Obama's Speech in Response to the Wright Controversy

You may be right that it was a stupid thing to say. But it is by no means a huge deal. It certainly isn't as crazy as Bill Clinton's Jesse Jackson comments.

And it certainly isn't as "damn stupid" as someone pretending to no more about 20 years of church services based on a few 30 second video and audio clips, than people who were there the whole time.

I'm sorry I keep bringing it up, but the arrogance, and lack of rational thought involved in that kind of thinking taints the whole discussion for me.

 

Sure it's a huge deal, Obama was already catching heat for associating with a racist and then Obama makes a racist comment himself.

Your man's campaign just got a kick in the taint.

 

Not really. The association with Wright has been a negative, but this latest thing, is relatively minor.

 

Keep telling yourself that. He just confirmed the fears of many a voter.

 

I think it would be a big mistake in not approaching it like Bill or Hillary's past racial comments. The American political landscape been primed with racial landmines over the past 30 years with Conservative radio and news bolstering that line.

It's not as simple as mitigating the remarks by relating it to the gravity of our history of institutional racism (else Obama's speech wouldn't be historic or innovative). There are certain grievances among white people who already have one perceived notion of progress within the civil rights movement while feeling that they are on the reverse end of an unfair double standard.

Conservative politicians have exploited that emotional vein successfully several times before and they'll freely do it again and again to secure the white vote.

It's too early to tell how things will turn out, whether Obama's speech will overpower Wright's comments. Again, I'm not a fan of what recently came out of his mouth. He just made his tightrope walk even harder.

 

What about anything Obama has done is there for you or any other voter to be fearful of?

Where does the fear come in?

 

I love it when conservatives start throwing the word racist around, when for so many years they decried the regime of political correctness that got us into this racial stalemate.

How can one talk about racial differences and the issue of race without using stereotypes? You can't. There is no evidence that Rev. Wright is a racist.

One can have ethnocentric beliefs and not be a racist. Otherwise, Latin Americans who speak Spanish to their friends in public and celebrate Cinco de Mayo would be racist; Asian Americans who live in Asian communities and shop at Asian markets would be racist; Muslim Americans who go to mosques and Jewish Americans who go to synagogues where their clergy preach their own ethnocentric politics on the dangers to the Arab and Jewish world would be racist.

Just because you don't go to a white church and listen to white-friendly services doesn't make you a racist.

 

True, but

1) appointing a racist to a position of leadership on your campaign
and
2) dedicating yourself to listen to a racist's rhetoric every Sunday for the past 20 years

invites some very serious questions. Obama used extremely poor judgement here. It's a major issue.

 

This argument only works if you concede that Wright is a racist. He isn't, even though many are trying to label him as such based on snippets and sound bites. It's a dangerous game to play. Heck, Mike Huckabee stepped up to defend Wright, of all people.

And speaking of poor judgment... Keating Five.

 

What is a white-friendly service? Catholic Mass?

 

Serious questions like ... Do you ever get tired of making sh** up?

Prove me that Wright position of leadership in Obama's campaign was any more titular.

Prove me that every one of Wright's sermons for the last 20 years was racist.

Take your time. I'll wait dutifully for your reply.

 

Do you ever get tired of being proven wrong? sigh, I guess not.

I never said that all of his sermons were racist. If you could read properly, you'd see that I said he listened to a racist's rhetoric. As in delivered by a racist. Which is true. PWN3D

Wright was on Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee. Leadership Committee. Sounds like a position of leadership to me. PWN3D AGAIN

Think, No Worries, Think. TIA, brah

 

Any particular reason why you singled out Catholics?

 

A little context...

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http://www.youtube.com/user/TRINITYCHGO

 

The implication of a leadership position, as you well know, is influence. Show me how Wright has influenced Obama's policies. In particular, concentrate on Obama's racist policies.

Without any real *racist* influence, you are just talking through your ... well you know.

