Now that Barack Obama has finally and unequivocally denounced Jeremiah Wright, the next move is up the rantin' Rev himself.

How is he likely to respond?

It seems obvious that the Obama camp would greatly prefer an angry attack-- featuring insults like "Judas" and "Uncle Tom" and "Zionist Tool." If anything, Obama's comments today seemed designed to provoke Rev. Wright and to produce the kind of bitter (to use one of Barack's favorite words) reaction that would do more than anything else to separate the pastor from his former protege', once and for all.

If Al Sharpton and other race-baiting radicals and extremists joined in with their own condemnations of Senator Obama, it would be all the better for his campaign and his candidacy.

Then, and only then, would Obama be able to get back on track as the "post racial unifier" who stood up to hate-mongers on all sides and spoke directly to the broad American middle.

If Pastor Wright remains uncharacteristically silent -- with no angry words about the "anger" which Barack explicitly aimed at him -- then it's a sure sign that he's so deeply enraged by his former friend's betrayal that he wants, above all, to damage the Obama campaign.

Ironically, if he maintains any remaining affection for the Junior Senator from Illinois, he'll speak up within the next few days and attack him as a sell out.

It's precisely the sort of verbal assault that will help assure primary victories in both North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th.
 
Every Hollywood producer knows that the best way to build up a hero is to provide him with a compelling, charismatic villain as his chief enemy. At the moment, in political terms, Jeremiah Wright qualifies as the most useful enemy in the world.

The Ranting Rev is back, trailing malodorous clouds of sulfurous new controversy, imperiling the Obama campaign at its very core. The Obama promise of “a more perfect union” directly contradicts the Jeremiah Wright insistence on unbridgeable racial difference and distinction. 

Nothing makes this pastor-protege? conflict more obvious or more significant than Wright’s crackpot theories on education, and his fiery insistence that the different “brains” of black kids and white kids require totally different educational approaches. 

In his Detroit NAACP speech on Sunday night, Dr. Wright cited (and somewhat distorted) the controversial work of a professor at Wayne State University named Janice Hale, suggesting that “in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.” 

And which group of kids, according to Reverend Wright, count as “rocks” – not shiny, juicy fruit capable of providing nourishment, but inorganic pieces of dead matter notable mostly for their threat of smashing school windows? If he thinks of black kids as “rocks” (on which teachers might break their teeth) he’s recycling hateful white supremacist ideology. If it’s white kids who are only rocks, he’s a black racist. Either way, he’s an idiot. 

But there’s more from this “mighty man of God,” as he hails Dr. Hale for research that “led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered the two different worlds have two different ways of learning.” 

In other words, Wright suggests that race differences are so profound, so overwhelming that African-American kids whose ancestors left “the Motherland” more than 300 years ago have more in common with children in Senegal or Sierra Leone than they do with the white kids who grew up down the block and whose families have functioned in the same American society for generations. If this absurd notion that race trumps every other historical and psychological and cultural factor isn’t racism, then what, exactly, is racism? 

Dr. Wright continued in his Detroit dementia: “European and European-American children have a left-brained cognitive object oriented learning style…Left brain is logical and analytical… African and African-American children have a different way of learning. They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style.  Right brain that means creative and intuitive.” 

In other words, Dr. Wright makes the same sick and silly claims about fundamental, genetically determined, unbridgeable difference between “left-brained” whites and “right-brained” blacks that white racists have advanced for years.  

To him, it’s wrong to compare “African-American” and “European-American” kids with one another because they are virtually different species. 

His claims raise a hugely uncomfortable question that Senator Obama must now confront.  

If it’s in any sense true that black kids and white kids possess “from the cradle” a “different way of learning,” and if this difference is indeed based on inherited distinctions in brain structure, shouldn’t they then be placed in separate classrooms? 

Let me make my own position clear: I believe that the idea of racial segregation in the classroom is evil, outrageous, un-American, un-Constitutional and in every way unacceptable. Of course, the epic Supreme Court Case of Brown-vs.-School Board was rightly decided --- declaring that separate-but-equal is not equal. The government cannot force kids into separate schools or separate classrooms based on race. 

