History Forum / General / British History / April 2008

"Wright's Voice Could Spell Doom for Obama"...

Hmmmmmmm...

I Reckon So...

A Brief Sampling...

"His views on Farrakhan and Israel?  "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism,
not Judaism, was a gutter religion.  He was talking about the same thing
United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's
being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for."

"And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what
Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago.  He is one of the most important voices
in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis
Farrakhan is not my enemy.  He did not put me in chains, he did not put me
in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Deus Vult
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Wright's Voice Could Spell Doom for Obama

Dana Milbank
The Washington Post

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long
before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a
paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool
than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

HILARIOUS!  But that's just what Pastor Wright has NOT DONE.  -- DSH

Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.

INDEED... -- DSH

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment
that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus
on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It
was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about
race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik
Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official
Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that
Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view
that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial
minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held
himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the
minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on
the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's
vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head
table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security
was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

SO NOTED... -- DSH

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his
pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance
himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had
said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We
both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get
elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what
they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

So Barak was LYING and INSINCERELY DISSEMBLING? -- DSH

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he
was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

We'll HEAR and SEE from "The Black Church" tomorrow. -- DSH

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an
attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of
African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he
asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her
religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my
grandma, you got another thing [sic] coming."

That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to
extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than
express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his
former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.

Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the
full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same
accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning.

YEP... -- DSH

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming
home to roost"?

Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to
come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright
bombastic divisive principles."

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism,
not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing
United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's
being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants
to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20
years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st
century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my
enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he
didn't make me this color."

He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black
clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe."

He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his
belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against
people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").

And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has
apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to
apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on
your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on
your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?"

Capisce, reverend.  All too well.
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DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas