Good for you :)
 

Good point Tobold. However, I'm not sure that the Obama example is the best. Not all Americans and MMO players are Democrats.

There was nothing gutsy about Obama's speech. He failed to answer the central question: how could have he been a member of that church for 20 years and never have been aware of the hateful, anti-American comments of Pastor Wright. The very same pastor who he claims as a good close friend. The same pastor that baptized his children and officiated at his marriage.

He joined that Afro centric church for one reason only: to establish his career in politics *not* because he felt a spirtual connection. Being half-white, Harvard educated and raised in a white family and in a white neighborhood he so desperately needed the "street cred" of belonging to a black church in Chicago which is a rite of passage in the black community in Illinois. (Note: Even Oprah Winfrey left that church).

For a presidential candiate that wants to see America go beyond race and division, Obama has demonstrated a serious lack of character on this issue. A white politician would have never been allowed to get away with what he did. The biased media here in America would not allow it.

When you peel away the Kennedyesque exterior, Obama is nothing more than a typical Chicago politician. He's not the messiah.
 

Not all Americans and MMO players are Democrats.

Not all. But if only MMO players could vote, Obama would be president, they fall right into his core constituency.

He's not the messiah.

Which is actually why I'm warming up towards the guy. Previously he was in messiah mode, chanting "hope, hope, hope", and giving not much clue about how he actually wanted to make things better. The race speech went far beyond that, first time I've seen Obama in presidential mode, facing up to the realities. We're down from three candidates pretending to be white men to just two, Hillary and McCain. Now if Hillary could manage a good speech about what it would mean to have a female president, McCain could actually be in trouble.
 

Hi Tobold,

I don't know if you read The Onion, but if you found Obama's "Hope, Hope, Hope" chants annoying then you'll probably get a kick out of this article:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/black_guy_asks_nation_for_change
 

Trying this link again:

Black Guy Asks Nation for change
 

I think Hope is very important, and there have to be people to spread it, people like Martin Luther King for example. But the Presidency of the United States is an executive office, not a visionary one. I'm all for people in that office having hope, moral values, and even some vision. But in the end their job is to actually solve problems, to compromise, and to live with the realities to make things actually better. "Hope" or "Change" is not an actual policy, and if you elect somebody just because he promised you Hope and Change, without telling you how he'll achieve that, you're risking a nasty surprise.
 

@anonymous.

go read all of Martin Luther King's speeches. If what Pastor
Wright said pushed you over the edge you'll probably explode.

I will say this. IT's the first time in my 23 years of voting I've ever seeen a Democrat stand by his friends even when they made a mistake. He didn't say the pastor was right. He basically said he was human and that the church was full of differing viewpoints.

I'd hate to be your friend. I guess you'd throw me to the lions the first time I said something stupid. And unfortunately I'm human and I do that sometimes.
 

Executive offices are all about vision and direction, much less about implementation. If you killed off the executive team in any major corporation, nothing would change. Product would still be produced, shipped, and sold. The problem would come around when you wanted to change something.

America has been lacking a shared vision since the cold war / space race. We could really use one (that does not involve pigeon holing another country as the big bad enemy).
 

The one time I remember you making political comments, you essentially said people were voting for Obama because they feel guilty about black people. It marginalized his candidacy, his voters, and race relations in the US. It wasn't merely "bruised feelings," it was insulting. So I prefer if you didn't write as if you were some kind of politically conscious martyr.

With that said, I still wonder about Rev. Wright, but if you look at the content of his speeches, aside from the AIDS production by the government, they're not THAT radical (although the tone is much too hateful). America's done some pretty shady things, and many people are upset about it. It's not unAmerican to criticize America.
 

More wonderful remarks by Wright, he apparently hates Italians too:

"(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him," Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. "The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans."

Wright continued, "From the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth (in a barn in a township that was under the Apartheid Roman government that said his daddy had to be in), up to and including the circumstances surrounding Jesus' death on a cross, a Roman cross, public lynching Italian style. .."

What I don't get is how can Obama, or anybody, stand to be in Wright's presence? I have had friends who I realized were bile-filled hatemongers, ranting and raving (some of them only did this after you get a beer in them, but it only took one). I tend to push those people out of my life, since who wants to surround themselves with toxic people?

That said, I am not particularly offended by Wright, since I have heard the exact same sentiment many times from friends in theater or improv here in Chicago. The level of hate and bile and venom is astounding among people who claim to stand for love and justice. WWJD indeed.
 

