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Opinion Writers Praise Obama Speech

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Dissenters Say Issue is Pastor, Not Race Relations

Sen. Barack Obama‘s address on race Tuesday was received favorably by an overwhelming majority of opinion journalists and commentators on Wednesday, but a dissenting minority insisted that the issue was not the future of race relations, as Obama contended, but whether the Democratic candidate had come clean about his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The news tipsheet D-Day said a YouTube video of Obama’s speech apparently had been watched 1.25 million times.

The candidate took his message after his morning speech to individual columnists, granting interviews Tuesday and Wednesday to the Philadelphia Tribune, an African American weekly located in an upcoming primary state; to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post; Bob Herbert of the New York Times and DeWayne Wickham of USA Today, campaign spokeswoman Candice Tollvier said. Obama also appeared on ABC-TV’s “Nightline.”

Obama’s speech “had the extraordinary effect of producing a near-total consensus on talk radio that he did an outstanding job,” David Hinckley wrote in the New York Daily News.

“That consensus had its limits, however, as admirers said they like him even more and critics said they still think he’s dead wrong, both in general and in his support for controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

As one example of the enthusiasm the speech generated, Hinckley quoted James Mtume, co-host of “Open Line” on New York’s WRKS-FM, who said, “his was probably the most important speech since Dr. Martin Luther King in Washington in 1963. There’s never been a presidential candidate who brought this reality [of race] before the American people with this level of specificity.”

An instant poll among 709 self-reported Democrats, Republicans and independents indicated that the majority of those identified with political parties did not believe that Obama’s speech would put to rest racial comments made by Wright, who has recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and has been Obama’s spiritual mentor for 20 years.

 

 

 

“In taking on the issues of race and Wright’s remarks, Obama sought to douse two fires simultaneously: worries among whites struggling to square Obama’s inclusive rhetoric with the divisive views of his minister, and fears among some African-Americans that Obama would jettison Wright to appeal to white voters,” William Douglas wrote for McClatchy Newspapers.

Many editorial writers and columnists reached for such words as “historic” in praising Obama’s 37-minute speech, delivered in front of an array of American flags in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

“Unlike perhaps any other political figure in modern America, Sen. Obama navigated the history, the current condition and the possible future of this nation’s racial and economic divides that usually go unspoken. And he did so with uncommon grace, aplomb and candor,” the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press wrote in its editorial.

“Indeed, he spoke with such remarkable understanding, compassion and breadth that his speech from Philadelphia is destined to become a milestone event in this nation’s political history. It will be replayed and studied for its frank, inspiring and challenging appraisal of this nation’s most powerful social undercurrent.”

But the Wall Street Journal countered, “A genuine message of racial healing would also have given more credit to the real racial gains in American society over the last 40 years . . .”

And the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal said, “Sen. Obama’s previous professions of ignorance about the controversy have been disingenuous. After all, he identified the pastor as his spiritual mentor — the man whose sermon gave him the idea for ‘The Audacity of Hope.’ No one can imagine any other politician sliding away so easily from a similar controversy.

“Sen. Obama forcefully framed the reasons why racial differences must be overcome. What he did not do was offer real solutions.”

The controversy prompted some media outlets to explore the culture of the black church, one that shocked many unfamiliar with the hyperbole offered by many of its preachers. Reporter Joe Johns, on CNN, took viewers to his Metropolitan AME Church in Washington on Tuesday night.

Public Radio International’s “To the Point,” one of many talk shows that addressed the speech, featured investigative reporter Ronald Kessler, who was credited with breaking to the outside world the story of some of the more controversial aspects of Wright’s sermons or homilies, fiery rhetoric that inflamed critics and threatened Obama’s quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, in which he is leading in delegates.

On “To the Point,” former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, a supporter of Hillary Clinton, said he had used language similar to Wright’s in attempting to quell black anger as a lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. “I had to express the legitimate hatred of people living under in a very oppressive conditions,” Young said, adding that Wright had studied the Old Testament and “the prophets were not very polite, either.” He said King would be proud of Obama.

