AS writes:
... are Obama's beliefs represented by the handful of video clips of the most incendiary of Wright's sermons? Or to unpack it a little further: Does Obama believe that black people should damn America? Does he believe that racial separatism is a viable option? Is he a black liberation theologian?
Andrew is right (pun intended). Someone from the Left should go through the comments and deal with them, systematically, one-by-one.
AVOIDING LABELS
The Right is trying to blur them all into labels. "America hater", etc. This has to be resisted. Later on, the last minute smear campaigns that will be put on air have to be combated. So much probably requires more than ignoring it all, hoping it will go away.
We all need to be careful about what was actually said. For instance, in the little clips I heard, 'damn America' was tied to specific things, to specific teaching in the Bible being violated. It wasn't a generalized injunction to 'damn America, right or wrong', was it? The causality used to suggest 'chickens coming home to roost' following 9/11 (a phrase used by a U.S. diplomat, as best I recall, too) was off the mark, but the idea that the U.S. bears responsibility for having pulled together the mujahedeen to fight an "irregular war" in Afghanistan is not (nor is it controversial).
Yet, if you listen to just FIXed News, you'd never get that, would you?
BLASPHEMY-LITE FROM FOX NEWS CHANNEL
We have to get sick also at the "cult preaching" that done from the FOX pulpit.
Viewers of it aren't encouraged to listen to alternative points of view, to seek facts, beyond their cult-bubble. They are told over and over that what they are hearing is "fair" and that everything else is ... not to be trusted, just as if the devil was waiting to tempt them on the other channels. Pappa O'Reilly even repeatedly and frequently assures his audience that he is the true Shepard of the sheep ("I'm looking out for you!").
Do they really think that we are all so stupid as to drink the cool-aide and not call them on it?
