The Dish

Heilemann notes the real differences between Clinton’s shrewd 1992 gambit and Obama’s quandary with Wright. One other thing perhaps worth saying: the "government created AIDS" meme is both an appalling lie and actually, sadly, still very prevalent among urban African-Americans. Anyone who has had even the slightest contact with HIV work in the inner city knows this. It’s part insane paranoia, part racial poison, and part the legacy of Tuskegee. But it’s real. Wright’s nuttiness is less remarkable in that context, although it doesn’t make it any less inexcusable, of course. The difficult question is how you reach and engage inner city residents on these matters if you do not sometimes acquiesce in the sub-cultural memes that endure and make sense to them. I think you have to challenge it head-on, but I understand a pragmatic attempt to ignore this stuff if  that’s what it takes to reach otherwise very marginalized groups.

I guess the broader point is that any politician trying to represent all these factions: white, black, urban poor, suburban middle class, prosperous yuppies, et al will have to contain contradictions that will offend and shock some people. Part of Obama’s promise is his attempt to bring all these people along. But that’s risky. With that expansive goal, the baggage increases. And it can shift in flight and hit you on the head if you’re not careful.

All great video techniques were once mastered and pioneered by Michel Gondry:

A joke forwarded to me today:

One line summary of Obama’s speech yesterday: “I did not have pastoral relations with that man.”

It spreads to a trucking company in Switzerland. Or was it the other way round?

A tip: while running for Congress don’t speak at a party in honor of Hitler’s birthday.

(hat tip: Megan)

A critique from the Annenberg Center. I have to say, though, that if Jeremiah Wright’s words are to be the basis on which this election is decided, then John McCain’s words count too.

Above is one of Paul Rothemund’s origami sculptures. They are crafted out of folded DNA strands and photographed by an atomic-force microscope. 

Hilzoy looks at the legal complications a couple is facing because the husband has changed his sex after 25 years of marriage:

Imagine losing your kids because a court decides that your marriage, which was valid when you had them, is not valid any longer. Imagine further the joys of living in a state where it’s not clear what the legal status of your marriage after transition is: whether, in the eyes of the law, a man who has become a woman is (a) still a man, and therefore in a standard heterosexual marriage, appearances to the contrary, or (b) a woman, in which case your marriage might no longer be valid, and you might be liable at any time to lose custody rights over your kids, inheritance, the right to make decisions for your spouse if she becomes incapacitated, and so on.[…]

This is just grotesque. If you’re legally married, the status of your marriage should not be altered by taking hormones or having surgery. Neither should your custody rights, or your right to inherit.

Of course, that’s right. And yet it isn’t close to being true in 49 states.

Hope over fear – back in 2004. Now, it’s fear all the way. Hey, it works for the Clintons so it can’t be wrong, right?

In Jeremiah Wright’s own words from March last year:

Q: He knew you a long time before he responded to an altar call. What do you think moved him to do that?

A: I don’t know. I would like to — somebody said last week did you ever think one of your sermons would be used as a mantra in a Democratic convention speech and a title to a book of a presidential candidate? No, I did not. I think, okay, if I were a person caught up in ego I would say "my powerful preaching." I think it’s that he found a church that — and you know he checked out a lot of churches. And probably more the conversations we had outside of church, and outside of the sermons, than my preaching or worship experience –he found a church that was firmly committed to both arms of the cross. The personal spirituality, the personal piety, and the social action — that when the benediction was over, what are you doing?

As he mentions from time to time, the Free South Africa sign caught his attention. What’s a church on South Side Chicago? Most people don’t even know where Johannesburg is. They think it’s in Mississippi somewhere. Steve Biko? You’re talking about Steve Biko? Black consciousness movement? Who’s Nelson Mandela? Well, after Tutu and Mandela became media events — but here we were in the ’70s talking about it. That fascinated him, because the average church was talking about the pastor’s anniversary and chicken dinners and car washes. And here we are talking about the connectedness of the people of God across the globe. That intrigued him.