Reply #44: Since this thread has re-emerged, let me clarify the OP [View All]

The example of southern white working-class racism was chosen as an analogue of southern traditionalist black church community disapproval of homosexuals. (And chosen because I am a white man born in the deep south, so I feel more comfortable generalizing about my own general group than spinning out a hypothetical about someone else's experiences.)

The post is anti-McClurkin... using someone like him is pandering to the the SC black churches precisely ON their bigotry. It is what the Republicans do... find hot button issues to make quick-and-dirty connections with people by appealing to the worst in them.

That is just what the OP is against.

I have no problem with Obama reaching out to a community that has some bad attitudes, just not by reaching out to them by playing on those same bad attitudes.

And that is what he was, and is, trying to do. By refusing to change his plan to feature on of Bush's gay bashers from the big "defense of marriage" election is lower than low, Obama has sent a powerful message to a community that to some degree he shares their worst values. Then he pitches out some hollow words to the blogosphere.

But the action is the symbol. He is standing up to the homosexuals to show his down-home christian values to a group that would, for some reason, be mortally offended if a performer was bumped for having been a flak for Bush in 2004. I have no idea why would that be such an insult to them, but the Obama campaign has apparently calculated that it would.