Rezko and Wright: The Two Sides of Obama`s Chicago
The gleaming image that Senator
Barack Obama has so artfully created for himself as a
combination of all the best qualities of Socrates,
Neo from The Matrix, and
Jonathan Livingston Seagull was sullied last week
by revelations about his close friends Tony Rezko and
Jeremiah Wright, two very different but very
representative citizens of my own long-time home city of
Chicago.
In fact, the Obama story is
continuing to play out along the lines I`ve been
outlining over the last 14 month in more
articles and
blog postings than I care to remember.
Back on February 10, 2008 for
example, I
wrote in VDARE.com:
"Now, Obama is a smooth operator. But the two people who
have had the greatest influence on his adult life—his
wife Michelle and his spiritual advisor,
Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.—are not. They feel
a deep racial anger and are not terribly good at hiding
it."
About a week later, Michelle made
herself so obnoxious, saying
"… for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my
country,"
that the Main Stream Media [MSM] finally had to take
notice.
And now the other shoe has dropped
regarding Rev. Dr. Wright.
As I wrote in VDARE a
year ago::
"Why has Obama tied his fate to the
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a tactless race man who is the
living opposite of the myth Obama is trying to project
about himself? … Obama`s `spiritual mentor` just won`t
shut up because the man of God is also a
man of wrath."
On Thursday, ABC showed a 2003
sermon from the Obamas` church in which Rev. Dr. Wright,
whom Obama has
known at least since 1988, proclaims (among much
else of a far left ilk):
The candidate later moved to
"distance" himself from the man to whom he devoted
much of pp. 274-295 of his 1995 autobiography, issuing
this lawyerly bit of all-purpose prose:
"All of the statements that have been the subject of
controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn."
—Barack
Obama
In Slate, Mickey Kaus
rephrased Obama`s statement as:
"If it offends you, I condemn it!
"This seems to be the General Rule of Obama—if it`s
going to damage him, he condemns it! And rejects and
denounces. Vehemently! The Rule would seem to apply to
all past and future controversial statements—his
campaign could get that sentence printed up on little
laminated cards and hand them out to reporters, or
include them after the statements of all Obama
surrogates, like those fine-print `void where
prohibited` waivers. `Condemned if controversial.`"
Obama did make one falsifiable
assertion:
"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause
of this controversy were not statements I personally
heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or
heard him utter in private conversation."
Oh, come on …
Wright has been saying
anti-American and anti-white things to all and
sundry at least since his
1984 trip to Libya with Black Muslim leader Louis
Farrakhan to
meet arch-terrorist Col. Muammar Kaddafi. That`s why
Obama picked out Wright`s church after one of the many
black ministers he knew during his "community
organizing" days told him he would be more
politically effective if he belonged to a church.
Wright`s Trinity United megachurch represented for Obama
the optimal combination of competitively successful and
ideologically radical.
According to Obama`s Dreams,
when the Ivy Leaguer first met Wright, he interrogated
the minister about whether Trinity wasn`t too bourgeois
for him.
Fortunately, Wright`s powerful
sermon
"The Audacity of Hope" , whose title Obama
borrowed for his 2006 bestseller,—
"It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away
more food in a day than most residents of
Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks`
greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere,
apathy in another hemisphere …
—overcame Obama`s doubts about
Trinity`s covert "middleclassness" and he joined
in 1988.
Here`s an excerpt from Trinity`s
website explaining their "Black
Value System":
“Disavowal of the Pursuit of `Middleclassness.`
Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that
captors must be able to identify the `talented tenth` of
those subjugated, especially those who show promise of
providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the
captor`s control.
“Those so identified are separated from the rest of the
people by:
1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social
system that
encourages them to kill off one another.
2. Placing them in
concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic
environment that induces captive youth to fill the
jails and prisons.
3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which,
while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes
them into believing they are better than others and
teaches them to think in terms of `we` and `they`
instead of `us.`
4. So, while it is permissible to chase `middleclassness`
with all our might, we must avoid the third separation
method – the psychological entrapment of Black
`middleclassness.` If we avoid this snare, we will also
diminish our `voluntary` contributions to methods A and
B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be
deprived of their birthright: the leadership,
resourcefulness and example of their own talented
persons.”
In 2006, the Obamas donated
$22,500 to Trinity, helping propagate this
racist paranoia.
Meanwhile, a very different side of
Obama is also finally surfacing in the press due to the
federal corruption trial of Obama`s political patron
Tony Rezko. As I
wrote on VDARE.COM in April 2007:
"Does this mean that the idea of
all that is pure and holy being embodied in a
Chicago politician was
ridiculous from the beginning?
