Obama's Speech in Response to the Wright Controversy

But his grandma is way closer to him than Wright and Wright's statements are way out of line and public compare to his grandma's. How does that make it a valid comparison?

 

Unfortunately you don't get it.

 

Then have a nice day. You can't throw blanket statements on people like that. It's no damn wonder you can't see the problem with Rev Wright and Obama aligning himself to that racist for so many years.

You are going to talk to me about reading comprehension when I was responding to your question of....

how do you know his grandfather was racist in the first freakin place? who told you that?

You are slipping, bigtime. Why did you ask me how I know that? You could have just agreed he was a racist.

I read it on Wikipedia but you tell me. Just look it up first, we don't want you to make a fool out of yourself (again).

And....

 

Sir or madam, unfortunately it's you who doesn't get it.

Have a nice day.

 

why is it that white people like Imus have to give big apologies to the American public but a man of supposedly Christian faith as the Reverend Wright gets a pass. The man could've helped Obama tremendously by just saying "I was wrong for saying those things during my sermons." It's easy for Obama to denounce Wright's messages and views. However, if Wright truly cares about changing this country and sending Christian values, why is it so hard for him to say "I was wrong". Reason why is that there are two Obama's. One that trancends race and color and is the beacon of hope and change. The other Obama is the one we don't see. The one that believes in the teachings of that hateful church, the one that rewards his pastor by putting him on his campaign commitee for African relations(he's no longer spiritual advisor but Wright is still part of Obama's campaign), the one that is known to be friends with known domestic terrorists who bombed the pentagon in the 60s with no remorse today, the one that chooses to make bad judgment after bad judgment by telling the American people that we need to do our part to change yet he refuses to do his part in changing his very own people. It's east to just distance yourself from people but its a lot harder to ask them to change. So before he gets on his high horse and continues talking about change, he needs to practice what he preaches.

 

I don't recall his grandmother opening up a church and preaching a hate mesage against blacks. I fail to see a sensible similarity. BTW.. Did he disown his grandfather? The rev is not his family. If he put the rev before his grandfather, shame on him.

Independent rational thinking is useful too. Try it out some time.

 

I can make a reasonable assumption that his father's father didn't make her racist given the time period. as a matter of fact your's is the idioic assumption that his grandfather did, as if it somehow justified it anyway

no i'm asking you where did you get the knowledge from? you got that from obama so he isn't exactly denying anything or hiding anything about his grandfather

 

You're coming off like a complete ass. It's ok to have differing points of view...but suggesting Major, of all people, isn't a rational thinker is beyond laughable.

 

For about the fifth time, he's describing a personal relationship between him and these people. He's not creating a comparison of their actions, statements, or anything else, but of his relationship between each. He's stating that these people are both personally connected to him and he will not disown them. It has nothing to do with what message each was preaching or whether or not they started a church. Trying to create your own connections doesn't change that one bit. It just makes it appear that you still have yet to understand any part of his speech or message.

 

Huckabee on the Wright controversy:

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Huckabee:


As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you — we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names...


http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

 

Look, I havent spoken to you in those terms. If thats how you want to roll let me know.

If Major is going to take shots at me, then I'm free to respond back with one.

You just need to mind your own damn business.

 

You haven't made a reasonable assumption in this thread, so why try to start now. You've be the one justifying racism throughout this thread.

I read it on Wikipedia. So what?

I didn't say he denied it, now did I? I said he had a real good example of a family member with some racist beliefs and he failed to use him. I haven't read the family closeness index meter report that some of you seem to have that says which family member is the closest to him thereby making that persons racist beliefs the best example to defuse the rants of a racist friend.

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/new_wright.html

A Speech That Fell Short
By Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.

Obama's Philadelphia speech made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's views in strong language -- and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and "shocking ignorance" of the African-American experience -- and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger -- and argued that the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda.

It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways.

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of the African-American community. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.

Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront in Philadelphia. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes his charge is correct, he should urge the overthrow of the American government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk, because the HIV virus spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.

The Philadelphia speech implied that these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" -- both are the foibles of family. But while Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.

But haven't George Bush and other Republican politicians accepted the support of Jerry Falwell, who spouted hate of his own? Yes, but they didn't financially support his ministry and sit directly under his teaching for decades.

The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church -- a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church's pastor attacked the American government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists interpret as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the Republican candidate attending this church lacked judgment, and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.

In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright's problem is exactly the opposite: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.

King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. ... Hate distorts the personality. ... The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."

Barack Obama is not a man who hates -- but he chose to walk with a man who does.

michaelgerson@cfr.org

 

let me see, one grandparent raised him, one was in africa. I guess i need the meter to determine who he was close to

when?

 

I'm sorry but buying in to that weak attempt by Obama doesn't make you the enlightened one. He's excusing poor judgement with a very weak non relevant example.

If I'm Obama and my ambition is to run this country the right way... Wright's mission was the polar opposite of the values I would need to run this country. Obama has called Wright his confidant many times. A preacher who curses in church, delivers sermons that are aimed to fuel racial strife and undermines the foundation of government is not what I go to church for. I go to hear the word of Jesus Christ.

 

Did he really say this? If so, he better have some damned good evidence.

To state that racism is a problem is one thing. That sadly is an issue that still needs to be dealt with. To accuse the US government of genocide by creating HIV as the means to accomplish it is a serious charge.

 

If Obama asked himself "What would Jesus do?", naturally he would think that Jesus would throw Wright under the bus. Forgiveness is so 0 AD.

 

This is my favorite post you've ever made about Jesus.

 

nice speech, but he race bait and switch the topic.

 

Regardless of how authoritatively you make these proclamations, judging from most of the replies in this thread it will only seem to haunt him with you, bigtexxx/trader_j, illskills, ymc and a couple of others.