On Your Knees!

Depending on who and what you read in the wake of Sen. Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race, he either hit a home run or barely squibbed a single past a drawn-in infield.

Unless you are noted race relations expert and baseball sage Pat Buchanan.

To Buchanan, Obama not only struck out, he used a corked bat, took steroids, and bet on his own team to boot. On his blog, "PJB" (which sounds oddly like a sandwich of some kind, no?), Buchanan levels quite likely the harshest review seen yet of Obama's speech:

"It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”

Wow. Barack Obama--Harvard Law grad, U.S. Senator, Presidential candidate, black hustler.
And Lord knows if there is one man in America who has the record of tolerance, wisdom and ethical high standards to be quoted as a voice of reason on race relations, it's Richard Nixon.

Did Buchanan even hear the speech?

"Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to."

Interesting, because in the Obama speech I watched and listened to, he very much dwelt on both sides of the racial divide, and spoke about white fears and concerns in a way rarely if ever heard from from a black leader.

But, wait it gets better. For slaves, that is.

"First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known."

See? Slavery was the best thing that ever happened to those "black folks." After all, they got to get rounded up like animals, lose all human dignity, do 200 years or so of forced labor in another land, suffer generations of lost and uprooted families, AND--get Christian salvation. See? It was win-win-win-win-win!

Oh, Buchanan also has advice for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the man whose comments Obama forthrightly condemened.

"Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American," Buchanan says.

See? It's all about knowing your place in this great land of liberty.

And with that, one assumes Massuh Pat stalks back to the Big House in a huff. Damn but those shufflin' darkies get uppity sometimes.

Especially when they run for President.