As I said previously, either he was aware of this kind of thing for the past two decades and had no real problem with it, or he was unaware of it, demonstrating an utter cluelessness. And I don’t buy the latter. I don’t believe that Wright suddenly changed, and I don’t believe that Obama believes that he did. Somehow, I have a feeling that the only thing that really outrages and saddens Barack Obama is the fact that his former pastor has switched from being a political asset in Chicago to being a political liability nationally.
In any event, either way, he’s not fit to to get my vote for president. I suspect that a lot (too many for him to win) of other people will have the same opinion.
As someone once said, sincerity is the key to success in life. If you can fake that, you have it made. I think that Obama’s mask is starting to slip.
[Update a few minutes later]
I agree with Roger Simon that this is a tragedy for race relations in this country (and that Obama has been to them what Bill and Hillary were for gender feminism).
The situation is close to tragic and this election year shows a real chance of running off the rails in a way few of us would have predicted. It has a potential for pushing race relations seriously backwards in a society that was already relatively open handed. People do not like being accused of racism when it is not there. The original attraction of the Obama campaign is that it was post-racial and now it is anything but.
This is not the fault of America or of the American people. It has been caused by the race baiters and the spinelessness and opportunism of Barack Obama. He made his compact with the race-baiting devil twenty years ago and now, in the immortal words of Reverend Wright, “it has come home to roost.”
Obama still has a chance to salvage his “post-racial candidacy,” if not his campaign, which (I suspect) is now a completely lost cause. What we need from him is a real speech on race in America, where he calls out the true haters and bigots, and poverty pimps and shakedown artists in his own party–the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons who keep their own people on the “liberal” plantation. That would be a service to the nation, and a speech worth praising. But I don’t think he has either the political acumen or courage to do that. Not to mention that it would estrange his own wife. I guess that, with this implosion of his candidacy, Michelle (whose pastor Wright no doubt really was) won’t have any more reason to be proud of America.
[Another update]
Obama has been telling us that his lack of experience doesn’t matter, because what is important is not experience, but “judgment.” But just what does this episode say about his vaunted judgment?
Back on March 18, Obama declared that we were being unfair in concluding Jeremiah Wright was “a crank or a demagogue” because we didn’t know him the way Obama did. We were reaching that conclusion based on “snippets” and “soundbites,” whereas he could take the full assessment based on a close relationship of 20 years or so.
He was, he assured us, in a better position to make a better judgment.
Today, Obama tells us, he doesn’t really know Jeremiah Wright at all.
And now, it seems, we’re in better position to make a judgment about Barack Obama.
UPDATE: Paraphrasing a reader’s suggestion, foreseeing an Oval Office address near the end of Obama’s first term: “The Prime Minister Ahmadinejad who ordered the nuclear strike on Tel Aviv yesterday… is not the same man I met in Tehran at our summit back in 2009.”
Heh.
Of course, this argument would carry a little more weight if George Bush hadn’t declared that he could see Putin’s soul in his eyes. On the other hand, as much as he’d no doubt like to be, Obama isn’t running against George Bush.
Just curious – do you agree with EVERYTHING your pastor says? I don’t. Does that make me a bad person?
If you’re asking me, I don’t have a pastor. I’m not a member of any organized religion or a believer in God.
But this isn’t about mere “disagreement with some things that he says.” I can imagine having a religious leader who said some things with which I disagreed. I can’t imagine having, or at least keeping for a week, let along twenty years, one who is an ignorant, paranoid anti-American bigot, and a hypocrite to boot.
Thanks for the answer, Rand, and yes it was directed to you. I vaguely remembered after hitting “submit” that you weren’t into organized religion.
My point is that not agreeing with the guy up there in the pulpit is pretty common in American churches. I’m a Catholic, and also pro-choice. This means that every time I get an “abortion is murder” speech I disagree with it. But I don’t stomp out of the church, or even tell the pastor I disagree with him.
I think that was Obama’s original point in the Philadelphia speech a few weeks back. Now that Wright’s gone on his road show, Obama has to be more vehement.
Shelby Steele, Hoover Institute Fellow, as much as predicted all of this in an interview.
The thesis is that the racial divide in America follows a historical pattern where Senator Obama can identify himself with the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton-Louis Farakhan style of identity politics, gaining strength for being authentic, or he can broaden his appeal by distancing himself from that tradition of confrontation in order to broaden his appeal beyond racial identity, and risk being branded a sell-out.
Senator Obama does not have a Jeremiah Wright problem as much as a who does he want to be problem. Not everyone in the confrontational camp is a Louis Farakhan let alone a Jeremiah Wright, but the history and the politics of the racial divide is such that men like Farakhan and Wright are part of the political landscape and also have a lot of polarizing effect.
