Saturday, May 31, 2008

Saturday's Shame

He couldn't do it on a weekday because that would have attracted too much news and given conservative radio hosts days and days to talk about it.
And he couldn't do it on a Sunday because that would have been too obvious and simply would have added insult to injury.
So Obama chose a Saturday to have his spokesperson quietly announce that yes, he has resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ, his spiritual home for more than 20 years.
Forget Obama's strident and repeated defenses of Trinity. Pretend that never happened.
Trinity United no longer serves Obama's purposes. It no longer fits his political manifesto. It became too obvious a liability. It simply had to go.
So, Obama sheepishly ducked out "sometime within the last few days," according to his spokesperson. We don't know exactly when this happened. We only know that Obama decided it would be announced today. It's an old rule that when you don't particularly want to make news about something, you announce it over the weekend - either after business hours on Friday or on Saturday.
It also happened that today, Saturday, was the day that the Democrat Party decided to broker a deal behind closed doors that determines the fate of Michigan and Florida convention delegates by declaring Florida and Michigan Democrat delegates half-persons and granting them half-votes.
When this decision was announced more than a few people were not happy.
"How can you call yourselves Democrats if you don't count the vote?" one man in the audience shouted before being escorted out by security. "This is not the Democratic Party!"
"We just blew the election!" a woman in the audience shouted.
"This isn't unity! Count all the votes!" another audience member yelled.
Put these two stories together and its downright creepy: The expected first African-American to be nominated for President by a major party walks away from an African-American Church while his party adopts a less than one person/one vote policy that hearkens back to the days of racial segregation.
And this from a party that claims to be progressive?

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