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This Good Friday Let Us Not Crucify Barack Obama
Senator Obama has a problem: the hardening of the American heart, the closing of the American mind, the shriveling of our souls, the shrinking capacity of our imaginations, our jaded senses, the seen-it-all attitude that makes us into sneering voyeurs too mean spirited to save ourselves.
I was a guest on a PRI radio show the day after Obama delivered is historic speech on race. I was a guest along with a person that the host introduced as "most responsible" for making Obama's minister's charged comments into a political football. According to the host's introduction, Republican activist Ronald Kessler used his website to turn Obama's minister's words into the story the media jumped on.
Kessler had just heard Obama's March 18 speech on race too. He said it left him unmoved. He was in a sneering mood bristling with ever-so-reasonable middle class certitude of his conservative righteousness. To Kessler the speech was just politics, nothing more. The idea of it's truth was of no consequence. To him it was all about tactics.
That night I was listening to Laura Ingraham (a show that I was on several times and where Laura repeatedly called me a "great American" because, as the father of a Marine, I'd written Keeping Faith and then Faith of Our Sons, books that praised and explained the military family.) Laura was sneering at Obama's speech. Her candidate had been Mitt Romney. As Romney's self-described "conservative-conservative" Ingraham had also been routinely mocking McCain. And she hates Clinton. Now she hates Obama more...
Bitterness as a way of life marches forward on the left as well as the right. I read the responses from Clinton supporters (on various websites) also damning Obama's speech as "just words." Some of the Clinton people sounded even more cynical than Kessler and Ingraham.
Obama is the chef who opens a new restaurant and serves honest good and beautifully prepared food made of the most wholesome ingredients only to have the food critic pan his offerings as "all too ordinary." "Where," asks the seen-it-all jaded bored critic, "are the calf's brains marinated in truffle-soaked baby duck's testicles?"
Obama offers civility in the midst of a drunken national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.
By providence or blind luck, we are being given a second chance. In Obama our founders appear once again stepping from the mists of time to offer a wayward great, great grandchild an opportunity for redemption. But everything is turned on its head. Good is called bad. The greatest things about Obama are used against him, decency and transparency are mocked.
Obama stands in the tradition of our founders, a citizen running for office, not a "professional" striver. But the cry goes up, "He doesn't have the experience!" Experience? At what? Playing games with our country's soul while the only real game in our nation's capitol is hanging on to power, enriching oneself at the political trough through connections, taking us to war after war, making us hated throughout the world by catering to our insatiable, unreasoning fears.
Obama is the man who reaches out to help a dying passerby and the passerby snarls, "What do you really want?" Obama came to us on March, 18 with one of the most generous and brilliant speeches that has been delivered on American soil. He spoke honestly of things all other American leaders have been too timid and self-serving to even mention. Standing behind him were the sprits of countless murdered, enslaved, tortured, lost black Americans. Their blood cries out for revenge and yet Obama offered forgiveness, perspective and understanding.
Obama is not Jesus. Obama makes mistakes. He is rightly self-deprecating. Nevertheless, imperfect as he is, Obama is offering America a fresh start. There is more decent intelligent authenticity in his little finger than the Clintons will ever know. There is more kind wisdom in Obama than in all our sneering bloodsucking moronic media combined. But we have imbibed detritus for so long that when clean food is offered we can't taste it.
This isn't about politics. I'm a fifty-five year old white man who has been a conservative all my life. I've been a right wing Republican activist. I'm a big fan of the military. If Obama can reach out to me he can reach out to anyone. He can win in November.
What I'm saying here will lose me friends. For instance the Bush family gave one of my recent military-related books a ringing endorsement. After Laura Bush read an excerpt out on Meet The Press sales skyrocketed. I probably won't get too many more of those sorts of endorsements. But the chips are down and the presidential choices this year are too important not to not fight for.
As I see it our choice is between a good and heroic old man whose time has past and who will perpetuate failed policy, a jaded woman of the establishment, who will do anything to perpetuate her family's dynastic "claim" to power, and a brilliant, openhearted new founding father the likes of which America has not seen.
