Should we judge a candidate for high office by the company he/she keeps? Cousin Mark observes:
It does some (sic) strange to me that Obama has to take responsibility for anything anyone he's ever met has said.
There is some unfairness here. He is being smeared with his association with William Ayers, who as a member of the Weather Underground was a domestic terrorist, though it seems the association is tangential. They served on a board of directors together.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an entirely different issue. There is clearly a close association between the Senator and the Reverend. Senator Obama was a member of the Reverend’s church for twenty years. It seems fair to wonder how the Senator could continue this association given the inflammatory things said in that church. Cousin Mark and I have both disassociated ourselves from religion that we find objectionable. This does not make us better than Senator Obama, but it begs the question why didn’t he leave this church and join another?
In an election the candidate needs to nuance his message for various audiences, this makes it difficult to know the real truth about character. That is why we have to look at the people that the candidate associates with. This is not unfair; it is the only way to get a true gauge of the person’s true self. It applies across the board, to left, right and center.
All I can say is that I might not have raised the issue with Rev. Wright himself, but I would not have been back in that church if he were preaching values I did not share. Life is too short to listen to objectionable crap every Sunday. I even bet there are many black churches in
