The first week of last month ended the primary campaign and morphed seamlessly into the race for the presidency. Obama had reached the required delegate count and Hillary, although still defiant on that Tuesday night, had to “suspend” her campaign by the following Saturday. Her concession speech was gracious and she pledged to campaign with Obama to put the Democrats in the White House on January 21 of next year. The reason why she quit for the time being is simple; she had run out of money. The campaign was in debt for over $20 million in spite of her having loaned it $11 million and the super delegates were switching to Obama. The strategy changed, therefore, to Plan B; the vice presidency. This “dream ticket” which would unite the party was immediately floated by the media and there was a veritable stampede to push Obama to make that announcement right then and there. To his credit he resisted these efforts because it is difficult to see how this ménage á trois would work in the White House. Hillary obviously comes with Bill in tow and he is not the type to sit by quietly and let others play first violin. Nevertheless, the idea is not dead and is bound to resurface before or during the convention unless Obama comes up with a vice presidential candidate who is clearly above reproach and brings strength to the ticket in the areas were Obama is weak. These are, as the primaries have shown, white elderly women who relish the gains of feminism and white blue collar workers whose livelihood is at stake in an economy that continues to deteriorate.

            Although the adjective white in the sentence above is a taboo subject because we live supposedly in a color-blind society it corresponds to the facts. As mentioned in last month’s installment white fear of black people and vice versa is a fact of life and has to be taken into account. We live, however, in a rather strange society. It supposedly values the truth but cannot stand to hear it. I was reminded of Schiller’s Don Carlos where the young Marquis Posa on his knees implores Philip II: Majestaet, gebt Gedankenfreiheit (majesty, allow freedom of thought). Well, freedom of thought has always existed; freedom of speech was and is the problem even in our “liberal, secular democracy.” It is this freedom of speech which, when used to speak truth to power, that put the first speed bump on Obama’s drive to the presidency in form of his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have already discussed him to some extent last month but the issue is too important to mention only in passing. The reason is not only the substantive content, but also what it tells us about the methods used by the American media to make and break candidates for political office, as well as Obama’s character.

            The media’s method is simple. It consists of diligently searching not only for a given candidate’s past utterances, but also those of his acquaintances, picking one or two of the most inflammatory statements and playing them endlessly on cable TV. This eventually seeps into the regular broadcast networks and magazines. A label is then attached to the person that defines him/her for ever more. Austrians will remember how this game was played with the former UN Secretary General and subsequent President of the Republic, Kurt Waldheim. On flimsy grounds he was declared a war criminal and anti-Semitic Nazi.  This landed him on the watch list and he could no longer visit the U.S. He was made “radioactive” and nobody dared to speak up for him any more. Waldheim is dead now and Austria has weathered the storm, but the same tactic is being used at this time with equal success in regard to Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan and most recently the catholic Reverend Father Michael Pfleger. All of them are currently radioactive and any kind word or attempt to understand their views puts one automatically beyond the pale of polite society. But understand we must if we value the truth and are not satisfied with stereotypes.

            Reverend Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ was turned into a millstone around Obama’s neck and he felt the need to sever his contacts with the church completely after Father Pfleger gave a sermon there earlier last month in which he played a little skit on the pulpit ridiculing Hillary. It is now necessary to look at context and what this particular church and Father Pfleger’s St. Sabina are all about.

            I have already mentioned last month how Obama came to know the Reverend Wright and then join Trinity more than 20 years ago, but “black liberation theology” which is the underpinning of the Reverend’s work was not in my vocabulary. Since I was completely ignorant in this matter, I did what the Reverend had asked Sean Hannity to do, in the interview which was discussed last month, and bought the most relevant books by Cone and Hopkins. 

            We must now go back to the middle sixties, the Civil Rights movement and the mindset of the African-American community of those years, which was only partly covered in last month’s installment. While Martin Luther King preached the gospel of non-violence and the gradual easing of the burdens of the black people there was also the younger more militant “black power” group. They were not waiting for a dream to come to fruition; they wanted action now and inner cities began to go up in flames. King’s Christianity was challenged by the “black Muslims” under Malcolm X who subscribed at that time to the “white devils” theory from whom separation must be obtained by any and all means. For Malcolm “all options were on the table,” a phrase which did not exist at the time but is currently used to bully Iran. After Malcolm had been expelled from the black Muslims, had gone to Mecca and given up on the white devils idea, he had become more ecumenical in his political outlook. Nevertheless, he insisted on the right to self-defense. His speeches were regarded as inflammatory, he was assassinated and so was King a few years later when he spoke out against the Vietnam War.

