Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

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[col. writ 4/12/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal Our national politics is largely the stuff of illusion. It is the stuff of spin. It is the manipulation of images to pluck the heartstrings, or to stoke the furnaces of emotion. Any emotion will do: love, hate, fear, all are but instruments upon which politicians will play to move people to the polls, to get them either to vote for them, or against their opponents. What all of this really means in the day-to-day lives of many of the voters, is actually quite minimal, for politicians don't really care about what voters want; they care about those who can afford them -- those who pay them well for their services. In essence, politics is a business, and voters are merely bare necessities. We see this in the vast, obscene amounts of money raised for virtually all political offices. At bottom, politics is the elevation of symbol over substance, for it seeks to create the illusion of change, while leaving unchanged the e

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The recent quasi-controversy over the comments made by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, retired pastor of the United Church of Christ, to which Sen. Barack Obama (D.IL), both belongs and attends, has shown us how limited, and how narrow, is this new politics peddled by the freshman Senator from Chicago. Although first popularized via the web, the Reverend's comments caused Sen. Obama to say he was "appalled" by them, and he has repudiated such remarks as "offensive." Just what were these comments? As far as I've heard, they were that Sen. Hilary Clinton (D.NY) has had a political advantage because she's white; that she was raised in a family of means (especially when contrasted with Obama's upbringing); and she was never called a nigger. Sounds objectively true to me. Rev. Wright's other remarks were that the country was built on racism, is run by rich white people, and that the events of 9/11 was a direct reaction to US foreign policy. Again -- true enough. And while we can see how such truth

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