Today's Stories

April 30, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

Tariq Ali
Storming Heaven: 1968 Revisited

John Ross
Bad Jazz in NOLA: Three NAFTA Leaders Sit It for the Last Time

Glen Ford
Pop Goes the Race-Neutral Campaign!

Joshua Frank
Election Season Piffle: Thinking Outside the Voting Booth

Ashley Smith
Iraq After Basra

Robert Weissman
Medical R&D That Works in the Developing World

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Shroud of Secrecy

Website of the Day
Richard Nixon, April 30, 1970

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

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The Real Rise of Barack Obama

The Dark Knight

By WAJAHAT ALI

Like Superman, flying in the sky, Obama swept into the hearts and minds of White America as a redeeming savior capable of single handedly battling the old guard, prehistoric, Republican foes of progress and enlightenment. For several months, the media pundits and corporate news channels adulated Obama to the point of beatific eminence as a near infallible superhero who could walk on water and feed the multitudes with a simplistic slogan of “hope” and “change.” And then last week the freight train known as reality hit harder than a speeding locomotive, and the masses, spurred by the media, political adversaries, interest groups and pundits, finally opened their eyes and cried, “Look up there in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No – It’s a Black man!”

Superman’s alias is Clark Kent, a square jawed, all American, intellectual, non threatening, Kansas farm boy raised by Ma and Pa Kent; however, Clark, despite his American values, was always an “alien” Kal-El from the planet Krypton, the last surviving son of Jor-El gifted with fantastic powers. Any fan of superhero mythology knows that the alien hero’s supernatural qualities – the same ones that make him unique, beloved and endearing - also eventually serve to alienate him from the masses due to a pervasive, silent whisper of fear – usually perpetuated by a nemesis such as Lex Luthor– instilling perennial doubt and apprehension regarding the alien superhero’s true loyalties and sincerity. 

Like Superman, those characteristics that make Obama unique and powerful, such as his biracial, multicultural upbringing, his intellectual eloquence, and his African Muslim name, also alienate him with certain mainstream demographics.  However, unlike Clark Kent, Barack Obama cannot comfortably hide and assimilate under an “All-American” European name and skin tone. With his Arabic birth name, his middle name reminding the voting population of a recently executed Iraqi dictator, twenty percent of the nation still believing Obama is a closet Muslim, and his “dark” skin color that could possibly ignite a 50 shot police barrage in New York ending in an acquittal, Obama’s critics superficially suggest he represents White America’s “worst nightmare”: an angry, eloquent, opinionated, divisive, secretly Anti-American, Black [potentially Muslim] nationalist. 

Recently, McCain shamelessly insinuated Obama supports “terrorism” and the democratically elected Palestinian government of Hamas - referred to as a terrorist group by most American Congressman - with this gem of a sound bite: "I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare ... If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Furthermore, Hilary Clinton still trumpets her dominating, crushing and monumental win by all of 9.5 points in Pennsylvania thanks to rural demographics, less educated workers and seniors – all of them White. In addition, her non-stop, energizer bunny smear campaign of Obama as an “elitist” - the blackest pot calling the kettle black - suddenly transformed Obama, the Clark Kent/Superman superhero, into a charismatic yet fallible mortal, a Bruce Wayne/ Batman Dark Knight. The corporate media, once so enamored by this magical, United Colors of Benetton poster boy, jumped ship after finally realizing that a “Dark” man could actually win the highest Office in the land. With a renewed zeal and passion, the self appointed info-tainment media circus on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, talk radio, and European Press, consisting mostly of White men and peroxide Blonde women repeatedly parroted Clinton’s mantra reminding Americans that Obama “just can’t cross over with working class Whites.”

If corporate media and politicians were actually interested in fair, reasoned and intelligent discourse instead of the latest polls and knee jerk histrionic sensationalism, they would realize the “elitist” Obama received the majority of votes among low-income voters in 14 different primaries and caucuses, many of those whom were “White.” The truth of the matter is none of these candidates, including Obama, represents White, Middle Class America.  Granted, Obama has a problem crossing over to some seniors and White workers, however what is not reported is that Hillary, last year’s sure-fire lock for the Democratic nomination, once held a near 20 point lead in Pennsylvania which eroded to a 9.5 point win.  Furthermore, unlike Obama, Clinton’s campaign budget is in the hole, recently rebounding due to a desperate $5 million dollar “loan” by Hillary to her own campaign. Surely, there’s nothing “elitist” about an “Average Joan” funding her own ambitious bid for a public office with millions from her own wealth while many Americans are either currently jobless, working two jobs just to stay broke or thirty days away from a foreclosure. McCain’s shameless attempts to empathize with the “Middle Class” should be ridiculed after examining his marriage to Beer heiress, Cindy McCain, whose net worth exceeds $100 million dollars, with most of it tied to her father’s stake in Hensley & Co., and the rest injected into the McCains’ faces.