"Why, yes, it does mean that."
On Friday, the Chicago Tribune
reported that Obama was even deeper in Fat Tony`s
debt than he had previously revealed:
"But
in a 90-minute interview with Tribune reporters and
editors, Obama disclosed that Rezko had raised more for
Obama`s earlier political campaigns than previously
known, gathering as much as $250,000 for the first three
offices he sought."[Obama:
I trusted Rezko, By David Jackson, March 15,
2008]
Hilariously, Obama told the
Tribune that he never dreamt that Rezko would ever
ask him for a favor in return for all the favors he had
done for him:
"Trying to put his past with
Antoin `Tony` Rezko behind him, presidential
candidate
Barack Obama on Friday said he never thought the
now-indicted Chicago businessman would try to take
advantage of him because his old friend had never asked
for a political favor."
That reminds me of the
Simpsons episode where Homer has the local mob boss,
(named Fat Tony, coincidentally enough) drive out Marge
Simpson`s competition in the pretzel business.
Inevitably,
Fat Tony (whose voice is provided by Chicago actor
Joe Mantegna)
later asks Homer for a favor in return:
Fat
Tony: Now, Homer, as you
no doubt recall, you were
done a favor by our, uh, how
shall I say…
Mafia Crime Syndicate.
Homer: Oh yeah.
Fat Tony: Now the time has come for you to do us
a favor.
Homer [Self-righteously appalled]: You
mean the mob only did me a favor to get
something in return? … [Heartbroken] Oh, Fat
Tony! … [Sternly] I will say good day to you,
sir!
Fat Tony [Meekly]: OK. I will go.
[Fat Tony walks away in shame]
Fat Tony: [Realizing what just happened]
Wait a minute!
Keep in mind that the Obama-Rezko
connection is likely penny ante-scale stuff compared to
what
Mr. and Mrs. Clinton appear to have been up to since
2001. My guesstimate is that the complicated real estate
deal that Obama and Rezko carried out in 2005 was worth
about
$70,000 to Obama. Bill Clinton charges private
interests like CitiGroup three or four times that amount
just for a speech.
To figure out what really was going
on with the purchase of Obama`s stately Chicago home,
however, you`d have to study
Chicago`s zoning regulations and the role of the
Chicago Landmarks Commission, on which
Michelle Obama sat. And who has time for that kind
of tedium?
The secret behind the
Chicago Way is that it endures because most of the
corruption is too boring for the citizens to get
terribly worked up over. The taxpayers get nickeled and
dimed by the players, but, as
Mayor Richard J. Daley taught Chicago`s insiders a
half century ago, as long as the pols don`t get too
greedy or too outrageous, the public will more or less
put up with it because the only alternative is for them
to dive into this big barrel of boredom themselves to
try to figure out how they are being cheated.
What`s the common denominator
between these two characteristic Chicagoans: the radical
Wright and the glad-handing Rezko? How can Obama be so
closely linked to both?
Similarly, when his fiancée washed
out of her corporate law career, why did the seemingly
high-minded Obama encourage Michelle to
take a job as a
fixer with the
Daley Machine?
A little noticed 2007 New
Republic article by Ryan Lizza, "The
Agitator", offers a way to understand these two
sides of Obama: the leftist Chicago community organizer
Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), author of Rules for Radicals.
Lizza notes:
"In Dreams, Obama spent some 150 pages on his
four years in Chicago working as an organizer, but
there`s little discussion of the theory that undergirded
his work and informed that of his teachers. Alinsky is
the missing layer of his account."
Lizza explains:
"In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the
country to take a job that he didn`t fully understand.
But, while he knew little about his new
vocation—community organizer—it still had a romantic
ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. … `Change won`t
come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a
mobilized grass roots. That`s what I`ll do. I`ll
organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.`"
Obama`s bosses were three white
leftists (Gerald Kellman, Mike Kruglik and Gregory
Galluzzo,)
"schooled in a style of organizing devised by Saul
Alinsky, the radical University of Chicago-trained
social scientist… While Obama was in search of an
authentic African American experience, Kellman was
simply in search of an authentic African American."
LBJ`s Great Society had incorporated
Alinskyism.
Tom Wolfe`s brilliant Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
explains how poverty programs were set up to only give
out grants to "authentic" inner city groups,
their "authenticity" being measured by how well
they could intimidate (Mau-Mau) the bureaucrats (flak
catchers). As Wolfe
gleefully documents, self-interested hucksters
immediately organized their own protest groups to grab
the handouts.