But if Wright is right (and like all fair-minded or decent people I know he is completely wrong) then isn’t separate-but-equal exactly what we need in our schools? If blacks and whites really do possess such vastly different styles of learning (according to Wright, “logical and analytical” vs. “creative and intuitive”) then wouldn’t they actually benefit from the segregation that the NAACP itself so conspicuously (and nobly) worked to end? 

In other words, this great Civil Rights organization seems to have come full-circle—from supporting Thurgood Marshall and other lions of justice in demanding that black kids can- and must- learn and compete directly with white kids, to now cheering the lunatic Dr. Wright who says it’s wrong to even compare achievements of black children with the performance of white children because the two races are so completely different. 

While Obama tries to rally his followers with the chant of “Yes We Can,” Dr. Wright shrieks at African-American children, “No You Can’t” --- you can’t compete with white or Asian kids because your lack of “logical and analytical” and “left-brained” wiring makes it impossible for you even to engage your white neighbors on the same playing field.  

Wright says to black children that it’s better, more appropriate, to liken you to deprived youngsters in dusty, destitute townships in sub-Saharan Africa, where previous generations suffered from colonialism and starvation and, yes, dysfunctional, pre-literate tribal cultures, than it is to group you with American children from families that have lived for generations in the same city.  

In other words, Jeremiah Wright’s appalling educational theories in no way comport with Senator Obama’s celebrated claim that we should have no “red states” or “blue states” but just “the United States of America.”  

The questions for the Presidential candidate are urgent and overwhelmingly important: 

--Do you agree with Dr. Wright that in shaping education for our African-American young people, we should look to African rather than American models?  

--Do you share his belief that black children must remain so incurably different from their “European-American” counterparts that it’s wrong even to compare them to their white classmates? 

--If these differences really are as huge, as fundamental (“comparing apples and rocks”) as Pastor Wright contends, would you support a new educational approach that separates our children at school? 

-- Given the fact that Jeremiah Wright has been talking and writing about such offensive and inane educational theory for at least two decades, when did you first realize that your Pastor and “spiritual guide” was actually a raving racist with more in common with Dr. David Duke than Dr. Martin Luther King? 

Of course, the mainstream media won’t pose such questions for Senator Obama. 

But they should—because any continued effort to justify or excuse the appalling idiocy of Jeremiah Wright undermines the very essence of the Illinois Senator’s “more perfect union” campaign. It’s now blindingly obvious that it’s not just a few “out of context” statements by Dr. Wright that count as offensive and illogical, but his entire race-based world-view and philosophy.  

Senator Obama should reject that “Afro-Centric” world-view and admit that he was wrong in ever treating it with honor and respect. If he continues in his refusal to do so, then he admits that his much-heralded role as a “unifier” is nothing more than a convenient political pose.

The other cartoon figure cheerfully responds: “Beer Drinking and Bowling Scores.”

The punch-line is intended to highlight the stupidity and vapidity and shallowness of voters --- influenced by nonsense when our nation faces grave challenges.

The problem with this entire argument is that when it comes to “Major Issues” there are simply no differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

What’s the “right” or appropriate answer to the query in the cartoon? Were voters supposed to be influenced by their miniscule differences on government health insurance? On raising taxes? On surrender in Iraq regardless of the advice of our generals?

What are the “major issues” where these two candidates disagree?

Since they’ve both signed on to a virtually identical “progressive” agenda, of course it all comes down to personality --- which candidate inspires more “hope” based on vague promises, or which one is better equipped to answer late night phone calls based on vague experience. Obama says he can bring “change” and unite the country, without fully explaining how; Clinton claims she’s proven her ability to handle emergencies, without showing where (other than the devastating sniper fire in Bosnia).

When policies are interchangeable and indistinguishable, personality inevitably becomes the focus of the campaign.

And in this regard, voters have discovered that neither “Wonder Boy” (Barack O) or “The Energizer Bunny” (Hillary C) is especially likable.

Monday’s column by “minister” Oliver “Buzz” Thomas in USA TODAY deserves recognition as one of the dumbest in recent history not just because of its environmental and “population bomb” hysteria, but for its explicit comparison of the Aztec cult of human sacrifice with today’s Catholic Church.

