http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3875
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3522
By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal
Weeks of brooding over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama eruptions have severely shaken the hope I expressed in January: “If Barack Obama can show he is tough enough and pragmatic enough to win the presidency and serve with distinction, it would be the best thing that could happen to America and the world.”
What should we learn about Obama’s judgment and fortitude from the fact that he sat passively in the pews for 20 years and gave money and took his children while Wright spewed far-left, America-hating, white-bashing, conspiracy-theorizing, loony, “God damn America” vitriol from the pulpit?
This concern is not dispelled by Obama’s shifting explanations, including his mostly admirable March 18 speech about http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3940 and the issue of race.
Also disturbing is the bleak picture of America painted by Obama’s closest adviser, his http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3523, in highly newsworthy comments, most of which the media have chosen to ignore. Her stunning February 18 statement that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” did get some attention, but just two mentions buried in The Washington Post and three buried in the news columns of The New York Times. The news columns of both papers, and almost all others, have ignored Michelle Obama’s assertions that this country is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear”; that “our souls are broken”; and that most Americans’ lives have “gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.”
All this from a woman whose own life doesn’t seem so rough: She went from a working-class background to Princeton, Harvard Law School, and a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago. That’s the mansion that the Obamas bought with a little help from their friend Tony Rezko, now on trial on unrelated corruption charges, months after Obama’s 2004 election to the Senate. Meanwhile, Michelle’s salary at the University of Chicago hospitals soared from $122,000 to $317,000.
Many Democrats dismiss the Wright controversy as much ado about “bupkus,” as one puts it. Many Republicans see clear proof of unfitness for high office in Obama’s choice of Wright as his spiritual adviser and his equivocations about why he condoned the reverend’s vicious rhetoric for so long.
http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm