There are hundreds of black preachers across America who, to one degree or another, sound off like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and rail against white America for oppressing Blacks. I have no doubt that, at times, the rhetoric takes on an American hating tinge given the history of African Americans in this country over the last 400 years.
The question isn’t whether Wright is in or out of the mainstream of black preachers but rather what exactly candidate Obama believes? John McCain, after all, is extremely friendly with Pastor John Hagee, a controversial preacher whose anti-homosexual statements and what some consider anti-Catholic rants have landed him in hot water more than once.
I can see some conservatives heads exploding – “There is no equivalence between Hagee and Wright!” This is true – except in the narrow sense that both Pastors are used by political opponents to make it appear that the other candidate shares their preacher’s hateful views. McCain and Obama have disavowed the hate speech coming from their pastors so we can safely assume that they, in fact, do not agree with the more problematic positions taken by their preacher friends.
And I think we can give Obama the benefit of the doubt and say with some certainty that he does not agree with his spiritual advisor’s view of white America nor does Obama’s view of America match that of Wright. Just looking at his political career could tell you this. Obama has never played “the angry black radical” in his decade in politics. He has never given any hint that he supports the idea that the government created the AIDS virus to kill black people or any of the other loony conspiracy theories spouted by Wright.
Therefore, what’s the big deal about Reverend Wright? Why should it matter what he believes? Isn’t it more important to find out what the candidate believes?
As for Wright, the founder of so-called Black Liberation Theology” says we white people just don’t get it.
From Newsmax:
Apologists for Wright have said that what he says is normal in black churches, and many blacks claim such preaching cannot be understood by whites.(Note: I will not link the Newsmax story until independent verification of its thesis is forthcoming.)“If you’re black, it’s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,†the New York Times quoted James Cone as saying. Cone is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of what is known as black liberation theology.
I suppose for some African Americans, the above might be true. But is anyone seriously suggesting that Obama subscribes to those views?
I don’t see how. There is simply no evidence that Obama is a race mongering radical. So it is not what Wright believes that has Obama in trouble today. It is what the candidate himself has said by way of explanation that could be his downfall.
Obama has pleaded innocent. He says he was never in the church when Wright was making those horrible statements. He says he was unaware his pastor of 20 years even held those views:
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
This is a lie. And as we have seen with the Rezko caper, Obama is very good at it.
In fact, Obama knew full well what flights of rhetorical fancy Wright was capable. He canceled Wright’s scheduled invocation at his presidential announcement speech, explaining to his friend:
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.â€
The idea that Obama didn’t know that Wright was a hate mongering, anti-American race baiting radical is absurd. And as more of Wright’s past utterings come to light and the probability that either through Wright’s writings or preaching Obama knew full well what kind of preacher he was grows, the candidate will find himself trying to parse his own statement of defense into smaller and smaller bits until he looks and sounds like Bill Clinton (“It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.”)
Just 48 hours ago, I thought the Obama-Wright story had a good chance of blowing over. But Obama is going to find out, like all politicians before him, it’s not so much the transgression that gets you but lying about it will bring you down everytime.
10:17 am
[...] Right Wing Nut House wonders if we should ignore Wright. [...]
11:01 am
Rick,
not sure there’s much of a comparison between McCain’s relationship to Hagee and Obama’s to Wright. Hagee is not McCain’s pastor or mentor nor is McCain even a member of his church as is the case for Obama. It has to be assumed that, to some degree, Obama is comfortable with Jeremiah Wright’s views, which should be most troubling to anyone who is voting for him because they think he will bring reconciliation to our land.
11:26 am
Rick, there is a major difference between distancing yourself from a radical minister (McCain/Hagee) who you have known for a while and distancing yourself from a radical minister (Obama/Wright) who attracted you like no other minister in your town (by Obama’s admission), whose recorded sermons you took with you when you left to attend Harvard (by Obama’s admission), who you have referred to numerous times as friend and mentor (by Obama’s admission), who so impressed you that you took the title of your book from one of that minister’s sermons (by Obama’s admission) and whose church you have attended on a regular basis for 20 years and claimed that church as your own, who you supported by $22,500 worth of donations in just one year. Now Obama is in full damage control as it is not just a bump in the road, the road is falling out from underneath him and he knows it. So he has to minimize the damage and if it takes a couple of white lies to do that, well, that’s politics, after all.
But then it becomes obvious that there are number of reasons for this close association between Obama/Wright. Now the goal is to figure out which one it is.