It would have been convenient for the Senator if his pastor hadn’t become a political issue, and it would have been more helpful yet if the good Reverend didn’t go around on his speaking tour for the good of the campaign. It is even suggested that the Reverend is an agent-provocateur for the Clinton camp. But as Shelby Steele predicted, it it weren’t Reverend Wright, it would be someone else or some other circumstances that would bring this issue to a head.
In one way, the choice for Senator Obama is very easy. He could say, “Yes, Reverend Wright is my pastor, and yes I sat and listened to his outrageous remarks, but I am running for President now, and it is time for black and white to unite as patriotic Americans, those remarks cursing America are crazy-talk and we need to rise above that kind of conduct.” That could be the opening for a “Sister Souljah” moment. That would also be the “broad appeal but risking looking like a sell-out” route.
What Senator Obama is trying to do is stradle the fence and it isn’t working. The non-apology apology, the non-repudiating repudiation. On one hand repudiate the Reverend enough to stay main stream, on the other hand offer excuses for the Reverend to stay authentic. You end up offending both camps.
That Senator Obama sat through however many years of inflamatory sermons is not the issue. The issue is who does Senator Obama want to be from this day forward in advancing his candidacy and in leading if he is elected. He has that choice in front of him and it looks like he has trouble choosing.
So, you’re comparing “abortion is murder” (certainly a philosophically respectable position, even if one disagrees with it) to “the US government created AIDS as a means of genocide against black people”?
You seem to have as big a problem with ridiculous moral equivalents as Obama does.
Chris wrote:…My point is that not agreeing with the guy up there in the pulpit is pretty common in American churches.
Yes, its very common. However, we’re not talking about everyday sermons here either. We’re talking about a man in a position of influence casting forth racist and anti-American ideas. If THAT doesn’t get you to walk out of his influence, what will?
That Senator Obama sat through however many years of inflamatory sermons is not the issue. The issue is who does Senator Obama want to be from this day forward in advancing his candidacy and in leading if he is elected. He has that choice in front of him and it looks like he has trouble choosing.
It’s the issue with me. I am not willing to vote for a man who doesn’t know who he is, or is willing and capable of being a political chameleon.
Rand – I don’t think I said that anti-abortionism was morally equivalent to accusations of genocide. What I said was, “my priest says things I disagree with. Do I therefore have to explicitly repudiate every remark of his that I disagree with?”
Mac – so the parish priest is not in a “position of influence?” I thought these supposedly were everyday sermons by just another preacher.
Obama just today repudiated Wright’s remarks. If you read Obama’s books, you’ll not find stuff like what Wright said in them. I’m not sure what exactly else Obama is supposed to do.
I don’t think I said that anti-abortionism was morally equivalent to accusations of genocide.
By using it as an example, you certainly implied it.
What I said was, “my priest says things I disagree with. Do I therefore have to explicitly repudiate every remark of his that I disagree with?”
The answer is no. But you continue to obfuscate the issue (just as Obama attempted to for weeks). This isn’t about merely “disagreeing” with things that your priest says. Are you saying that (for more appropriate examples than thinking that abortion is murder) if your priest stood up in the pulpit and said “God Damn America,” and accused the US government of committing deliberate genocide against Catholics, and said that it was equivalent to Al Qaeda, except under a different flag, and that David Duke was one of the great men of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, that you wouldn’t seek another parish? And if you are running for president, you should be expected to be questioned about not only why you didn’t, but why you exposed your young children to such poisonous and bizarre opinions.
I’m not sure what exactly else Obama is supposed to do.
You don’t get it. There is nothing else he can do now. His candidacy is on the rocks. What he was supposed to do, he should have done years ago. There are some things that, if you do them, they make you ineligible, or at least unlikely, to be elected president of the United States, and showing remorse for them (or worse, pretending that you didn’t do them, which is what Obama is now doing) doesn’t mitigate it. It is clear that only now, when he finds his pastor’s remarks politically inconvenient, does he renounce them.
I guess this is the “new politics” we’ve been hearing so much about.
Not sure I want to get into an argument with an anonymous person, but here goes.
1) Actually, I have heard anti-abortion people say in church and from the pulpit that abortion was genocide. They felt that it was. I don’t agree.
2) If, every week, my priest was saying stuff like you suggested, I’d leave. My suspicion is that Wright wasn’t. If he was, he probably wouldn’t have a 5,000 member church with millions of dollars of cash to run senior citizen centers. Obama says he wasn’t preaching this vitriol every week, and I believe him.
