is that the man isn't a liar, he's a bullshitter in Harry Frankfurt's sense -- he has no regard for the truth one way or the other. He isn't intent on deceiving you, he just wants to tell you whatever he needs to to get along and get what he wants. This has a lot in common with Shelby Steele's various discussions of Obama as a "bargainer", a man without an authentic identity, and an "invisible man".
Barack Obama was up to his old bullshitting again last night, in his interview with Larry King. It is well known that Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity Church are very much not your typical black church. Jeremiah Wright is a pioneer of "Black Liberation Theology", he's a former member of the Nation of Islam, and he's the one who very controversially introduced many of the themes of Black Nationalist Muslims into the black Christian church. If fact, every aspect of the Trinity church are centered around the racist themes of "Black Liberation Theology" which many Christians must understand as fundamentally sacrilegious in their racist distortions of the Christian creed.
Jeremiah Wright himself says that his church was very much outside the mainstream of black churches in Chicago, as he explains in this interview:
UPDATE: I call it bullshit, Charles Krauthammer calls it fraud. Also -- Powerline calls "bullshit" on the post-modern "narrative" dodge used by Jeremiah Wright's racist successor at Barack Omama's church.
UPDATE: McClatchy takes a look inside Obama's "conventional" church:
Barack Obama was up to his old bullshitting again last night, in his interview with Larry King. It is well known that Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity Church are very much not your typical black church. Jeremiah Wright is a pioneer of "Black Liberation Theology", he's a former member of the Nation of Islam, and he's the one who very controversially introduced many of the themes of Black Nationalist Muslims into the black Christian church. If fact, every aspect of the Trinity church are centered around the racist themes of "Black Liberation Theology" which many Christians must understand as fundamentally sacrilegious in their racist distortions of the Christian creed.
Jeremiah Wright himself says that his church was very much outside the mainstream of black churches in Chicago, as he explains in this interview:
I am not your typical garden-variety African-American clergy person, and because I'm not -- [Obama] was talking about organizing the churches in those early days. I said, man, you don't know who you're talking to. They don't like me. I'm not well liked in the city of Chicago, so you tell them you're a member of Trinity, you're going to turn off preachers before they ever get to know you, 'cause they're going to associate you with me, and just that association could be a negative in terms of how you are perceived in their eyes before you open your mouth -- "Oh, you go to Jeremiah's church." That kind of negative imaging I said might be harmful to him in terms of what he was trying to do in building coalitions and getting other churches to do things, again, for the benefit of the people. That would never happen just because they're going to associate your name with mine.Contrast the truth about Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church with this bullshitting by Barack Obama about his church on Larry King:
the church that I have attended for 15 years is a very conventional Christian church, a African-American church, squarely grounded in the tradition of the African-American church, that we talk mostly about Christ and salvation and sin and mercy and justice and hope.This isn't intentional deception, this is bullshit. Obama assumes the audience doesn't need to be deceived, it's an ignorant audience with a desire to believe a particular thing, and Obama is more than happy to tell them what they want to believe. He gets what he wants (at the price of being genuine) and the audience gets what it wants (at the price of being bullshitted), and everyone feels good about themselves. It's all bullshit, but it buys everyone what they "bargained" for, as explained by Shelby Steele.
UPDATE: I call it bullshit, Charles Krauthammer calls it fraud. Also -- Powerline calls "bullshit" on the post-modern "narrative" dodge used by Jeremiah Wright's racist successor at Barack Omama's church.
UPDATE: McClatchy takes a look inside Obama's "conventional" church:
Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation. Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church ..Via Instapundit via Gateway Pundit. Gateway Pundit also has a link to what must be considered the ultimate in Obama bullshit:
(AP) Senator Barack Obama has told members of his denomination that some conservative Christian leaders have exploited and politicized religion to sow division. In a 30-minute speech before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ .. the Democratic presidential candidate said, "Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us."Read the whole thing.
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