“Churches offer a kind of group therapy,” said Anna Deavere Smith, the actress and author who teaches at New York University Law School.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African American Studies at Princeton University, asked why Americans had no problem judging someone like Thomas Jefferson, who held and impregnated slaves, and wrote that blacks were inferior to whites, with an emphasis on the good Jefferson did. Why would they not use the same balance in judging Wright? Harris-Lacewell asked. She said she had attended Wright’s church while in Chicago, as did nearly all black faculty members at the University of Chicago.

Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical theologian who has been credited as a founder of the Religious Right, recalled several excesses of white evangelicals and said they had been invited to the White House despite them.

Nevertheless, Kessler contended that Obama must “have an affinity” for Wright’s more controversial comments if he continued to attend such a church. “It was eloquent, it was brilliant, but it was just words,” he said of Obama’s speech.

Kessler, chief Washington correspondent for Newsmax, said that when he was advised that he did not fully understand the black church, he consulted his black friend Juan Williams, who told Kessler that preachers such as Wright subscribe to “the whole ideology of victimhood.” Williams, a correspondent for National Public Radio and commentator on Fox News, is one of the few black journalists who have disparaged Wright and his church.

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News Media Said to Play Role in Racial Ignorance

 

 

Sen. Barack Obama‘s speech in Philadelphia exposed why news consumers “do not understand why race in America is a linchpin subject, even more so than the economy, stupid,” media critic Amy Alexander wrote Wednesday on the Web site of the Nation magazine. “The speech was ‘historic’ because it exposes the huge blind spots in coverage, which are made possible by a media elite that has resisted the thorough racial and class integration of its ranks for decades,” she said.

“Senator Obama broke new ground not because he decided to talk about race but because he forced American media to finally try to cover calmly and with necessary context a topic that it has primarily covered as entertainment for the better part of two decades.”

Alexander cited Journal-isms as standing alone “in charting the steady shrinking and demoralization of a population of journalists — blacks, Latinos, Asians and women — that was small to begin with. And for those who remain, their influence in shaping the daily narrative of this historic presidential election is minimal.”

She continued, “The MSM-haters in the blogosphere focus incorrectly on journalists’ supposed liberal biases, missing completely Big Media’s biggest sin — its utter bankruptcy on matters of class and race. To those of us black journalists who have worked in major corporate news organizations and have seen first-hand the insidious negative fallout of racial denial in the industry, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama represents the inevitable, unhappy outcome of long-standing negligence on the part of the media leadership class: A viable black presidential candidate places serious matters of race and class squarely on the table and there aren’t enough big-league journalists capable of skillfully and fairly carving it up.”

 

 

On the Poynter Institute Web site, Dean Keith M. Woods said journalists should emulate Obama’s speech in providing context to their reporting on race relations.

“People wonder why journalists don’t ask the second question. (‘What do you mean, Ms. Ferraro, when you say, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position?” ‘) Part of the answer is that some of us are afraid it’ll look like we’re picking at wounds,” Woods wrote. “Part of the answer is that some are afraid they’ll reveal their own incompetence on the topic. Part of the answer is that some of us think we already know the answer.

“It’s that second question, though, that plunges us beneath the platitudes to the raw, more revealing truths Obama points to in the speech.

“‘That anger’ of black men like Wright, he said, ‘may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. . . . to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.’

“Think what you will about the politics of his speech, but heed the lessons. Hear the stories in the context, the complexity, the sub-platitude opinions. They are about our secret struggles over the family, friends and neighbors we embrace who also harbor, even espouse, prejudices that would embarrass us and offend others. Journalists could tell stories about wrestling sometimes to get out even a sentence, even the word ‘black’ or ‘white’ or ‘Latino’ [or is it Hispanic?] when the person sitting across from us is not from our group.”

