Desiderata

I must reprint this comment by desiderata on a Huffpo blog "Obama cracks my TV in half" by Adam McKay.

Desiderata 
Not everybody was so impressed by Obama's speech. Even now I am listening to Dan Abrams ignore the thoughtful analysis of the divisions among us to, instead, roast Barack for not acting more politically by villifying and defecating on the Reverand Wright.

Had Obama done exactly as Abrams and Tucker Carlson rebuked him for not doing, Barack would have been just another ambitious and phony politician, not the very human, considerate and thoughtful individual that a real President needs to be.

And as a former supporter of John Edwards, I rejected the notion that the last candidates left in the Democratic race were more than Republican-lite.

This morning, as much as I tried to resist, I heard and saw greatness. This cardboard image of Obama held in my mind filled-out, looked me in the eye and told me the truth about himself, myself, and what this nation loses if the media is allowed to destroy his candidacy through confusing us as to who is the candidate__Barack or his pastor.

And who among faithful churchgoers would desert their church because your pastor, priest, rabbi said some over-the-top things in sermon? Fallwell & Robertson declared 911 a deserving punishment for America for our sins. How many quit their congregations?

So, Obama loves the Reverand Wright but not everything preached. Sounds very Christian to me: Love the sinner but hate the sin.

But it was Obama's soul, laid out naked before us on television, that spoke of our divisions, life experiences and truths long shrouded in the shadows. He defined this morning what so many have struggled to comprehend. He suceeded in simultaneously exposing the wounds and having us look closely at the disease without turning away. He radiated the very "hope" for healing our society that I, before today, flipped off as just cheap political retoric.

I understand now, And I will gladly cast my Pennsylvania Primary vote__in the very core of Carville's "Little Alabama" for Barack Obama.

We all have heard of historical once-in-a-lifetime lives that changed the world for the better. Ghandi, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, FDR.

Barack Obama clearly has the insight, intelligence, courage and heartfelt desire for that better world. Compare with that politically calculating it's-all-about-me candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

Clinton attributes Obama's front-runner status to his lofty oratory. She is right. She can never match his way with words because his soul speaks for him while her speeches come from a political playbook.

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.

"But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. "__Barack Obama