Friday, April 25, 2008

Reply to a Loved One about the Town Hall Meeting

Glad you enjoyed the post. I enjoyed writing it and am grateful for the response I got. I wish there were a downtown office in Madison where I could go and volunteer for Barack twelve hours a day. It felt really wonderful to be there with the people. It was a time of peace and harmony and joy. I'm glad I went.

I think Barack very much wants to take the high road and he is, as he says, kept from doing so by "distractions." He's taking a lot of hits right now from the media, who think they are being "fair and balanced" because the Clintons have accused them of being easy on him and hard on them. The Clintons are like Bobby Knight, who was always yelling at and intimidating the refs to try to influence their calls.

I mentioned the race of people at the gathering and I was thinking about it. The population of Indiana is 9% black, which is less than the total national proportion, which is maybe 12% now, and I guessed that maybe 20-30% of the folks at the town hall meeting were black, and there might have been more than that. Yes, I am very aware of race, and I think it's time we integrated this land and got together and did away with all the irrelevant nonsense. The media are shit-stirrers (note my mention of Chris Matthews, one of the worst) and are trying to see problems and divisions where none exist -- so they will have something to talk about between commercials. If you want to know how I feel about race, read the speech that Barack wrote, or better yet, watch and listen to it. I loved Barack when he defended the Reverend Wright, saying, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the African-American community." That was what a "mensch" -- a good, moral, courageous person -- would do. Honestly, I believe all the other candidates of recent times -- especially Hillary Clinton -- would disown a friend and mentor, who had been damned in one endlessly aired sound-bite which distorted and misrepresented the truth, and would disown him in a New York minute. At least for the public record.

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