The one time I remember you making political comments, you essentially said people were voting for Obama because they feel guilty about black people.

It was that statement that was particularly insulting. Tobold may believe it deep down, but was insulting nonetheless. He has every right to say it, but in one instance everything else he said about american politics was marginalized in my mind.

When you make a sweeping generalization like that, you lose credibility whether its politics or discussing WoW class mechanics.

I expect better from Tobold and was disappointed to read that, but I can't blame him for saying what he feels.
 

Regarding the quote from the S.F. Chronicle; well, yes, up to this point both Democrat candidates have taken turns dealing with verbal gaffes from advisors and supporters, and up to the point of the Wright 'eruption' both Obama and Clinton were taking turns 'repudiating' and 'cutting off conversation'. But suddenly when Obama's self-proclaimed mentor, 20-year-long-pastor, and member of his campaign, was exposed for racial comments, the game (supposedly) changed. As for Wright not being cut off / repudiated - when Obama repudiated things a preacher said from the pulpit, banished him from the campaign, and sent him into prolonged hiding - those actions look a lot like 'repudiation'!

An aside, I've been hearing it bantered-about in various circles that MLK said much worse than Wright, but no one has ponied-up with any actual quotes -- I re-read the 'I Have A Dream' speech this morning, and Wright isn't even close to the same league in content, depth, or talent. Maybe they're thinking of Malcolm X or Farrakhan?

Anyway, this Wright thing comes on the heels of Obama problems with candid comments from his wife, and of two advisors (NAFTA & "monster"), and additional revelations about Obama-Rezko ties... a trail of confirmation of politics-as-usual, Chicago-style. Obama, and his campaign, and his apologists have yet to explain what's to "understand" about Wright's comments, especially since Wright is an American child of privilege and education - as is Obama - with neither spending significant time in the American South. It's particularly odd that Obama is seemingly commended for wanting "conversation", when he and his campaign have been posturing to cut off conversation in cases like that of Don Imus (Rutgers comments), Bill Clinton (comments prior to the South Carolina primary), and Geraldine Ferraro (comments prior to the Mississippi primary).

Politics as usual, from both / all sides.
"Conversation" will continue, to be sure: Billary Clinton won't let this die, and neither will McCain or the 'Republican Attack Machine'.

And interesting to think about a European view on the Wright issue. With Christianity statistically on the wane in Europe, I wondered about the reaction to Obama's tight ties to such a pastor and radical theology.
I'm pretty sure that if Obama's church was in some EU countries it would be labeled a dangerous sect, and Wright might sound to them hauntingly like the speeches of radical Imams they are dealing with...

Oh, and hang in there, Tobold!
 

The one time I remember you making political comments, you essentially said people were voting for Obama because they feel guilty about black people.

There you misrepresent what I said. I was just remarking that his claim that he was the first post-race candidate was a false one. And I was right, now everyone is talking about race, while many commenters on that thread said "race doesn't matter". Of course it does!
 

I'm not at all a fan of Barack Obama. This is where *not* being American comes in as an advantage. Europeans don't have the same sense of guilt towards African Americans. Electing somebody just because he is black seems like a bad idea to me.

That was the original comment. Was it misinterpreted or just very poorly articulated? You tell us.
 

Not my best formulation, but there is no direct connection between the guilt thing and the election thing. If Obama is elected, his race *will* have played a large role.
 

And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place."
 

Do I equate wright and king. NO.

But if every man in this world were judged based on the most inflamatory thing they've ever said. We'd all be in the same boat.

if you can show me years and years of stuff like you can on Farrakhan. Then bring it on. If all you have is one speech that the clinton camp wants to focus on. I think that says as much as the speech does.

Abraham Lincoln is on record as being worried that black people might not be able to function in society as free men. Does that lessen the fact that he overcame that and did free them?

And we are talking about branding not the man who said it but one of his friends. Obviously Aethiests talking here. Or someone who doesn't practice thier own religion. One or the other.
 

Tobold, I hope you see the difference in noting that race will be a factor, and saying that whites are voting for a black man due to guilt. Of course race will be a factor just like gender will be for Clinton. Every aspect of a person's platform, character, personality and looks is a factor in presidential election. You aren't breaking any new ground with a statement like that.