“We all remember the Aztecs,” Thomas writes. “Some say their religion, with its penchant for violence and human sacrifice, played a critical role in the destruction of their civilization….Now, consider the Roman Catholic Church’s continued opposition to modern birth control…Clergy should consider voicing the difficult truth that having more than two children during such a time is selfish. Dare we say sinful?...When Aztec society was threatened by disease and military defeat, their religious leaders appear to have let them down… Let’s hope we can learn from their mistakes.”

The most appalling aspect of this sort of argument is its blind and fanatical moral relativism, and its denial of anything like ultimate truth (and falsehood).

The fact is that Aztec “religious leaders” didn’t just “let down” their people in a time of crisis– they misled them from the beginning into a monstrously cruel and profoundly evil death cult, based on cutting the hearts out of the chests of hundreds of thousands  of victims.

If the prophetic books of the Bible are correct on this issue (and I very much believe that they are) then those who practiced human sacrifice as part of worshipping stone idols  weren’t just making “mistakes” from which we can learn; they were practicing unspeakable evil that we should abjure and condemn.

The real irony here is that the Catholic Church represents the polar opposite of the Aztec cult, with no similarity whatever.

As the Holy Father made unmistakably and beautifully clear during his inspiring visit to the United States, the Church promotes a “culture of life” – valuing, not discarding or denigrating, even the most powerless among us.

The Aztecs, on the other hand, practiced a Cult of Death that celebrated mass murder as the ultimate act of religious worship.

If anything, it’s the promoters of abortion (who celebrate the sacrifice of millions of the unborn) who resemble the pagan killers and mutilators of children and adults.

The Church, on the other hand, deserves credit for emphasizing life over death---an emphasis that the Reverend Thomas apparently seeks to change.

His column might be alarming, were it not so deeply silly.

We’ve tried to contact the gentleman to ask him to appear as a guest on my radio show – so far without success.

If he is able to join me, I promise not to cut his heart out – but to slice up his arguments with humane surgical precision.

The recent headline in the New York Times proclaimed:  

“81% IN NEW POLL SAY THE NATION IS HEADED ON THE WRONG TRACK.” 

When you read the body of the poll (by the New York Times and CBS News) the numbers tell an oddly contradictory story. 

“How would you rate the financial condition in your household—72% Good, 27% Bad 

“In the last couple of years have you been….”Getting Ahead or Staying Even, 71%, Falling Behind, 28% 

“How concerned are you that someone in your household might be looking for a job in the next year---Not at all Concerned, 45%; Somewhat concerned  26%, Very Concerned, 28%” 

As usual with these polls, in other words, the respondents make a clear distinction between the state of the country at large (which they learn about from the media) and their own situation (which they know first-hand). 

The contradiction looks as striking as always – 72% who say their own financial condition is “good,” while 81% say the nation at large is on the wrong track. 

Once again, the people express the sense that “I’m Okay…. But everybody else is in a mess.” 

When a majority embraces this puzzling contradiction, it’s evidence of confusion and uncertainty – not desperation.

  For the book I’m currently completing (“THE TEN BIG LIES ABOUT AMERICA”) I’ve been reading through some recent Inaugural Addresses and I came across a truly alarming line from Bill Clinton’s stunningly banal big speech of January 21, 1993.

 

  “We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for its children,” the handsome new president declared.

 

   What in the name of heaven could he possibly have in mind?

  

   In the family model, parents work hard and earn money to support children who, before their teens years at least, don’t earn at all. Did Clinton believe – does his wife now believe – that some American (like parents) should toil away in order to support those who don’t work?

 

   The context encourages that interpretation. In the lines immediately preceding the exhortation to “provide for our nation” in the way “a family provides for its children,” Clinton emphasized sacrifice.

 

  “We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, in their future,” he declared. “It will not be easy. It will require sacrifice. But it can be done, and done fairly, not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for our own sake.”

 

   Beyond the vapid platitudes, he seems to warn the public to expect big tax increases (whenever Democrats talk about “investing more in our own people” they mean they want to raise taxes).

 

   But then, after that hint, comes the chilling bit about “providing for our nation” and the comparison of its citizens to “children.”