 

lol I guess you gave up trying to disprove the other point. At least you grasped for a straw on this one. You didn't do a very good job, but at least you tried.

Do you think Wright's almost assuredly pro-reparations stance had anything to do with Barack hemming and hawing about whether he was for or against them?

 

This story is one of the greatest of all time, really it is. Perhaps the only greater joy could have come from Larry Sinclair's homostyle sexcapades being proven true. Eh, one can dream.

Of course the best part of this story is what it does to Barry O'GDam'Amerikkka -- it renders him unelectable. Seen the Ohio polls comparing McCain to O'GDam'Amerikka? McCain is trouncing him. The beauty of it all is that Hillary would likely be at least competitive against John McCain, yet she has realistically no chance at the nomination without an internal coup. This is GREAT! And the infighting between the dems will continue for MONTHS! And they will spend their warchests on EACH OTHER, not on John McCain, Man of Honor. The Republicans have barely had to lift a finger to decimate the libs this time around. Rush Limbaugh is kicking back in West Palm Beach and laughing at the HILARITY.

 

Another Angry Black Preacher

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, March 21, 2008; A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032003021_pf.html

Let's ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Is he as far outside the African American mainstream as many of us would like to think?

Because Barack Obama's speech on race in America was so candid about both the legitimacy of black and white grievances -- and the flaws in those grievances -- it carried the risk of offending almost everyone.

A man who, by parentage, is half black and half white took it upon himself to explain each side's story to the other. Obama resembled no one so much as the conciliatory sibling in a large and boisterous family, shouting: "Please, please, will you listen to each other for a sec?"

One of the least remarked upon passages in Obama's speech is also one of the most important -- and the part most relevant to the Wright controversy. There is, Obama said, a powerful anger in the black community rooted in "memories of humiliation and doubt" that "may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends" but "does find voice in the barbershop or the beauty shop or around the kitchen table. . . . And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."

Yes, black people say things about our country and its injustices to each other that they don't say to those of us who are white. Whites also say things about blacks privately that they don't say in front of their black friends and associates.

One black leader who was capable of getting very angry indeed is the one now being invoked against Wright. His name was Martin Luther King Jr.

An important book on King's rhetoric by Barnard College professor Jonathan Rieder, due out next month, offers a more complex view of King than the sanitized version that is so popular, especially among conservative commentators. In "The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me," Rieder -- an admirer of King -- notes that the civil rights icon was "not just a crossover artist but a code switcher who switched in and out of idioms as he moved between black and white audiences."

Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

If today's technology had existed then, I would imagine the media playing quotations of that sort over and over. Right-wing commentators would use the material to argue that King was anti-American and to discredit his call for racial and class justice. King certainly angered a lot of people at the time.

I cite King not to justify Wright's damnation of America or his lunatic and pernicious theories but to suggest that Obama's pastor and his church are not as far outside the African American mainstream as many would suggest. I would also ask my conservative friends who praise King so lavishly to search their consciences and wonder if they would have stood up for him in 1968.

These are realities that Obama has forced us to confront, and they are painful. Wright was operating within a long tradition of African American outrage, which is one reason Obama could not walk away from his old pastor in the name of political survival. Obama's personal closeness to Wright would have made such a move craven in any event.

I'm a liberal, and I loathe the anti-American things Wright said precisely because I believe that the genius of our country is its capacity for self-correction. Progressivism and, yes, hope itself depend on a belief that personal conversion and social change are possible, that flawed human beings are capable of transcending their pasts and their failings.

Obama understands the anger of whites as well as the anger of blacks, but he's placed a bet on the other side of King's legacy that converted rage into the search for a beloved community. This does not prove that Obama deserves to be president. It does mean that he deserves to be judged on his own terms and not by the ravings of an angry preacher.

 

Obama's camp is REACHING now...WOW....a Picture of Wright with Bill Clinton...The Clinton's are RACISTs too now!