Lizza points out that Obama`s
indoctrination in Alinskyism has endured:
"Obama`s self-conception as an organizer isn`t just a
campaign gimmick. … In the 13 years between Obama`s
return to Chicago from law school and his Senate
campaign, he was deeply involved with the city`s
constellation of community-organizing groups… He taught
Alinsky`s concepts and methods in workshops."
Indeed,
here`s a chapter that Obama wrote for the 1990 book After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois,
a rare
example of
Obama leaving a paper trail.
It`s important to grasp that Alinsky
was not a dreamy idealist. As his 1970
Time profile shows,
he was a conscious
Machiavellian for whom the ends justified the
means.
Lizza adds:
"Alinsky had prowled the same neighborhoods that Obama
now worked and internalized many of the same lessons. As
a University of Chicago criminology graduate student, he
ingratiated himself with
Al Capone`s mobsters to learn all he could about the
dynamics of the city`s underworld, an experience that
helped foster a lifelong appreciation for seeing the
world as it actually exists, rather than through the
academic`s idealized prism."
Making nice with Tony Rezko on
Monday after you hear a Jeremiah Wright rant on
Sunday—hey, Alinsky would have had no problem with that.
Alinsky`s eyes were always on the
prize:
"The first and most fundamental lesson Obama learned was
… `You want to organize for power!` … The other
fundamental lesson Obama was taught is Alinsky`s maxim
that self-interest is the only principle around which to
organize people."
Obama has since figured out a key
breakthrough—that many white people are motivated
heavily
by status striving against other whites. And that`s
a competition in which
conspicuous favoritism toward blacks, such as, say,
an underprivileged Presidential candidate, cay pay
off.
By nature, Alinsky was an agitator
who loved a face-to-face argument. As Hillary Clinton
pointed out in her Wellesley senior
thesis (long blockaded, by another amusing
coincidence —just like Michelle Obama`s), Alinsky`s
street-theatre approach was both a strength and weakness
at achieving their mutual leftist goals. Bill Dedman of
MSNBC summarizes:
"In the end, [Hillary] judged that Alinsky`s
`power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by
existing social conflicts`—overriding national issues
such as racial tension and segregation. Alinsky had no
success in forming an effective national movement, she
said, referring dismissively to “the anachronistic
nature of small autonomous conflict."
[Reading
Hillary Rodham`s hidden thesis, May 9, 2007]
In 2008, the two old students of
Alinsky are competing for national power. Amusingly,
Obama, the professional Alinskyite, has seriously
out-organized Hillary, perhaps because she turned down a
job offer from Alinsky, choosing instead to attend Yale
Law School.
(By the way, in case you are
wondering about the comparative prose style of the
similarly locked-up theses of Hillary versus
Michelle Obama, Hillary`s arch but fluent and
slightly witty
writing wins easily over Michelle`s whiny and
artless
maunderings.)
Despite the difference in
personality between Alinsky and Obama—Alinsky was an
annoying Lenny Bruce, Obama is a reassuring
Sidney Poitier—Hillary`s 1969 criticism also applies
to Obama`s four years as a full-time Alinskyite. By his
own account, Obama`s only accomplishment was mau-mauing
the black bureaucrats at the Chicago Housing Authority
into removing some
asbestos from public housing; a worthy task, but a
solution to a problem that ranks comically low on any
list of
troubles besetting
black slum dwellers.
In summary, Obama came to the
Chicago to do good, but ended up doing well.
It`s, the story of his life. Obama
takes jobs ostensibly to help blacks—community
organizer, discrimination lawyer, politician—but they
mostly just help fuel his
amazing ascent to the White House. The fundamental
flaw in Obama`s career is that each job is to help poor
blacks get more goodies out of the government, but
government handouts undermine
black moral fiber, leaving the community worse off
than before the Great Society.
Sadly, as a half-white
preppie from paradise, Obama has never felt
"black enough" to effectively challenge the
leftist orthodoxy in which a Jeremiah Wright is
considered by other blacks to be part of the black
mainstream.
If Obama had wanted to improve
tangibly the lives of Chicago inner city blacks, but
didn`t care about attaining power and fame for himself,
he could have become, say, a high school teacher,
perhaps at
Providence-St. Mel, the famous all-black Catholic
school on the West Side that`s renown for
straightening out young fellows. With his charisma,
he could have been a great teacher and role model
But, for better or worse, he chose a
different path—one of overweening personal ambition.
[Steve Sailer (email
him) is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic
for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com
features his daily blog.]