James H Cone (born in 1938) was a seminary student during those times and had received his Ph.D. in 1965 from Northwestern University in Chicago. He realized that the black power struggle of the Malcolm X variety needed some spiritual underpinning, but since black Americans were Christians they were not likely to change their faith in large numbers to that of Islam. But by the same token they could also not identify with the white Christian Church which preached love, tolerance and forgiveness while at the same time its members treated African-Americans as an underclass and engaged not only in blatant discrimination but intermittent killings and burning of churches in the South. This clearly made him angry and he looked for an alternative. The inspiration came from the Exodus story in the Bible and the sayings of Jesus. Cone was struck with the observation that the major function of the God of the Hebrews was to lead the slaves from Egypt into freedom and that His overriding concern was social justice for the poor and under-privileged as proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets. The same theme was then taken up by Jesus who likewise worked for the poor and outcasts of his day.

Thus, Cone reasoned, there was no need to change one’s Christian faith, all one had to do was realize that God is black because blacks are also created in His image. The picture of the blond blue-eyed Jesus is not the authentic one; he is likewise black because blackness was for Cone the color of poverty and misery. Jesus’ birth in a stable with animals, having to be put in a feeding trough instead of a crib, his subsequent fight against the Jewish power structure, which ended with his crucifixion, likewise mirrored the black experience. His resurrection is not only a promise of freedom to come after death, but his living spirit animates the black community in the here and now to throw off the shackles of oppression and leads them to their rightful place in the sun.

Cone wrote his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, in 1969 while teaching at Adrian College near Detroit in Michigan. He followed it up with a systematic exploration of the topic in 1970 under the title A Black Theology of Liberation which was a major success and became the seminal work for the next generation of black theologians. A second edition was printed in 1986, which reflected somewhat less anger and included a second part which consisted of chapters written by others who had followed in his footsteps. The Twentieth Anniversary Edition of this book, on which the above presented synopsis was based, was by October 2007 in its eighteenth printing.

In the Preface to the 1986 edition he wrote,

The task of explicating the gospel of God’s liberating presence with oppressed blacks was too urgent to be sidetracked into an academic debate with white scholars about the nature of theology. It was clear to me that what was needed was a fresh start [italics in the original] in theology, a new way of doing it that would arise out of the black struggle for justice and in no way would be dependent upon be [sic] approval of white academics in religion. Again I thought of Malcolm: ‘don’t let anybody who is oppressing us ever lay the ground rules. Don’t go by their games, don’t play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game, and we’ve got some new rules. . . .’”            

I have quoted this paragraph because the advice of not letting your adversary define who you are is highly relevant for the Obama campaign. Some years later Cone became the faculty advisor for Dwight Hopkins who received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Hopkins’ book, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation, published in 1999, was in its seventh printing in 2006 and represents a more recent summation. The book also describes how Liberation Theology had spread around the world and the initial difficulties in other regions especially Latin America where the parishioners felt that the emphasis should not be on race but in Marxist terms on class distinctions. These differences reflected local concerns. For the Americans race was more important because it conformed to their daily experiences. Malcolm had once said: “What is the name of a black Ph.D. walking at night in a white neighborhood? Nigger!”  Or as Reverend Wright, who also has a Ph.D. had put it to Obama on their first meeting: “We don’t buy into these [class] divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack, Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.”

In contrast to what the media tell us, black liberation theology, as practiced by Trinity and other black churches, is not preaching hate and division but encourages its members through a variety of social outreach programs to become fully self-reliant individuals. When one reads these books and the actual transcripts of some of the controversial sermons and press conference statements by Pastor Wright, one does not find anything particularly objectionable. He speaks truth to power and when he does so with prophetic fervor in his soul, accompanied by bodily gyrations, he is not speaking to us but to his congregation that is not only used to, but expects passion. The black church differs also from conventional white churches, especially in poor neighborhoods, in the sense that the gospel of Christ is taken literally and as an obligation. It is not to be quietly listened to but is regarded as a social action program. Church does not end when everybody goes home on Sunday but service to the needy, the sick and imprisoned starts on Monday and goes on throughout the week. The key passage of scripture is Matthew 25:35-36:

“For when  I was hungry you gave me food; when thirsty you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me to your home, when naked you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me.”

This is the kingdom of God in action and surely nothing to be ashamed of. Since the Protestant Wright, the Muslim Farrakhan and the white Catholic priest Michael Pfleger serve the same largely under-privileged community they find common ground in this passage and also come to each other’s aid when attacked by outsiders. But this is clearly not in keeping with the current Zeitgeist and political correctness. They are labeled as left liberal extremist racists and as such dangerous. But let’s face it if we leave “racist” out, because it didn’t exist at that time, Jesus would also fit that categorization. This is also the reason why Hopkins said that, "To caricature and attack Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is to attack the Black church in America," and "Attempts to muzzle him and Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago exemplify a bad omen for every African American preacher and every African American church in the country. And with the Black church censored, other Christian churches will be the next in line.”

