Topic category:  Other/General

Until recently, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was smartly and successfully running for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination as the candidate who happened to be black (half black, to be precise), quietly taking the black vote (hugely disproportionately Democrat) even against Hillary Rodham Clinton, because black voters identified with him, while being competitive with white voters, because many white voters were eager to vote for a candidate at least partly black and some preferred a male presidential candidate to a female one.

Stated otherwise, race and gender were working FOR Obama and AGAINST his chief rival for the 2008 Democrat presidential candidate.

Finally, the Obama-is-the-post-race candidate canard exploded when the rookie United States Senator and presidential hopeful, facing hard questions about his relationship with his long-time pastor, decided that it was time for a speech by him on race making three racialpoints: (1) he's half-black and half-white and therefore the best candidate to resolve America's racial problems; (2) he won't "disown" that pastor, or the black community, or his white grandmother; and (3) he equates his pastor's pulpit prayer for God to damn America and crazed charges, such as America invented the AIDS virus to exterminate blacks with his white grandmother's alleged private "confession" of fear of blacks she did not known when she came upon them in the street and use "more than once" of "racial stereotypes" that made her ambitious grandson "cringe."

A self-described biracial emailer is furious that I consider Rev. Jeremiah A. "God Damn America" Wright, Jr., Obama's pastor of choice and spiritual mentor for about twenty years, racist.

Irate Emailer:

"... maybe you can tell me specifically what he said in the sermons, in the original context that you consider racist.

"FYI I'm biracial and most of my friends and half of my family are white. None of them consider it racist either.

"Sure I can edit you down to drivel. If for example I say 'Former Ambassador Ed Peck said the chickens have come home to roost' and Hannity edits that to 'The chickens have come home to roost' it sounds bad, but the meaning has changed entirely. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

"However, you probably wanted an excuse to hate Obama anyway. This one is pretty lame, and based on false information, but whatever works, right?"

I do think Rev. Wright is racist, not merely a person who made a few intemperate or ill-considered racist remarks.

If a pastor quoted hate speech from Hitler's Mein Kampff in a Sunday sermon without making it crystal clear that it WAS hate speech, the excuse that the pastor was presenting someone else's view and not responsible for it would not pass the laugh test either.

Mort Kondracke: "Obama says, he rejects and abhors what Wright said and did.... But, he could cite no instance when he ever intervened with Wright to protest his hateful nonsense. Reportedly, Oprah Winfrey quietly left Wright's church. Obama did not."

Oprah is smarter than Obama (and didn't need Rev. Wright)!

I've checked the website of Rev. Wright's church (Trinity United Church of Christ).

I've read Rev. Wright's tribute to HIS spiritual mentor, delivered in 2004 and published in a book in 2005, in which, to use the word Obama used in describing his white grandmother's expression of fear of black men on the street she did not known, he "confessed" to "growing to hate" "'honkies'" "with each passing day."

I don't excuse racist or otherwise vile language, much less racism; I don't define racism as something of which only whites are capable; and I don't agree that good deeds in advance earn a pass for racist or otherwise vile language.

Long before I criticized Rev. Wright, I had criticized Don Imus, in "Duke Case v. "Nappy-headed Hos" Remark, posted on April 11, 2007.

I wrote:

"I too am outraged that Imus dissed members of the Rutgers women's basketball team as 'nappy-headed hos.' It wasn't funny. It was foolish."

"If the disrespected ladies sue Imus for defamation and win judgments against him (falsely imputing unchastity to a woman is not unpunishable expression), that would be good as far as I'm concerned.

"If viewers and listeners choose wholesome fare instead of Imus, great.

"If MSNBC substitutes Laura Ingraham or Michelle Malkin or Alan Keyes for Imus, hallelujah."

But I rejected a race-based double-standard while taking context into account:

"Self-described leaders who initially treated the Duke case as an opportunity and have yet to condemn it as a hoax treated the 'nappy hos' nastiness as monumental misconduct pose a much greater problem that Imus.

"Yes, Imus made some remarks that are not merely stupid, but racist.

"But HE is not a policeman or a prosecutor, or a racist."

"Let's not minimize the monumental wrong that involved misuse of the criminal justice system or exaggerate the significance of a shock jock making a fool of himself while trying to make people laugh at the expense of some female college basketball players on account of their race (black), hair and tattoos.

"The Reverend Jackson calling for Imus to be fired is the same one who pleaded to be forgiven for his anti-Semitic reference to New York City as 'Hymietown' and for an adulterous affair that result in an out-of-wedlock daughter."

"Likewise, Reverend Sharpton sitting in judgment of Imus is worse than the pot calling the kettle black.

"Remember Tawana Brawley and the unrepentant Reverend {Sharpton]."

