New York Times Worships Hussein As Mandela
Politico:
The executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, sees “unmistakable” similarities between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, he said in a podcast interview on the paper’s website.
The interview, done for the New York Times Book Review, is on the subject of Keller’s young adult biography of Nelson Mandela, whom he covered. Asked about Obama, Keller calls him “fascinating.”
Keller said Obama and Mandela share a rhetorical style, not always riveting, but always “appealing to the higher sense of purpose and history.”
And he said both “somehow rose above race while still clearly being black.”
I transcribed the brief portion of the interview, pointed out to me by a reader, which you can listen to here (.mp3).
You want to be careful about drawing historical parallels between societies that are so different, but there are a couple of similarities that, if you watch what happened South Africa, that are unmistakable in the Obama campaign.
One is the inspirational quality of it. Mandela, like Obama, although he wasn’t always the most riveting public speaker, was the kind of speaker who didn’t dwell on the details of his ten-point program, but went for emotional lift. He was appealing to the higher sense of purpose and history in his public appearances, as Obama does.
And the other thing is that both of them, in a way, transcended race — at least, to a degree transcended race. Colin Powell used to use this line when people used to try to draw him into conversations abot race and what it was like to be the first black secretary of state, the first black this, the first black that, and he would say, “I ain’t that black.”
And what I think what he meant by that was not just that he was light-skinned, but that he didn’t grow up as preoccupied by race as a lot of other African-Ameircans who rose to prominence.
And Something of the same thing can be said about either Mandela or Obama — that they somehow rose above race while still clearly being black.
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And he said both “somehow rose above race while still clearly being black.”
Give me a break. Racism is a thriving business in the “black community”. osama/obama is a 20 year member of an afro centric black separatist church which has NO non-blacks sitting in the pews. His preacher is a racist clown who just awarded louie farrakhan a lifetime achievement award. He hasn’t risen above anything, least of all race. In a nut shell, except for the fact that osama/obama’s deadbeat father was from Kenya, and he spews the same emotional bullshit Mandela does, there isn’t much else he has in common with Mandela. And just like Mandela, his promises are empty political rhetoric. This country is soooooo screwed.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:01 pm