aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, October 29, 2007

Obama’s slow motion train wreck

It’s really really hard for me to see how this works for Obama:

He approached the subject gingerly at first. Then, just when the concert had seemed to reach its pitch and about to end, Mr. McClurkin returned to it with a full-blown plea: “Don’t call me a bigot or anti-gay when I have suffered the same feelings,” he cried.

“God delivered me from homosexuality,” he added. He then told the audience to believe the Bible over the blogs: “God is the only way.” The crowd sang and clapped along in full support.

The political implications of his performance are not clear. The concert-goers we talked with afterward were generally more focused on making allowances for Mr. McClurkin’s past homosexuality than on anything about Mr. Obama.

The Obama campaign had appeared to be caught off guard by the reaction to inviting Mr. McClurkin in the first place, and it may have been surprised tonight by the degree to which the singer focused on himself. The other speakers and singers had avoided referencing the controversy. Even an openly gay minister whom Mr. Obama had invited after the fact to try to appease his gay and lesbian critics spoke so early that few people heard him.

Adding the white gay preacher was a blunder, but this is how you compound an error:

Aides gave reporters a three-page memo detailing McClurkin’s and Obama’s views on gay rights that noted in capital letters “MCCLURKIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE GAYS AND LESBIANS WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR LIVES AND HAS CRITICIZED CHURCH LEADERS WHO DEMONIZE HOMOSEXUALS,” with quotes detailing those statements from the singer.

I know Obama’s not a homophobe and he has a great record on LGBT rights; the thing is that this whole fiasco has been horribly managed. And it seems to just keep on getting worse.

Meanwhile, more substantively, he picks Social Security??? I’ve long been among those who believe, there is no crisis!

And while I’m linking Atrios, don’t miss his The Audacity of Homophobia.