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/photograph-of-bill-clinton-and-rev-wright-surfaces/

Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces

By Kate Phillips
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and President Bill Clinton at a prayer breakfast at the White House in September 1998.

During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.

Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided today by the Obama campaign. Mr. Wright’s relationship with Senator Barack Obama, as his longtime pastor, has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent days because of incendiary excerpts of sermons Mr. Wright gave at their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago.

In providing the photograph to The New York Times, the Obama campaign appeared to be trying to divert some attention to the Clintons after a week in which Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright has left him facing one of the biggest challenges of his campaign. There is nothing in the picture or the note that addresses whether Mr. Clinton had met Mr. Wright prior to the White House meeting or whether he or Mrs. Clinton knew anything about Mr. Wright’s views.
The invitation to the breakfast.
The invitation’s envelope.

Asked for a response tonight through email, Howard Wolfson, a top aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, wrote, “Urgent indeed — a picture — oooooooo!”

Senator Clinton’s spokesman, Phil Singer, sent along this reply to a request for comment:

In the course of his two terms in office, Bill Clinton met with, corresponded with and took pictures with literally tens of thousands of people.

A thank-you note from Mr. Clinton to Mr. Wright. (Click to enlarge)

Mr. Wright was invited to the 1998 prayer breakfast, and in addition, he received a thank-you note from former President Clinton for his expressions of support about six weeks later.

According to an account by James Bennet, former White House correspondent who has since left The Times:

With tears in his eyes, President Clinton told a roomful of clerics this morning that he had sinned, speaking just hours before the world was presented a painstaking account by prosecutors of when, where and how.

Addressing an annual prayer breakfast at the White House, Mr. Clinton drew on the New Testament, the Yom Kippur liturgy and Ernest Hemingway as he made his most abject confession yet of personal failure, while declaring that he would defend and redeem his Presidency.

‘’I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,'’ he admitted softly, saying that after resisting expressions of contrition he had reached ‘’the rock-bottom truth of where I am.'’
For the first time, Mr. Clinton also asked for forgiveness from Monica S. Lewinsky, on the day that the details of their intimate relationship — details that he had denied and struggled to suppress — poured out through the Internet, whose wonders as a tool of communication he has so often extolled.

Mr. Wright is not mentioned in the article. Also visible in the photograph is Vice President Al Gore.

And according to the newly released schedules of Mrs. Clinton by the National Archives of her years as first lady, she was in attendance, too.

Her schedule reads:

“Religion Leaders Breakfast (w/POTUS)” in the East Room from 9-10:30 a.m.

Format:
- The President and First Lady are announced into the East Room and proceed to their tables.
- The Vice President makes remarks and introduces The President.
- The President makes remarks and introduces Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann.
- Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann gives blessing.
- Breakfast is served.
- Following breakfast, The President opens discussion.
- Upon conclusion of the discussion, The President introduces Dr. Reverend James Forbes.
- Dr. Reverend James Forbes gives benediction.
- The President, First Lady, and Vice President depart.
PARTICIPANTS: Approx. 130 guests to attend.

The wording of Mr. Clinton’s thank-you note to Mr. Wright, dated Oct. 28, 1998:

Dear Pastor Wright:

Thank you so much for your kind message.
I am touched by your prayers and by the many expressions of encouragement and support I have received from friends across our country.

You have my best wishes.

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

 

A whole lot of nothing. But it's good to know the likes of TJ and Ill-Skillz are still on the lunitic fringe. Obama has plenty of time to improve these numbers.

New Faux news poll:


By a 57%-24% margin, registered votes do not believe that Obama shares Wright's controversial views. The internals show only 17% of Democrats saying Obama shares Wright's ideas, along with 20% of independents and 36% of Republicans.

Fox also asked respondents whether they had doubts about Obama because of his association with Wright. The results: 35% Yes, 54% No, with the numbers standing at 26%-66% for Democrats, 27%-61% among independents, and 56%-33% with Republicans.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339949,00.html