Obama’s subtexts

In an intriguing piece in TNR , writer Cinque Henderson - who identifies himself as one of the few remaining Clinton supporters among African-Americans - explains Obama’s use of “hoodwinked” and “bamboozled” (not the first words to spring to Obama’s lips, one would think) in the South Carolina primary: “It comes from a scene in Malcolm X , where Denzel Washington warns black people about the hidden evils of ‘the White Man’ masquerading as a smiling politician: ‘Every election year, these politicians are sent up here to pacify us,’ he says. ‘You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled.” Obama was “helping to convince blacks that the first two-term Democratic president in 50 years, a man referred to as the first black president, is in fact a secret racist.”

Henderson also challenges Obama’s implication that Jeremiah Wright is typical of the lack church: “He generalized Wright’s ridiculousness to distract from his individual choice to worship under a buffoon for two decades. I have a cousin who attended Wright’s church for three weeks, and then left, never to return . . . . Barack needed to protect his reputation as a race-healer and unifier, so he told a lie about black religious life to help keep the glow of his own reputation alive.”