Obama comes to us from outside the system that has produced our present multiple crises of wars of choice and a failing economy. He does what all truly great leaders do: he speaks to the soul in plain self-revealing words of hope.
If we squander this undeserved reprieve and choose business-as-usual, if we don't elevate ourselves out of our self-made mire, we will step into a future of steep and steady decline and war without end. It won't matter if you are right or left. It won't matter if the Republicans or the Democratic Party wins. We will all lose.
I think there is reason to hope. There are decent people out there who have refused to go along with the smear-by-association campaign. Mike Huckabee defended Obama. McCain said we can't blame Obama for his minister's words. Not everyone on the right is stooping as low as the Clintons and the right-wing media scavengers.
Obama is worth fighting for. He is worth losing old friends for. History has thrown America an unlikely lifeline. Do we have the decency, the sense, the last glimmer of sanity needed to open our hearts to change?
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It
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I am encouraged by your observations and the comments of others on this blog. I am a white man, aged 54 years, that has become fatigued by the dishonesty in our community of power and authority.
For me, Barack Obama offers a breath of fresh air if only I dare to believe. I have come to respect Obama's vision and his faith in this imperfect country. At one time, I considered Obama a novelty. Today, he has my vote and my support. For me, he represents a change in the spirit of this country. I never realized how much I desired his vision, his hope, and his confidence.
Thank you Frank ,for your courage and conviction. You encourage us to reclaim our dignity even though it may compromise our comfort and reputation in the local communities that dominate our individual lives.
Beautifully put.
Why is the right wing always so ANGRY?
Mr. Shaeffer: Thank you for your words. Unfortunately I am forced to remember a time when a young white women tripped and fell on the ground in fron to me. I helped her get back on her feet and after thanking me she told me that since I was black I should not have touched her. White America will vote against its on self interest before voting for an African-American.
Thankfully, the facts do not bear out that we can extrapolate this incident to all whites.
I remember helping a white girl who had fallen on the ground get back on her feet. After thanking me she told me to never touch her again because I was black. White America will vote against its own interest before voting for a black man.
Amen. Thanks so much for this. It's the direction I'd like to see political discourse take.
Thank you, Mr. Schaeffer, for this inspried article. It is very sad to think that America has become the country of cynics and naysayers, but I don't think it has. I think we have a diseased media that chooses not to exercise good judgment and honest evaluation. I'm encouraged to see an article like yours—and many of the articles I've read lately on the internet. It shows that reason and honorable thinking are still strong, but they don't have an outlet with a megaphone. At least not yet.
We get stories like the one about Reverend Wright—distorted, spliced, and largely irrelevant—because they benefit a cynical and greedy few who continue to distort our culture by infecting our media. If people like you continue to speak out, perhaps honesty and reason will finally take priority over the self-serving voices that have no love for this country or its people. And finally we can begin to have a productive public discourse about many things—without being drowned out or distracted by Orwellian and heartless noise.
Author wrote: "Obama stands in the tradition of our founders, a citizen running for office, not a "professional" striver.
Really?
Obama ran for Illinois Senate in 1996
Ran for Illinois Senate in 1998
In 2000, ran for U.S. House of Representatives but failed.
Went right back to seeking another political office
Ran for Illinois Senate again in 2002.
Ran for US Senate in 2003. Outlawyered other candidates to run unopposed.
Not a professional politician? Nonsense!
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"Obama comes to us from outside the system. "
How much more IN the system one has to be to become a part of it?! Obama's been "in the system," a professional politician for many years.
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"Brilliant, openhearted new founding father the likes of which America has not seen. "
This must be a joke, right?! What exactly he is a founding father of? Now the hyperbolae is getting out of hand.
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"Obama is not Jesus. Obama makes mistakes. "
Really think he's not Jesus? Sure. Well, may be a little bit. Right? Have you ever mentioned ONE mistake Obama made? Anywhere? Ever? OK, now this is getting scary.
Sharon - thank you for keeping an open mind, doing the work to research a troubling matter and thinking for yourself. Would that more of our fellow citizens would undertake the same path. This is a seminal moment in history that we will endlessly regret if we don't embrace it. Obama will need not only our support to win in November, he will need our help to lead and govern.
