Campaign Media Roundup

"The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly," he told PBS' Bill Moyers in the interview to be broadcast on Friday.

Those who are airing the snippets "are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic."

So - who IS Jeremiah Wright? As he points out - he's whoever you want him to be. I compared him to John Brown. Is he actually the Bogeyman?

"In the Moyers interview, a soft-spoken Wright expresses his horror that the media has made him a bogeyman, endlessly replaying sound bites of fiery sermons which he claims were taken out of context."

- from ABC News Olivia Stearns and David Wright

Hold on there ABC - He "claims" they were taken out of context? No, they ARE being taken out of context. Those words were not spoken as part of any presidential campaign. They were spoken in the heat of a sermon at a black church in Chicago - before Obama was a candidate. But they are today being applied to Obama during his presidential campaign. That is out of context. Unless you're Sean Hannity. See the difference?

Methinks ABC is still a bit prickly about the heat they took after the last debate.

Here's A great note from Don Frederick at "Top of the Ticket"

North Carolinians aren't biased; just ask 'em

A delicious dispatch from the "I'm perfect, you're not" view-of-the-universe department ...

As a prelude to North Carolina's May 6 Democratic presidential primary, state voters recently were asked about prejudices. As related by the Raleigh News & Observer, here's what the poll found:

* A whoppingly large number -- 91% -- said race would not affect their political decisions -- but 54% said they knew someone who would not cast a ballot for a black.

* A candidate's gender, 79% said, would make no difference to them -- but 63% said they knew someone who would not vote for a woman.

The survey by Elon University also looked ahead to the fall election that will feature Republican John McCain trying to become the oldest person elected to a first presidential term.

No problem, 66% said, age would not be a factor in their vote -- but 44% said they knew someone who would not support someone they viewed as "too old."

Nice to know there are so many open-minded folks in the Tar Heel State. Too bad about so many of their neighbors, though.

-- Don Frederick

...yes and if you're a cop in NY you can shoot a guy 50 times because you know he's guilty. We don't need no stinkin' assumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Also from Top of The Ticket and Andrew Malcolm -

Barack Obama to meet unconditionally with dreaded 'Fox News Sunday'!

The shifting political race has candidates jockeying for position and "pivoting"(the new favorite talking point word of this election) on issues.

With so many people interested in election news - the networks are "pivoting" to win ad dollars. So quien es mas macho? FOX or ABC?

Jeremiah Wright is our John Brown

I'm afraid to write this post. The weight of history is heavy on this topic.

The potential for hate and evil resulting from this comparison are great. But the strong parallel Between Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright and Abraham Lincoln and John Brown struck like a thunderbolt tonight when I read that Rev. Wright had been interviewed by PBS and that his remarks were already stirring new, hostile reactions against Barack Obama in the American public.

For those educated in California public schools, here's an introduction to John Brown:

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was a white American abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish all slavery. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas and the unsuccessful raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859.

President Abraham Lincoln said he was a "misguided fanatic" and Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans."[1] His attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, electrified the nation. He was tried for treason against the state of Virginia and was hanged, but his behavior at the trial seemed heroic to millions of Americans. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of the abolitionist iceberg and represented the wishes of the Republican Party, but those charges were vehemently denied by the Republicans. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that a year later led to secession and the American Civil War.

Barack Obama is the modern embodiment of that old Republican, Abraham Lincoln. In Lincoln's time, being Republican meant standing up for the values of the Republic over the values of the special or, "peculiar" interest of capital, i.e., the slave owners. In 1860 he was referred to by hostile partisans as a "Black Republican" and you are free to read into that any extension of evil darkness and race based prejudice you'd care to mention. Today, Obama obliquely identifies himself for the values of the Republic against the "peculiar" interests of modern capitalists.

More about Brown:

"Historians agree John Brown played a major role in starting the Civil War.[4] His role and actions prior to the Civil War, as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose still make him a controversial figure today. He is sometimes heralded as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist; black scholars have consistently held the first viewpoint while those who apologize for black slavery have held the second; those belonging to neither category have held various views. While some writers, such as Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot, others, such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation." David S. Reynolds hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free." For Ken Chowder he is "at certain times, a great man", but also "the father of American terrorism."

Please - I'm not suggesting that Rev. Wright is a terrorist but I am assuming that he can be seen as a controversial figure. I'm also not defending Rev. Wright or his words. He has injured my favorite candidate and I wish he had never said anything to offend the good and decent people of this nation. But I will go on with this comparison.

