Obama calls Pastor Wright's words "inflammatory and appalling" (UPDATED)

I guess this is supposed to end the controversy:

In the handful of years Senator Barack Obama has spent in the national spotlight, his stance toward his pastor has gone from glowing praise to growing distance to — as of Friday — strong criticism.

On Friday, Mr. Obama called a grab bag of statements by his longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., “inflammatory and appalling.”

“I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue,” he wrote in a campaign statement that was his strongest in a series of public disavowals of his pastor’s views over the past year.

Earlier in the week, several television stations played clips in which Mr. Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, referred to the United States as the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.” and said the Sept. 11 attacks were a result of corrupt American foreign policy.

On Friday, Senator John McCain’s campaign forwarded to reporters an article in The Wall Street Journal in which Mr. Wright was quoted as saying, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run,” and accusing the United States of importing drugs, exporting guns and training murderers.

Later in the day, Rush Limbaugh dwelled on Mr. Wright in his radio program, calling him “a race-baiter and a hatemonger.”

In the statement he released a few hours later, Mr. Obama, known for his uplifting messages about national unity, professed a certain innocence about his pastor’s most incendiary messages.

“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,” he said.

The eight-paragraph statement, first posted on the Web site The Huffington Post, did not recount Mr. Wright’s claims but addressed concerns about whether his beliefs reflected Mr. Obama’s. “He has never been my political adviser,” Mr. Obama wrote. “He’s been my pastor.”

And so that's it.  He uses lawyer-ese to extricate himself from this circumstance and all his supporters and those who are considering voting for him should now rest easy.  For many, Obama will remain the epitome of morality and virtue.

To that I say hold on.

He's been in this church for the better part of 20 years and has stated he'll remain there.  A church led by an idiot who has repeated the black conspiracy that AIDS is a concoction created by the United States government to commit genocide against blacks.  A church that has embraced an idiot who calls America the world's number 1 killer.  A church that has embraced Louis Farrakhan.  A church instrumentally involved in the spreading of hate.  And now that all of this has come to light, Obama decides to distance himself. 

How... politically expedient.

I'l freely admit that I'm not the most objective source on all of this.  I've had problems with Mr. Obama for some time and so this for me is but icing on the cake, substantiation for what I believe to be fodder for the notion that Barack Obama is slicker than Slick Willy.  So I'm willing to hear the opinions of others I respect who suggest that Obama's repudiation of Jeremiah Wright's lunacy is enough.

Like The Anchoress:

Rev. Wright is a Christian preacher from the left wing. He’s going to preach to left-wing sensibilities, overfocusing on some of the touchier parts of American history (because every nation and history has its darker moments, and it is stupid to pretend otherwise).

Some Christian preachers on the right do the same in reverse, glossing over issues that perhaps could stand some constructive criticism, and overfocusing on the shinier pages of history.

(The extreme hate-and-madness of the Westboro church goes beyond either example. For all that Wright may piss some off, he is basing a good deal of his stuff on history and perception and his perspective as a black man in America; he is not standing outside of AIDS funerals with signs saying “God hates fags;” he is not out disrupting soldier’s funerals).

I wrote yesterday,

What a way to run an election, or divide a nation.  This is using a massive and annihilating cannon to destroy an opponent when something much less destructive could do the trick.

If someone wants to defeat Candidate Obama in this election, there are plenty of ways to do it that don’t involve messing with his church and igniting an issue that can flare into a conflagration uncontrollable. You don’t defeat the candidate by scorching the earth, unless you don’t give a damn about the nation and care only for your own voice, your own sensibilities or your own acquisition of power.

I say let’s get back to talking about real issues - let’s get back to the real game of politics instead of the secondary game of illusion, misdirection and character assassination, which serves more to run out the clock than to move the ball. Let’s stop - for heaven’s sake let us stop - this endless goosing and gotcha-ing which has become a substitute for substance in this horrid election cycle.  We all deserve better than this.

I'll agree with the final statement of that excerpt.  We all deserve better than a candidate who decides conveniently to repudiate his pastor only after his inflammatory words are finally covered by media outlets that have largely treated this candidate with kid gloves. 

But I simply can't agree with the notion that Obama's words are enough.  To do so would mean that I have to set aside what seems to be logical.  There's only one reason Obama is now putting miles between himself and Jeremiah Wright. 

And to miss that point is to miss all points about the man.

UPDATE: Via FloppingAces, a Jeremiah Wright montage that leaves little doubt.  Little. Doubt.

Link: sevenload.com

Comments

I commented on the Anchoress' post, and I quote myself (how's that for ego?):

"Anchoress, respectfully, the problem with your reasoning is that that pastor is teaching his community to hate, to be ungrateful, to be discontented in an unprofitable way, to blame everyone and everything except themselves for the problems of their community.

