The controversy surrounding the North Carolina GOP ad that features the now familiar Jeremiah Wright clip damning America has generated the largest amount of manufactured outrage I’ve seen in quite a while.
The ad raises a legitimate question: Is Obama too “extreme” for North Carolina? Does his belonging to Wright’s church for 20 years – “sitting in a pew” and listening to his pastor spout his hatred – make Obama himself an extremist?
There can be no reasonable challenge to the idea that Wright spreads hate. It is not only in his sermons but in the bulletins published by his church as well. Black “Liberation” Theology or not. Good works in the community notwithstanding. Jeremiah Wright encourages his flock to hate rich white people, hate Jews, hate the government of the United States, hate our ancestors, hate everything about America – including “middle classness – of which he doesn’t approve.
No amount of spinning can alter the fact that Wright is a conspiracy mongering, hate spewing preacher. If he has asked God to forgive those who he sees as having oppressed African Americans – as indeed there has been plenty of oppression – I have not seen it. This would seem to give the lie to Obama’s contention that Wright preaches a gospel of Christian love. Without forgiveness, there is no love and there is no room for “love” of anyone in Wright’s sermons except the oppressed – a curious belief for a Christian.
Where Christ forgave the Romans because the didn’t know what they were doing, Wright specifically makes mention of conspiracies against African Americans and genocide – atrocities carried out by whites with the full knowledge that what they were doing was wrong and evil. This is an interesting but flawed analysis because it presupposes a level of organization and an ability to carry out long term plans by generations of white people as well as (compared to today) an extraordinarily weak and divided central government. And, of course, Wright makes no mention of the many white abolitionists – many of them rich, white men – who fought to end the abomination of slavery.
But since there is no forgiveness (nor, one suspects, any redemption) for the architects of black oppression, the only possible conclusion to be drawn is that African Americans should hate those who Wright says are their oppressors. Wright urges God to damn America and Americans for our past and present sins. And if you can spin that any other way than promoting hatred, you should be a PR flack for the devil.
I am told that I don’t understand this kind of Christianity, that because I and others who are condemning Wright have not immersed ourselves in the black religious experience that we should just keep our mouths shut and ignore Wright’s hate mongering. This may be politically convenient for Obama but it hardly addresses the issue raised by the North Carolina ad – which, of course, is the entire point of criticism directed against it and the NC GOP.
Can Obama be tarred with the charge of being an “extremist” because of what his pastor of 20 years believes? And more to the point, by making the charge is the North Carolina GOP guilty of racism or even dirty politics?
As to the notion that Obama himself is an extremist I suppose that depends on your point of view. I don’t find him extreme – no more so than any liberal with a statist agenda. However, there may be some in North Carolina who feel differently. Conservative Tar Heels are a notoriously independent lot (they elected Democrat Heath Shuler who defeated 8 term incumbent Charlie Taylor) and some of Obama’s positions on gun control, late term abortions, perhaps even the Iraq War could be considered by some as “extreme.”
But to make that claim just because of what his pastor believes is another question. While Obama’s politics are not extreme to many, the fact that he sat in a pew for 20 years listening to Wright without leaving or even complaining about his pastor’s warped views – the point of the ad – raises legitimate questions as to Obama’s core beliefs about America.
The answer is we don’t know if Obama shares the extremist views of his pastor because he only denounced them when it was politically expedient to do so – when his campaign was in deep trouble immediately after Wright’s hate mongering came to light. To take Obama at his word that the reason he didn’t denounce Wright’s remarks earlier was because he wasn’t aware that his pastor held such views is becoming less and less credible as more information surfaces about the wide extent and dissemination of Wright’s beliefs. In short, Obama would have had to slept through Wright’s sermons not to have heard the pastor’s message.
However, there is considerable doubt whether Obama really believes that God should damn America or that AIDS is a government plot or that white people are evil. In that respect, the NC ad is a typical political ad – that is, it is stretches the truth to the breaking point.
But it is hardly racist nor, as the New York Times claims, is it designed to “stir up bigotry” in North Carolina. Why make that claim? Because it has black people in it? Because it makes the unarguable point that Wright is a hate mongering preacher? Because the ad portrays the close relationship Obama has with his pastor?
This is nuts. And it is a taste of the kind of defense that Obama will use in the general election against any and all Republican attacks. They will play the race card for all that it is worth. And that will be just as dishonest as any ad the GOP will ever run against him. It will be Obama who will seek to make this coming contest a campaign about race.
In this, he will have a willing assist from the press who will insist that the campaign should be about “issues” while calling out the GOP for any attempt to brand Obama as too liberal or too “extreme.” The will let slide Democratic attack ads that will portray McCain as “out of touch” (read “too old”) or unfeeling about the plight of the middle class.
