5 Feet of Fury

Thomas Sowell: “the audacity of rhetoric”

“Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.

“Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright’s words have a ‘resonance’ in the black community.

“There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan’s words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?

“While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright’s words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come.”