Coulter Says Obama is the Problem, not Rev. Wright

If Lenny Bruce were to come back as a Republican woman, his name would be Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is the baddest of the bad girls, and has a mouth that her mom forgot to wash out with soap. Sometimes Ann Coulter can be wickedly funny, however, and when she takes on the issue of Barack Obama and his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she is dead on point. "Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright", she says. " Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to" Obama. It's Obama, not Wright, who Coulter finds to be "stark bonkersville," based on the views Obama espouses in his book, Dreams from My Father. Coulter asks, "Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no."

While pundits characterized Obama's Speech on Religion (and Race) as "courageous," "needed," etc., I couldn't help but think that no one has played the race card to this extent in an to attempt to gain advantage in a Presidential campaign since David Duke, the hateful Louisiana racist who ran in 1988. While there is no way that Barack Obama or his views can be compared to David Duke, I've been listening to Obama's speeches. From day to day, Obama moves from his accentless Hawaiian English, to an accent that seems to speak of a childhood somewhere near Atlanta, and back again, I can't quite decide whether Obama is just involved in a perpetual identity crisis or whether he's just a genuine nutter. Ann Coulter suggests the latter, and says that America needs to read Obama's book. (And not a bad time to do just that. At Amazon, the price has now decined to nearly half of its issue price.)

As for me, I'm done with the troubling questions that arose in my mind after Obama's speech. Since then, I've had the opportunity to run into all those nice people in my life who look like more like Barack than me, and I am pretty sure that they aren't carefully concealing some hidden hatred of me based on my race. I'm sticking to the viewpoint that here in Chicago, we moved beyond race some time ago. If you examine your own life, and the people who you interact with on a daily basis, you'll realize that's the truth.

It would take a great deal more than a few loose words from Barack Obama to change the great strides made by all the people of Chicago over the past fourty years. It's become crystal clear that good race relations are now the rule rather than the exception, and that should be a source of great civic pride for all of us.