Saturday, May 31, 2008

Obama Resigns From Trinity Church, 20-Years Too Late

Politico.com is reporting that the Obama campaign is going to spin the resignation from Trinity thus: Barack did this to protect the church from the relentless media coverage it has been receiving, coverage which may be impeding the church from doing its "good works."

I've written before about the cynicism evinced by Obama in wrapping around the Cross, much as the far-right reactionary candidates of the past have exclusively done. With the arguable exception of Jimmy Carter, Barack is the first progressive Democrat candidate to adopt one of the vilest and most divisive tactics employed by the Right.

I have argued that deployment of religiosity by Obama was a grievous and gratuitous strategic error that would (and already has) come back to haunt him.

His 20-year-too-late resignation from the church is preposterous on its face. Is he expecting the public to swallow the idea that only since the media shined its lights on Trinity has it been a sanctuary for anti-white sentiment? That, in his 20-years of alleged Trinity church going he never heard similar race-baiting comments coming from the pulpit?

He used the church membership as another line on his political resume; after all, how can anyone be elected president if he/she cannot plausibly assert membership in one church or another? Unfortunately for the candidate, he choose the wrong church and now, in the famous words of Rev. Wright himself, "the chickens are coming home to roost."

The Obama campaign is confronted with its first significant political dilemma. Either the candidate is an obvious hypocrite and was a church member in name only and didn't know or care anything about the church's ideology; or, he was deeply involved in church matters and at least implicitly condoned this church's ideological bent. Not a pretty choice.

He played the god-card when he had no need to do so; now he has to live with the consequences of that decision.

[Note: I take no joy in writing this; his achievements thus far have been monumental, as is his courage.]

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