters who lean Democratic. Not a one of them would criticize somebody for alluding to Democrats or liberals as part of a "Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show". What's forbidden, apparently, is to generalize about voters who lean Republican or who are in the amorphous political "center". The only way to escape that trap, it seems, is to follow the Quayle model of treating them as "happy campers".

Moreover, you must plug your ears to political reality. The "happy campers" of this nation have no resentment of affirmative action. They have no fear of crime. They don't "feel their dreams slipping away". African-American "happy campers" who came of age in an era of Jim Crow and segregation (and here Gerson seems to be speaking both individually and collectively) cannot be said to have "bitterness and biases" resulting from their experiences with legal and institutionalized discrimination.

Gerson explains, "The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained." Except it's not "insulting" to be explained, unless the explanation is wrong or "the truth hurts". It's insulting to be "explained away", but that's very different from being "explained", and that expansion on Gerson's actual words doesn't fit Gerson's accusations against Obama. (Besides, Gerson's prior profession was speechwriter, so we shouldn't need to read extra words into his column to have it make sense.)

Gerson proceeds to exemplify how, despite his earlier claims, it's okay to generalize about "they don't vote for us, anyway" voter blocs. Gerson presents extreme elements of "Black theology" that he attributes to James Cone, then tells us that Rev. Wright was mentored by Cone (guilt by association) even though Gerson has apparently been unable to put Cone's words directly into Wright's mouth, then he implies that anybody who goes to a church that is in any way associated with "Black theology" (guilt by association by association) must either accept those views as basic beliefs of their pastor or have been "asleep in the pew".

Although not offered as an defense of his generalizations, Gerson writes, "Most people would rather be termed right or wrong than be dismissed." See? So Gerson wasn't being patronizing, condescending or dismissive when he generalized what he sees as the worst of "Black theology" to all churches that advance some aspect of "black liberation theology" (those are his terms and his capitalization, and it is he who uses the terms as synonyms), and in suggesting that those churches follow a philosophy that is "not Biblical." He was simply telling all of the ministers of those churches, and everybody in their congregations, "You are wrong." Don't go reading a James Baker-type attitude into that. (And don't you dare suggest that Gerson wouldn't dream of offering a similar analysis of a mainstream white Christian movement.)

What's perhaps most interesting about these continuing, relentless right-wing assaults on Obama, Reverend Wright, and his so-called "elitism" (the difference in that regard between Obama and the other candidates being principally one of image, not substance) is that it suggests that Obama remains the Republicans' most feared opponent for the fall campaign.

... And The Spin Machine Keeps On Spinning

Robert Novak is smarter than a lot of his fellow columnists. Unlike, for example, a Michael Gerson, who happily says the most stupid things to advance the Republican agenda, Novak puts those words into the mouths of others. Perhaps accurately, but let's just say I wouldn't recommend talking to him about a controversial subject lest you become his convenient foil.

Novak starts out by reminding us that it's important for Obama not to be seen as an angry black man.

Did [the latest speech] solve Obama's pastor problem? Leading Democrats certainly hope so, but they are not sure. His vulnerability transcends relations with a radical preacher. If Obama comes to be seen not as a presidential candidate who happens to be black but as a black candidate in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he will face a difficult struggle in the general election against John McCain even if he bests Hillary Clinton.

That's clever. Novak could have issued a straightforward acknowledgment of the fact that only "teh stupids" would conclude that Obama is "in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton", and that nobody who is familiar with Obama's record would make such an obvious error. But candor is not consistent with Novak's goal, which (of course) is to keep the tarnish on Obama's image, not to clean it off.

So who is Novak's foil?

My friend Armstrong Williams, the African American conservative, told me, "It is not unusual to hear in many black churches the same language that Reverend Wright is being criticized for." I raised this with NPR reporter and Fox commentator Juan Williams (no relation to Armstrong). "Not at all," replied Williams, who also is African American. "It's ridiculous. I never have heard that in church."

Wright's demagoguery is so unusual in Juan Williams's view that it was necessary for Obama to separate himself from it two months ago. Instead of orating about race in America, Williams says, Obama should have repented as a "sinner" partaking of lies from the pulpit. It was a post-partisan, post-racial opportunity lost by the candidate.

From what I can see, Williams is Episcopalian. I can't say that I'm surprised that his church experiences would depart from... well, pretty much any church that doesn't offer staid, conservative services that follow centuries of church doctrine and tradition. It would seem, well, vapid to speak of a "white church" experience by comparing Episcopal services to the preaching style of John Hagee, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggert, Rod Parsley, Jim Bakker.... "That's not a 'white church' experience - I've never heard anything like that in church." Well, duh.

"Partaking lies from the pulpit"? Williams was truly suggesting that Obama's immediate response to the Wright controversy should have been to condemn the entire church, all of its works, and everybody who attended services while Wright was leading the church? That, to Novak, would have been taking a "post-partisan, post-racial opportunity"? I think the laugh track on the Washington Post website must be broken, because at this point we should be hearing raucous laughter. (But at least at this point he's not (overtly) trying to put that suggestion into Williams' mouth.)

