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Pastor: When White Folks Say Obama Was an “Embarrassment”, Here’s What You Say

By

James Lyttle

Published on September 17, 2018

One of the common responses to criticism of Donald Trump by his voters is something along the lines “Obama was an embarrassment for 8 years.”  One Christian pastor is calling out that notion.

John Pavlovitz has penned an open letter to those white Trump voters, informing them that no, in fact, they weren’t embarrassed by the former President:

Were you embarrassed by his lone and enduring twenty-five year marriage to a strong woman he’s never ceased to publicly praise, respect, or cherish?

Were you embarrassed by the way he lovingly and sweetly parented and protected his daughters?

Pavolovitz asked these, along with a lot of other relevant questions. Here is the entire post:

“I remember the day after the Election, a friend of mine who happens to be white, remarked on social media that he “finally wasn’t embarrassed of America and our President.”

I sprained my eyes rolling them and they have never fully recovered.

Since then I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by more white folks than I can count, especially in recent months; supposed relief at once again having a leader who instills pride.

Since I don’t have the time to ask each of the individually, I’ll ask here:

So, you were embarrassed for the past 8 years, huh? 

Really?

What exactly were you embarrassed by?

Were you embarrassed by his lone and enduring twenty-five year marriage to a strong woman he’s never ceased to publicly praise, respect, or cherish?

Were you embarrassed by the way he lovingly and sweetly parented and protected his daughters?

Were you embarrassed by his Columbia University degree in Political Science or his graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School?

Maybe you were embarrassed by his white American and Black Kenyan parents, or the diversity he was raised in as normal?

Were you embarrassed by his eloquence, his quick wit, his easy humor, his seeming comfort meeting with both world leaders and street cleaners; by his bright smile or his sense of empathy or his steadiness—perhaps by his lack of personal scandals or verbal gaffes or impulsive tirades?

No. Of course you weren’t.

Honestly, I don’t believe you were ever embarrassed. That word implies an association that brings ridicule, one that makes you ashamed by association, and if that’s something you claim to have experienced over the past eight years by having Barack Obama representing you in the world—I’m going to suggest you rethink your word choice.

You weren’t “embarrassed” by Barack Obama.

You were threatened by him.
You were offended by him.
You were challenged by him.
You were enraged by him.

But I don’t believe it had anything to do with his resume or his experience or his character or his conduct in office—because you seem fully proud right now to be associated with a three-time married, serial adulterer and confessed predator; a man whose election and business dealings and relationships are riddled with controversy and malfeasance. You’re perfectly fine being represented by a bullying, obnoxious, genitalia-grabbing, Tweet-ranting, Prime Minister-shoving charlatan who’s managed to offended all our allies in a few short months. And you’re okay with him putting on religious faith like a rented, dusty, ill-fitting tuxedo and immediately tossing it in the garbage when he’s finished with it.

None of that you’re embarrassed of? I wonder how that works.

Actually, I’m afraid I have an idea. I hope I’m wrong.

Listen, you’re perfectly within your rights to have disagreed with Barack Obama’s policies or to have taken issue with his tactics. No one’s claiming he was a flawless politician or a perfect human being. But somehow I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here. I think the thing President Obama did that really upset you, white friend—was having a complexion that was far darker than you were ever comfortable with. I think the President we have now feels much better.

Because objectively speaking, if what’s happening in our country right now doesn’t cause you great shame and doesn’t induce the continual meeting of your palm to your face—I don’t believe embarrassment is ever something you struggle with.

No, if you claimed to be “embarrassed” by Barack Obama but you’re not embarrassed by Donald Trump—I’m going to strongly suggest it was largely a pigmentation issue.

And as an American and a Christian committed to diversity and equality and to the liberty at the heart of this nation—that, embarrasses me.”

This may infuriate some and sadden others while making some happy. I had become a fan of Megyn Kelly on the Today show as background sound. She is witty, smart, caring and real. I am sad to see her go.
The segment was on cultural appropriations. This was all in the line of a discussion about cultural appropriation is wearing a kimono and white face geisha or /how about dressing as Egyptian/Hawaiian, Eskimo/Native American/Gypsy/astronaut/scuba diver/disney princess/ pirate...is that cultural appropriation when dressing up for Halloween or a costume party? Are we so damn up tight we can't laugh at our own foibles and the dumb stuff we did as kids? I heard her comments on "black face" (the minstrel version where white actors put on black makeup and did parodies of black culture in the 1800's and into the 20th century too. What I heard was a woman who as a child thought nothing of dressing up for Halloween in "blackface" ...we are talking about the culture of the American south in the 1950's-60's....not the most aware time in our history and still very racist. I heard her say (or it could have been body language and tone of voice-I was doing other things at the time.) then it was acceptable.. but NOW it is not. (then on to the next segment)..The following day she attempted to apologize for the way it came across to everyone. .