It may be not accurate to intimate that Obama shares his pastor’s extremist views about America as the NC GOP ad clearly does. But the hysterical reaction – including McCain’s denunciation without even seeing the piece – gives us a taste of what’s to come as the Obama campaign and the press fully intend to “racialize” this campaign. Every attempt to criticize Obama will be decried as trying to scare white voters. Every attempt to bring Reverend Wright into the campaign will be denounced as racist.
It will not be the GOP playing the race card in the coming campaign. They wouldn’t dare. Rather it will be the Obama campaign using race to shield the candidate from attacks – fair or unfair. It’s probably smart politics. But what it says about Obama is not very elevating.
11:25 am
One can assume Obama agrees with his pastors extremist views. Wright was not some visiting cleric. He was the pastor for 20 years. Obama was not born into this church . He joined it as an adult.
I don’t think we can assume that. The only thing we have to go on are his politics. And while we disagree with this statist agenda, there is also no sign of the hatred espoused by Wright.
All we can do is ask the question – not that the candidate will answer it.
ed.
12:12 pm
It should be no surprise that McCain denounced this ad. McCain was/is the media’s candidate for the GOP nomination. He is basically a big-spending liberal who nearly twice became a Democrat. He opposed border control, thought Charles Keating a good guy, good enough to take his money, and has had no trouble “reaching out” to Democrats.
Where he seems to have problems is with conservatives.
12:34 pm
This is a case where the truth—even a cynical truth—would have helped Obama. I strongly suspect he joined the church for purely political reasons: 8,000 congregants in his district and instant street cred in a low income black population from which he is, by virtue of his personal history and top-notch education, distanced.
“Why did I join this church? I was a community organizer, and the church gave me a platform. And I was an aspiring politician and I knew the church would help me gain traction in my district. If I wanted to do good, I knew I would have to compromise with people I didn’t entirely agree with. This was one of those compromises.”
He’d have taken some sneering hits for being a cynic, but let’s face it, all politicians have a degree of cynicism. So do voters. It would have cauterized the wound.
12:39 pm
Sigh… the NYTs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGu9yxdbFio
When the going gets tough, the tough vote present.
1:22 pm
I used to live in Goldsboro and I think people there would consider a long time membership in Trinity UCC including substantial financial support to be pretty radical.
If you have a rabid, racist preacher spewing an anti-American message, why is it racist to call him on it? The more damning question might be: Why didn’t Obama call him on it?
5:39 pm
Looking Ahead to Indiana and N. Carolina Primaries…
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama head into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries next mo…
6:13 pm
I think McCain doesn’t want to touch anything that has to do with Obama’s religion like the Rev. Wright controversy. McCain has questioned Obama’s association with the terrorist Ayers and Hamas’s endorsement.
7:21 pm
If anyone had bothered to really listen to Obama’s speeches from the beginning of his campaign, as I have, you would have heard the nuanced words of a man who was preaching to the choir. His choir. Rev. Wright’s choir. Obama, from the beginning, has been speaking to dark skinned Americans who have bought into the victimology of the Rev. Wright’s of America and the light skinned Americans that Shelby Steele so acurately said suffer from “white guilt”.
Obama had created a frenzy among his followers that we have not seen in some time. People who hang on to his every word without knowing what those words mean or understanding that at the basis of his beliefs lie Saul Alinsky “communalism” and Marxist “government”. He has told them that He is the one to lead them out of the social darkness. “He” is the one they have been waiting for. The American Messiah who will lead us to his socialistic utopia because although socialism has never really worked before, it was not lead by him. To think that Senator Obama has not played the “race” card before now, is to not have really listened to what he has said. I ask you, is there any doubt who he was referring to with his “guns, God and people who don’t look like them” remarks in San Francisco? Could his remarks about Selma many months ago have been your first clue that the bar was being set and that anyone who questions his socialist views will be label “racist” or “bigot”?
This campaign was set up long ago by Obama to make sure that any criticism of him would be labeled racist. And he has done that very, very successfully. So a nation that has drawn the lines to protect a certain segment of our society has been hoisted by it’s own petard.
And now the Democratic Party, the party of identity politics, is in real trouble. It is about to split right down the middle and the left wing talking heads knows it. Today, on Fox Cable News, Bob Beckel was asked about the NC GOP ad. He called the people of NC “racist crackers”. He was so angry I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel in his neck. Racist crackers? Is that now the acceptable terminology for those who question Obama’s relationship with a radical minister? Is “racist” now the new term for “radical” when it applies to Obama?
It is fair to ask Senator Obama is he subscribes to the preaching of Rev. Wright and the teachings of James Cone who Wright bases his Black Liberation theology on. It is fair to ask Obama if he too, agrees with Cone. It is also fair to question why Senator Obama seems to have ties with so many radicals like Wright, Ayers, Dohrn, Rezko and a man who is a known PLO supporter. It is also fair to ask why his wife thinks that America is “mean”.
Had the table been turned, and a Republican candidate had sat for 20 years in the pew of a church that had a minister of the caliber of David Duke and then said that he could no more disown his minister than he could his own “white” community, would that Republican even be a consideration for the President of the United States or would he be facing protest marches?
