Does Lanny Davis really disagree with any of this?
Maybe Lanny Davis thinks God used to be for slavery. Maybe Lanny Davis thinks that the government was right when it enshrined slavery into law. Maybe Lanny Davis thinks nothing has improved and that people cannot change for the better. Maybe Lanny Davis thinks it is out of line to say that the principles of the Bible (or the Constitution, for that matter) are what God wants for us, and that God damns those that fail to live up to those principles.
I shouldn’t even waste my time on Lanny Davis, but he gets to splash his spew on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. And he wants to play the innocent.
Some have suggested that any Clinton supporters who continue to raise this issue are “playing the race card” or taking the “low” road.
When I said on CNN recently that concerns about the Wright-Obama issue were “appropriate” to continue to be discussed, my friend Joe Klein of Time Magazine said, “Lanny, Lanny, you’re spreading the poison right now” and that an “honorable person” would “stay away from this stuff.”
Attacking the motives of those who feel this discomfort about Senator Obama’s response or nonresponse to Reverend Wright’s comments is not just unfair and wrong. It also misses the important electoral point about winning the general election in November: This issue is not going away.
Maybe Lanny Davis is actually offended about Rev. Wright’s less than flattering comments about Israel. If so, he should just say so. But to pull out Rev. Wright’s sermon on ‘change in government’ to suggest that Wright’s church is a hate-church? I rarely say it, but Joe Klein is right…that’s spreading the poison.
And what did Rev. Wright say about Israel?
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.
If Lanny Davis had an ounce of credibility he’d acknowledge that ‘state terrorism’ is not the same thing as non-state terrorism. One uses the organs of the state, like the police, the courts, informants, checkpoints, and collective punishment. The other uses bombs and sabotage. I know it is controversial to equate Israel’s governance of the occupied territories with South Africa’s Apartheid state, but it’s not so controversial that a former U.S. president didn’t feel free to write a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Should Senator Obama refuse to answer Jimmy Carter’s phonecalls?
As for the other comment that seems to be really bothering Mr. Davis…
“The United States of White America.”
…I hear Clinton supporters talk all the time about how its time to end the string of white male presidents and put a woman in the Oval Office. They might say with little irony, “The United States of White Male America,” and no one would bat an eye. Sometimes it pays to keep things in context.
If Lanny Davis had complained about Rev. Wright’s theory that the government gave AIDS to black people, I would have more sympathy. That’s a kooky and totally unsubstantiated theory. It’s not supported at all by the available scientific research. Rev. Wright shouldn’t go around saying stuff like that because…that’s spreading the poison.
But that’s not Lanny Davis’ objection. Lanny Davis is just upset that his candidate lost the nomination. And he wants to live in a world where anyone that even associates with anyone that has a bad thing to say about Israel gets ostracized.
I think that the country is a bit tired of it. I think Lanny Davis is today’s Worst Person in the World.