Here we are in the 21st century we have become more aware that this kind of parody is NOT acceptable. Is this something to fire someone over...I think this is overreacting. I have heard some black Americans come out against her...and a few...damn few noted the body language or the knowledge that it is now not appropriate. Are we so damn up tight we can't laugh at our own foibles from childhood? If so I am living in the wrong century. Note I did not say it was appropriate now nor looking back with the culture and knowledge of the early part of the 21st century.  Are we so hateful to ourselves that this is wrong? Can we not learn from our mistakes and move forward? I bet many of us did things as unthinking kids that if brought back to us now would not be included in our shining moments of life.  I am saddened by the rush to condemn what was done by a child relating how that was accepted at the time but we now know is not appropriate.  

Bells of Dunblane/ (insert naughty word) another deadly school attack

First a bit of history.  We lived in Longmont, Colorado on 20 April 1999 when the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado massacre occurred. My husband plays the bagpipe (how these connect...) keep reading.  In Dunblane Scotland on 13 March 1996 there was a school massacre  at Dunblane Primary School.   22 October 2015 Stockholm, Scotland there was another school attack that killed 1 student and 1 teacher before the attacker was killed......(There have been many, more you can look them up but over 180 in 16 years.) My husband, Doug, plays the bagpipe and was a member of the City of Denver Pipe Band (for how these connect...) keep reading.
Doug  wrote this out for me and since I tend to cry easily I will just post it as he wrote it.

Bells of Dunblane

It has been said that a bagpiper has a tune for every occasion.

Andrew was the Pipe Major of the City of Denver Pipe Band.  In his day job, he taught French at the Boulder Valley School District.  He lived nearby in Littleton, Colorado where his daughter, Stephanie, was a student at Columbine High School.  Stephanie was a highland dancer with the band and was well-known to other band members, of which there were nearly a hundred.

In 1998 a friend of Andrew’s visited Scotland.  While there, this friend attended a pipe concert where he surreptitiously used a pocket tape recorder to record the event.  He thought Andrew might be interested in hearing it, so he made a copy and sent the tape to him, but inadvertently forgot to include the names of the tunes.  Andrew played the tape and found several tunes he liked.  One in particular caught his attention so he wrote manuscript copies of it and shared it with members of the band.  The band included the tune in its repertoire as “The Nameless Tune.”  They played it at concerts that fall and into the next spring.

Then came the Columbine shootings.  Fifteen people, including the two shooters, were killed and 20 others wounded.  Stephanie and a friend had the good fortune to choose that day to go home for lunch and raid Andrew’s refrigerator (and skip returning to school that day).  They missed the whole thing.  Through her connection with the pipe band, Stephanie was asked if the City of Denver Pipe Band would perform at the memorial.  The band agrees and “The Nameless Tune” was included in the services.

In the summer of 1999 the City of Denver Pipe Band toured Scotland, performing at several locales well-known to pipers, including Oban.  After the performance at Oban a man came out of the crowd and said he recognized “The Nameless Tune.”  It was the “Bells of Dunblane.”

You do remember Dunblane?  On March 13, 1996 a gunman entered Dunblane Primary School and killed a teacher and sixteen children.  A piper, Robert (Bob) Mathieson , visited Dunblane at the time of the funerals and heard the bells tolling.  This inspired him to write the tune.  Without knowing its history, Andrew chose this tune to commemorate the students of Columbine High School.

The Bells of Dunblane has become the tune of choice when pipers perform for memorials to the victims of school shootings.

It has been said that a piper has a tune for every occasion.  Sadly, that is true.

Doug Stevenson,

Former member of the City of Denver Pipe Band

You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3I8H6TsQaQ

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre) 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre).

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html  is a list from February 2, 1996 until October 1, 2015

--Cyn 

still another school shooting

"Da*n it we need to stop this NOW.  We need to take away the mental health stigma and stop the bullies (a form of mental illness) and we will stop the crazy shooters.  We have to say enough and make it stick.

Thoughts of Lace Embrace 2015….

First off Lace Embrace was fantastic.  Not as well attended as some years but there were other things going on at the same time…I do not know how well it was publicized.  I’ve 2 hours plus away by car.  I got the info via an email…

My daughter, Jan, accompanied me this year and I did enjoy the entire weekend while she was here and hope she did too.  The problem occurred because I am a dork and don’t do needle tatting as many people do.  I shuttle tat and teach shuttle tatting…I can teach the very, very basics of needle tatting but Saturday proved why I maybe should not try to do something over my head as a teacher of needle tatting.