Bruise feelings if you want to have a true dialogue, I get that. But if you claim to be on some moral high ground on the issue of race due to being a European, be prepared to defend that assertion. It's a strong claim with no basis of fact behind it, which you certainly did not provide. It very much resembled flame bait, which is why I thought it was a low point for your blog.

I'll take that last response as a tacit retraction :)
 

@Tobold
I agree with the original comments you were making towards offending someone. It is simply IMPOSSIBLE to have an intelligent conversation that brings true issues to light without offending someone, somewhere in the world. It seems, someone will ALWAYS take offence to something you said.

That said, I think its important to try to think of others feelings and avoid hateful speech, but we really need to get off the PC tip-toeing around we do with our speeches. I also think that MANY (and I do mean MANY) people/groups use "I'm offended" to really mean "I don't agree with you and therefore you should retract that statement because its detrimental to my ideology/stance/platform/etc".

As for the presidential race, I'm a policy person first and foremost. I think the President should have vision and share that vision with Americans but he/she also has to know what he is doing. I've personally only seen 1 of the 3 candidates currently who has proposed solid sounding ideas with specific details (not that I agree with all these ideas mind you) while the others seem to be able to talk for 30 min and say very little substantial.

I think Obama is a charismatic and likeable guy, but I don't see anything in his history/credentials/speeches that leaves me to believe he would know how to handle one of the biggest governments in the world, much less tackle some enourmous issue like our broken Medicare system. Same goes for the other 2 candidates for that matter. Thats why I was really disappointed when Mitt Romney dropped out b/c he was a candidate with REAL experience in running large corporations and governments and lends real credibility to his objectives.

Alas...here we are. Guess I'll be picking the lesser of the evils this year.
 

@Tobold,

People come to your blog voluntarily, because they like how you think. It's amazing to think someone would even ASK you to change something you wrote.

The free-ness of the Internet has bred a huge sense of entitlement.

As far as the current political race, it's reminiscent of a forum flamewar. There is no real hope of persuading people on different sides, but people will escalate the intensity and inventiveness of their attacks in an effort to do so.
 

As far as the current political race, it's reminiscent of a forum flamewar. There is no real hope of persuading people on different sides, but people will escalate the intensity and inventiveness of their attacks in an effort to do so.

Now I'm obviously badly placed to say this, because I'm doing just the opposite. But I'd consider a discussion of the merits and policies of the next President of the United States to be more important than lets say the "nerf Warlocks" debate on the WoW forums. Because at the end of the day whether Warlocks are nerfed or not doesn't change anything, but who becomes President can change world history. The minor differences between Hillary and Obama's health care plans could kill more people than the whole World of Warcraft could ever cause. It is actually a bit sad that most people on the internet are easier to excite about games than about politics.
 

Sam,

Of course Wright is nowhere near the class of MLK. For example, Wright is hiding because he claims that his safety is jeopardy, but MLK persisted right up to his assassination. Wright won't even speak to the press via phone, but MLK was speaking out in the open right up to the end.
And actually, 'war crimes' claims are rather standard fare of U.S. politicians right now who oppose the Iraq War and Gitmo!

I'm not offended when someone like Wright expresses an opinion, but when they openly subscribe to conspiracy theories and spew black supremacist anti-white and anti-Semitic stuff, then I lump them in with conspiracy kooks and all other anti-Semites and supremacists, including white ones. I would reject a presidential candidate who was a disciple of David Duke (KKK); I'll have to 'pass' on a presidential candidate who calls Wright their "mentor".

Wright has a close association with Farrakhan, even giving the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan. Now does one give an award bearing their name to someone whom they agree with, or disagree with?

Obama didn't back away from calling for the repudiation and firing of people like Don Imus, for one diatribe in the Rutgers episode, but he applies a double-standard when he treats Wright differently. That brings up the question of 'character' - are moral and ethical principles applied with the blindfold of justice, or are they applied depending on skin color?

The press had a field day back when it was claimed that Reagan slept through staff meetings. But Obama sat in the pews of a church for 20 years and didn’t hear anything? Obama's honesty is called into question when he changed his story about what he heard in his church (much like Clinton's Bosnia story-change). We do know that this church was where the bulk of Obama's charitable contributions went, and people typically give to those organizations which they agree with and believe in.

Obama's apologists try to make the case that the Wright episode is 'guilt by association'. Then they turn around and try to link other candidates to lobbyists, etc... guilt by association.