#1) Obama needed street cred in the district he was running in that was unabashedly black. What better way to to that than to join a chuch (he had many invites to other black churches, by Obama’s own admission) that played to the crowd that made up his district. Black, poor and victimized. So the move to Trinity was a political one, not a religious one.
2) Obama agreed with Wright. The church’s connection to the motherland, Africa, where Obama’s father was born. The black “power to the people” message. The perpetuation of victimhood by living in a “rich white America”. The politican, Obama, not really agreeing with the black man, Obama but knowing that he could not win elections being a race baiter in the mold of Sharpton and Jackson but in his soul, Wright was saying what he really believed.
3) Obama is really, after all, just a standard, run of the mill, politics as usual, Chicago politician. One who has associated himself with those who could further his career the most; Tony Rezko, fixer and financier; Rev. Wright, who gave him credibility with the voter base, William Ayers who was in a position to act as a mover and shaker for him with the far left crowd that is rampant in Chicago. This belies his message that he brings a new type of politican to the national scene. If door #3 is the real Obama, then he is just another politician who has used friends, and money of friends, to light the fuse on his meteoric rise in national politics even though he has a weak record on the issues and was a fence sitting in the Illinois senate. A golden boy who has a gift of rhetoric and who was playing it like a fine tuned fiddle.
Now Obama, in full damage control mode, is trying to make the flap over his pastor/church a “race” issue. He said Saturday (according to the AP), “I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division has started to raise their ungly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been the shift”
So he is pointing fingers, without pointing fingers, basically saying that any attack on an angry and hate mongering preacher is “racist” and that trying to remind the crowd that the Hillary campaign has been making the issue one of race, not one of issues for the nation. So the race card that Obama has claimed he will never use, has just been slapped on the table.
He also said “If all I knew were those statements I saw on television, I would be shocked.”
Is he telling his that he sat in the pews, Sunday after Sunday, and was not shocked until he saw them on television? Is he trying to tell us, that in 20 years, the pastor who has had a reputation as a black power preacher, never spoke those angry words while he was in attendance at Trinity?
One thing that has never been looked at is the history of how Obama’s district fared under his leadership. Did his message of “hope” and “change” actually change anything while he was taking campaign donations from Rezko and Rezko was contributing the the inner city blight with low income housing making the plight of Obama’s district even worse? Did their lives improve? Was gang activity lessened? Did the schools improve?
It is long past time to vet a candidate that we really know little about.
11:28 am
Rick, one other thing; Wright is not the founder of the “black liberation” theology. Cone is and Wright is an advocate of Cone’s as well as DuBois.
11:32 am
FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST WOULD YOU PEOPLE PLEASE READ THE BLODDY POST?
I SAY SPECIFICALLY THAT THERE IS NO EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN HAGEE AND WRIGHT EXCEPT IN A VERY NARROW WAY:
I can see some conservatives heads exploding – “There is no equivalence between Hagee and Wright!†This is true – except in the narrow sense that both Pastors are used by political opponents to make it appear that the other candidate shares their preacher’s hateful views.
You cannot deny that both Republicans and Democrats are using the two preachers in exactly the same way. And that’s the only “equivalence” between the two situations.
The next person that tries to convince me of something I’ve already admitted in the post will have their comment deleted.
12:10 pm
I completely repudiate your assertion that we can “give Obama the benefit of the doubt and say with some certainty that he does not agree with his spiritual advisor’s view of white America”. As a rule, people join clubs, societies and churches to assemble with others that share their own beliefs and ideas. Usually, the prime member that you bond with is the leader of that group. I believe that Obama is not entitled to any benefit of doubt, but is instead obligated to prove that he is the exception, not the rule.
I agree. And Obama has proved what he believes the last 10 years he has been in politics. If he harbors these feelings, he has never shown them. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt based on a 10 year record?
ed.
12:29 pm
Rick responded: “I agree. And Obama has proved what he believes the last 10 years he has been in politics. If he harbors these feelings, he has never shown them. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt based on a 10 year record?”
Sorry Rick, I still don’t accept a 10 year history of being a smart, savvy politician as proof that he disagrees with Wright. Obama is many things, but stupid he is not. One public utterance of agreement with Wright ends his career as a politician. Proof is quitting a church upon hearing Wright’s effluvium… proof is publicly denouncing those statements BEFORE the media forces you to do so…
Help me understand how you, Rick, could be a member of a church, lead by a white supremist, that weekly preaches that the black man is the source of all crime and evil in America, and we should deport all of them back to Liberia. Do you honestly believe that you would stay a member of this church for another hour after you heard that? Would you have him marry you? Baptize your children? Is it possible that you could affiliate with such a man and not agree with him? If so, you are the most complex man I have ever known.