Jan is definitely in the bobbin lace camp of tatting…no shuttle for her (at least yet) as the shuttle is not being friendly to her hand…needles are.  This was her first attempt at needle tatting….

[The pattern was a simple ruffled ball from Patty Dowden 2011-2012 all uses permitted (except sale of document).  Continuous thread method used for shuttles. 

R: 1-1-1-1 close ring very firmly, do not reverse work, shoe lace trick closed firmly.  Firm tension allows the ruffles the stiffness needed to stand up.

{Just 3 picots in the start ring.  The shoe lace trick (tie) functions as a lock join onto a picot and the start of the first spiral.  A picot precedes the ds on all the chain segments. }

Chain segments: -1-1 lock join to next picot on previous row/segment.

{Repeat around the spiral, lock join so there is a space to start the next segment.  The first spiral has 2-2-in each segment, the second spiral has 4. The third spiral has 8 segments, the fourth has 16….continuing as large as desired.   It will be very dense. ]

Now that you have read the pattern we are starting where the problem occurred.  (Neither the teacher, a shuttle tatter, nor I and I can teach only the basics of needle method…) Jan did an awesome job on the starting ring…then we went on using the ring method but without the lock join (how to do that with a needle?? Way over my skill with a needle at this time but learning it soon) and the needle won’t bend to make the turn…duh then I noted it wasn’t a chain!!!!!!!!!!!!...start over this part using chain method and taking it off the needle as needed to make it work.  I still (Oct 5, 2015) am not sure how to make it work….

I suspect that will be the last time Jan tries needle tatting….unless a tatting friend, Brigitte, is available to help Jan with tatting.  Brigitte did a good job of explaining how to tat with a needle.  Way better than I did.  Jan picked up adding the stitches quickly but I am not sure she will try it again.  I can only hope…

I do need to figure out how to do the lock join before long as it is in the beginner lessons.

Peace, Cyn

A powerful message for all

Gentle readers here comes another mini rant.  I say mini rant because the video said it way better than I ever could.  Please watch the video that I think can be found here:
https://celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/orlando-jones-puts-a-powerful-twist-on-the-als-ice-bucket-challenge-184643763.html?soc_src=copy

I don't know who the young man (Orlando Jones) is nor do I know his acting ability but if this isn't straight from his heart then he deserves an award.  After watching the less than 2 minute long video all I could do was sit in stunned silence.  It doesn't end with the bucket over the head nor with a donation to ALS but with a challenge to us all.   

I take the liberty of posting the written info here just in case you won't (or can't) watch the video:
'With a somber tone, Jones laments, "Gandhi and Martin Luther King and millions of others are dead, and they were fighting for human RIGHTS, and it all seems to stem from some militarized police force threatening the rights of PEOPLE to assemble."  Noting that he is a "lifetime member of the NRA" and "active member of the great state of Louisiana's police force," he goes so far as to display his badge before getting to the grit of his message.

"I'm not pointing any fingers here at anybody but myself, and I'm asking something very hard of myself. I'm challenging myself to listen without prejudice, to love without limits, and to reverse the hate. So that's my challenge to me and hopefully you'll accept this challenge too."

The video wraps with a series of hashtags that flash on the screen in silence: #justiceformichaelbrown #weareallferguson #reversethehate.

We'll have to wait and see whether Jones's campaign catches on, but something tells us it's already making people stop and think — and that's the first step toward change.'    

Peace, Cyn

Hate is a 4 letter word

Gentle readers, this morning after seeing another "I hate you fill in the blank '  post on facebook regarding the affordable care act, and a couple other hate posts i started to get angry...first off i am tired..exhausted...done with the concept of hate and began trying to calm my mind before going to Quaker meeting...for those of you who don't know that Quakers still exist please read my later post entitled "  Quakers...yes we are still here..." and then I  read the following written in 2012 and posted on the Daily KOS ( A big thank you for saying what I wanted to say):

MinistryOfTruthFollowRSS

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MON JAN 09, 2012 AT 01:57 PM PST

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

byMinistryOfTruthFollow

    I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

More rant below the fold . . .

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can. You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its' debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.

Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me.

Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back. Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed assholes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Sinclair Lewis warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly fuck over working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I do not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.

You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO MINISTRYOFTRUTH ON MON JAN 09, 2012 AT 01:57 PM PST.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY CLASSWARFARE NEWSLETTER: WALLSTREET VS WORKING CLASS GLOBAL OCCUPY MOVEMENT, STREET PROPHETS , AND MITT ROMNEY BAIN CHRONICLES.

Peace, Cyn