That is a HUGE problem. It reflects in Obama’s writings and in some of the spewings from his wife’s mouth - her discontent and ingratitude are so obvious in spite of a prosperous lifestyle that she and her husband were able to obtain because this is America, and it is still the land of opportunity."

That is directly country to Jesus' teachings on how we are to deal with this world, and it only goes to prove that Mr. Wright only quotes (out of context) that which will bolster his personal bigotries.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Fellow Rush 24/7 subscribers:

March 14 broadcast, hour #1, two sound clips between 0:13 and 0:16. Listen just once.

Fer cryin' in the freakin' SINK. What you're reading in the blogs, doesn't even scratch the surface. Be in a sitting position when you hear this crap.

And Rick, thanks for the hint. I have zero hours during the week to listen to Rush, and end up stockpiling his fifteen hour MP3 haystacks and scraping around for the golden needles on the weekends, with nary a clue as to where to start.

I keep hearing this is the coffin lid being nailed on the Obama campaign. And my reply just keeps echoing, reflexively...maybe, in a sane universe...in a sane universe...maybe. I don't think it'll shake out that way. I just don't know.

[Karol]

A well educated man who professes he has the qualities to be president of the United States has been in a church for 20 years but did not know that Pastor Wright gave inflammatory sermons. In 20 years he never heard one? If you believe that, I have a bridge I will sell you.

[Muslims Against Sharia]

Muslims Against Sharia call on Senators McCain and Obama to cut all ties with their racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic supporters.

McCain: http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/03/mccains-spiritual-guide-destroy-islam.html
Obama: http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/03/racist-congregation-cheering-racist.html

[N Waff]

This is not a story about pastor Wright, this is a story about bringing into question Obama's judgement and character. He's been a member of this racist pastor's congregation for many years and he's just now realizing he's been spiritually instructed by a racist. I think Obama's recent comments denouncing Wright are the statements of a politician making political moves. And no wonder Michelle Obama's never been proud of her country before - she too is following the black equivelant of a KKK religious leader.

[Lance Del Goebel]

This country is so far removed from the truth, so entrenched in a world of Orwellian propaganda that when a person dares tell the truth they are perceived as crazy. It's not crazy or hateful to mention the terrorism the United States has carried out against innocent people, it's truthful and more patriotic than anything the head-in-the-sand pretend patriots will ever say or do. Everything I read that Reverend Wright said is accurate. It is a shame Mr. Obama is a gutless coward who will now run from the truth in order to appease this white country so that he can become the new CEO of the corrupt corporation that is the United States of Terrorism.

[tim]

Lance Del Goebel = Stuck on stupid.

Thanks for stopping by and displaying what ignorance truly is.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Wow, if I was Mindy McConnell or Tim O'Hara or Capt. Kirk or Maj. Tony Nelson, I wouldn't have the first clue about how to explain this to the genie/alien living in my house / on my starship:

Here's this presidential candidate, arguably the front-runner, working so hard to associate his name with the word "CHANGE." And who could argue that among all the things in this country that might benefit from some changing, this one thing juts out most prominently: Racial disharmony resulting from an absurd unwritten rule that prejudice and discrimination are permitted in some directions but not others.

And on that one issue, and on none other, the Change Candidate's passion for change suddenly and embarrassingly wanes to oh-point-oh-something on the Richter scale of revolutionary agitation. He just DOESN'T CARE about that one.

He'd really much rather punish our businesses for outsourcing jobs...by raising their taxes. And fight terrorism...by doing nothing. And fight recession...by making it really, really, godawful expensive to hire people. On the change the country could really use, he's got a sudden case of ADD.

Uncle Martin, Mork, Spock and Jeannie would be confused and for good reason. It makes sense to us only because we have been acclimated to it slowly.

[William M. Fox]

How credible is candidate Obama? First he denied knowledge of Wright's more outrageous rantings. Then, he admitted awareness of them, but claimed that they were due to, and understandably directed at, white racism, given Pastor Wright's experience as a black.

Yet, Wright does not qualify his outbursts. He yells "God damn America," not "God damn white racists." He charges that America has murdered and infected blacks with HIV, not that white racists are to blame.

Such indiscriminate attacks on America and all whites go far beyond reasonable disagreement between mature adults.
How many non-prejudiced Americans would support and belong to a church with such a pastor for more than twenty years, claim him as a close friend and adviser, let alone, have him marry them and baptize and guide their spouses and children?

William Fox
6605 SW 37th Way
Gainesville, FL 32608
(352) 376-9786

[Jonathan]

I could not possibly care less about the election but everyone should know that Aids IS a man-made bioweapon created to kill off some of earth's population. Believing this disease just mutated out of nowhere is ignorant.

[tim]

"I could not possibly care less about the election..."

Ya' lost me right there.