 

   In the Clintonian view of the world, do we live in a society made up of helpless, infantilized kids (or adolescents) who depend on a few grown-ups to generate wealth for the whole “family”? Did President Clinton in 1993 himself represent the ultimate Daddy, with Hillary the mother-of-us-all?

 

   I wish someone would ask Senator Clinton whether she agrees with her husband’s analogy, and believes that we have an obligation “to provide for our nation the way a family provides for its children.”

 

   Does she still see a parental role for our leaders?

 

   It shouldn’t take a village to answer such questions.

 

An important new study of divorce and out-of-wedlock birth shows that taxpayers lose more than a hundred billion each year to cover the costs of family break-up.  

The Institute for American Values and allied organizations analyzed the additional costs to the legal system, welfare programs, and anti-poverty efforts as bureaucrats, cops and social workers try to cope with the tens of millions of kids and adults in fatherless households.  

The report proves that even a minor improvement in family stability would save the taxpayer billions. A mere 1 percent decline in family fragmentation would, for instance, save the taxpayer at least $1.1 billion every year. Defending and repairing the institution of marriage is therefore not just a moral issue: it’s a major factor in healing a wide range of social problems, rejuvenating our troubled economy, and avoiding governmental bankruptcy.  

Those who can’t depend on strong families far too often become the dependents of government.

Rabbi Mark Glickman of the very liberal Reform branch of Judaism recently wrote a Seattle Times column decrying Christian congregations that celebrate their own Passover Seders. Rabbi Glickman claims the Seder was developed long after the Exodus events it commemorates, and was supposed to convey powerful anti-Christian messages, making Christian participation inappropriate.  

In truth, there’s nothing in the ancient formulation of the Passover Haggadah—the book of Seder liturgy—that disrespects or contradicts Christianity or Jesus, and most Jews passionately disagree with Rabbi Glickman. Retelling the story Exodus and affirming Jewish faith doesn’t amount to an attack on Christianity – any more than affirming Christian faith amounts to an attack on the Old Testament or Judaism.  

The two religions certainly disagree on key theological points, but share a commitment to remembering God’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage as a liberating moment in human history. Christian rediscovery of the Jewish roots of Christianity is actually good for Jews, Christians and humanity. 

The controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s recent speech at a San Francisco fundraiser highlights his most glaring weaknesses as a presidential candidate. To the well-heeled and sophisticated audience, Obama spoke about working class Americans and their hardships under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He then commented, “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Under criticism from both Senators Clinton and McCain, Obama responded by defending his conclusion that voters are, indeed, bitter. “No, I’m in touch,” he commented. “I know exactly what’s going on…. People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington.” 

Of course, this line ignores the most serious questions about his previous statement. 

The right way to pose a challenge to Obama would be to ask: 

“Senator, do you really believe that religion is something people ‘cling to’ in bitterness, or is it something they embrace in joy? 

“Senator, do people cling to guns out of bitterness, or own them proudly as a means to protect their families, in celebration of a Constitutional right? 

“Senator, is ‘anti-trade sentiment’ merely a product of bitterness for struggling blue collar Americans or is it, I’ve you’ve suggested elsewhere, a sentiment you actually share?” 

The truth is, there’s no good way to answer these questions for Obama. He ought to admit he misspoke and expressed himself poorly. His unwillingness to do so—and insistence on defending indefensible remarks-- demonstrates one of his obvious weaknesses as a candidate.  

The fact that Obama delivered his original remarks at a San Francisco fundraising makes them all the more damning and damaging. 

The episode also demonstrates that for all his polish and charm and self-assurance when reading a carefully scripted speech, Obama simply isn’t that great when speaking off the cuff. In debates, Hillary Clinton frequently outperformed him. In interviews he can sound awkward and stilted – if never quite inarticulate. 

Aside from revealing his condescending attitude toward working class voters, Obama’s words in “Bitter-Gate” reveal a candidate whose political skills may not prove as formidable as his adoring minions in mainstream media would have us believe.  