3)Stating that his choice of pastor disqualifies him from the Presidency is your opinion. It is not mine.
Not sure I want to get into an argument with an anonymous person
Sorry, that was me.
Actually, I have heard anti-abortion people say in church and from the pulpit that abortion was genocide. They felt that it was. I don’t agree.
Again, this isn’t about “agree” or “disagree.” As I said, it’s a perfectly respectable philosophical position that abortion is murder, whether you agree with it or not. If you believe that, then by extension, “genocide” is not an unreasonable characterization of millions of abortions per year. It’s hardly an extreme position, and it’s the position of the Church, with which millions of people agree.
I don’t know why you continue to use this ridiculous example. Unless, of course, it’s because you can’t come up with a good one that’s comparable.
If, every week, my priest was saying stuff like you suggested, I’d leave. My suspicion is that Wright wasn’t.
If he wasn’t saying it every week, he certainly seemed to be doing it often enough to get lots of sound bites of it. And he was selling the sermons on DVD, so it’s hardly something that he saw as unusual, or to be hidden.
If he was, he probably wouldn’t have a 5,000 member church with millions of dollars of cash to run senior citizen centers.
What’s your basis for this? It doesn’t seem to follow at all. While they’re extreme positions, 5000 people who believe this stuff wouldn’t be surprising in a city the size of Chicago.
Stating that his choice of pastor disqualifies him from the Presidency is your opinion. It is not mine.
So?
Who cares what your opinion is?
Seriously.
You only get one vote. Unless you can persuade millions of others to share your opinion, your candidate is going to lose. Obama certainly seem to think that it’s an important issue, and that there are many who share my opinion, or he wouldn’t have made his latest attempt to dig himself out of the hole.
As I said in the post, his choice of pastor, and his choice to remain with that pastor for twenty years, speaks to his judgment, or lack thereof. It is a perfectly legitimate issue on which to judge his fitness for office. And it’s not one that he can fix by throwing his pastor under the bus now, only after he becomes politically inconvenient to him.
One other point:
If, every week, my priest was saying stuff like you suggested, I’d leave.
So, if it was only monthly, that would be OK? How about quarterly?
If I had a religious leader who said such things even once, that would be the last time I’d listen to it, because I’d be gone for good. At least if he didn’t later renounce it, and confess to his error.
If you are attending a church, you are supposed to be serving Gods’ will and preserving your immortal soul. If they are preaching wrong from the pulpit, you are risking your eternal soul if you so much as stay and therefore give moral support to evil. Leaving an immoral group is the righteous thing to do if you truly believe. If you don’t believe, why are you attending?
I have serious issues with those that try to tell me how to live based on their attendance to a visibly flawed institution. A president should have an honest track record in this department if in no other.
Rand and Redneck – My left-wing friends will say “Bush lied – people died.” No, Bush was wrong, or more accurately incorrect, regarding WMD in Iraq. (A lot of people were incorrect, including me.)Similarly, my priest, or Wright, can be incorrect but not evil or racist.
I don’t know what experiences a 60-year-old black man had in his life, but I’ll bet whatever is in your wallet that he’s been personally discriminated against. This personal experience may have led Wright to say things that are incorrect, sound evil or sound racist.
So therefore, Obama gave the man a pass. He looked at the good works, the ministries, the money raised. He considered that the United Church of Christ is a predominately white church.
Now that Wright is personally arguing with Obama via the Press Club event, Obama has denounced Wright.
I suspect that I am arguing with people who wouldn’t vote for Obama no matter what, so I shall stop posting on this topic on this forum.
I don’t know what experiences a 60-year-old black man had in his life, but I’ll bet whatever is in your wallet that he’s been personally discriminated against.
No doubt. Though apparently he had a middle-class upbringing in Philly, which, while not free of discrimination, was neither a hotbed of it. But ignoring how much he himself suffered, many black people are victims of it, but don’t develop such toxic views of American society. They understand human nature, and that just because racism persists, it doesn’t have to hold them back, and that it’s still a great country. And of course, white people are discriminated against as well, they don’t develop quite the chip on the shoulder about it as Reverend Wright seemingly has.
Of course, it may be (and in fact is likely) that Reverend Wright knows this, too, but (like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) has found it quite lucrative to be a race hustler. Judging by the size of his mansion, I’d say that this is a pretty good bet.
As for our not voting for Obama regardless, that’s a good bet as well. I’ll have many other posts up as to why he’d be an awful president, independently of his pastor problems. So you are indeed wasting your time arguing about the latter here. Or anywhere that intelligent people, who haven’t drunk the Barack koolaid, hang out.
