Transcript from today's New York Times

I am posting this link because a lot of what may be posted (and has been) will be hearsay and taken out of context. It was refreshing to hear and watch him address all the negative flack being repeated ad nauseum towards him from media and the political spinsters..always fragments, repeated and repeated..His speech went way beyond the issues of race as leveled towards and about him personally. But here's the link to what he said in all its contexts:
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A

Lucky for him he's not a white candidate who paid homage to Bob Jones U.

His notion that we've all heard our pastors say "things with which we disagree" is top quality bullshit.

If your friends tell you that Supertramp was the greatest rock group ever, you can just disagree. If they tell you watching American Idol is time well spent, you can disagree. If they tell you that the niggers are the reason a good man can barely get by in this country it's time to get new friends. Period.

Your post is too complex for me to follow..Evidently you have a lot on your mind.
A

I tried to wade through your lengthy analysis of the speech but decided to stop when I got to the link and just read that instead. I should have just linked you to something else in my post I guess, then I'd look smart.

I don't know what you waded through as I gave no 'analysis' of the speech. Just posted the transcript. I know it's hard for you to to do more than wade through, slosh around what aren't your preconceived opinions. I suspect you're missing a lot, but then how could you know that!
A

As with his book "Audacity of Hope" he wrote this speech himself.'

Since he's from Chicago, I guess I could say he hit a homer out of the park, at Wrigley Field.

Might this be the best speech, so clean and spare, with no fluff (B.S.) we Americans might ever have the honor of hearing, I wonder.
I''m still a bit giddy, I hope America realizes what a rare treasure he is.

But you can't get new family. When I was a kid, every adult on both sides of my family was a racist redneck. I hate some of the things they said and believed, but I love my family despite their shortcomings. And some of them have changed their ways.

And it turns out that some of my friends have grown up, too. Maybe there is hope for everyone.

regardless of how Oabam spins it. We're talking about a church and it's pastor that he patronized for over twenty years. That's not family and if, in spite of the hatred and racism, he begins to think of this man as family then I say that disqualifies him. If you go to mass and the priest starts talking about how cute the asses of little boys are you don't chalk it up to a simple disagreement in a matter of taste. You think racism is a social ill or do you think it's just an alternative philosophy?

I think every one of us has views and behaviors that are contradictory. I also think that he's right to say that several generations of black men are infected, for good reason or bad, with a hatred of the system that held them down. Is he supposed to disassociate himself from an entire generation of African-Americans?

And since the vast majority of pastors in this country are men, I guess we should all revisit our silent approval of the misogyny that runs rampant in every one of these phony outfits that tries to pass itself as a shortcut to salvation?

BT,

I read the speech [Thanks 'A'] and I have to say there's very little spinning going on there. Not only does he denounce and renounce the racist remarks, he demonstrates why they are at odds with his platform, which he re-asserts is about 'hope' and 'unity' in the face of understandable though unjustifiable differences. That's really where balance and context [historical, biographical, economic, etc] enter into it: He is trying to be fair to a man he knows, whose good works and life experience he knows, and yet repudiate his extremism. Ultimately, though, I guess Wright has to be judged on Wright's terms, not on those of a presidential candidate who is trying to navigate the hair-pins bends and meanderings of the American political landscape.

What I sense from your outrage is your frustration that people aren't more definitive in their affiliations and judgments. Life is more complex than that and there's too much overlap for the kind of neat boundaries you're looking for. Even your own father [whom you love, I presume] is weighted with contradictions that make for vexed and difficult choices. You say you lost a ton of respect for him, but you didn't stop loving him did you? You will try to make him better, no? Improve his views? Enlighten him? If you do so, are you automatically making excuses for him? Countenancing his evil? Are you being quiet and just glossing over it, or are you doing the decent thing? If a man you love, your own father, can disappoint you, then so can a politician for Christ's sakes. The guy's probably more flawed than your dad. Maybe. Maybe not. But what do you want or expect, beatification? All with a pinch of salt, my friend. He's not the fucking messiah.

It's Easter time ZB, and that means another of my altar boy posts.

Now, do I have to answer for Fr. James Lynch? The guy was fucking nutso. It's undeniable that while kneeling there next to him (at the altar) that I was influenced by him.

So what?

I would argue that what I learned while listening to this freaking nutcake was as important to me in forming the opinions that I hold dear today, as any words I heard with which I agreed.

Let the maniacs speak I say. They define the boundaries.

Who can honestly say they haven't had at least one?

Here, here!

Not I.