The three candidates for president provided an illuminating contrast with their very different observance of the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on Friday. Barack Obama addressed a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering a vague, detail-free but soaring promise to complete King’s dream by addressing persistent poverty and economic inequality. Hillary Clinton summoned tears to recall her personal reaction as a college junior forty years ago – throwing her book bag across her dorm room and feeling her whole world was shattered. John McCain went to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the civil rights museum on the site where King was actually shot, and expressed his regret for voting against the national King holiday when Congress first considered it in the ‘80’s. He received a smattering of boos and catcalls from the all-black crowd, but also audible shouts of “we forgive you” and “everybody makes mistakes.” After his remarks, Senator McCain – who refuses Secret Service protection – plunged into the once hostile crowd, in the rain, and spent considerable time hugging and greeting its members. In short, Obama provided a stage-managed, effective, but meaningless media event, Clinton embarrassed herself with a narcissistic and oddly self-pitying recollection, and McCain showed why some of us believe that he is a most unusual and intriguing candidate. He knew he wasn’t going to get any votes from a talk to an African-American crowd in Memphis. Of course, most of those who heard him – however moved they seemed to be – will vote for Obama, McCain’s likely rival, in the fall. Nor does John McCain need extra votes in Memphis to carry Tennessee, which looks like  reliably Republican state in November. Nonetheless, McCain made himself look presidential – delivering bracing straight talk about an unhealed national wound in a high risk and low benefit insertion in his schedule. Typically, disappointingly, the media only featured the headline that he acknowledged his mistake in first opposing the holiday, but gave little attention to the substance of the fine speech about the meaning of Dr. King’s work. Aside from the falling barriers of race and gender on the Democratic side, Senator McCain is making his own efforts to make this campaign different, and better, than our other recent electoral contests.

Robert Redford invaded Capitol Hill on Tuesday to confront a House of Representatives subcommittee with impassioned demands for more money for the arts.  

Accompanied by singer John Legend, actress Kerry Washington and other luminaries, the Sundance Kid attempted this daring hold-up in broad daylight –insisting that funding for the National Endowment for the Arts must be restored to its 1992 peak of $176 million, from the paltry 2009 figure of $128 million proposed by the Bush administration. 

After all, Redford reasons, what’s a mere $48 million difference when it comes to the beautiful friendship between the Democrats who control Congress and their well-heeled friends in Hollyweird? 

The demands associated with national “Arts Advocacy Day” (sorry if you missed it) display enough gall to be divided into three parts.  

If Tinseltown titans want more funding for the arts, then why don’t they spend their own damn money? Considering the tens of millions of dollars raised in Hollywood for the Obama and Clinton campaigns, Redford and company easily could come up with double or triple the proposed federal expenditure to create their own “endowment for the arts.”  

In addition to privatizing an utterly useless (and totally wasteful) government boondoggle, this new venture could also display more expertise in judging artistic projects (with funding and supervision by creative people themselves) than the silly federal bureaucrats who currently control the “official” arts programs. 

Congress and the executive branch have enough time evaluating what military equipment deserves funding, or which environmental programs require more money. It’s insane to put these same federal office holders in charge of deciding what documentary films, and performance art, and poetry readings, and literary magazines, and public sculpture deserve taxpayer money. 

The whole idea of “official” federally approved art goes against the notion of free expression that most pop culture potentates claim to promote. Opposition to government sponsorship hardly amounts to imposition of government censorship. Communist dictatorships granted great power to “arts commissars” to nourish useful creativity that served the regime; decadent monarchies have also stolen money from the oppressed populace to establish lavish court theatres and orchestras and art collections to glorify the name of the ruler. 

We don’t need to operate in that style in the world’s greatest Republic. In his prepared testimony, Redford modestly cited his own Sundance Film Festival as an example of artistic endeavors promoting economic development. But wouldn’t it be absurd to suggest that this glittering, lavish, celebrity-saturated annual event requires taxpayer funding for its survival? 

Then again, when it comes to Redford’s latest film project -- the talky, tendentious anti-war snooze fest “Lions for Lambs” (also starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise)-- the public rejected the film so decisively (making it one of the biggest turkeys of recent years) that some retroactive government grant might constitute its beleaguered director’s only hope of ever recouping some of his losses.