Obama Reax - It's not the Racism, it's the intellectual dishonesty

I haven't had a whole lot of time to think about the Obama speech (still haven't, really), but I was struck by the unbelievability of the speech more than anything.

Apparently, I wasn't alone.

Victor Davis Hanson pointed out the relativistic nature of the speech, with a hidden rejection of absolutes that guts it of any moral authority.

The tragedy of Obama's speech and the mindless endorsement of it was the rejection of any constant moral standard—an absolute sense of wrong and right that transcends situational ethics, context, and individual particulars. And once one jettisons such absolutes, they won't be there when one wishes to seek refuge in them in a future hour of need.

When he failed to "disown" Rev. Wright, and then brought in parallels of things purportedly as bad, or offered excuses that Wright had done good things to balance the bad, or that there were certain mitigating circumstances that explain his hatred, then the universal wrong of Wright's racism and lying disappears and with it any ethical standard by which we have moral authority to condemn such vitriol.

Newt Gingrich went on Cavuto's FoxNews show to declare the speech "intellectually dishonest." Video at the link.

All things considered, though, it's these two YouTube efforts that best describe what went wrong with this speech. The first shows Obama flip flopping on what he knew and when he knew it. The second compares Obama's own words to those of his wife and his pastor. I think I see the beginnings of a 527 negative ad in that second clip.

First the flipflop:



Then the comparison:



No matter what, this will serve as ammunition for Hillary's campaign, who will surely continue to run the "Red Phone" ad as a contrast to Obama's inconsistency and unreadiness. If she fail to capitalize on this inconsistency, Senator McCain surely will.