SHARPTON TARGETS NADER OVER OBAMA COMMENTS

SHARPTON TARGETS NADER OVER OBAMA COMMENTS: Rev. takes issue with Ralph questioning senator's blackness.
(June 27, 2008)

*Al Sharpton barely had time to deal with this week's Don Imus flare-up when Ralph Nader made headlines for saying that Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama "talks white" and ignores issues of poverty.
Nader, a consumer activist and presidential candidate on the Independent ticket, told Denver's Rocky Mountain News Wednesday:
"I haven't heard [Obama] have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards."
Asked to clarify whether he thought Obama does try to "talk white," Nader said: "Of course."
Sharpton's response was swift.
"I don't know how one 'talks black or white,'" wrote Sharpton in an email sent to members of the media. "There are clearly different styles and speech cadences in every community."
In closing, Sharpton said Nader's comments were "beneath the respect many have had for you and more importantly below the level of political discourse we need at this point in history.
"Those of us that deal with real people in real pain in the black community every day need real answers and real change and that is more important than the volume or style in which it is presented."
Obama, meanwhile, said Nader is "somebody who is trying to get attention and whose campaign hasn't gotten any traction. So what better way to get some traction than to make an inflammatory statement like the one that he made."

Source: EURweb.com