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Si Frumkin , a Holocaust survivor and longtime Jewish activist, now devotes his time to public service, lecturing, writing, and whatever else has to be done.
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By Si Frumkin
March 24, 2008
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One of the most basic strategies in a successful magic trick is the use of misdirection and diversion. A great magician amazes by doing the obviously impossible and the audience applauds, delighted to be fooled, misdirected to look left when the real action is on the right, and cannot explain the inexplicable.
Of course, stage magic is not the only art to use misdirection and diversion. Attorneys, salespersons, criminals and interrogators would be out of business if they couldn't divert the dialogue. But most of all, the magic of diversion, the ability to persuade the listener that what he hears is what the speaker really means is the mother milk of politics. The responses at press conferences, the campaign promises that do not really promise anything substantial, the impossible dreams that are created for those who have come to enjoy to be fooled by cunning rhetoric require a gift that only a few possess.
Barack Obama is one of those favored few.
I am usually frustrated by magic shows. I leave trying to understand how it was done and I cannot. But in the case of Obama?s now famous speech in Philadelphia on March 18, my frustration is unprecedented. I think, no, I believe, that I know what the trick was but I can?t come to terms with the idea that, apparently, very few do. The media, depending on their political predilection, either describe the speech as being on par with the best of Lincoln, Kennedy and Churchill for analyzing and defining our racial dilemma, or else as painting a wrong and distorted picture of racial reality in America.
I think both views are wrong. The speech was indeed about race but that was a diversion -- a clever one, worthy of a genius -- since what caused the outrage against Reverend Wright was not his racist cant but his anti-Americanism. Black racism is not new and doesn't shock -- we have become used to apologizing for slavery that existed before we were born and before most of our ancestors were in America. (By the way, it is interesting that this year we should have but didn't celebrate the law that prohibited the importation of slaves to the US on January 1, 1808, almost exactly 200 years ago!)
The outrage over Jeremiah Wright was his anti-Americanism. It wasn't unprecedented -- similar accusations were and are voiced in Islamic madrassahs around the world, by the demented presidents of Venezuela and Iran, by the neo-fascists, skinheads and anarchists, by the nuts of the right and the left.
These ravings about AIDS being created and spread by the United States, by CIA's drug distribution to blacks, of America having deserved -- or even orchestrated -- 9/11 are heard from radicals who hate us and want us dead.
They should not be heard from a pastor of a recognized church who is admittedly the religious adviser, close friend and mentor of a future President of the United States. And this is what the outrage was all about until Barack Obama diverted us to a discussion of the racial problem in the United States, a topic that is important and interesting but has no more to do with America?s outrage over Rev. Wright's unacceptable hatred than sawing a woman in half by a magician.
Obama?s masterful sleight of hand went unnoticed. There was deafening applause, a few muted boos and the discussion was diverted away from the hatred of America that the Obama family listened to for 20 years without protest or complaint.
So here is a scenario: A white (or Hispanic or Asian or Jewish) clergyman calls on his congregation to join him in chanting "God Damn America!" and says that the AIDS virus was created and distributed by the U.S. government. At the same time, this clergyman remains a close longtime religious and ideological adviser to a white (or Hispanic or Asian or Jewish) Presidential contender. Don't you think that the same storm of disapproval for himself and for the candidate would erupt? I do. Americans do not want a President who did not have the intelligence, dedication and guts to reject an America-hater. And it has nothing to do with race.
And as to Obama's not being aware of or taking seriously Rev. Wright's ideology: here is another scenario. How credible would I be if I had attended KKK meetings for 20 years and still claimed that I had no idea what that organization stands for? Anybody -- of any race -- would be thought to be either very stupid or a liar, neither of which is a qualification for the most important job in the world. So, the solution is: talk about race.
Did it work? Apparently it did. But maybe, just maybe the American people are too smart for this bit of sleight of hand even if it is presented eloquently, charismatically and in sonorous tones.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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