The bottom line:
This isn't just about Wright sound bites, but about Obama's claims about 'words count' and about his judgment, which are both seriously undermined by his admission that Wright is his mentor - which carries a meaning of advisor, guide, teacher. Now we know more of what this teacher is teaching, what this church stands for, and the underpinning theology. Personally, my viewpoint on the situation was much more influenced by research into Black Liberation Theology, and seeing how that worldview correlates with Obama's legislative voting record (when he did get around to voting) and his speeches, and his wife's candid comments, than Wright sound bites.
The 'fruit' of the 'association' is pretty obvious to me.
 

well I'm glad to know your opinion is more than 2 inches deep. I'd just like to see that same level of detail applied to both the other candidates. I hear a lot of people obsesing about this when both of the other candidates have far bigger skeletons in thier closet.

I suspect it's because those skeletons have been rattled so many times over the years everyone is used to them and this is the new thing to freak out over.

Only time will tell whose right and whose wrong. And thank god any of the 3 possibles , obama, hillary , or mccain will be a major improvement over the current president.
 

@Sam

LOL...I think only time will tell if any of these 3 candidates WILL be a major improvement over our current President.

A short but very important example is if one of them pushes out a new govt healthcare system (which is not even part of the constitutional right of the Federal govt to do but I must be splitting hairs). This is the same govt that abused and broke our current Medicare system so I'm curious as to why ANYONE in their sound mind and judgement could possibly think our govt could get it right with now covering everyone below the age of 65. The thought is laughable and extremely scary.

Another is implementing over-restrictive policies because of supposed 'man-made global warming' that might strangle our energy producing capabilities so that you and I have to wait 2 hours in line at the gas pump.

Hmmm...I'm sorry Sam, but based on what I'm hearing from all 3 candidates, I just feel more afraid for our future with one of them than I currently do with Bush.
 

"Not my best formulation, but there is no direct connection between the guilt thing and the election thing. If Obama is elected, his race *will* have played a large role."

That's some pretty weak rationalizing and back-peddling. Your previous quote clearly implied that Americans voting for a black man did so because they felt guilty and that being a European you were able to spot this "truth." In that post many, many people replied giving you evidence and examples that such a belief was erroneous. The most frustrating part was not only what you said, but your apparent lack of willingness to listen and learn from people much more familiar with the situation than you are.

You have a very good grasp on MMO issues, which is why people come and visit your blog, but your understanding of American politics leaves a lot to be desired.
 

It is impolite, immature, and unfortunately very common on the internet, to pretend that if somebody doesn't agree with your opinion, he simply is too stupid to have understood the issue.

What I am saying is that people, especially liberals, both in Europe and in the USA have feelings of guilt towards groups of the population which suffered injustice in the past. And these feelings of guilt often result in overcompensation: if you are a member of a minority that suffered injustice in the past, you can now get away with things you couldn't get away with if you were part of the majority demographics.

In the case of Obama you *will* hear some people saying that they vote for him "because it is time that a black man got elected" or a similar formulation. But if you look at it completely rational, there is no reason why color of skin should play any role at all in getting elected to the office of POTUS. (Neither should gender) If Obama is the most qualified person for the job, he should get it. If he is even minimally less qualified than the competition, he shouldn't get over the hurdle with a couple of "affirmative action" votes.
 

Not that it matters who gets the nomination or how, "they" will get "their" president in office whoever wins. The election is just a "circus" to go with the "bread" to give the illusion of freedom.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/wasdin/wasdin10.html
 

@Tobold
I couldn't agree with you more. The sheer fact that the majority of the Hispanic population is supporting Clinton (b/c she has been courting them) and the majority of the Black populaion is supporting Obama, shows that race certainly has something to do with this race. The irony is that the Democratic Party is 'supposed' to be race neutral and 'for the little guy' but here we are with the biggest race-inspired topic in this decade and its all within the same party that is supposed to unite these groups.

A President should be elected on ideologies and experience and vision not on skin pigmentation, age, or gender. Unfortunately, the former is certainly playing a role for some...but not for me.

@Paul
While I agree that both parties do take advantage of groups or peoples to get votes, I find that website you linked to be overly-anarchist and too outrageous to believe.

For some reason, the conspiracy theorists seemed to get alot of press in this day and age. Its probably b/c people feel dis-enfranchised when everything in TV/MOVIES and even in WoW portray every person as being able to 'make a difference' in the world. The fact is, your singular vote will make a difference and so will your neighbor's but you won't 'feel' it the same way as if you moved off to an island and established a 'new state'.