Yesterday on “Washington Watch,” the Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell compared President Obama to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for killing a sheriff’s deputy, a crime which Al-Amin has maintained he did not commit. Blackwell was speaking with the radio program’s guest host Richard Land, a right-wing pastor who left his Southern Baptist Convention post after making racially insensitive, plagiarized comments on his since-cancelled radio show.
Land told Blackwell that he thought that during 2008 presidential campaign President Obama came across like Martin Luther King, Jr., even though Land was a harsh critic of Obama during that race, labeling him a “first-class arsonist.” “We so wanted Martin Luther King,” Land said, “and I’m afraid we’ve gotten Stokely Carmichael instead.”
“Not even that, we’ve gotten Rap Brown, which is even worse,” Blackwell responded.
Land suggested that King would join their criticisms of Obama: “Can you imagine how Dr. King would react to what’s been going on?”
Blackwell, a former Republican politician from Ohio, said Obama’s “very existence” proves that America isn’t a racist country, “but he blew it” on racial reconciliation. Land posited that Obama could have been America’s version of Nelson Mandela and ushered in the end of racism.
