How to Swift Boat Barack Obama? [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
Republican strategists are salivating over the "inflammatory sermons by Obama [3]'s pastor" Jeremiah Wright [4]. They believe that Wright's sermons "offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base." Notwithstanding Obama's highly praised speech on race yesterday [5], the videos of Wright's sermons have "convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton [6] and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey." According to Micah Sifry [7], "Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the 'truth' of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet -- and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the 'politics' of a speech, but its actual content? In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?"