The unedited address should destroy Obama’s carefully cultivated image as a unifier and healer and a nice guy. Unifiers don’t suggest that the L.A. riots and 9-11 and Katrina have anything in common other than the fact that they happened in America. Unifiers and nice guys don’t lie about the U.S. government’s actions just to stir up a sympathetic audience. Unifiers don’t go out of their way, and off their script, to pit one race against another.
Obama does that explicitly in another part of the speech that is also not “old news.”
“We need additional federal public transportation dollars flowing to the highest need communities. We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs,” where, the implication is, the rich white people live. Instead, Obama says, federal money should flow to “our neighborhoods”: “We should be investing in minority-owned businesses, in our neighborhoods, so people don’t have to travel from miles away.”
The solution, Obama says, is a series of new federal programs, including one to teach punctuality to the poor: “We can’t expect them to have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office. We have to help them get there.”
“Our” neighborhoods? Obama lived in Chicago’s tony Hyde Park and still maintains a residence there. Hyde Park is one of the city’s richest neighborhoods.
In the “roads” and “neighborhoods” riff, Obama pits the suburbs against the city and says that taxpayer dollars should be used to “invest” in “minority-owned businesses.” That attitude that government has the right to “invest” in this way turns up all over Obama’s current policies, though most of his administration’s high-profile investments have gone to political supporters touting the latest “green” energy scheme, not necessarily minority investors. The suburbs and neighborhoods passage also show that Barack Obama is at heart a redistributionist when it comes to wealth. We have known this since his famous encounter with Joe the Plumber four years ago, but this speech plus the other videos that have been unearthed this year show that redistribution has remained a consistent idea driving Obama’s politics.
In dismissing the suburbs and discussing “our” neighborhoods, Obama sounds like Eric Holder, who in congressional testimony referred to “my people” when talking about the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. Though Holder’s controversial and divisive comment is old news now, it’s not old news that the president got there first several years ago.
It’s also not old news that some in the news media knew that this tape was out there five years ago, yet chose not to report it. It’s not old news that many in the media are dismissing it now.
More: So, according to Ann Althouse, those of us pointing out Obama’s race-baiting in this video “look ugly,” but the man in the video who is engaging in the race-baiting doesn’t. With all due respect to the professor, that’s ridiculous.
More: Althouse also walled off the Obama phone video in the same post. So tell us then, what’s acceptable to talk about? The Obama phone lady provides evidence that the president is buying votes in a swing state and increasing dependency on the government. The 2007 video provides evidence that Obama is a race hustler who lied in order to stir up racial tensions. Why should this be out of bounds to talk about?
More: Shorter Ann Althouse: Romney and Ryan had nothing to do with the 2007 video, but it’s dragging them down. It’s not dragging down the man on the video doing the race-baiting, and never will, and never should. Because, racism.
Is that about right?
Well, It would be OLD NEWS if the Alphabet Soup media had covered it properly at the time.
It’s our fault. We thought we heard that he was going to be the post racial president. What he actually said was that he was going to be the most racial president.
“It’s an old speech that tells us something new about Barack Obama.”
And something about the press.
Ann Althouse has a ‘flaming’ response to use of this self-incriminating video against Obama. She calls herself undecided. Given Obama’s truly abismal record in the economy, national security and race relations, this makes me think she is crazy as Andrew Sullivan. There’s no defending racism which is exactly why the race baiting divisive speech of Obama is unacceptable. Ann should be ashamed of herself.
this.
I think the analogy of Althouse with Andrew Sullivan is spot on. Toss in Charles (little footballs) Johnson and you have the makings of a trend: Althouse, Sullivan and Johnson.
This and many other responses to events during the past few months have utterly destroyed the last vestiges of the “well-intentioned incompetence” defense as a cover for the countless treasonable acts that have been committed by Obama and his administration very deliberately since (before) day one.
Because Prof. Althouse’s delicate sensibilities possibly about having fallen for the Obama scam four years ago makes her so exquisitely sensitive to the meanies who are telling the truth.
Ya know, I followed Althouse’s blog for awhile (I used to live in Madison, law prof, etc.) but drifted away.
After seeing that she (a) voted for Obama in 2008 (b) is genuinely undecided this time around (meaning she may vote for him again, after the colossal clusterfuck of the last four years) and (c) thinks that airing in full his 2007 race-baiting speech is “repellent”.
Now I know why I quit reading her.
I swear, it felt like I was losing IQ points reading her.
And Althouse digs in deeper with her reply, saying, essentially, that no one should challenge the racialist rhetoric of the left because doing so will offend those inclined to believe the rhetoric.
It’s The Whine who looks ugly, Ann, not us. I can somewhat understand & forgive Jeremiah Wright for his race-baiting, but don’t tell me on one hand that you’re going to be the post racial president, and then give a most racial speech that’s full of lies that you, as a sitting Senator, should know are lies.
Totally agree that Ann Althouse is incorrect. This is not old news because no has seen it except the liberals who hid it. Also, it is not ugly, it is his speech. Now, as a woman I wonder how she could come up with this conclusion? Please rethink your conclusion especially in the light of his failed presidency.
Althouse is quite mistaken, and because of squishes like her liberty will either die outright, or will have to be redeemed one day at a steep price.
She is a coward.
Ann Althouse is a liberal law professor at the University of Wisconsin and voted for Obama in 2008. Can you expect anything better from her than continuing stupidity?
She’s not smart enough to be Liberal. She’s something else. Go read her stuff on her blog. At some point you’ll get the picture of what’s going on. And it isn’t pretty.
I don’t expect Althouse to be invited back to Instapundit again.
Really, her arguments are of the worst sort of fuzzy-headed thinking and inability to make decisions or good choices. She voted for Obama in 2008 and has never expressed any remorse about it.
If we’re going to feel sad about this we should feel sorry for Meade, the guy who met Althouse through her blog, dumped his life, moved to Madison and married her. He is a very smart, well-spoken, reasonable guy. Now look what he is stuck with.
So, here’s the takeaway: we’re stuck with a nation overrun by an awful lot of poorly reasoning, not very bright people like Althouse. And the best we can hope for is that at some point these people marginalize themselves out of polite company like Althouse has done.
Really, it’s quite pathetic. And like I said, I feel badly for Meade.