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Is There A Pattern Here? If So, Is There A Name For It?

Barack Obama

• opposes school vouchers for poor families but sends his own children to a private school;

• supports ?campaign finance reform? but opts out of public financing since he can raise more money privately under the old, presumably corrupt system;

• attests to the centrality of his religious experience in shaping his identity but regards others, who are less privileged and culturally and politically different, as ?clinging? to religion;

• promises an end to bitter partisanship even though his own record (what there is of it) is one of the most partisan in the Senate and his opponent?s is one of the most bi-partisan;

• promises to transcend race even though he a) married, sat passively for 20 years in the pews of, and raised his children in a church led by and permeated with a militant afro-centrism that often found expression in parnoid (they invented AIDS to kill us), anti-white (?greedy whites? etc.), hatred of America (AmeriKKKa, etc.), and b) continues to support government programs that benefit some and burden others because of their race.

• claims to face the future ?with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations? while, several lines later in the same speech, claiming that his own nomination will be regarded in the future as ?the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless ? the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal?.?
  

I know there?s a word for a pattern of saying one thing and doing the opposite, but I can?t call it to mind right now. Let?s see, it?s not ?Messiah? (despite caring for the sick for the first time, halting the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet) ... it?s not ?New Politician.? Oh well, I?m sure I?ll think of it in a while....

Full post as published by Discriminations on June 20, 2008 (boomark / email).