BHO's Flip-Floppin' Hypocrisy

It is with (probably unhealthy amounts of) glee that I watch the Democratic party being consumed by the identity politics it spawned. It's like watching a snake devour itself.

Gallup has a poll out that shows a significant chunk of Democrats will vote for McCain, no matter who emerges from the bloodbath with the Dem nomination.

For today, let's deal with BHO's "big speech" that had the media all twitterpated last week.

1) It was essentially a very flashy retraction / correction of his prior statement in the Huffington Post:

"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation."
- BHO, The Huffington Post, 3/14/08

"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."
- BHO, Philadelphia, PA, 3/18/08

OOPS!

2) It served to illustrate the hypocrisy of BHO:

"There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group."
- BHO referring to Don Imus, ABC News, 4/11/07

I trust that Wright's commets have been sufficiently catalogued that they do not need to be repeated here, but just to make sure that there is no doubt as to what BHO thought of Wright's words:

"We've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide ... But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial ... they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic ... As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together ..."
- BHO, Philadelphia, PA, 3/18/08

This, as is emerging as his pattern, contradicts an earlier BHO tatement:

"I don't think that my church is actually particularly controversal."
- BHO, Nelsonville, OH, 3/2/08

But the real kicker is that Jeremiah Wright worked for BHO's campaign, at least right up until the controversy erupted, despite BHO's earlier assurances during the Don Imus mess:

"After removing Mr. Wright from a religious advisory committee on his campaign on Friday, Mr. Obama concluded over the weekend that he had not sufficiently explained his association with the pastor"
- NYTimes, 3/18/08

OOPS again!

3) It unfairly equated Geraldine Ferraro with Jeremiah Wright:

"We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias."
- BHO, Philadelphia, PA, 3/18/08

It is, at least in my opinion, extremely unfair and dishonest to represent Geraldine Ferraro and Jeremiah "U.S. of KKKA" Wright as two sides of the same coin, and apparently Ferraro agrees.

4) It threw grandma under the bus:

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
- BHO, Philadelphia, PA, 3/18/08

Ed Koch responded to this much more articulately than I could:

"There was a time spanning the 70’s to the mid-90s when many blacks and whites in large American cities expressed the same feelings on street crime held by Obama’s grandmother. Indeed, the Rev. Jesse Jackson made similar comments in 1993 at a meeting of his organization, Operation Push, devoted to street crime. According to a Nov. 29, 1993, article in the Chicago Sun Times, he said, “’We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular.’ Then Jackson told the audience, ‘There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved . . . After all we have been through,’ he said. ‘Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.’” Isn’t that exactly what Obama’s grandmother was referring to? To equate her fears, similar to Jesse Jackson’s, with Wright’s anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-Israel rantings is despicable coming from a grandson. In today’s vernacular, he threw her under the wheels of the bus to keep his presidential
campaign rolling. For shame."
- Ed Koch, 3/24/08

In short, BHO's grandmother is no more a racist than Jesse Jackson (and I'd probably wager significantly less).

5) His follow-up showed more of what I fear are BHO's true colors:

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know ... there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."
- BHO, Philadelphia, PA, 3/20/08

As has already been pointed out, this isn't a reaction unique to white people. Jesse Jackson himself has had similar reactions. I'm just wondering now, since he slandered a whole ethnic group with his "typical white person" comment, and earlier had said, "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group," does that mean he has to fire himself (or just remain a hypocrite)?

In honor of BHO's "landmark" speech, I'd like to start an organization called "Typical White People Against Politicians Who Bad-Mouth Their Own Grandmothers."