C.I. in last week's "Roundtable:"
The reality is that whomever is president will be called out for something in 20 years and that's just how it works. It's because knowledge is not a base line and progress is never complete. For those reasons, any country will always have embarrassments in their past and good for that because otherwise you're saying that people don't evolve, that understanding doesn't increase from generation to generation. You're saying human development is static.
As I (Jim) said at the time, "Wow." From the e-mails, I wasn't the only impressed with the comments last Sunday. From the e-mails after Tuesday, I wasn't the only one noticing -- the thief of speechmaking, Barack Obama, appeared to be cribbing as well.
Obama from his Pretty Words speech last Tuesday:
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; [. . . ]
and:
This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation [. . .]
He also spoke a great deal about "perfection" indicating that he read Ava and C.I.'s "TV: Nothing-ness" last week. Some readers were proud to have; others, not so much. For the record, C.I. is not Deval Patrick or anyone who gave permission to Obama to be so 'inspired' that he copied.