6:06 pm
Rick,
I think you are pretty much on target in this post. I don’t think Obama really believes what Wright is preaching.
I do think that the reactions about it bode badly for him in a general election. There are many whites who probably waiting for a fairly strong reason not to vote for him and this will be what they need.
I had some real hopes for Obama not because he is black or white but because he is mixed as my kids are. If you want to find a person who really understands the state of race in our country talk to someone raised in an interracial home.
I wanted Obama to be the “I am not white or black but an American first, steeped in the positive influences of two cultures…” candidate.
Alas… it is not to be with him. Like you said – he is a politician.
10:01 pm
Jeeze, Rick, chill or you will wind up taking a double dose of blood pressure medicine. I didn’t say “you said”, I said there was a big difference because the left wing pundits are all pointing out Hagee’s endorsement of McCain which you seemt agree with in your response.
I was not trying to convince you of anything.
Perhaps, though, you would like to tell me which door Obama is standing behind; #1, #2 or #3?
3:26 pm
Obama’s heritage of being a blend of the black experience and the white experience is what makes him such a unique person in these obviously unique and historical campaign times. I must say, however, that you are all showing your white slips from under your pants or skirts because you are acting and responding in a stereotypical, non-thinking, ethnocentristic
caucasion manner. Your prism of life is monotone,WHITE, while Obama’s is filled with the richness of black and white and all the shades in between. You are sorry, little people and the reason we still live in a racially biased society.
I am a 60+ white female who grew up inspired by JFK. He asked us to reach out and think about what we could do for our country. You all need to do the same as it’s a bigger world than it used to be.
The fact that you are so blinded with goo goo eyed admiration for this manipulative man makes responding to your comment useless. I would note however, you have no problem with your candidate lying through his teeth when it suits him and trying to equate the toxic, hate filled words spewed by his pastor with something your priest or preacher might say that you disagree with.
And I hope you don’t get a nosebleed considering the moral heights you have ascended compared to the rest of us insects.
ed.
4:23 pm
“James Cone . . . is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of what is known as black liberation theology.”
Last time I looked “liberation theology” was a buzz word for socialism and/or communism.
Hate speech is hate speech is hate speech – except when a “victim” spews it – that’s the MSM mantra and they’re sticking to it.
It’s all b.s. and we all know it – heck even the Kool Aid drinkers know it on some level. One can only hope that the reality of who and what Barack Hussein Obama really is will sink in before the Democratic Party makes the huge mistake of nominating this empty suit to run for President! He would be the ruination of our nation in short order and would be (gasp) an even WORSE and more destructive president than the despicable James Earl Carter, Jr.
12:16 am
O’Bama is a complete phoney and a liar and will do anything to get elected – just like Hillary. Oh, and I’m a Democrate, BTW. For anyone who really believe’s that Obama DIDN’T KNOW Wright was filled with hate and ignorance after sitting in his church for TWENTY YEARS, and being HIS FRIEND, and his PROTIGE, and USING WRIGHT TO GET ELECTED IN IL, they need to get mental help!
Obama’s speach in the aftermath was eloquent and rang as true as any I’ve ever heard. HOWEVER, it is tooo little tooo late. I mean, Spitzer said all the right things after he was exposed. Both men know right from wrong or at least can recite it. Both can do it in an intelligent and convincing manner. YET both are rotten. Of course Obama will now say, let’s look past division. Where were those words for Wright? Why not tell Wright to put a sock in it these last 20 years? Why not say, “damn, I’m not going to be associated with this biggot, this nut.” I mean, surely he could have gone to a diiferent church. AHHHH, but not one so revered by the local African American community and one with 8,000 members (which BTW Oprah attends – funny how that’s getting no play).
No, Obama sat there and made THIS his church, and made THIS SCUM his Pastor, and his MENTOR
This is judgment?? And now, we are supposed to believe Obama when he PRETENDS this is all news to him and he disagrees with it? HOW STUPID ARE THOSE THAT BELIEVE HIM?? So, yes, the words were true and wonderful, but what else could Obama have said or done at that point? I prefer to use MY COMMON SENSE and believe that the Obama of the last TWENTY YEARS is the REAL Obama – as sad as that is (our country needed a guy like him – he knows it and has played the part perfectly, except for that hiding the last 20 years part).