The "thrown under the bus" line should be retired, but of course Novak drags it out:

Nobody knows whether Obama's performance has damaged his candidacy permanently, but his supporters hope the issue is out of the news. The difficulty is that Jeremiah Wright, thrown under the bus by his former parishioner, can reemerge any time he wishes and renew discussion of the Democratic presidential front-runner's real identity.

And if Wright doesn't wish, he'll have partisans like Novak trying to bring the issue to the forefront at every opportunity.

But for Novak to suggest that Obama's statement threw Wright under the bus? After suggesting that the proper response to the initial scandal would have been to throw Wright, his entire church, and his entire conversation under a Mack truck and run over them fifty or sixty times? If you were ever in doubt that Novak is a man with no shame....

Different Visions of Rev. Wright

The New Republic attempts to explain what might have attracted Obama to Rev. Wright. Presenting a passage from David Mendell's biography of Obama,

Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday. Even if some blacks consider Wright's church serving only the bourgeois set, his ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago's black community.

* * *

But more than that, Trinity's less doctrinal approach to the Bible intrigued and attracted Obama. "Faith to him is how he sees the human condition," Wright said. "Faith to him is not . . . litmus test, mouth-spouting, quoting Scripture. It's what you do with your life, how you live your life. That's far more important than beating someone over the head with Scripture that says women shouldn't wear pants or if you drink, you're going to hell. That's just not who Barack is."

The article suggests,

So, if you buy Wright's account [as given to David Mendell] - and it rings pretty true to me - it was his intellectualism and social progressivism that won Obama over. Certainly it's hard to imagine that someone like Obama, who came from a progressive, secular background, would have felt genuinely comfortable in a socially conservative, anti-intellectual church. The problem for Obama is that the flip-side of these virtues was a minister with a radical worldview and a penchant for advertising it loudly.

That interpretation would help explain why Obama might accept Wright, warts and all, into his life. And why he would give Wright a chance to redeem himself, rather than issuing the renunciation some demanded from "day one" of this petty scandal.

The Washington Post in an unsigned editorial (and it seems almost cowardly to say this without attaching an author's name) opines:

We didn't join the renewed and growing chorus calling on Mr. Obama to renounce the Rev. Wright after the minister's all-about-me rant at the National Press Club on Monday, but the candidate's motivation is pretty obvious. The Rev. Wright praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, said it was plausible that AIDS was a genocidal tool of the U.S. government to kill African Americans and proclaimed that attacks on him were an attack on the black church. He also delivered a deliberate poke in the eye to his former parishioner, suggesting that Mr. Obama's conciliatory Philadelphia speech was nothing but politics. With each defiant utterance Monday, the Rev. Wright dug a deeper political hole for Mr. Obama.

Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment.

You can't pat yourself on the back for supposedly not calling for further repudiation of Wright while insisting that Wright's comments raise questions about Obama's judgment - the two go hand-in-hand. Moreover, do try for some internal consistency. Yesterday's similarly unsigned editorial proclaimed,

None of this is helpful to Mr. Obama, who could face more calls not only to denounce such inflammatory comments but also to renounce his longtime pastor. We will not join in that chorus. In his address on race in Philadelphia last month after video of the Rev. Wright's fiery sermons burst onto the national scene, Mr. Obama condemned, "in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy." The candidate credibly explained how he could understand his minister's anger without sharing or approving of it. Having had a closer look at the Rev. Wright, voters will have to decide for themselves how much weight to give Mr. Obama's long association with the pastor. But it is the Rev. Wright, not Mr. Obama, who yesterday chose to further discredit himself.

So yesterday Obama had given a credible response to attacks over Wright, and today he has insufficiently responded to "legitimate questions about his judgment"?

The saddest part here is that Wright had a choice to make. He could have stepped up by presenting himself as a solid, Christian leader who had been misunderstood in one sermon. He could have engaged in a gentle dialog on race, discussed the difference in style between his style of preaching and the more restrained version many Americans are used to. He could have deflated the use of the out-of-context "G-D America" clip by Obama's opponents. But no, he instead chose to act the part of, in Jim Sleeper's words, a "wounded, raving, preening narcissist". It has to be painful to have your career reduced to a caricature, to have your good works ignored, and to have the Washington Post suggest that anybody who would voluntarily associate with you is unfit for national office. But Wright needs to take responsibility for the fact that he just made that pain a lot worse.

Time For Obama To Give a New Speech On Wright

A number of years ago, a lawyer I know decided to support a fellow lawyer in his quest to become a judge. He hosted a large party for the candidate, and introduced him to a wide range of people including some influential union leaders. We're not talking strangers here - the lawyers had known each other for years, and for two of three years had attended the same law school. They weren't personally close, but they had been working with each other professionally for years.

What was the "thank you" the lawyer received for his efforts? Once the parties were over and the introductions had been made, the candidate simply bypassed him. He was an intermediary, and the candidate no longer saw a need for him.

