19th Mar 2008
Macca mess and pacca lies
What an outburst. Can’t remember the last time a judge slammed a divorcee like he did Heather Mills. The headlines are awful, her reputation is in tatters and the sympathy rating zero.
Another first today with the multiple front page apologies to the McCann’s following over 100 reports which blamed them for their daughters disappearance. I can’t remember this ever happening before.
Last night Barack Obama sought to inject some substance into his style with key note speech on race in the US. According to USNews.comthe speech has received rave reviews across the States. I’ll be keeping an eye on Real Clear Politics to see if it results in a bounce.
Here is a summary of responses:
The Politico reports Obama “said the clips of Wright’s sermons that have aired repeatedly in the last week were not simply controversial but instead ‘expressed a profoundly distorted view of the country.’ Wright has expressed anger about what he considers a racist America, and placed blame on the government for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the spread of HIV/AIDS.” Obama acknowledged “his presence in the church during some of Wright’s controversial remarks. He did not, however, detail how he responded to those comments at the time.”
The New York Times reports in a front page story that Obama “delivered a sweeping assessment of race in America. It was the most extensive speech of his presidential campaign devoted to race and unity, a moment his advisers conceded presented one of the biggest tests of his candidacy.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama “addressed race relations at length, an issue that has come to the forefront of his presidential campaign in recent weeks, and one that all candidates have, until now, hesitated to tackle head on.”
The AP notes Obama addressed “both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet a campaign uproar over race and his former pastor’s incendiary statements.” The Washington Post reports in a front page story that Obama “delivered a blunt and deeply personal speech here Tuesday about racial division in America as he sought to quell a political controversy that threatens to engulf his presidential candidacy.”
The Los Angeles Times (3/18, Neuman, 881K) reports Obama said that “the videotaped ’snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube,’ or the ‘caricatures being peddled by some commentators,’ distort Wright’s appeal. ‘The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor.’”
Analysis Questions Whether He Achieved His Political Goals. On ABC World News, Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said the speech was “enough to reassure the relatively affluent, liberals and independents, who are already with Barack Obama. They might have been worried. But this reassured them. He’s been having a bigger problem with white, working-class voters. And the problem, the fact that Senator Obama sat in those pews for twenty years is not going to sit well with them.”
The New York Times reports in an analysis story, “Democratic and Republican strategists, scholars, and voters all agreed that Mr. Obama had given a brave, incisive speech about one of the topics most difficult to address in American life. But nearly all of them expressed doubt that his address will fully put to rest the firestorm over Mr. Wright’s statements.”
The Politico says in an analysis piece that the speech “counts as a remarkable event - most of all for the specificity with which Obama discussed racial attitudes and animosities that politicians usually prefer to leave unmentioned,” while the AP says Obama “doubtlessly raised eyebrows in many circles, however, with a populist pivot that named a new villain in the racial divide. ‘Black anger’ and ‘white resentments,’ he said, have ‘distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze: a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed.’”
On the CBS Evening News, correspondent Jeff Greenfield said, “How does a guy who spends 20 years with somebody with some notions that seem very bizarre like AIDS is a government conspiracy, what’s he doing with that guy for 20 years?” On NBC Nightly News, Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart said, “To have” Obama’s speech “out there, out in the open and in black and white for people to read for years to come, I think is a very important gift the Senator has given the country.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough added, “The question is not how we are going to react in Georgetown or Manhattan or other areas; it’s how they’re going to react in Youngstown, Ohio; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Jacksonville, Florida. These are the Reagan Democrats, that voted for Bill Clinton twice, that voted for Ronald Reagan, twice, voted for George W. Bush twice. There is white resentment there.”
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