Although the story is (thankfully) not getting much heat in the mainstream press, a lot of chatter has been going on the past couple days regarding Barack Obama’s recent remarks at a campaign event on the day of the Virginia Tech Massacre—remarks in which the saintly Senator supposedly “compared” the massacre to the firing of Don Imus, the economic hardships of outsourcing, the loss of pension benefits, a lack of healthcare coverage, etc. Ben Smith got the ball rolling at Politico, Ann Coulter’s boyfriend picked it up on Slate, as did Isaac Chotiner at TNR, and of course Drudge shouted it out from the rooftops (although the mention no longer appears on the main page).

This appears to be the offending passage:

There’s also another kind of violence though that we’re gonna have to think about. It’s not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughter.

…

There’s the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under ‘em because their job has moved to another country. They’ve lost their job, they’ve lost their pension benefits, and they’ve lost their health care and they’re having to compete against their teenage children for jobs at the local fast food place paying $7 an hour.

Taken out of context like this, I can see how Obama’s comments may come across as bizarre or strained. But looking at the full transcript, and watching segments of the actual speech online, it’s clear the criticism is, at best, misguided.

The key passage in Obama’s remarks, the one that best contextualizes his discussion of “violence” and best conveys his thoughts on the tragedy, is actually quite moving:

[T]here’s a lot of different forms of violence in our society and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other—to not understand that we are all connected that we are all connected, fundamentally, as a people…And that those who may not look like me, or talk like me, or worship the same god that I do, are nevertheless worthy of respect and dignity and a sense of common humanity.

I’m tired of pundits inferring supposed false “comparisons” in political remarks, as if looking for a connection between societal issues or concerns inevitably means you’ve equated the two (nevermind the fact that, when Obama actually does compare the events, he says the level of tragedy is, well, non-compareable).

Obama, in this speech, defined a certain societal ill—our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other—and applied it to a number of political concerns (racism, economic insecurity, lack of health care, etc.) that “may not surface to the same level of the tragedy,” as he put it, but are nevertheless related in their cause.

The political punditry at large (as best exemplified by lazy analysts like Brendan Nyhan) seems to be under the impression that Obama’s tendency, and unique ability, to explain America’s problems through the use of broad themes is something that will hamper him during the upcoming primary, particularly with regards to blue-collar Democratic voters (a contention I just can’t understand). But watching a clearly shaken Obama address an attentive and appreciative audience in the midst of a national tragedy, nobody can doubt his sincerity.