It is not surprising, but heartbreaking to witness the SwiftBoating of a man's spiritual relationship. I urge everyone to follow Sharon's lead and search out Rev. Wright's ACTUAL sermons - not those grotesquely manipulated soundbite concoctions fed by the press. You will see sober, passionate, nuanced and honest examinations of the state of our spiritual health.
Hope trumps fear!
Wow, this is a wonderful post. Indeed, if America wishes to go forward, we must choose the right person. I am a 47 yr old white woman. That in essence tells us that Obama does appeal to white women over 40! I'm a secretary for a large firm. So In don't make all that much money. Never even been to Starbucks and have never tasted a latte.
I hate it when the media lumps people into groups. We have the young people, we have the white women over 40, white males, on and on and on. We are one people and we're in this together. Barrack can bring us all together and build up this great nation once again.
We must to get it right this time. It's so important. It seems that this good man will bring us in that direction - if we let him.
Mr. Schaeffer,
More eloquent or truer words about what Obama offers the country have rarely been said.
There are so many people out there who just don't hear it, don't get it. And many of them are decent people. I ask myself are they tone deaf? Are they blind? Or are they deliberating refusing to hear him and see him for what he is and what he is offering.
Perhaps it as, as you put it, it is due to the hardening of hearts, the shrivelling of souls, and so on. I'm not a religious man but I feel close to the impulse of what I would imagine is a prayer–to ask fate, destiny, God or whatever greater force there is out there–to not let this opportunity slip away. To not let the country turn away from this chance to move forward and to realize , or at least try to realize, a better world.
Thanks, Frank. As a fellow Orthodox who has traveled a similar road to your own, this call resonates with me completely. And as an Obama Independent I have had to confront the very real right-wing fear, suspicion, and hatred among my own kin. Like you said, it's worth it. This is the right time for that fight. We have to have a leader who can inspire and mobilize other leaders, and in turn the people, to turn America away from the precipice of a very ugly future for our children and our great union. Thanks be to God.
People really need to read, and then re-read Obama's Philadelphia speech. It was and is a watershed in relations between Americans...
Ten, Twenty and Forty years from now, our children and grand children will read and listen to his words, and look back to 2008 as a turning point for our society. We will either move forward, following the lead of Barack Obama, or return to our uncomfortable islands of hate and fear. In either case, it will be this speech, and this moment, and this election, that determines our character from this time forward.
I find Barack Obama a brave man in that he is willing to admit that his white grandmother was afraid of black men, especially at night. I found that brave because a Presidential candidate is willing to admit that one of his ancestors had racist feelings and he said this openly. Many people, especially white people, have those feelings (regardless of age) and for him to admit that, yes, Grandma is afraid of black men and then say this in front of millions of people deserves praise. In recent days when reading about racial relations in this country and how we as a people can honestly speak about these issues without fear and stereotypes, I have despaired. Why? Because as a person with autism, the social stuff stymies me because it is so subtle. Why someone would judge someone else just because he/she has more melanin pigment in the skin is illogical to me. I tend to think from specific to general, so there is no generic black (or fill in the blank) person. Everyone is an individual with likes, dislikes, experiences, hobbies, and other things that make up a person's personality. Also, to persist in hanging on to information that is not accurate baffles me. I have a tendency to want to me accurate on things and especially on things pertaining to people. And it saddens me that many people aren't willing to do that. And so Barack Obama, because of his experiences as person of mixed race ancestry and the fact that he was born after 1960 and lived in Hawaii and Indonesia during his formative years has made him to be honest about race and race relations. And that he is running for President and willing to do and say these things deserves praise and I hope others will follow.
Xenia Grant
Dear Mr. Schaeffer
Thank you so much for this truly moving and sincere piece of writing. I am so grateful to you for expressing what I feel, but don't possess the talent to convey. Obama is such an authentic, brilliant, and decent man. We are so blessed to have him. I am so afraid that the country will squander this amazing opportunity.
One of the most heart felt statement I have ever read.
T^hank you for your passion and life experience.
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Posted March 21, 2008 | 10:50 AM (EST)