I would also note, Chris, that you seem to completely ignore the arguments that we actually make, instead reconstructing caricatures of them, when you respond to them at all.
We understand why you do this, but still, it might be worth thinking about. You’re not likely to change our minds, primarily because you make such lousy arguments, but we still have some hope that we’ll change yours.
Hmmmm.
@ Chris Gerrib
1. Frankly attending a church that you disagree with on such a fundamental basis is pretty odd.
2. “I think that was Obama’s original point in the Philadelphia speech a few weeks back. Now that Wright’s gone on his road show, Obama has to be more vehement.”
So. Because Wright is doing some traveling his comments are now even worse than before? They weren’t repellent enough previously but now that Wright has left Chicago, now they’re really bad?
3. “Obama just today repudiated Wright’s remarks. If you read Obama’s books, you’ll not find stuff like what Wright said in them. I’m not sure what exactly else Obama is supposed to do.”
Completely and absolutely false.
In Obama’s book “Dreams of my father” he specifically recounts a highly racist sermon given by Rev. Wright that laid blame for all the world’s ills on “white mens greed”. It was this sermon that provided the inspiration for Obama to be baptised, join the TUCC chuch *and* the title for his second book.
Tell me. How would you react if a white man wrote a sermon demonizing black people by referring to “black mens greed”??
4. “If, every week, my priest was saying stuff like you suggested, I’d leave. My suspicion is that Wright wasn’t. If he was, he probably wouldn’t have a 5,000 member church with millions of dollars of cash to run senior citizen centers. Obama says he wasn’t preaching this vitriol every week, and I believe him.”
Wrong again. The funds TUCC has to run senior citizen centers come from grants, not the congregation of TUCC. This is little more than mutual lefty back-scratching that keeps them all employed. Like when Senator Obama gave a $1 million earmark to his wife’s employer.
John Cole puts it nicely:
�I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,� he said.
Obama also distanced himself from the man in a way he has been reluctant to in the past.
�The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,� he said. �His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.�
�They certainly don�t portray accurately my values and beliefs,� he said.
�If Reverend Wright thinks that�s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn�t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either.�
All the talking heads assured me he had to do this, and now he has. I am not sure why it was necessary, as it was pretty clear to me when listening to Wright the past few days that he was not speaking for Obama, but such is the guilt-by-association bullshit of the media.
As to Wright himself, well, I have my own thoughts. First and foremost, I guess I am no longer the delicate fainting flower that most other bloggers and media commenters are these days. I spent several years in the early days of this blog being all sorts of outraged about petty bullshit. I spent days calling Ted Rall an asshole (he still is, I think), days opining about what an asshole Michael Moore is, and so on. I got my panties all in a bunch about Ward Churchhill (also a dick), and stupid things Bill Maher may or may not have said, and so on.
And you know what? They may be assholes, or jerks, or whatever term you want to use, but they sure as hell didn�t run this economy into the ground. They aren�t responsible for turning a huge surplus into a several hundred billion dollar deficit. I have yet to read any memos from Barbra Streisand detailing how we should spy on American citizens.
And so it is with Jeremiah Wright. Is he a jerk? I don�t think there is any argument to be made that lately he hasn�t in fact been one big, giant, puckered asshole. His ego tour the past few days was all about him, but so what? I blame the media as much as I blame him. Is it an offensive notion that the government created aids? Absolutely, but I refuse to get all bent out of shape about it, because the government that tortures people and ran the Tuskegee experiment and wiretapped MLK for years opens itself up to crazy accusations like that.
So Jeremiah Wright has acted like a jackass the past few days, and he may have acted supremely selfishly by hurting Obama�s electoral chances. Regardless, he may be a flawed man, but that does not undo all the good he has done over the years. I don�t know of any bloggers with thirty years of service to the poor and the indigent. Get back to me when Chris Matthews feeds hungry people for three decades. And even with all his flaws, Jeremiah Wright did give us this quality bit of entertainment, and I have to admit to enjoying someone treat the media with the respect they deserve (which is to be mocked, have eyes rolled at them, and taunted as Wright did yesterday at the Press Club).
Maybe it is because I am totally and unrepentantly in the tank for Obama, but I just can�t get worked up over what his pastor said. Maybe it is because I am not religious, and I am used to religious people saying things that sound crazy. Or maybe I just refuse to spend any more time and energy getting worked up over and denouncing, distancing, and rejecting the wrong people- people who really don�t matter in the big scheme of things. If you have a memo from Jeremiah Wright to John Yoo showing how we should become a rogue nation, let me know. If you have pictures of Jeremiah Wright voting against the GI Bill, send it to me. If you have evidence of Jeremiah Wright training junior soldiers on the finer aspects of stacking and torturing naked Iraqi captives, pass them on.
