It has taken me a long time, but I finally realize my moral universe is completely out of synch with today’s “cutting edge” values. No one makes this clearer than Barack Obama, along with a couple of his “casual” and “not so casual” associations.

First, a “casual” association which begets a question: what does a person have to have done in his life to be considered a pariah? Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d be damned before I’d even shake hands with a couple of self-admitted domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dorhn–much less go to their house to get my political career off the ground like Barack Obama did in 1995. Obama’s reasoning? “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense,” he said.

I’m confused. To me, there’s a difference between “knowing” people and “going to their house.” But Obama’s on firm “cutting edge” ground here: both Ayers and Dorhn are tenured professors at prestigious universities. Apparently, “forgive, forget–and reward” extends even to a couple of unrepentant bombers.

In the “not-so-casual” realm, we have the Rev. Wright. As out-of-it as I am, the first time my church minister said something “out of the ordinary”–perhaps that the government invented AIDs to kill black people, e.g., I might have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Everyone has a bad day now and then. But after second time or the third time–as opposed to, say, 20 years of venomous spew–I’d like to think I would have reached my limit and walked out. Mr Obama had a much more “nuanced” approach at first, saying he could no more disown Wright than “disown the black community.”

Again it’s just me, but if I were a black person of faith, I’d be insulted being lumped together with a preacher who’s decided to take his mixture of bigotry, pseudo-biology and paranoid conspiracy theories “national.” Apparently even Mr. Obama discovered that some “cutting edge” values don’t mix well with political ambition. The Rev. Wright is officially “under the bus.” The bet here is so is Barack Obama.

In one way, it’s a shame. There is no doubt the commodity in steepest decline in America these days is hope. Voters on both sides of the aisle are rightly disgusted with a government that appears incapable of doing anything–other than enriching the people who inhabit it. Barack Obama portrayed himself as a “breed apart”–which is why the realization that he’s “just another politician” is so jarring for so many.

Perhaps I’m not the only American with “old-fashioned” values. And perhaps I’ll live long enough to see a genuine statesman rise above the seemingly endless supply mediocrities we’re forced to endure right now.

But Barack Obama isn’t it. Not by a long shot.

atahlert@comcast.net

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