With this background we can now look how Obama has handled the Wright and subsequent controversies because they give us an insight into who he is apart from what he says. The Reverend’s “rant” snippets, played ad nauseam on TV, had hit him clearly unawares and when first confronted with them he distanced himself from the comments and said that he had not heard them before. This was not quite believable and the media kept hammering on it. Up to that point Obama had not found the Reverend’s sermons objectionable because, they are common fare in the black church. When he was confronted with the soundbytes in the debate and asked how he felt about them he said that he rejected them and when pressed with, “but do you denounce” them he gave in and said “ok; I reject and denounce them.”

This was his first mistake because he had disregarded Malcolm’s advice, “don’t let your adversary define you or your friends!” “This is a new game; you make the rules and you explain why you do so.” Obama is running on a platform of “change” and he could have defined the new rules. He could have told the questioner during the debate, “Look, the black church differs from the white church because it comes from a completely different background and serves different constituencies. Pastor Wright’s first name is Jeremiah and just as the prophet Jeremiah two and a half thousand years ago he is holding government accountable for what it is doing. This is not un-American or un-patriotic but on the contrary he upholds the principles this country should stand for. I’ll put a full explanation on my website why the pastor talks the way he does, and now let’s have another question on matters that directly affect the welfare of the American people.”

This is the core of Obama’s problem; he was caught unprepared and could not come to the defense of his church. At that moment he needed to please a white audience that sees him as a black man and at the same time he could not afford to offend the black community more than necessary. He wants to win the presidency after all and this cannot be accomplished without the white as well as the black vote. But it was obvious that his adversaries now had an “in” and they kept at it relentlessly. Every time you turned on a news channel there was Reverend Wright gyrating and expostulating the same “hate” remarks. 

In response Obama felt obliged to give on March 18 the speech on race in Philadelphia. Is was a rhetorical masterpiece in which he tried to make a distinction between the political views of the pastor, which he didn’t agree with, and the man. 

“As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. . . . I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

But the media would not let the matter rest and kept harping on the Reverend until the latter decided no more turning the other cheek and went on the offensive with three speeches. On April 25 came an interview on the PBS program Bill Moyer’s Journal, where he explained the situation in rational terms. We watched it and were impressed because the man came across as a reasonable human being without engaging in antics. In regard to the question about how Obama’s reaction to the attacks on Wright had affected him he said: “It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor.”

That was it, simple and straightforward but not good enough for the press because they added “he’s just a politician.” The following Sunday Wright gave a speech before the NAACP (National Association for Colored People) in Detroit, which we likewise watched and since he was talking largely to black folks he did engage in some levity but his main theme was that although blacks are “different” from whites that does not make them “deficient.” In his talk before the National Press club on Monday the Reverend went over the same ground and when asked in the discussion period how he had felt about Obama’s response to have been characterized as a politician, he said:

“What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They’ve said, ‘You’re a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never be elected.’ Politicians say what they say and what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls . . . . Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors.  They have a different person to whom they’re accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st.  That’s what I mean.  I do what pastors do.” 

 But he also had this choice morsel for Obama: “And I said to Barack Obama, last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people. All right?  It’s about policy, not the American people.’”

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and Obama now found himself in the role of Henry II who needed to get rid of “this meddlesome priest.”  A few days later he called Wright's remarks "divisive and destructive" and warned that they "end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate. . . . I gave [Wright] the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church, but when Wright stands behind such ridiculous propositions then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced,"

Yet, as his critics immediately pointed out the Reverend hadn’t said anything new in these conferences, these views had been known to Obama all along and that Obama now acted from political expediency. He had thereby proved the Reverend’s point that his response was that of a politician. Although this storm has abated somewhat, it will re-emerge in the fall because it does go to the questions of character and judgment. It is already said that one cannot go to a church for more than 20 years, renounce it when it becomes politically inconvenient, and still claim authenticity.

In the relative campaign news lull prior to the Pennsylvania primary Mayhill Fowler, a self-styled reporter for the Huffington Post website, who follows Obama on the campaign trail came to the rescue. She had attended a private fundraiser for Obama in San Francisco and taped his presentation which included a comment about Pennsylvania voters, “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.” This was the soundbyte some pundits had been waiting for because they could now paint Obama in addition to his troubles with Wright, as an “elitist” who is out of touch with the working class which he is supposed to represent. This statement was now repeated in a mantra like manner but no context was ever given. When I went to the Huffington Post website, where not only the transcript but also part of the voice recording was available, it was obvious that the sound was so garbled that it was difficult to make out the complete sentence. Nevertheless, even when one accepts the transcript, it was clear that the statement had been made in the context of a question by volunteers from the audience who were about to visit Pennsylviana to drum up support for Obama. He had given a long answer which included,

“But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. 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.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.”