The Poynter Institute has started a new blog, “Diversity at Work.” One of its pieces, by Mallary Jean Tenore, is “When Racial Slurs Are Part of the Story.”

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Iraq Reporting “More Complicated” After Five Years

 

 

Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, reporting “has become a much more complicated proposition,” says James Glanz, Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times. Glanz is one of three journalists who describe covering the conflict for the Committee to Protect Journalists video report, “Dateline Iraq.”

Bobby Ghosh, Time magazine world editor and member of the South Asian Journalists Association, says Iraq “is the biggest story of our generation. It is the biggest story in the world even though parts of the world don’t seem interested in it. I don’t think we’ll be done telling the story for years.

“There’s a curiosity, having been there at the start, wanting to know how it turns out, but truth be told, the real reason why I’m going back, why I’m flying out in a couple of days, is I feel heavily invested in the lives of my friends and colleagues there. When I’m not there, and other journalists will tell you the same, I feel a sense of survival guilt.

“I fully expect to be writing about it for the rest of my working life.”

The Committee also provides a statistical profile of the 127 journalists killed in Iraq.

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Univision PAC Aids “Secure America” Backer

“According to a February filing with the Federal Election Commission (‘FEC’), Univision’s political action committee contributed $1,000 on January 30, 2008 to the Friends of Cliff Stearns committee. Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) is a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus whose first chair was Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO),” the new Hispanic political Web site Candidatoususa.com reported this week.

“Stearns was a co-sponsor of H.R. 4437 (The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005), which was popularly known as the Sensenbrenner Bill. He is also a co-sponsor of the pending immigration enforcement bill H.R. 4088 formally entitled the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act of 2007. Stearns’ stance on immigration is spelled out on his campaign website, which includes the statement ‘Let me assure you that I will oppose any bill that contains amnesty provisions.’

“National Council of La Raza (NCLR) director of immigration and national campaigns, Clarissa Martínez, strongly criticized the Univision PAC decision to contribute to the Stearns campaign committee.

“Asked to explain the Stearns contribution, Univision corporate communications vice president, Mónica Talán, said the network’s policy is not to discuss its PAC publicly.”

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Gonzalez Calls Paterson Forthcoming About Adultery

 

 

“Those who follow this column know I don’t do gossip and trivia,” New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez told readers on Wednesday, explaining how he broke the story that newly sworn-in New York Gov. David Paterson and his wife had had affairs when their marriage was on the skids.

Gonzalez said Paterson wanted to discuss it. “He was more forthcoming than any politician I’ve interviewed in 30 years.”

“I expressed my deep regrets for even asking such questions,” wrote Gonzalez, a former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“Journalists, of course, are no better or worse than politicians.

“Over the years, I have seen more than my share of colleagues boast of visits to brothels and known of married reporters and editors carrying on extramarital affairs — sometimes even with young interns.”

John Koblin wrote Tuesday in the New York Observer, “Depending on which Albany reporters you talk to, the Paterson affair (affairs?) were axiomatic in Albany journalistic gossip as much as five years ago.

“But: ‘Who really cared until March 10?’ asked another Albany reporter interviewed by The Observer.” On March 10, the news broke that Gov. Eliot Spitzer was accused of being the customer of a prosecution ring, making Lt. Gov. Paterson his successor if Spitzer resigned. He did.

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Short Takes

 

 

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Feedback: White First or Journalist First?

To: David Westin, President, ABC News

I was appalled by a question Terry Moran asked Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday’s “Nightline” broadcast.

“Are you black first, or American?”

What century are your producers living in? Are you in the year 2008 unable to see the bias and rank insult in such a question?

I look forward to hearing Mr. Moran ask Sens. Clinton and McCain whether they are “white first, or American.” A better question is whether Mr. Moran is “white first or a journalist first?”

Linda Williams
Professional journalist and longtime viewer of “Nightline”
Raleigh, N.C.
March 19, 2008

Williams is senior editor for news at the Raleigh News & Observer

 

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