Barack Obama yesterday delivered a crucial speech to try to explain why he spent 20 years sitting in the church pews listening to racist rants from his radical black preacher. I believe Obama did a poor job of explaining his lack of judgement- but in the process he did something much worse. He violated a code of privacy and ethics. Worse, the person he violated was his own Grandmother. But hey, when you’re running for President- anything goes.
What he actually did was throw his own white grandmother under the bus- in order to explain away his shortcomings. I’ll bet Grandma is proud this morning. Her own grandson served her up for public humiliation and scorn as a racist by publicly disclosing private conversations he had with her years ago. He served Grandpa up as a scapegoat to explain away the hate and venom towards white America coming from his preacher. But I thought bleeding heart liberals believe “two wrongs don’t make a right?â€�
Obama threw Grandma under the bus to save his own Presidential ambitions. How loving. How loyal. How classy. Worse, Obama is trying to compare what a person says in private to her own grandson…to his preacher’s public racist rants made to a congregation of thousands, and perhaps a television audience of hundreds of thousands more. What an absurd comparison. Is anyone buying? I sure hope not.
Actually, the worst part of all is that we’ll never know if Obama’s Grandmother said anything truly racist or offensive. After all, we weren’t there. Maybe she never said a thing wrong- maybe Obama, as a mixed-race child going through identity crisis, only took the comments as racist. Maybe what she said is perfectly acceptable to most Americans. Maybe the problem is his attitude towards race. Maybe he’s just overly sensitive. But no matter- Grandma is now road-kill. She was sacrificed at the alter of political expediency. Someone had to be sacrificed- why not someone that loved you, trusted you, and sacrificed for you? No wonder people think politicians are vicious. No wonder people think politicians would eat their own to achieve victory. They’re right.
Time to compare Obama’s confessions about his Grandma with mine. Just like Obama, I grew up living in the same home with my Grandparents. Just like Obama, my Grandmother was like a second mother to me. Just like Obama, my Grandmother sacrificed everything and anything for me. Just like Obama, I grew up a blue-collar kid with nothing- but was saved when my Grandparents paid for me to attend private school in my last 2 years of high school. My Grandparents’ sacrifice saved my life- they rescued me from a violent, dangerous, drug-infested public school in Mt Vernon, New York (on the Bronx borderline). You know, those same urban public schools that Barack never attended(he attended rich private prep schools in Hawaii). Those same public schools that are failing miserably across the country- yet Barack wants to raise your taxes and spend billions more to force your children to attend.
But I digress. Back to my Grandmother Meta Reis- the most wonderful Grandma any boy has ever had. She may have said some things privately that I disagreed with, or that I found offensive. But you’ll never know about them. Because I would never violate her privacy. I’m not the kind to rat out granny. I love her too much to criticize her and expose her memory to public scorn and humiliation. I cherish my memories of my Grandmother. I wouldn’t share a word that she ever said in private…with millions of strangers. I would never throw my Grandma under the bus.
The irony is my Grandmother is long dead (she died in 1993). And I still would do nothing to harm her reputation. Barack’s Grandmother is still alive. How terrible. Did she hear that speech? What did she think? She was lucky enough to raise a Grandson that might someday be President- and he used his soapbox in front of tens of millions to hold his living Grandmother up to public ridicule as a racist? All because he wasn’t man enough to finally end his relationship with a racist white-hating, America-hating, Farrakhan-loving demagogue. How sad. So is this the infamous “changeâ€� that Barack stands for? Sounds like the “politics of oldâ€� to me- make an excuse, find a scapegoat. But using your private conversations with your own Grandma as the scapegoat- well that is a new low, even for a politician. Just think about this for awhile- if a politician would sell out his own Grandma, think what he’ll do to you.
