Obama's tricky path

Maureen Dowd:

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“I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds,” he said. “One of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.”

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Obama, of course, will only ratchet up the skepticism of those who don’t understand why he stayed in the church for 20 years if his belief system is so diametrically opposed to Wright’s.

He’s back on the tricky path he faced as a child, navigating between two racial cultures. At Trinity, he may have ignored what he should have heard because he was trying to assimilate to black culture. Now, he may be outraged by what he belatedly heard because he’s trying to relate to the white lunch-pail set.

Having been deserted at age 2 by his father, Obama has now been deserted by the father-figure in his church, the man who inspired him to become a Christian, married him, dedicated his house, baptized his children, gave him the title of his second book and theme for his presidential run and worked on his campaign.

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I think she may be right on the issue of not paying attention to what was really said. I think church for Obama was really a social gathering, a weekly party where people enjoyed each other's company. It had its rituals that blended into to fun, but I don't get the feeling he was into too many of the sermons, other than the one that inspired his book.

I don't say this to excuse his lack of understanding of what Wright had been saying. In fact it suggest as President it would be easy for him to go along with the Democrat congregation without really challenge the orthodoxy. It plays into the theme that he does not hear the details needed to make sound decisions. It has taken him weeks to see how fundamentally wrong Wright was and that was only after his sincerity was challenged by Wright.

He has finally come to the conclusion I did the first time I heard the so called "snippets." He has finally said the obvious about Wright's nutty suggestion that the government created the HIV virus to kill blacks. He has finally seen that there can be no context for such a blood libel. Perhaps many in the country have seen that he is not up to the job of being President, not because of what his minister said, but because it took him so long to comprehend it.