The regular readers of the Trifling blog don’t usually encounter political commentary from the owner/publisher. This is because I am typically a-political. Not that I don’t have positions or opinions, but like football, I have never developed a penchant for watching either of these spectator sports. My roommate however, as well as being a snappy dresser and fine musician, can occasionally be called upon for some pretty spectacular repartee. In the case of this submission, he was responding via email to a friend of his who is less than an adherent of the current POTUS. He was suggesting that the POTUS was disingenuous about his knowledge of and participation in the church of the right Rev. Wright. Here is my roommates unabridged response:
Having been in regular, weekly church attendance (save for a few years, Europe, etc…), albeit professionally, since the age of 17 (my first church job, while a student), I feel more than qualified to speak to the broader actualities of the “church” experience. To whit, those that deal more with social/political concerns than theological/religious ones. To assume that the many in church are there for a God fix, borders on naïveté…
I seriously doubt that Obama was a regular congregant. I would conjecture that his belonging to that specific congregation is much more of a Black/Chicago/Oprah/political/networking decision, than a traditional epiphany. Obama is rather a denizen of the black community. This and many other crucial (to any reasonable understanding of the man) aspects of his history and life are lost on most white americans, who much like their “colored” brethren, cannot see much beyond obvious pigmentation differences and lamentably misconstrue them with cultural attributes. Obama was raised by a white mother and, more specifically, white grandparents, in a predominantly white culture. All of this carping about him is nothing more than the ravings of delusional people long disenfranchised, whose pusillanimous character is easily manipulated, with fear, by the very people they should, in actuality, be bitching about.