Oh, and before we forget, last but not least there’s also Obama’s kryptonite: Reverend Wright, whose fiery and impassioned rhetoric and recent speeches are an answer to Clinton and McCain’s Presidential prayers. After Obama attempted to slay the PR debacle of March with – what some called – a “historic” race speech, Wright re-emerged like “Night of the Living Dead” to remind America that opinionated, passionate, angry and controversial Black men still exist. His appearance on Bill Moyers’ Show, and incendiary speeches at an NAACP event and The National Press Club have led to a week long, non stop headline “guilt by association” trial prosecuting Obama, Reverend Wright, and the Church of “uppity Blackness.”

Wright theatrically, and many say arrogantly, blasted the media’s double standard when portraying Black churches and the African American Christian tradition. He reminded America of the sadistic Tuskegee experiments and the use and abuse of African Americans as medical guinea pigs [Read Harriet Washington’s award winning Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on African Americans.] Furthermore, like most policy experts, both Republican and Democrat, he suggested American imperialism and interference in the Middle East is responsible for our terrorism blowback. However, he made his most controversial statement in claiming the government is capable of disseminating AIDS and Crack to the African American community. Ishmael Reed, in a recent essay entitled The Crazy Reverend Wright, writes about the latter: 

“Rev. Wright proposes that crack was deliberately brought into the inner city by the government. The CIA admitted to having knowledge that US allies brought drugs into the urban areas. The late Gary Webb was ridiculed by the American press for his "Dark Alliance," yet as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair disclose in their book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, two years after Webb's series ran, the CIA's inspector general confirmed that the agency had in fact been aiding those very same Contra drug-runners (and many more).”

One need not agree, endorse nor support most of Wright’s opinions, and according to the recent polls most Americans do not. Granted, Wright’s appearances and comments are not only ill timed but also cancerous to Obama’s candidacy, however they reflect a very real, sincere frustration and anger that many, not only African Americans, share in regards to the government’s hypocritical and self serving domestic and foreign policies, such as “The War on Drugs” and “The War on Terror” respectively, whose subsequent victims are usually the most poor, powerless, and disenfranchised members of American society.

Furthermore, Reverend Wright’s “incendiary” and “divisive” comments are hardly new, as America’s relationship with rabble rousing, controversial Baptist polemicists has been long and fruitful. Regrettably, due to socio-political reality of America, we can only uncomfortably tolerate White pastors, such as the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who spewed vitriolic anger and bombastic rhetoric damning America for its vices and sins. Lest we forget, Falwell and Robertson tag teamed like the Christian version of “The Justice League” to issue this enlightened post 9-11 commentary:
Falwell: I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this [The 9-11 attacks] happen.”
Robertson: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government.
Both pastors enjoyed and continue to enjoy veneration and respect by several ranking members of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration undoubtedly due to their influence over the Evangelical Christian vote. However, neither Bush Sr. nor President G.W. Bush were demonized, lambasted or endlessly hounded for explanations regarding their affiliations with these “incendiary”, White pastors.

Furthermore, the holy Billy Graham, second only to Mother Theresa or Shirley Temple as icons of virtue, cultivated personal friendships and acquaintanceships with nearly all the sitting Presidents dating back to Nixon, many times serving as their spiritual advisor. Despite a highly successful and charismatic career “building bridges” undoubtedly fueled by a sincere devotion and belief in his religion, Graham secretly harbored deeply anti-Semitic sentiments as evidenced by the recorded Nixon tapes of 1972 that were released by the US National Archives. In the tapes, Mr. Graham complained of a Jewish “stranglehold” on Hollywood and the media, which he urged “has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.” Graham continues:

“A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me, because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth, but they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."

The Reverend apologized in 2002 for these comments and publicly stated he regretted harboring such views. Applying the Obama-Wright standard of today, if indeed a Pastor’s inflammatory rhetoric and opinions can be readily transferable to his parishioners, then surely Regan, George Bush, George W. Bush and Clinton should be thoroughly vetted for potential strains of virulent anti-Semitism. [Carter, due to calls for “conversation” with Hamas and his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, has already been branded an anti-Semite.]

 Even Hillary Clinton, who routinely smears Obama with feigned elegance by suggesting had she hypothetically been in Obama’s shoes she “would have left [Wright’s] church”, confided she turned to Rev. Graham during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: 

“He was someone who could understand both Bill and me, and there aren't many people who can,” and he gave her confidence "that what I was doing, no matter what the rest of the world thought, was right. Right for me, right for my family and right for my country. And I will never forget that."

Applying the Obama-Wright standard perhaps Clinton’s Jewish supporters and lobbyists should not forget Graham’s anti-Semitism and critically re-examine, question and repeatedly test Clinton’s views regarding the Jewish people.

After analyzing this Reverend Wright spectacle in light of Obama’s entire campaign, the real kryptonite to Obama’s presidential aspirations was never Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan, “elitism” or questions of his political inexperience. It has been, is, and always will be race. A “Reverend Wright-esque Spectacle” concerning race and/or religion [Obama’s Arabic/Muslim name], if not now, then surely later would have erupted during the Presidential campaign. No matter what Obama does, says, doesn’t say, or doesn’t do, the racial parameters set by Whiteness have determined and will continue to determine his viability and success as a leader and a candidate.