            There was nothing offensive in these words and they could readily be defended. But that is not what Obama did in the debate when questioned about the soundbyte. He said that he misspoke and apologized. He had again accepted the adversary’s position rather than sticking to his guns. The next flap came over the American flag lapel pin. Ever since 9/11 our super patriots from George W on down wear a little U.S. flag in their lapel to demonstrate American pride, I guess. It was de rigeur for Republicans and some TV pundits, but the Democrats largely did not participate in this ritual. When Obama was asked by George Stephanopoulos in a debate why he was not wearing one, Obama gave a convoluted answer instead of simply looking down at him and saying: “Oh George, where is yours?” And pointing to the other moderator, who likewise did not wear one, “did you forget yours too?” These are trifles but they reminded me of Vienna after March 12, 1938 when everybody was showing up with a little swastika in his lapel and when one of my older school mates noticed that he hadn’t put it on had said: “Oh I forgot my Gesinnung” (loyalty declaration).

As I said these are trifles but again Obama caved in and he now wears a pin when even Sean Hannity has largely given up on his. The latest reversal of positions came late last month when Obama declared that he would not accept federal funding for the fall campaign but use money raised directly from the public. Previously he had said that if he were to be nominated he would accpt the $85 million as stipulated by law and he would also negotiate with McCain on how to curtail spending. This is no longer the case. There are good reasons for not limiting one’s fundraising ability because the law is actually full of loopholes and Obama cannot afford to be outspent in the fall campaign. But it shows again that he had not thought the matter through when he made the promise in the first place. It is clear that he is a man in a hurry who had called himself “restless” in his second book, and who can speak rashly to please his audience. When he told the AIPAC meeting not only that he is one hundred percent for Israel but also that Jerusalem has to remain forever undivided, i.e. under complete Israeli control, the Arabs were aghast because he had just sold out the Palestinians who will never agree to it.

These and other aspects which are not yet public knowledge will come to haunt him in the fall. Let’s face it, his meteoric rise from a two term Illinois state senator to a U.S. senator who announces in the beginning of the third year of his first  term that he is now running for the presidency, is rather unusual to say the least. Questions will be asked to whom he owes this phenomenal succes and the book by Webster GriffinTarpley, Obama. the Postmodern Coup, will provide grist for the rumor mill. My personal opinion is that Obama was actually running in 2007 for the vice presidency and he was probably as surprised as everybody else by his success. But he has now become the standard bearer and will have to show his mettle. Will he really be able to effect change in Washington if he were elected? One may wonder, although it is unlikely that he would get us into another war, which would be the main advantage of his election.

But it is too early to speculate on what might happen because at present he is only the presumptive rather than actual nominee and from Denver in August it’s a long time till November. Although the economy, the costs of the war and the general popular disgust favor the Democrats in November we don’t know what the Bush administration and/or Israel are going to do in the meantime in regard to Iran. The war drums are being beaten again and both Hillary as well as Obama have missed a critical opportunity in the second half of last month. After the tête a tête at Senator Feinstein’s home where the two of them hammered out her surrender terms they should have announced not only that Hillary would now work with and for him but also that for the rest of this session of Congress they would not continue to campaign. Instead they would work in the Senate to produce a bipartisan resolution that will require congressional approval prior to any military action against Iran during the rest of President Bush’s term. Furthermore, they would introduce legislation to ask the UN for a one year extension of its Iraq mandate so that no “status of forces agreement” will be signed until the new administration has had an opportunity to reassess the situation in 2009. In addition a resolution could have been passed that tells the Israeli government that if it were to engage in air strikes against Iran during the upcoming months this would be condemned and financial aid would be stopped. Such declarations would have been acts of statesmenship rather than campaign promises of which we have heard enough already.

The country is in serious difficulties and by January 21 of next year it may be too late to fix them. The media are full of excuses why oil and gas prices are so high. They need look no further than the instability of the Middle East and the threat of a war with Iran which nobody but a few deluded souls really wants. If one were a speculator in the oil price futures and money were all one was interested in, wouldn’t one bet that the price will inexorably go up as long as the oil fields are threatened by war? Those are some of the problems we face right now and the question is whether or not either one of the candidates is capable of meeting them.