Obama: At least as radical as a Puritan

Melanie Phillips, who is a British journalist that strikes me as more than just a little bit wacky and possibly even mildly deranged, published an item in The Spectator today, drawing on some articles by a Stanley Kurtz that appeared in the National Review Online.

Apparently Kurtz's project is to unearth what are purportedly the most outré, leftist "radical" scribblings he can find and attempt to somehow attribute them to Barack Obama by hook or by crook and by any means necessary, as we used to say back in the Hashbury, man.

Phillips gravely intones:

Kurtz dug out a chapter in a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois in which Obama sketched out how radical black churches could be harnessed to help radicalise the black population.

I don't know how much digging it took, because the entire chapter is available on the internets right here.

Further to Phillips's overheated paranoias, it's true that Obama does suggest involving churches in community work, e.g.:

This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and any other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire organizers, conduct research, develop leadership, hold rallies and education cam­paigns, and begin drawing up plans on a whole range of issues — jobs, education, crime, etc. Once such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and corporations more responsive to commu­nity needs.

So radical, one can barely stand it. Who knows where Phillips came up with the "radical black" prefix for Obama's churches. Extracted wholesale from that storied East End London fog, presumably. Elsewhere the descriptor Obama employs is "prominent black," and refers to "young and forward-thinking pastors."

Do those sound like Jeremiah Wright to you? Nor I.

And are "radical" and "prominent" the same things? According to these learned scribes, that would appear to be the case. Clearly none is the manner of church of which either Phillips or Kurtz might approve, and isn't that just so dreadfully lamentable for each of that pair of Eurocentric elitist media honkeys.

If either of these characters believe that the Obama chapter is representative of some brand of dangerous radicalism, then neither of them get out much, that's evident enough.

But they sure can work a guilt-by-association fallacy in a pinch.