This is not a unique experience. There are people who view others as rungs on the ladder of success. They'll happily use your head as a rung, then forget about you. Some of these people are really good at making you feel important right up to the day they no longer have a use for you. The next day, they may say something like this:

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls....

* * *

"He didn't distance himself. He had to distance himself because he's a politician."

I think it's time for Obama to reexamine his relationship with Wright, to see if he may have been regarded as nothing more than a step on the ladder of success by a narcissistic preacher who no longer has a use for him.

Eugene Robinson gets it about right, acknowledging Wright's service as a marine and a preacher, but observing.

I'm through with Wright not because he responded - in similar circumstances, I certainly couldn't have kept silent - but because his response was so egocentric. We get it, Rev. Wright: You're ready for your close-up.

* * *

Historically and theologically, he was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus.

Sadly, it's time for Obama to return the favor.

In the alternative, he can let Wright continue to step on his head for the next several months (or until Wright gets better traction from finding somebody else to step on).
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Update: Andrew Sullivan puts things more bluntly:

This is no longer about cynics trying to associate one man's politics with another. It is now about Wright attempting to associate himself and some of his noxious, stupid, rancid views with the likely Democratic nominee.

Freed from his church and given a national spotlight, we now get to see "the real Reverend Wright". Is he still the man Obama thought he was? (Here's some music to think by.)
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Update 2: There's going to be a lot of this today. At TPM Cafe, Todd Gitlin opines,

Wright on video, preening, smirking, reveling in his star turn, has spun my mind around. I found him convincing in this sense: He's convinced me that he's a clear and present danger to Obama's candidacy. The father has turned on the son--it's the Laius complex in action. Sure, sure, Wright offers a heap of clever and not-so-clever self-extenuations for his kind words about Louis Farrakhan, and absurdly claims to speak for the entire black church. But he makes it clear that he believes Obama is simply "a politician," meaning a shifty no-good. He's broken the parental contract.

Obama's choice here is potentially "make or break". In no small part it's his supporters who are demanding action this time. His opponents are gloating.
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Update 3: M.J. Rosenberg adds,

It is not Wright himself that bothers us. It is that Obama does not utterly and completely repudiate a man who is willfully and with malice aforethought doing him profound and possibly fatal damage.

We don't care about Wright's views on racism, the Middle East or Farrakhan. He's just another media preacher. And not one of us believes that Barack Obama shares any of his views.

That is why we need Obama to divest himself of this guy. Not doing so, allowing this buffoon to hurt the most promising campaign of a generation, would demonstrate a weakness we cannot have in a President.

I imagine it's painful to repudiate the guy who no doubt showed a gentle, loving face over twenty years as Obama's pastor, but I think the face we're seeing now is "the real deal". Rosenberg is correct, in my view, to identify Obama's next step as a test of his suitability for the presidency.

Syndicated Columnists Are Often Cowardly, Shallow And Dishonest....

And, of course, Bill Kristol is a syndicated columnist.

Seriously, let's take a look at his latest smear piece:

• "But orators often ask themselves the convenient questions, not the difficult ones. And Barack Obama is an accomplished orator."
• "After all, politicians sometimes indulge in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point. And Barack Obama is an able politician."
• "But ambitious men sometimes do a disservice to the best in their own communities. And Barack Obama is an ambitious man."

Kristol could have added to my amusement by couching his observations in the form of questions, but... close enough. As I previously observed,

I'm left wondering if Kristol writes his editorials at a desk, or while sitting in front of a highly polished vanity mirror.

Who is he really writing about?

If he were really writing about Barack Obama, he wouldn't need to dance around his accusations. He could say, "Barack Obama is indulging in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point." But instead he utilizes faulty logic to make a smear he is apparently afraid to present directly. Instead we get things like this:

• Party hacks are often spineless cowards.
• Bill Kristol is a party hack.
• Draw your own conclusion.

But don't prejudge Kristol - while the bulk of his column is composed of that type of smear by innuendo, we haven't gotten to the meat of his attack yet:

The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race.

Hm. Some might argue that the last thing we need is a rich, white Republican party hack telling us that we don't need a national conversation about race. But let's hear him out.

Luckily, Obama isn’t really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race.

Okay, Bill... then the point of this column was to share the fact that you shuddered about something that you don't expect to happen? Really, couldn't you find a better foundation for your smear piece than, "I shudder at the bogeyman, even though he doesn't exist?" Particularly given that your smears about things that don't make you shudder once again reveal your trademark sloppiness with the facts.

The real question, of course, is not why Obama joined Trinity, but why he stayed there for two decades, in the flock of a pastor who ... suggested soon after 9/11 that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

For the "chickens" line, Wright was quoting Ambassador Edward Peck. You know, one of those wild, out-of-control Republican appointees....

Meanwhile, we're five years into the war under a leadership Kristol describes as having driven us into a ditch. He's not only comfortable in the passenger seat, he insists upon keeping the same driver while screaming "Step on it!" Yeah, he's one to lecture Obama for hanging with the wrong crowd....