On what Obama represents

Great to see Gail-Tzipporah get on board with a fascinating post today. I agree that it's time for the GOP to back away from how Obama may feel about radical movements that were active during his childhood.

I point to this fascinating Haaretz column, though, for the sort of perspective we often can only get from our friends who watch us from a distance.

Gail-Tzipporah's questions for Obama are perfectly fair. But I wonder if her fellow Republicans can digest honest answers in the proper spirit. Disdain for Obama will soon exceed Clinton-rage. It already may have, frankly. As Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston sarcastically puts it:

1. Vote against Obama because you fear and loathe Muslims

2. Vote against Obama because you fear and loathe Arabs.

3. Vote against Obama because you've had all you can take of affirmative action, immigrants, names which defy pronunciation, pluralism, and bend-over-backwards tolerance.

4. Vote against Obama because liberal Democrats are hypocritical wimps, not real Christians, and, in fact, closet gays - and deserve to be punished.

5. Vote against Obama because the New York media and Hollywood deserve to be exposed and disgraced.

6.Vote against Obama because in this day and age in America, white people get the short end of the stick.

7. Vote against Obama because the one group facing the worst discrimination is the community of believing Christian Republicans.

8. Vote against Obama because blacks hate whites.

9. Vote against Obama because even though Jews once helped blacks, blacks hate Jews.

10. Vote against Obama because the Left hates America. Because liberals are ruining America's core institutions, schools, the military, the economy.

I know, this will seem to be an unfair and chilling slam of anyone who dares question "The One." Then again, the sorts of insinuations being made about Obama are chilling in and of themselves.

Obama, as a black man, has been sensitive to the underdog. Some of his friends and associates are terribly angry about what has happened to some of our world's underdogs.

The GOP exploits this anger as a wedge issue, in order to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Obama is supposed to cut off all contact with angry people, and his willingness to be friends with an angry person is seen as a secret agenda that binds them all.

Obama may need to do a better job of explaining the nature of his relationships with them, but he does not need to apologize for being a person who's trying to bring different groups together -- even the angry ones. (And let's face it, no one is angrier today than neoconservatives who can never bring themselves to admit the hardships they've caused for millions of innocents; and I don't see McCain cutting all of them off...)