For the record, Barack Obama requested that I forward this video to readers of this blog. I think he thought that the video would help allay concerns about his close, long-standing relationship with race-baiting Chicago preacher Jeremiah Wright. For me, it had the opposite effect. As I watched and listened, I was struck by Obama’s perfunctory, soulless resort to Clintonian word games:
“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.”
How’s that, again? “Not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews or heard him utter in private conversation.” Talk about caveats. It all depends on the meaning of “is.” This guy ain’t a Harvard trained lawyer for nothing. In other words, “I may have been there when Wright preached those words, but I didn’t hear him when he did. And I probably heard others preach similar stuff, just not Wright. And I may have heard about Wright’s preaching from other parishioners, but Wright never personally told me those things in a private conversation.” I think I get the picture.
When Clinton misled us, he did it with heart. He really meant his lies. In contrast, Obama comes across as a sort of newcaster-android, dispassionately dissembling on the controversy as if he has nothing to do with it. Take and look and see what you think. Pay special attention to the eyes and the tone of voice:
Obama continues:
“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.”
Hold on, here! Am I the only one who never heard Obama “strongly condemn” Wright’s “comments”? And how are these mere “comments”? You can tell from the congregation’s reaction to Wright that this isn’t the first time they’ve heard such racist, hate-mongering drivel from the pulpit. This is a group of people who have imbibed deeply of Wright’s poisonous philosophy. Obama has been one of them for twenty years. And he didn’t just “marry his wife” there. Wright married them. And the Obama daughters were passively baptized at Trinity. Wright baptized them. Slick Willie liked to bill himself as the first black president. In Barack Obama, we may have the first black Slick Willie.
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Gravitas 03.18.08 at 11:56 pm
Two reasons Obama couldn’t tell us why he won’t distance himself from Rev. Wright:
1) Because he cannot say that he joined up with Wright’s church to get access to and credibility with a huge pool of black votes in Illinois. As large as Wright’s church is, the circles of influence emanating across the country into other black churches — and Wright is far from the only disciple of Black Liberation Theology in the country–serve up votes of hundreds of thousands of black voters that Obama has to have to win the race. Now that would not be a politically correct thing to announce, but that is 99% certain to be what brought him to Wright’s church to begin with. And why he hung in there for 20 years.
2)Because Obama agrees with Wright–no matter what he is saying in the interests of winning this election. Read up on his background, observe his campaigning for his Muslim terrorist first cousin in Kenya, and read what he said when he felt freer to say it: he calls Wright his “spiritual mentor”. If we think for a minute that Wright and Obama do not share views about things political, we are willfully blind.