Charles P. Pierce on Obama's Trayvon remarks today...hoo boy.

[WilliamPitt]

(snip)

...in making those remarks, and in sounding for one of the very few times like what once was called a Race Man, the president broke what a lot of people assumed was a covenant he'd made with them when they permitted him to be president. That covenant was fashioned for him during his speech to the Democratic convention in Boston, wherein he told a divided country everything it really wanted to hear about itself. He was going to be the living demonstration of the progress the nation had made. His job, in addition to being president, was going to be as a redemptive figure. That was the deal by which the country would allow him to be its president.

I always thought that speech was overrated. I thought it was dreamy utopian nonsense that did not take into account the well-financed virulence that would be brought to bear on him, and on his policies, and on his entire public career. (I think the fact that he bought it has a lot to do with how stuck in the mud his administration has been, and is, on several important issues.) Remember, in his big speech on race during the campaign, he made it a point to mention how his grandmother would tense up when she saw black men on the street. That was the Barack Obama of the 2004 speech. That was the Barack Obama of the redemptive covenant. That was how the country would allow him to speak on race, if he wanted to be its president.

Today, there was none of that. He didn't even obliquely try to justify sidewalk profiling of the kind that set off the chain of circumstances by which Trayvon Martin was made dead. He spoke plain truth, and the reason you know it is so many smart people already are saying how politically unwise it was that he spoke at all. He broke the covenant, once and for all, which ought not to matter, because it was counterfeit all along.

Read it: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/president-obama-trayvon-martin-speech-071913

[AtheistCrusader]

1. I'm not sure what to make of this.

It kind of makes the hair stand up on my neck though. I feel like I'm seeing some code words that I don't understand...

"That was the deal by which the country would allow him to be its president."

This doesn't seem correct. This sounds like an assumption from one viewpoint. Another viewpoint is that Obama had a more productive vision for more American's than the 'fuck the 47%' counter-offer from the Republican camp.

Am I missing some veiled language here?

[dsc]

2. I think he is saying, among other things,

that if Obama said in 2004 and 2008, what he said today, he would not have become President. I think that is likely true.

[RainDog]

3. Yes. It's a flaw in the way the article/thinking was constructed

...that falls into the same trap of "white privilege" -- and also in "conservative privilege in America," in how the world is framed.

[DevonRex]

4. He did not break a covenant he never made; however, if some had believed one existed,

the more fools they.

[ReRe]

5. All that, and what did he say, actually?

Why write, if what you write can't be understood by those who read it?

[RainDog]

6. A GREAT comment from the site

I've never admitted it publicly before now but while I thought the 2004 speech revealed Obama to be a gifted orator I thought the speech itself was a bunch of wishful-thinking piffle. This country is divided and people need to get over this stupid idea that we're going to find "common ground" with our teabagger neighbors on major issues and principles.

I think the problem stems from Democratic politicians - who in most places are in the unenviable role of having to try and form relationships with and compromise with raging nutjobs on the other side of the aisle. This causes them to attach an inordinate amount of value on those skills, which are mainly useful to politicians and other occupations requiring frequent negotiations. This leads to the expectation that Dem activists and the rank and file should be doing that kind of bridge building work in their communities. Which is utterly unrealistic, as rank and file right wing Americans are as big authoritarian assholes as their politicians, if not bigger.

And besides, I'm not paid to be the fucking Wingnut Whisperer so I'm not going to do it.

[AmBlue]

7. So very true.

Our government was designed to work when there is compromise-- two parties meeting somewhere in the middle with a lot of back and forth, and a healthy dose of good faith give and take. When one side is forced by the other to do all the giving, we are left with what we have. Dysfunction in the extreme.

[bigtree]

8. so, he's been cynical about the first 'race' speech

. . . that's his problem.

Hardly a revelation from him about the latest one. Only sounds radical when Obama's remarks about a very real and prescient event are superimposed by the writer on what was a reaction to mostly made-up suppositions about Obama, his former preacher, his faith, and his own views on race in America.