Just words?

[Griswold]

Barack Obama is keen at delivering powerful speeches. Whether he's quipping "Yes we can!" or "Change America can believe in!," his penchant for carefully-crafted, flawlessly-delivered speeches is what has drawn many voters to him, despite his short voting record and relative anonymity.

But no speech, no matter how eloquent the words or how flawless the delivery, can cover up the shallowness that Obama is exhibiting on an increasingly regular basis.

Take, for example, Obama's speech last month "” a plagiarized speech, no less "” about words.

"Don't tell me words don't matter," he said. "'I have a dream.' Just words? 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words? 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words? Just speeches?"

Don't tell me words don't matter.

"The government gives them the drugs, build bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing 'God bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America. That's in the Bible for killing innocent people," Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's long-time pastor at Trinity United Church of God said in a sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Just words?

Obama thinks so.

"I don't think my church is necessarily controversial," Obama said earlier this month. "[Rev. Wright] is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with."

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said in another sermon. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Just words?

"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity," Obama told reporters Friday."

Don't tell me words don't matter.

"Obama was present in the South Side Chicago church on July 22 last year when Jim Davis, a freelance correspondent for Newsmax, attended services along with Obama. In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the 'United States of White America' and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright"™s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement," Newsmax reporter Ronald Kessler wrote Sunday.

"Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domesticand foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks thatcould be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," Obama said in a speech yesterday, directly contradicting his Friday statement that he had not personally overheard Wright make incendiary comments about America.

Don't tell me words don't matter.

When radio shock jock Don Imus referred to Rutgers University women basketball players last spring as "nappy-headed hoes," Obama pounced. "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude," Obama said.

We can assume that the caucasian race doesn't qualify as an ethnic group, since Wright "” who refers to America as the U. S. of KKK A. "” remained on Obama's staff until this firestorm began late last week.

But it doesn't matter. After all, they're just words.

Audacity of hope? Or audacity of deceit?