Had it not been for all the myriad little things I have needed to do these past few days, I might have found the time to sit down and read Senator Obama’s much heralded speech on race and so write the post I want to write about why, in my mind, the speech dodges the real issue and raises serious questions about the charismatic presidential candidate’s leadership abilities.

In the world of instant communication, sometimes, when you have (what you believe to be) a great thought, the likelihood is that someone else has it as well. So, if you delay in posting on this topic, someone else will. And in this case, someone else did. In a piece on National Review on Friday, Stephen Sprueill pretty much echoed my thoughts when he wrote:

What bothers me is that we don’t have any evidence — either an old letter or a statement from the campaign — that Obama ever confronted his friend and tried to change his mind. Such confrontations can grate on friendships, if they happen frequently enough, and especially if they concern trivial matters. But here we have a situation where a friend of Obama’s was spreading poisonous beliefs to a congregation that included Obama’s own daughters. Obama was in a unique position to lead by asking his friend to reconsider some of his hateful and paranoid ideas.

Given those hateful and paranoid ideas, I had a brief thought which I wanted to whip off before I set out for an event I’m coordinating this evening. This weekend, reading a post on Instapundit about the speech and a “conversation on race,” I realized that if we need to have that conversation, we begin with the greatest speech on race in American history, indeed, one of the greatest speeches in all American history, so I did a brief post linking Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

If we have a conversation on race, we should have an idea of the goals of that conversation. And Dr. King verbalized them:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
. . . .
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Contrast that hopeful vision with the Reverend Wright’s angry rhetoric and you see the true greatness of Dr. King. Dr. King, born 14 years before Wright, saw the same kind of prejudice which, in Senator Obama’s view, justified his pastor’s rage. Yet, Dr. King did not give into despair.

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I was delighted that my Friday post, Booing & Shouting: Standard Liberal Discourse? inspired such a spirited discussion though sometimes I wish that those who defended my points would use less colorful language in taking on those who disagreed with me.  More often than not, they make some very sound arguments whose points are sometimes obscured by their occasional vitriol.

 

While our critics did, from time to time, make some good points, they never succeeded in bringing cases apposite to the discussion.  I blogged about university students booing and/or shouting down speakers who offer perspectives at odds with the prevailing left-wing worldview.

 

One reader claimed that conservatives did this too, linking a story about students booing a liberal Congressman delivering an anti-war speech.

 

And indeed, conservatives did boo Congressman William “Lacy” Clay when he addressed the University of Missouri-St. Louis on May 13, 2006.  But, what distinguishes this situation from those referred to in the post is that that liberal Democrat delivered a Bush-bashing anti-war speech as a commencement ceremony.

 

Why did he see fit to inflict his opinions on students celebrating their graduation?  Shouldn’t a commencement speaker off remarks, reflecting the occasion, the commencement (beginning) of their adult lives and offer them sage advice and words of inspiration for the journey ahead.

 

Instead, he chose to politicize what should have been a non-partisan event where students of all political stripes sit together and celebrate the achievement of completing a stage of their education.  The stories I referenced involved lectures that, while open to the public, were not mandatory events.  If the students didn’t like the speakers, they didn’t have to attend.  If they disagreed with their (the speakers’) ideas, they could ask questions after the talk.

 

Why is it that so many liberals (and yes, a number on the right) wish to politicize everything, turning what should be a speech about the future to an angry harangue about a president and policy they don’t like?  Perhaps, it was boorish for Missouri students to boo their commencement speaker.  But, it was certainly disrespectful of the Congressman to deliver at angry, partisan address at a non-partisan celebratory forum.

 

For the past three years or so, I have had two Internet main portals (as well as great variety of minor ones) for getting the news. And I realized (yet again) today that the more mainstream of the two, Yahoo!’s homepage, was more biased than the one with a more partisan (if libertarian-conservative could be called partisan) edge.  Over at Instapundit, at least Glenn Reynolds regularly links pieces critical of Republicans.

 

 It seems that nearly every headline related to the Iraq War on Yahoo!‘s homepage offers bad news about the situation there.  If there is a critical article on McCain somewhere anywhere, Yahoo! will list it as among the top headlines.  Just as they list any report critical of the Bush Administration, even from a Soros front group.  

 

Just now, they spin the latest news in Pakistan to make it appear a setback for the US:  Pakistani judges freed; power slips away from U.S. ally Musharraf.  (Note the less loaded headline on the article itself.)  But, if power “slipping away from a stalwart U.S. ally” is it going to anti-American forces?  The reporter calls the Bush Administration a “staunch supporter of Musharraf,” but doesn’t mention that the president pushed for free elections there.

 

Look, Yahoo!’s editors have every right to lead with whatever headlines they choose, but the more they offer headlines which fit their worldview, the more people will choose other sources for the news. And the more they encourage conservative readers to seek sources with an edge.  But, at least some of those right-of-center sources “deign” to link articles critical of the party with which they are affiliated or whose candidates they more readily support.

 

Last week, I met a reader visiting LA from the East Coast at a Farmers Market coffee shop.  When we decided to drive to dinner, I asked him where he had parked his car.  He replied that he left at it a lot near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).  “You walked here?” I said incredulously, then realized that journey was just over three blocks (though one of them quite long).

 

Only in hearing the incredulity in my own voice did I realize how adapted I have become to LA’s car culture.  We take it as a given that if you’re going anywhere you drive.  Hence that delicious scene in LA Story where Steve Martin‘s Harris K. Telemacher drives to his next door neighbor’s house.

 

Once I drove to a hardware store, fewer than two blocks away.  Of course, then, that was my first stop among many errands that day.

 

Perhaps, realizing that I drove way too much, I decided to go for a walk today around my neighborhood, something I did regularly when I was new to Southern California.  It is a pleasant neighborhood with attractive bungalows, colorful gardens and a great variety of foliage, some native to the region, some from tropical locales, other plants the flora of American suburbia.

 

It was a pleasant stroll.  Once I set off, I started noticing things that I might otherwise have missed.  A yard (well, more properly, a driveway) sale almost hidden behind the trees between the sidewalk and the street.  Beyond the privacy bushes in one alleyway, I saw what I thought was the top of a modern sculpture.  I peered over a nearby fence to discover what looked like a trampoline on its side.

 

And then there were the people.  An elderly couple who had turned an outdoor landing of their building’s stairways into a balcony.  New parents awkwardly putting their child into what may have been a new stroller.  Russian men playing chess and checkers in a public park.  A lesbian couple giggling in the threshold to a public building, each wearing stockings which matched her outfit, but clashed with her friend’s.

 

It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.  Because the distances are so great in LA, we do need a car to get around.  Of my closest friends here, the one who lives nearest to me is a 20-minute drive away–without traffic.  With traffic, it can sometimes take two hours to get to the home of another.  

 

That said, today’s lesson was that I, for one, need to walk more.  And that it may well again be time to watch LA Story.