Media Matters doesn’t think Christopher Hitchens should have called Obama’s church racist, claiming it’s not even exclusive:

Citing the potential for increased press scrutiny of Obama, Hitchens asserted: “[T]his dumb, nasty, ethnic rock ‘n’ roll racist church that he goes to in Chicago, he won’t be able to walk away from that anymore.” In fact, while Obama’s church — the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago — is predominantly African-American, it has been described by non-blacks as “enthusiastically welcom[ing].” According to an April 2 article on the website for The Martin Marty Center — which is described on its website as “an institute for the advanced study of religion at the University of Chicago” — professor emeritus Martin E. Marty wrote of Obama’s church: “My wife and I on occasion attend, and, like all other non-blacks, are enthusiastically welcomed.” In addition, Rev. Jane Fisler Hoffman, a minister in the United Church of Christ who attends Trinity, recently made a statement about the church — video of which is available online — in which she stated that “[m]inisters all around the United Church of Christ — European-American, African-American, and other denominations — bring people from their churches to Trinity because the worship is so powerful, the preaching is so meaningful and prophetic.” Hoffman went on to add that Trinity “is a church that reaches out to everybody, locally, around the world, all colors, and it just wants to share the gospel and good news of Jesus.”[Media Matters - Hitchens attacked Obama's "dumb, nasty ... racist" church, compared Clintons to zombies, vampires, and werewolves]

Hitchens isn’t saying that TUCC is a racist church because they refuse to admit whites to their services. (Under religious freedom, you could have racially exclusive church, where you couldn’t have a racially exclusive anything else–the most extreme example of a 100 % racially exclusive religion is caste Hinduism.) What he’s saying that the TUCC under Reverend Jeremiah Wright is ideologically racist.That we can prove. Wright’s church still has this “Black Value System” thing on its website:

Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”

Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:

Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us”. So, while it is permissible to chase “middle-incomeness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method-the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness”: If we avoid the snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright, the leadership, resourcefulness, and example of their own talented persons.

What this means is that no matter how successful a black American gets, he must never stop hating and blaming whites for the failure of other blacks. And it’s deeply conspiratorial. Its like that thing in Boyz in the Hood:

Laurence Fishburne: Why is it that there is a gun shop on almost every corner in this community?
The Old Man: Why?
Laurence Fishburne: I’ll tell you why. For the same reason that there is a liquor store on almost every corner in the black community. Why? They want us to kill ourselves.

It’s nonsense. So when Media Matters follows Hitchens’ assertion that TUCC is a “dumb, nasty, ethnic rock ‘n’ roll racist church” with a sentence beginning “In fact…” they are not adding any actual facts to the debate, or answering Hitchen’s basic charge.

Allan Wall has pointed VDARE blog readers to the Obama-cult video that must be seen to be believed.

In my view, the best way to think about the Obama phenomenon is to ask, “If this guy were white and had a comparable record, would he ever have attracted the slightest attention?” The question answers itself.

Mercifully, there’s a lampoon-Obama-mania video available, too. It has its moments, but what I really appreciated was the slogan on a poster that flashes by shortly after the 2-minute mark:

Lemmings for Obama

That’s good enough to remember and use!

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson is quite worked up in the NYT over that Hillary Clinton “Red Phone” television spot.

You know the one (as explained by the NY Daily News):

“It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep,” a grim-voiced announcer intones over footage of angelic young kids in their beds.

“But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing,” the menacing voice-over continues.

“Your vote will decide who answers that call,” the announcer says. “Who do you want answering the phone?”

Patterson uses his super racism decoder ring to explain the subliminal hidden message:

ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent “It’s 3 a.m” advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond.

And we know what that means …

Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.[The Red Phone in Black and White, March 11, 2008]

They should have shown all the children sleeping in one bed with all the lights on, and they should all have been different races. It would be like Angelina Jolie’s house — gotta catch ‘em all!

By the way, wouldn’t “Vaguely Latino” be a good name for a rock band? No, you’re right, it wouldn’t.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone.

Well, that’s a reassuring image: An overwhelmed President Hillary trying to get by on two hours of sleep per night, cranked out of her skull on prescription uppers.

Anyway, the question I had about Hillary’s ad must be the reason they showed Hillary fully dressed and sitting at her desk at 3 AM:

When the Red Phone rings in the President’s bedroom at 3 AM, who else is in the room?

With President Obama, I presume it would be Mrs. Obama. And we can forecast Michelle’s advice with some degree of confidence:

“Barack, honey, I have to be up early for my personal trainer before I chair that crucial meeting of the National Diversity Sensitivity Outreach Relations Commission and I just don’t know how I’ll manage it all, so, whoever it is, just nuke ‘em so I can get some sleep. And while you’re at it, could you drop one on Princeton, New Jersey, too? Make sure it’s big enough to take out the Educational Testing Service as well. They’ll know why.”

But with Hillary, doesn’t this ad just re-open that question that we’ve all tried hard not to think about?