“Look, this man was brought up basically in a white family, so whatever he learned or didn’t learn, I attribute this more to the influence of communism and socialism” than to his race, Giuliani told the Daily News.Is this statement racist? I suspect so, and I'm not known for being Mr. Hypersensitive on such matters. Giuliani seems to be saying that one would expect a black family to teach kids to be Marxist. I don't know about you, but when I visit the "mostly black" areas of town, I don't run into a lot of people who like to quote Das Kapital.
"...The ideas that are troubling me and are leading to this come from communists with whom he associated when he was 9 years old” through family connections.Obama knew communists when he was nine? Why isn't this fact mentioned in any of the Obama bios in my possession?
When Obama was 9, he was living in Indonesia with his mother and his stepfather. Giuliani said he was referencing Obama’s grandfather having introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party.
The former mayor also brought up Obama’s relationship with “quasi-communist” community organizer Saul Alinksy and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama's stepfather was an important aide to the CIA-installed dictator General Suharto. That's Rudy's idea of a communist?
Frank Marshall Davis does seem to have known Obama's maternal grandfather. This association did not transform the grandfather (a Kansas furniture salesman) into a Maxist, and I doubt that it had any impact on Obama.
Does Rudy really think that this acquaintance means that young Obama somehow contracted communist "cooties," and that the disease has stayed with him throughout his life? Ridiculous. That simply isn't how the world works. Even the John Birchers would laugh at that kind of inanity.
I met all kinds of people when I was nine. So what?
If it is fair to talk about someone that Barack Obama may or may not have met briefly at the age of nine, then it is certainly fair to talk about someone with whom Giuliani had an extremely close relationship over the course of many years.
Rudy Giuliani's father was seriously mobbed-up; he even did a spell in Sing-Sing. If we accept the contention that Obama must be a commie simply because his grandfather once knew a noted American lefty, then shouldn't we also presume that Rudy is a gangster?
Obama never met Saul Alinksi -- in fact, Alinski died when Obama was ten years old. Moreover, Alinski was not a communist or even a socialist. He was an anti-racist and a labor organizer. I've seen no evidence that Obama's thinking has been influenced by any Alinski writings. (For more on the rumored Obama-Alinski connection, see Snopes.)
By the way, Rudy: Jeremiah Wright is not a communist -- he's an asshole. Do your research.
3 comments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Wright_controversy
Not an asshole. If you look at the full context, he said things that were no more radical than anything you have written on this blog.
He was an inconvenience to Obama in 2008 and had to be thrown under the bus.
If Obama were a socialist, I'd have voted for him.
Michael,
Holy shit you're right. Jeremiah Wright got smeared. I had thought i understood what Wright had said, but obviously hadn't. I hadn't taken the time to look at the source material. I hadn't seen his words presented like that.
How sad that so many of us have been running around believing such a gifted black preacher was an asshole.
Everyone should read that Wikipedia article.
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