John McCain's Fake Outrage Against John Lewis

I too was appalled when hearing McCain demanding Obama repudiates John Lewis statements when he has yet to denounce anything said by himself or Palin, or his supporters. In fact he went on TV and defended those supporters, bringing up veterans, exploiting his military affiliation. Well I reject and denounce McCain’s comments. He has the nerve to say that John Lewis cannot have an opinion, this man was beaten and fought for freedom in the same sense that John McCain did and in John Lewis' case it was the country he loved that was doing the beating. John McCain was overseas so I think John Lewis has a better understanding of what that time was like in this country having been on the forefront. When they ask us to reject people like Rev. Wright and Rep. John Lewis they are asking a portion of the population to deny what happened in this very country at the same time defending the right to Israel to exist and declaring never again. Now I only bring up the Israeli thing to say to whom should America be more responsible and defending to the death?

Please do not interpret this as some rant against Israel it is just to drastically highlight the discrepancy. African Americans have been put in the corner that if they talk about the history of this country that included the tragic periods of slavery and Jim Crow and the civil rights movement they are perceived as complaining or playing the race card and won’t forget the past. The truth is white America played the race card, they decided that brown skin was not good enough; your skin had to be white in order to be considered human and a child of god. All the while African Americans must suffer through substandard standards in our school system, job discrimination, and terrible living conditions. When I canvassed for Obama in Philadelphia I was surprised to see such conditions in the richest country in the world. I could understand why those people felt their vote didn’t count. But then I don’t have to go far to understand that I can just look out my window. The influx of drugs and inactivity.
These people have no where to go, nothing to do. Everything is for profit these days, you don’t have community centers offering training and arts and culture in the poor communities the way you do in the better off ones, so for these people the door of opportunity seems sealed shut and the American dream has slipped away. The teachers in these schools are talking about belly rings and boyfriends or girlfriends, they are complaining about thirty kids in a room, but when I was a child there were thirty kids to a class and the teacher had total control. In these neighborhoods people are more concerned with the latest block buster movie and movie star, singer, rap artist, or reality show, that’s where they find themselves.

Rep. John Lewis knows what he is talking about; we have to stop acting ignorant and acting like there wasn’t a Ku Klux Klan, or Black Panther party. Lets not forget about the lynching and hangings (terrorism) that took place by some of these peoples own ancestors, and yet they want to tie Obama to some guy who was fighting the system when Obama was eight years old. With the Ayers thing I don’t understand what the outrage is because some of these very McCain supporters hold the likes of Timothy McVeigh as their hero and celebrate the actions he took, they hold the government responsible for his execution. These are the people that McCain and Palin were trying to incite, and I believe they know exactly what they are doing and that is what makes them so dangerous, not what we need right now in this country.

I had the honor of attending an Obama rally over the weekend while I was out there canvassing; it was the last rally of the day in Philadelphia. Although it was in a predominantly black community the crowd was extremely diverse, Michael Nutter, Bob Casey, and Ed Rendell were there. The crowd was fired up and so was Obama, but the amazing thing was after rally, people were dancing in the streets and it was like a street festival. I saw black and white, Spanish, Asian, of all religions, dancing together holding signs supporting Obama. At no time did I hear anyone calling McCain old, liar or hatemonger. No one called Sarah Palin a criminal and immoral because of the recent ruling against her. We want to go beyond the us and them argument, because there is only "we the people". That is what Obama is doing in America.

John Lewis speaks from a unique position and he has a right to speak and he did do it in a responsible way by going to the media and pointing out what the media failed to point out. He knows these things usually start off in a whisper and end up with killing I think the most disappointing thing about America right now is our media. The media has so much blood on its hand and if something happens to Obama the media will be partially responsible. This new idea of punditry as news is such a disservice to the American people. The media acts as if people are entitled to their own facts. I thought the media was there to point out the facts. I remember what it was like during the lead up to the Iraq war and the media is just as responsible for that war as much as Bush and the Congress. There was nothing about the lies the Bush administration was pushing that a little investigative journalism would not have uncovered. The media became agents of the Bush administration, allowing him to stage press conferences and rallies; filling the airwaves with people who had no credibility, and by putting them on your shows giving them credibility and now there words are able to influence public opinion. I remember the majority of the media was instrumental in marketing the war, I guess they needed their exclusive all. What the media doesn’t realize is that the people don’t want exclusive they want information and truth.

How come no one has pointed out that McCain was nicknamed "Maverick" by the media, or the connection between the Keating five and Vicki Iseman—the lobbyist he is accused of writing letters to regulators according to her client list, the same thing McCain was admonished for in Keating Five? We have been on Ayers for about two weeks now. There is more of a connection between McCain and Iseman than there is between Obama and Ayers but because McCain throws it out there the media gives it life.