Obama's okey dokey moment

David Limbaugh:

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You can talk all you want to about Obama's "audacity of hope" theme, but the only audacity I heard in his speech was his lecturing Americans on their racism instead of explaining his longtime intimate relationship with Wright.

Obama's forte is not, as many have suggested, waxing eloquent while saying nothing. His real gift is saying one thing while appearing to say the opposite, so mellifluously and disarmingly that audiences shake their heads in affirmation of the very proposition they oppose. Without changing their minds, they believe they have agreed with him. Amazing -- and scary.

In his speech, he needed to condemn and distance himself from his pastor. And he did -- sort of. But before he was finished, he had virtually excused his pastor's statements and given us a history lesson in precisely why resentments giving rise to such statements came about -- and were justified. In other words, "Sure, Pastor Wright sometimes crossed the line, but don't let his tone obscure the underlying message: Racism is still pervasive in this country, which hasn't come close to making amends for its shameful past."

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He needed to speak directly, but he obfuscated with cleverly concealed contradictions and evasions. He said his campaign presents a powerful message of unity, but his words stoked racial unease and divisiveness. While paying lip service to our national motto, "Out of Many, One," he couldn't quit talking about people in terms of their color and ethnicity.

He scolded us for our racism, but he

-- encouraged us to keep race-consciousness at the very forefront of our national psyche,

-- sloppily conflated Pastor Wright's manifest racism and anti-Americanism with his white grandmother's stereotypical remarks and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro's political observation about the effect of Obama's race on his electability, and

-- didn't point his accusing finger at the race-hustlers of our time, who fan the flames of racial resentment and hostility.

Rather, he fed into feelings of racial distrust by playing to his leftist base and wrongly castigating Reaganism and conservative commentators for their alleged racism. He legitimized the noxious notion that conservative opposition to welfare and affirmative action are born of racism by saying we must "realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams." He implied that conservative resistance to throwing endless money at public education is rooted in a "cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn, that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem." These are misguided and damaging words.

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Obama is quite a salesman, but he is not making the sale with everyone. Conservatives are not the only ones who noticed. I think one of his worst mistakes was excusing the anger and hatred of his minister on the basis of past grievances. All bigots use that excuse including the KKK. It should not be tolerated or excused simply because the speaker was black. That merely confirms the soft bigotry of low expectations that has trapped the black community for years. It is the basis for the black excuse for all of life's setbacks rather than taking responsibility for ones circumstances.