Lastly, I’ve heard many argue that Rev. Wright IS a GOOD PERSON, and that the media has crucified him! That this church does countless things for the needy, etc. – I should hope so .. IT’S A CHURCH
! Yet, even the most evil or whacked person can be or do or say the most noble things. However, if at the end of the day, that person makes it his mission to determine (BASED ON COLOR) that those of light hew are THIS AND THAT AND >>>> well then that man is an ignorant fool. I KNOW THAT - Obama either DIDN’T or DIDN’T CARE - we should not now hand over the White House to him.
5:58 pm
The words of Rev. Wright did not surprise me, having attended schools in South Florida, I have heard the rheotoric before. What really surprised me was to see how out of touch white America is with black America by the reaction and public outcry to the unpatriotic and racist views of Rev. Wright. America is getting ready to elect a black president and yet white people know very little about the left wing-anti american views of many black Americans. Many black Americans hold left wing or communist ideas because they buy into the propaganda of justice for the poor and oppressed. I guess that the examples of communist run countries like Cuba and North Korea are not enought to convince people, communism is not the paradise its supporters say it is. God bless America. Say NO to socialism.
3:15 pm
It’s unfortunate that this society has so much hate ingrained in it. I’ve read your post and others about Rev. Wright. I live in the Chicago metropolitan area and know first hand the wonderful things this pastor has done for ALL of Chicago, not just the black citizens. His fundamental belief is that Christ died for all and loves all people. You call him anti-American, however if you have done any research at all into his background, you will find that during the Vietnam war he gave up is student deferment and enlisted in the military to fight for his country. I am so tired of people ranting about individuals who are courageous enough to try and better the environment of those who live in our country and the world. We don’t have to agree with everything a person does; in fact I don’t think it’s healthy to agree with everything. It’s the our differences that makes America so special. Senator Obama has obviously witnessed the positive impact that Dr. Wright has had in our community as has the Governors, Mayors and other officials that often call upon him for advice and support throughout his 36 years of service. The thing that is so special about Senator Obama is not that he’s perfect or has always said or done the right things, but that he believes that America is for us all, not just conservatives but liberals as well, not just whites and blacks, browns, and all between.
Rick, if you are so pro-American, then why spend so much effort trying to tear down someone else like Senator Obama. Our fore-fathers founding this country on Biblical principals and said that “In God We Trust”. So as the Bible says, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at him.” ... I don’t think you qualify to throw these stones.
9:15 am
Gracie #10
Just maybe we will all grow up to be “just like you” Sounds to me like you haven’t had your bell rang in the last few decades & you are very angry about it: Drank that kool aide a long time ago did you…see you have all the talking points memorized & loaded…so you believe all that stuff they taught you in the sixties & I see you have this “caucasion hate thing” going on as well, sorry you took the wrong turn a long time ago but at least you can enjoy a false sense of superiority until the very end
!
11:18 pm
You know, I find it extremely hypocritical of all you Obama haters. You never wanted to vote for a black man in the first place. It would not have mattered how much he accomplished or how intelligent he was. Any reason is a good reason not to vote a Black man into the highest office in the land. Barack Obama has done nothing in his political career which showed a hatred for any people. But yet you give John McCain a pass when he voted against Martin Luther Kings birthday as a holiday in his state (clearly racist). He simply apologized for the way he used to think back then (by his own admition). You drank his minute maid or whatever it is that white people drink. This is an example of an action which shows racism and a non appreciation for the struggles of an oppressed people during the civil rights movement. You don’t need a spiritual advisor to make you the person you are. McCain was a racist all on his own (no help needed). Talk about that for a while….
Would Obama use racism as an excuse? You are a disgrace to your candidate. You are practicing the “old politics” of accusing people of racism just because they disagree with you.
Sorry, but that doesn’t work anymore. All it does is make you look like a whining. simpering, politically calculating idiot.
It is people like you that Obama is running against. Or hadn’t you noticed?
ed.
1:18 pm
To Whom It May Concern:
Reverend Wright’s very words and actions are hurting Obama and his campaign. Yet, why doesn’t the Reverend Wright tell the public that when Mrs. Clinton and Bill were having marital problems regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ‘spiritual counseling?’... the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
I think this needs to be made public.
John Sisker
jsisker@sprynet.com
(714) 536-3850