To Judge or Not to Judge

In less than one month Americans will have a new president, and tensions are running high to discredit presidential candidates before election day. As you know, up until now mass media, T.V stations, national newspapers, and radio-talk shows, have eagerly jumped at the chance to publicize political scandals and accusations. While most recent reporting has honed on the V.P candidates, most notorious Sarah Palin, others have resorted to digging up past allegations. I came across one these gravedigger articles, in the Washington Post by Charles Krautrammer. In it he attempts to make the audience, more specifically voters who are still speculating, suspicious of presidential candidate, Barack Obama, bringing back to life old alleged ties with three sketchy characters, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The first Obama associate is convicted felon of political corrupt activities Tony Rezko. The second Obama associate is Bill Ayers, a once radical leader directly involved in a string of government building bombings, and highlighted by his contribution to fund Barack Obama’s campaign. The third and most publicized associate is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, criticized for his view of evil America and race-baiting. The core intention of this article is to cause suspicion of Obama’s affiliation with U.S degenerating, and politically corrupt characters. It sparks fear into Americans who love to celebrate and honor past presidents characterized by their impact while in office. To many Americans, JFK is a hero, perfect husband, and honest guy. We carry a common presidential identity through political discussions years after their time in office. To motivate voters to re-think Obama’s underlying character, the author relies on assumptions. One much relied on, is the assumption that Barack Obama was aware of his associates wrong doing. Just because he knew them, does this mean he knew what they were doing? Krauthammer assumes Obama was aware of Rev. Wrights, extremist views when he says, “Would you attend church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit”? If you know someone who smokes, does that mean you support smoking. Or more relative if you knew someone, but didn’t know they smoked would you become a bad guy? Does re-introducing past allegations reflect new suspicion of bad character? To prevent character degradation, I believe the government should put pressure on other presidential issues. Also to continue to allow the mass media to present both sides of the story, such as the CNN Barack Obama interview after Rev. Wright video leaked. Overall the public was given a chance to hear Obama’s position. I didn’t think the article was convincing because of the lack of verifiable evidence. In order to prove Obama’s acknowledgement of associates’ wrong doing, the author had better rely on T.V interviews, or video accounts. But in fact there was no mention of such tapes. No such footage of Obama taking part in the highly publicized church service. Where was he in the audience? I didn’t see him! To further disprove this authors opinion, I did research of my own. The most supportive media I found was the CNN interview where Obama announces the church service was not appropriate. Although I thoroughly disagree with most of the article, I do agree with his point of McCain. He thinks that McCain missed the opportunity to strike Obama supporters with associations while the issue was hot. “McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should have months ago have begun challenging Obama’s associations….” “McCain had his chance back in April when North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/09/AR2008100902328.html