Obama Plays the Otter Card

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmation action, that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap," he said. "On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, that rightly offend white and black alike...

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street....These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.---Barack Obama, Philadelphia '08

Masterful. In times of crisis, consult the repository of all human wisdom, the classics.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules or took a few liberties with our female guests. We did.

But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick, perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?

I put it to you, Greg, isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you bad-mouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!---Eric Stratton, Faber '63