Pastorgate plus Bittergate equals Obama's Exit Gate
By Monte Kuligowski (04/21/08)
Maybe it was women’s intuition that propelled Mona Charen to end her March 7, 2008 column, “How Does Obama Feel About America?” with the words: “One suspects that beneath the soothing talk, there is bitterness in the man that we'd best learn more about before voting.” As we learn more of the bitterness of Obama’s spiritual and political advisor, pastor, friend and putative uncle, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, one suspects that the fruit does not fall far from the tree. Like a crabapple tree, Obama had been flowering in the springtime of the campaign with pretentious show, but as the flowers of “hope and change” fade, there is no hiding the bitter crabapples.
Prior to the revelations of Wright (and of Obama’s current ties to the man and the church) and Obama’s links to other extreme leftists (e.g., William Ayers, his wife Michelle, etc.) it seemed that many were willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to Obama, concluding that his old Marxist and anti-American leanings were a thing of the past. But after the emergence of Pastorgate and Bittergate it is becoming increasingly clear that Obama’s anti-Americanism was not just a youthful phase of which he has outgrown.
Based on the newly discovered evidence, the presumption now is that Obama is unfit for the highest office in the land. Obama greatly desires to “move on” to the “issues,” however, there are no presidential issues involving Obama unless he gets past implications of racism, anti-Americanism and utter contempt for small town Americans. The content of one’s character is the preeminent issue of a presidential campaign. If he were a conservative and a member of a racist church for 20 years he no doubt would have been forced to resign as soon as the story broke. But no matter how hard the so-called mainstream media tries to prop Obama up as a viable candidate the collapse is inevitable.
Obama’s infamous words spoken to his fellow elitist friends in San Francisco on April 6 will haunt him until he drops out of the race (unlikely), gets beat by Hillary (hopefully) or gets trounced in the general election by McCain (providing that McCain figures out that he should not be defending Obama, but exposing him). Barack’s true feelings about heartland Americans came out in such a way and from such a context that a willing suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to overlook the man’s disdain for the “typical white person” (to borrow Obama’s phrase) in small town America.
Obama’s candid, yet “misspoken” words have been analyzed from every angle, with attention aptly given to the candidate’s use of the word “bitter” to explain why country folk “cling” to normal, everyday American traditions like religion and gun rights. No doubt, bitter is a significant word; however, in the analysis another even more significant word has been overlooked: The word “antipathy.”
In the words of the Democrat pop-star phenomenon in San Francisco: “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
First, Obama makes the mistake of believing that rural voters are like San Francisco liberals inasmuch as they look to the federal government to provide jobs, and in hard times are prone to becoming bitter. In Obama’s mind, the bitterness drives them to cling to things the elitist crowd would view as unsophisticated and dangerous: Real religion, gun ownership, and disapproval of illegal immigration and unilateral trade.
The real clincher from Obama’s soul-revealing words is that when those small town hicks get bitter they cling to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Let’s pause for a moment on the meaning of antipathy. No stronger word could be used to reveal Obama’s true feelings. The synonyms provided by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary for antipathy are: “disgust, abhorrence, detestation, hatred.” The proper label for people having antipathy, disgust, abhorrence, detestation and hatred “to people who aren’t like them” may be summed up with one word: Bigot.
While fundraising in San Francisco, Obama, with his high-and-mighty voice inflection and syntax, called the people of whom he looks upon with condescension nothing less than bitter bigots. It is one thing to infer unwisely that the unemployed are bitter. No rationale, however, exists to explain the leap from accusing people of being bitter to accusing people of harboring hatred toward people who are different – unless the accuser himself is a bigot.
Once small town Americans get the full import of what the Great Unifier was saying the likely response is going to be: Those are fighting words!
One might suspect, based on his choice of church for over 20 years, that Obama’s bitterness caused (and causes) him to cling to separatist religion and camouflaged antipathy to people who aren’t like him.
Indeed, Obama’s anti-American sentiments cannot be hidden under a bushel and his “misspoken” statements directed at a very large segment of Americans bear witness to the same.
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