Rev. Wright did not simply foolishly use racist language, like Imus. Rev. Wright is a racist hater who's proved it many times. Obama is a political opportunist who used Rev. Wright and his church for political advantage and did not separate himself from Rev. Wright until he disinvited Rev. Wright to the announcement of his presidential campaign (lest their ties be investigated then and his campaign quickly implode).

Victor David Hanson exquisitely analyzed "Obama’s ‘conversation’ about moral equivalence" in an article titled "An Elegant Farce."

Mr. Hanson: "Barack Obama’s Tuesday sermon...had little to do with the poor judgment revealed in Obama’s relationship with the hateful Rev. Wright, much less the damage that he does both to African Americans and to the country in general."

Right. Obama's race lecture was an attempt to distract attention from the elephant in the room: the question why Obama had been silent for twenty years about his spiritual mentor's anti-American, anti-white hate speech.

Mr. Hanson: "Obama chose not to review what Wright, now deemed the 'occasionally fierce critic,' said in detail, condemn it unequivocally, apologize, and then resign from such a Sunday venue of intolerance — the now accustomed American remedy to racism in the public realm that we saw in the Imus and other recent controversies."

Obama didn't apologize at all and instead virtually applauded himself for not "disowning" Rev. Wright and equating him to "the black community" and his white grandmother. And would Obama describe a white racist like David Duke as "an occasionally fierce critic"?

Mr. Hanson:

"...to Obama, the postmodernist, context is everything. We all have eccentric and flamboyant pastors like Wright with whom we disagree. And words, in his case, don’t quite mean what we think; unspoken intent and angst, not voiced hatred, are what matters more.

"Rather than account for his relationship with a hate-monger, Obama will enlighten you, as your teacher, why you are either confused or too ill-intended to ask him to disassociate himself from Wright."

Enlighten? Obama was trying to "whitewash" Rev. Wright and himself?

Mr. Hanson:

"The Obama apologia was a 'conversation' about moral equivalence. So the Wright hatred must be contextualized and understood in several ways that only the unusually gifted Obama can instruct us about:

1) The good that Rev. Wright and Trinity Church did far outweighs his controversial comments, which were taken out of context as 'snippets' and aired in the 'endless loop' on conservative outlets.

2) We are all at times racists and the uniquely qualified Obama is our valuable mirror of that ugliness: Wright may say things like 'God damn America' or 'Dirty Word' Israel or 'Clarence Colon,' but then it must be balanced by other truths like Obama’s own grandmother who also expresses fear of black males (his grandmother’s private angst is thus of the same magnitude as Wright’s outbursts broadcast to tens of thousands).

3) We don’t understand Wright’s history and personal narrative. But as someone who grew up in the hate-filled and racist 1960s, it was understandable that he was bound to mature into his present angry anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white mentality. (As if all blacks did?)

4) Indeed, Wright does nothing that much different from radio-talk show hosts and those of the Reagan Coalition who thrive on racial resentments. But whereas Wright has cause as a victim, his counterparts are opportunists who play on white fears.

5) And if we wish to continue to express worries about Obama’s past relationships with Wright — never delineated, never explained in detail — in trite and mean-spirited ways such as replaying the Wright tapes, then we have lost a rare opportunity to follow Obama into a post-racial America.

6) We, both black and white alike, are victims, victims of an insensitive system, a shapeless, anonymous 'it' that brings out the worst in all of us — but it will at last end with an Obama candidacy."

But only if the Obama candidacy results in Obama's election!

Secular extremism and extreme political correctness have contaminated much of America's educational system and Obama and his race speech evidence that.

But there is hope: Susan Estrich, a former president of the Harvard Law Review (like Obama) and a Democrat, but also a feminist who was raped during her Harvard days, rejected Obama;s offensive and inane analogizing of Rev. Wright's vile public statements to Obama's white grandmother's privately confided fear of black men on the street whom she did not know.

Mr. Hanson:

"The message? Some of us are never quite responsible for what we say. And Obama has no responsibility to explain the inexplicable of how he closely tied himself to someone of such repugnant and racist views. We will never hear 'It’s time for Rev. Wright and me to part our separate ways, and here’s why.'

"Instead, the entire Wright controversy evolved due to America’s failure to understand Rev. Wright’s past and the present status of race. No doubt, the next time some public figure utters a racist comment — and it will happen — we will then expect to hear about context that explains and excuses such an apparent hurtful outburst."

God protect us for that!

Mr. Hanson: "Obama is right about one thing: We are losing yet another opportunity to talk honestly about race, to hold all Americans to the same standards of public ethics and morality, and to emphasize that no one gets a pass peddling vulgar racism, or enabling it by failing to disassociate himself from its source — not Rev. Wright, not even the eloquent, but now vapid, Barack Obama."

Obama is much worse than vapid: he's a dangerous political opportunist posing as a savior.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.