When Obama refused to passionately and angrily distance himself from Wright, CNN commentators labeled him soft, passive, and unassertive. During the Pennsylvania primaries, when Obama took the offensive and ignited the critical, and many say “negative,” campaigning against Clinton, he was accused of losing his “Cool Hand Luke” aura and Zen calm and was instead “lashing out” under the strain of critical inquiry after failing to deliver the decisive “knockout blow” during the crucial final stretch. When Obama talked about “transcendence” and “moving forward” as a means of bridging the racial divide, his authentic Blackness came under review by doubting spectators because he sounded too conciliatory.  However, as of this week, due to Wright’s most recent comments, Obama was urged to abandon reconciliation, and instead  “passionately denounce” his former Pastor as to not appear both too soft or too radical.

Like Bagger Vance, the mystical and magical African American caddie played by Will Smith who inspires Matt Damon’s golf game, Obama is tolerable as long as he infuses the Democratic Party and the debased, scatological, two party election system with a superficial veneer of hope, optimism, vibrancy and youthful funk. After giving the elections his “funk” injection, he is expected, like Bagger Vance, to jig away into the sunset never to be heard from again as the White golfers resume their game. For those voters and pundits unable to look beyond their Whiteness, Obama’s greatest mistake was to actually pick up a club and start playing.

In playing this political game, Obama says he wants to stay clean and fair and not hit below the belt, even though many rightly label such rhetoric as hypocritical especially after observing some of his anti-Clinton television advertisements. However, Obama promised to no longer “throw elbows” and to instead elevate his game: "I told this to my team, that we are starting to sound like other folks. We're starting to run the same negative stuff and it shows that none of us are immune from this kind of politics.”

 If indeed Obama follows this strategy, his advisors should quickly remind him that the winning Presidential Gladiators of the American Political Arena are those who play in the sewers, shamelessly and recklessly slinging mud with a focused, single minded objective of out-smearing their opponents as to emerge the “cleaner” one amongst the “darkened” candidates. Nothing smears more permanently in the psyche of American voters than “Blackness.”

Aside from this Reverend Wright spectacle, one need only remember “Willie Horton,” the vile 1988 Bush vs. Dukakis benchmark of smear campaigning, and President George W. Bush’s camp cold calling voters during the 2000 Republican primaries and suggesting McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually his  “illegitimate black child.” It should surprise no student of American history and politics that in each three cases the candidate willing to stoop to the lowest common denominator in blatantly manipulating racial hysteria as an offensive weapon – George Bush Sr., Geroge Bush Jr., and now Hillary Clinton - gained significantly in the polls and eventually won their respective contests.

Following the cue given to him by the media and a polling populace born to think, reflect and vote in reaction to fear and panic, Obama caved and expressed “outrage” at Reverend Wright’s remarks and essentially severed his twenty year relationship with his former pastor.  This is the same pastor, mind you, who officiated Obama’s marriage, baptized his children, inspired Obama’s spiritual Christian rebirth and provided the title for Obama’s best selling memoir The Audacity of Hope, and most likely in some way encouraged Obama’s vision of remedying the egregious inequities still present in modern day America.  One of the tragedies of this situation is that Obama, the “dark” knight, had to choose between severing his twenty year friendship with a man he just last week considered a “family member” or keep his hopes for a presidential candidacy alive. As he severed the tie with Reverend Wright, who undoubtedly became political poison due to his ill-advised and self-serving speeches, Obama also eschewed any “real” dialogue about confronting America’s long festering racial and economic inequalities, which cannot easily be remedied with placating sound bites and digestible, comfort food polemics.

In this regards, Obama emerges a conflicted candidate, a man who desperately yearns to move “beyond race” but whose “transcendence” is anchored in stasis by his Blackness; a man who knows first hand the devastating and stymieing effects of a racist, imperialistic system of Whiteness, but must stay quiet as to appease and not terrify middle class Whites; a man expected to be both calm and peaceful, and is celebrated as such, yet admonished for a perceived passivity and lack of fiery aggression, whose rare emergence leads to denunciations of him being “angry,” “divisive,” and “uppity.”

I agree with many who state Reverend Wright’s appearances were politically foolish, selfish and detrimental to Obama’s campaign, and did next to nothing to quell White apprehension about Wright’s controversial sound bites. However, the “spectacle” of “Wright-gate” speaks volumes about a divided nation still unwilling to objectively confront the fundamental divides on race and class that plague every segment and institution of our society. Tragically, it illuminates the unrealistic character traits and the unfair double standards that mainstream Whiteness not only expects but demands from its “darker” citizens, especially those running for President. Finally, it reveals to all, for better or worse, that Obama is not the magical Bagger Vance; he is not the “Second Coming”; he does not walk on water, nor is he the infallible hero.

He is not Superman.

He is a politician.

And The Dark Knight rises.

Wajahat Ali is Pakistani Muslim American who is neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders,” (www.domesticcrusaders.com) is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/. He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com