7:30 pm
The reaction to this add proves conclusively that Democrats are a bunch of sniveling hypocrites. When they refer to our top General in Iraq as traitor (General Be-tray-us) it’s considered freedom of speach. When they call President Bush “extreme” that’s considered constituionally protected dissent. But when Republicans play hardball freedom of speach is suddenly off limits.
Just because Obama is black doesn’t mean that he’s exempt from criticism. The fact remains that he belongs to an organization that gave a lifetime achievement award to a man (Louis Farrahkan) who publicly refers to Jews as “bloodsuckers.” Yet, somehow, no one’s allowed to talk about it because Obama is black.
8:07 pm
Hate middle classness?
I guess so. Barack Obama and Rev. Wright both grew up in the middle class, but are now living upper class lives.
8:11 pm
By the way, Clinton received more than 20% more* votes than did Obama,in PA. That’s MOST significant!
*((5475-4540)/4570)x 100 = 20.6%
As Sherlock Holmes might say, “Alimentary, my dear canal.”
9:28 pm
Increase Mather Said: “He [McCain] ...nearly twice became a Democrat”
Eh, you’ll find no love for McCain here (he is RINO personified in my eyes), but parroting the “nearly twice” MSM line of BS is not plausible, unless, of course, you have ironclad evidence of that slur by same MSM?
If not, why repeat it?
11:12 pm
Wright spews not anti-american, instead anti status quo as I read between the lines. I’m confused as to what anti-american could mean unless one thinks that dissent is intolerable. Can we ever walk a mile in the shoes of our fellow african americans? Have our fellow americans african americans ever had a legitimate gripe? After all in order for us to engage them as slaves we had to deny before God that they had souls. Do you really feel that the playing field was levelled after Lincoln? After Johnson? We had to ‘give’ them souls before they could be freed. Can you next give them brains? go ahead and say they have no axe to grind, you who were dragged kicking and screaming against your own bitterness.
Work on your Wright chops, after all he’s a maverick just like McCain. At least the McCain of 2000. Today’s McCain is not the man I knew before Rove cut off his testicles in 2000. Wright is not a candidate last time I checked.
7:36 am
I propose the Republican National Convention adopt a resolution that no person may accept its nomination who does not first in writing accept the NC Ad and take the NumbersUSA no amnesty, no path to legalization pledge. See link for more details on proposed resolution.
8:47 am
Mark: McCain himself admitted he talked to Kerry about the VP nomination. He was also in discussion with the Dems about coming to caucus with them, Jeffords beat him to it.
You forget how angry McCain was after losing to Bush in 2000. It is widely believed his consideration of these two options were seriously considered.
I’m not repeating anything new here, nor anything that hasn’t appeared in print thousands of times.
McCain is neither a party-guy nor a conservative in any ideological sense. He will never be forgiven for trying with Kennedy and Graham to push amnesty through Congress before too many noticed.
11:11 am
bobwire:
There is no ‘status quo’ for which you say Wright is against. Even Obama said as much in his speech at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, on March 18, 2008. In that speech, Obama, criticised Wright, and properly so, “It’s that he [Wright] spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made…But what we know,what we have seen,is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation….”
What is meant by “anti-American” is Wright’s vilification of the present US government for the sins of the past. Where is Wright’s praise for US government efforts, supported by the general populace, for the past 50 years?
If Wright is not a bigot, where is his castigation of the Muslim-dominated countries still practicing slavery and genocide against Black Chrisians, Black Animists, and Black Muslims today?
Have we heard a beep from from Wright or his buddy Farrakhan about these continuing atrocities by nonAmericans against Blacks and others. Obama, not too long ago, was promoting the idea of rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq even if it meant genocide would ensue in Iraq.
Has Wright, the master of malign harangues, or Obama, the Great Dissembler, spoken out against the enslavemrnt and slow-motion genocide of the Tibetans?
Has the vast majority of the American Black clergy and the Congressional Black Caucus spoken out loudly and truthfully about these ‘foreign’ atrocities?
What actions have they vigorously pursued for justice for those innocents?
Where are the Black American organizations teaching, mentoring, training, nurturing the young to strive to be the best they can be, as are the 75% of Black Americans who have WORKED their way out of poverty? Why are recent Carribean Black immigrants, African Black immigrants, Korean immigrants and Vietnamese immigrants making more progress than now-native Black Americans? Why aren’t those attitudes and efforts for self-upliftment being emulated and adapted by Wright’s and Obama’s Black constituencies? Why are there so few voices speaking against the corrupt and corrupting Black American leadership and for their deliberately dumbed-down followership?
Why are Wright and the Obamas speaking to their constituencies against this self-effort, while they themselves reap the benefits of America’s open society. What slimes!
4:03 pm
Like the Dems won’t do everything in their power to tie McCain to Bush? Fair is fair.