John Brown saw the evil of slavery and declared himself violently opposed to it. Reverend Wright saw the injustice of America and as he wiped the blood of it on our hands we were unwillingly brought to shocking awareness of what some people believe.

No matter how hard the 1860 Republicans tried to repudiate the actions of John Brown and his words, no matter how meticulous Abraham Lincoln was in observing the Constitutional rights of slave owners, history records the clear impression that Lincoln carried forward the mission of John Brown to rid the nation of of slavery.
And make no mistake, John Brown condemned America for allowing oppression under law.

Lincoln distanced himself from Brown. Obama distances himself from Wright. But guilt by association has been assigned to both Lincoln and Obama for all time.

Now for myself, I am a Lincoln man.

I will accept Lincoln's association with the guilt of one John Brown in exchange for the redemption of millions of slaves to freedom.

And I am an Obama man. I will accept Obama's association with the guiltly words of one Jeremiah Wright in exchange for a new birth of American freedom.

Barack Obama's association with Reverend Wright is as radical as Abraham Lincoln's association with John Brown. Neither is real. Yet they scare the hell out of us. That is what challenges us to look carefully at his election.

Obama is betting that America can look beyond race and that he can win the Presidency. Others calmly declare that we are still a racist nation and that he can't possibly win.

For the sake of my country, I'd rather bet on Obama and lose than bet on racism and win.

Super Sunday Blog Post

There's a lot here for Sunday reading, so grab a cup of whatever soothes your mind and spend a few minutes here in review.

This post contains links from contributor Ray McInnis, a few words about the Egg McMuffin and a Sunday funny from Bob Henderson.

Also an essay from yours truly plus a note from Paul McGowan at PS Audio and a listen to the first sound recording, made in 1860!

So lets dig in!

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First - The Election

This is what awaits Barack Obama.
I don't know where this comes from but be sure to guess that this kind of stuff will find its way to the MSM if Obama gets the nod.

Nativists whose mono-brow, mono-cultutural, anti-immigrant hairs are already raised are going to pounce on this stuff. Gee, I remember when it was only Mexicans and people from Eastern Europe who got this kind of treatment in America.

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Reuters Fudging -

The Original Headline on this link from Reuters:

"Obama:Clinton Welcome to stay in race"

is now, "Clinton says no intention of dropping out:report"

Who requested THAT distinction?

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REV WRIGHT AND WRONG

Here is a link to an easily found video clip from two pastors who spoke on camera after 911 to tell us that God was giving us exactly what we deserved. I don't claim divine insight so I'll have to guess that Jerry Falwell got the same message from God that Jeremiah Wright got.

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Why didn't Obama leave his church?

This isn't a question. It's an attack on the ambivalent American. Obama didn't leave. I didn't leave. You didn't leave. We have evidence from left and right, black and white that America is not God's little innocent in the world. So why do we stay true to a country so full of sin as to be Righteously punished by God? Why do we not flee our country even when our President demands we fight a war on questionable terms?

I know what preaching in America is about. I am descended from generations of Protestant ministers. It was our family business from the early 1800's until the 1970's when my grandfather passed away.

In the 1930's, my Grandfather was Pastor to Pennsylvania coal miners and unemployed factory workers in tiny towns throughout the Southeastern corner of the state. The Reverend Chester Warren Quimby was sent to minister to men and women and children left destitute by the Great Depression. His own family depended on the value of his service to the people. And he was often called at late hours to serve. He met the untimely death of a wife, the tragic loss of a father, a family disrupted by drunken violence, or the parents who felt they could not go on raising children in poverty.

He was man who was asked over and over again, "Why?".

I knew the Reverend Dr. Quimby and I know the strength that came from his faith.
He may not have "Damned" America but he knew America's shortcomings and he knew the suffering of his people. He knew that his own life depended on offering faith and hope and healing to his people and he labored for years to bring the people to his church for the mercy he believed was theirs.

When your life depends on filling the church in your charge, you must preach to the people in ways that will bring them to God. If you are the pastor of a Church in a Chicago ghetto, how will you preach to them?

Reverend Jeremiah Wright wasn't trying to save me. He wasn't trying to show me the way to Christ from my million dollar home or to bring me to salvation from the senseless poverty of wealth. He wasn't trying to build his church in the comfortable American suburb I inhabit.

