If you haven’t heard, seen, or read Obama’s speech on race, I encourage you to take the time to do so. I’ve been waiting to hear a politician speak this frankly for a long time. You can find it here.

The postmortems that I’ve read seem to tentatively say it’s a great speech but that Americans generally prefer platitudes and attack ads over speeches that require them to think. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a speech before that required me to think, so I can’t say for sure that the hypothesis is correct. The media and politicians seem very afraid that Americans are going to rise up in anger toward anyone who dare challenge our intellect. I feel very relieved today that someone actually gave it a shot.

I’m glad he gave the speech, ’cause I think he could have easily been swiftboated if he hadn’t. Still, I don’t really understand what the fuss is about. Obama went to a black church in which the pastor sometimes got pissed off at whitey. Newsflash: whitey has traditionally been kind of a dick to black people. And it really bothers me that every news report I’ve seen on the subject has been treating this Reverend Wright guy as if he’s some kind of historically polarizing figure, a la Louis Farrakhan. Had anyone ever heard of him before last week? Yet I’m sure if you have a conversation with anyone who wishes to prove to you that Obama is a racist, that person will talk to you as if the Rev. Wright has been in the public consciousness for years.

I’d be curious to speak with someone whose mind has been changed about Obama after seeing the videos of his pastor making incendiary remarks. Aside from the fact that I don’t really know how any adult can watch a media “controversy” without a certain degree of suspicion, how exactly does this tarnish Obama’s character? Do people out there think that politicians now have to apologize for things that their friends have said? And what exactly is the fear: that Obama is secretly an Angry Black Man who, once elected, will go out of his way to disenfranchise white people? It’s exactly this kind of diverting, insubstantial bullshit that Obama spoke against in his speech today, and I just really hope we’re smart enough to listen. Support him or don’t support him, but for God’s sake, take the man at his word that he wants to do what’s right for his country. He didn’t train in a madrasah, he isn’t a secret terrorist, and he isn’t running for president to exact his revenge on white people. The fact that these scenarios are even being discussed in the public sphere show how warped our concept of reality has become.