Until then, I just can�t seem to get all worked up about the crazy scary black preacher that Obama has to �throw under the bus.�
*** Update ***
Glenzilla:
So it isn�t as though we really have anything else to talk about besides Jeremiah Wright. There are some countries in the world�probably most�which have so many big problems that they could ill-afford to devote much time and energy to a matter of this sort. Thankfully, the United States isn�t one of them. I believe it�s critical that we keep that in mind as we discuss him for the next seven months.
No fuc$ing shit.
Maybe it is because I am totally and unrepentantly in the tank for Obama, but I just can’t get worked up over what his pastor said.
I think that this whole anonymous bandwidth-and-disk-space-wasting rant can be boiled down to the above. Koolaid drinkers are impervious to logic, or facts. Those of us not “in the tank” for Obama, repentantly or otherwise, consider all the factors in whether or not to vote for him.
[This comment from Elifritz deleted]
Rand Simberg wrote:
Maybe it is because I am totally and unrepentantly in the tank for Obama, but I just can’t get worked up over what his pastor said.
I think that this whole anonymous bandwidth-and-disk-space-wasting rant can be boiled down to the above. Koolaid drinkers are impervious to logic, or facts. Those of us not “in the tank” for Obama, repentantly or otherwise, consider all the factors in whether or not to vote for him.
___________________________________________________I consider this to be a major issue. You and another blogger we both know have roughly opposite views on religion. I can respect both of those views honestly held and lived by. I can’t respect religion of convenience. Integrity is required for my respect as a spiritual leader or leader of the
country.
Consider all the factors yes, but some factors carry much more weight than others.
Oh what the hell – it’s just an argument on the Internet. So, I’ll try to respond to your points, Rand.
First, let me summarize what I think your argument is, to wit “1) Wright is a racist, therefore 2) anybody who associates with him is either a racist or a political opportunist.”
Let’s take point #2 first. It’s guilt by association. I don’t know how to refute that argument other then to evaluate what the man says and does. I have seen nothing to suggest in Obama’s speeches or political actions that he thinks Wright is correct.
Now consider point #1. A racist, to me, is somebody who has an irrational bias against people based on race. Wright may in fact suffer from racism. So do people in my family. Because I care about these people, and they are of an era where such things were acceptable, I give them a pass.
Obama in his Philadelphia speech strongly suggested that he was giving Wright a pass for just that reason. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I am choosing to take Obama at his word. You are not, and that is certainly your perogative. If you think I’ve “drank the Koolaid” that’s your perogative too.
I hope you consider this “responding to your argument” and not creating a strawman.
To add to the above, I suppose Obama could be an idiot or clueless and associate with Wright. I just don’t see that, and have no particular way to refute the argument other then to point out that he’s sure racked up a lot of delegates for a clueless idiot.
First, let me summarize what I think your argument is, to wit “1) Wright is a racist, therefore 2) anybody who associates with him is either a racist or a political opportunist.”
Nope. Try again.
(For one thing, his racism is the least of the problems with Wright.)
And I find it interesting that you continue to use the same logically flawed analogies that Obama does. A pastor is not your family. You can choose your pastor.
I just don’t see that, and have no particular way to refute the argument other then to point out that he’s sure racked up a lot of delegates for a clueless idiot.
Well, we are talking about Democrats here. It is certainly possible for someone who is politically naive to accumulate a lot of delegates among weepy feely types if he has a lot of charisma and gives a good speech.
But I’ve never claimed that Obama was a clueless idiot, so I don’t know what your point is.
Again, you seem to have trouble following my arguments, which makes it impossible for you to actually respond to them.
OK, Rand, you win – yours is the superior mind. I have no idea what your problem with Obama is, and at this point I don’t care.
I have no idea what your problem with Obama is
Yes, despite the fact that I’ve explained it very clearly, several times.
These Obamapologists are all acting like voters are being completely unforgiving and only want to listen to a candidate that is a master of spin. When in reality I feel that voters are actually a pretty forgiving lot about a lot of mistakes that our Presidents have made in there past. We routinely elect officials with drinking/drug problems, money problems, and marital problems. But whenever you are considering to put someone in the head office of the U.S.A then one things for damn certain — he/she better be a patriotic citizen of their country. Aside from the Wright imbroglio, Obama has exhibited attitudes and surrounded himself with other people that have espoused unpatriotic feelings of their country and that sort of stuff just isn’t going to be tolerated.