Jeremiah Wright was like my Grandfather. He gave himself to a barren land in our country. He reached out for the lost, the poor, the dis-oriented, the cast off, the denied, the weak, the hopeless and those struggling to save their families from economic destruction. He spoke to them and they came to worship.

More in a link From Contributor Ray McInnis

And more from Ray with comments from a supportiveCondi Rice - deflected by a blogger from the right.

Ray Adds:

for me, anyone can rattle on like this, endlessly, i suppose, but still miss one point: that for rice to talk about race is the same as nixon going to china, and validating it as a nation worthy of america having relations with, or -- and this is of lesser import -- reagan talking with gorbachev.

in effect, rice's words make the imbroglio of wright-obama of much less consequence, meaning that when whites who might be driven from voting for obama over the wright issue, could reconsider, because a black america, conservative, is making it sound more legit.

OK, wading through these waters is tricky, but after teaching american cultural studies course for several years, discovered that it is part of the solution.

ideally, if you want people to change from thinking that blacks are not the victims they claim to be to thoughts more sympathetic to the idea that they do in fact suffer as "victims", here's how it works -- and it has to be through the heart, one person at a time -- you do it by having that person actually conduct his/her own research on a topic in cultural studies -- like the origin of the "one drop" rule -- filtering these things through their minds, and -- voila! -- the change in heart occurs, because they finally understand what oppression means.

ledeen may be correct about the change that has occurred already, but it is going to take a few more generations to give us the social conditions that level the playing field to the point wheree conservatives claim it is now.

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EGGMC1

Herb Peterson died this week. Herb took credit for the invention of the Egg McMuffin at his McDonald's Restaurant on upper State Street in Santa Barbara, Ca.

While I have no doubt that Mr. Peterson conceived and introduced said McMuffin to his friend and mentor Ray Kroc, I know some urban lore on the subject from having worked in that restaurant from 1976 to 1979. Store Manager, Garth Bench, once told me that it was McDonald's crew members who came in each morning to warm up the grills for the lunch time burger menu who innovated the McMuffin by cooking their own breakfast sandwiches in the McDonald's kitchen. Garth said he was one of those young workers who inspired Mr. Peterson. I was told that in 1978.

Having done much the same to create my own sandwiches at the same restaurant, I can understand how this might have been the case. We were once told in a crew meeting, "You guys should put as much care into the burgers you serve the customers as the stuff I see you creating for yourselves on break!"

McDonald's President, Ray Kroc, had a ranch just north of us in the Santa Ynez Valley. He actually showed up at our restaurant in his limo. And secret boxes of frozen test items were sometimes stored in our freezer. That and a whole lot of after hours nonsense, plus a late night visit from Fleetwood Mac made working for McDonald's pretty interesting in our little town.

I enjoyed knowing and working for Mr. Peterson at McDonald's. And I will forever be grateful for the training I received as a young employee at the Golden Arches.

And as a final note, Mr. Peterson was a guest in my studio several years ago as we created some local radio commercials for his local McDonald's restaurants. What a pleasure to welcome this man into my own small business. I credit him to starting me on my my way to success

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Paul McGowan at PS Audio sent me some news this week. Paul was an entrepreneur/amateur engineer at 99.1 KXFM in Santa Maria, Ca. a few years before I became a DJ there in 1981. I still have one of the first hand built PS Audio phono pre-amps that was installed at the radio station.

He sends story about the recent recovery of the first recorded audio from 1860!

Much of this month's newsletter will focus on the state of digital media in our high end systems. It seems appropriate, therefore, that we start this newsletter off with news of the discovery of the world's first optical recording (like a CD) that predates Edison's first recording by nearly 20 years!

This is the link to a New York Times article about the Phonautogram, an optical voice recorder invented in 1853 (17 years before Edisons patent of the phonograph) by douard-Lon Scott de Martinville of Paris.

Edison's system was entirely mechanical and used a stylus (needle) that was moved by the power of your voice, to cut a pattern into a wax cylinder. In our free DVD From Coal to Coltrane we show a later version of Edison's machine and describe how it works.

Martinville's Phonautogram worked in a very similar fashion, only instead of cutting a pattern into a wax cylinder the French inventor used the moving stylus to write on a piece of paper. He had no clue how this would be played back but he wanted to design a piece of equipment that could capture and archive the human voice and he succeeded!

The article has a link so you can hear the reproduction of his first work, now decoded after sitting in storage for 155 years. Amazing.

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Contributor Bob Henderson sends us Today's Funny: