It's a good statement (the entire thing has even stronger comments) -- I just wish he'd have directly spoken to Wright remaining on his advisory committee if he is indeed so "angered" (his word).  That seemed to be the test Axelrod put to Hillary Clinton for Ferraro.  

But does he *reject* it?  Or denounce it?  Or renounce?  Deject?  Jectnounce?

For all the Clinton campaign's protests that "We aren't the ones who are bringing up the politics of personal attacks. We just want to get the focus back on issues, like the economy," all you ever hear from Clinton supporters these days is race, religion, race, religion, race, religion, race and religion.

no, Obama should also reject and renounce Jesus Christ, because didn't Jesus say hate the sin, but love the sinner. No, we must hate the sinner too, renounce, reject, destest, injest, retest, you name it we must do it. Down with Jesus and his wimpy forgiveness ways.

I think from now on we should take a few babies each year, keep them locked in a box until they are about 50 and then let them run for President, that way we can be absolutely sure that everyone they have ever met (nobody) is completely vetted. And we can't teach them language because we all know that from language comes lies. No, are only safety lies in their being completely empty and vacuous. I know that didn't quite work out with Bush, but once he fell under Cheneys sway all was lost.

this is a game changer. check out the frothiness on the Right. The Corner has devoted most of the day to it and Rush, Bill O'Reilly et al. are hysterical. Unfortunately, a post on Huff Po will likely not quiet the storm. Wright is an idiot. Why would he do this now? HRC is dancing. This is just what she needed!

good thing it's Friday. this thing is going nuclear. Check out Rich Lowry and friends... corner.nationalreview.com/post

matthawk is right. all we hear from hillary are ridiculous fear-based attacks on obama's race and religion. are we to believe that it is somehow an advantage in a presidential campaign to be ablack man named barack hussein obama? does anyone really believe that barack obama is some sort of manchurian muslim candidate? or that jeremiah wright's radical black christianity reflects obama's views?  

i think as time goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that hillary clinton's kitchen sink rovian campaign strategy makes her the tonya harding of american politics. i cannot help but think democrats will increasingly be turned off by this nasty business, and will respect obama for taking the high road and not taking the bait.

although it does obama no good to repeat it over and over again, it is nonetheless true that obama will still have the most elected delegates and the superdelegates will not overturn this result barring some spitzer-like scandal. it does however seem that hillary is running for the 2012 nomination by bringing obama down now so as to help john mccain, which quite frankly is despicable.

blackton -- but remember, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"  In other words love Wright, but kick him off the committee (or at least ask him to leave).  

eweiss, please, my the summer this will be old news.

blackton -- I'm sorry I addressed that post to you personally, not because I didn't mean it but because I hadn't read your "talk is cheap" post on the other Wright thread (my response is there -- have at it if you want but I think you've made this way too personal and I'm planning on avoid that in the future).  

Blackton:

nonsense.! You Obama supporters are crazy to think so. There is a frenzy on the Right about this. They are not going to go away and frankly they make some good points. The Obamas gave this guy $21,000. He is an integral part of Obama and is referenced everywhere in his books. That is not the problem. The problem is that the guy is kryptonite. He is a loose cannon and today is the first shot. There have been stories in the press foreshadowing the albatross that Wright would become for months. This makes Rezco look like kindergarten and much as you all would like to, Clinton cannot be blamed. Get over it. Obama’s closest spiritual advisor and mentor said, “God Damn America!! God Damn America!!" among other things. Again, this is not out of the blue. I have read at least a half-dozen articles predicting that this guy would be Obama’s downfall. I just don’t get why he opened his trap now.

eweiss, I never blamed Hillary. She has nothing to do with it. Nor do I give a rats ass about anything any of her ministers have ever said. Let's say one of her ministers also said abortion is wrong. Should Hillary reject and renounce him to curry favor with Democrats? Should she leave her church?

Why is George Bush allowed to have people like Pat Robertson or any right wing yokel as his spiritual advisers? My attitude is why not? anybody ever hear of separation of church and state?

If my priest is a member of Opus Dei does that mean as a Democrat I can't receive communion from him? Or accept fellowship or attend his mass?

I am sorry, I just don't see it. Every Catholic politician has had to deal with the crap the church has done and have not suffered for it, Eventually people are going to take a deep breath about this.

Now I am not saying it won't hurt him at all. I just think by the time Hillary and Obama get done destroying each other McCain will waltz right in.

I said this elsewhere but nobody picked it up (come on guys!  I have a massive sense of insecurity, don't make it worse!) -- but Wright is possibly trying to deep-six Obama's campaign and then say to him, told ya, whitey won't let a black boy become president, even if he's a goody two-shoes from Harvard.

I meant it as a joke the first time, but now I'm not so sure . . .  why would he do this now, as eweiss asks.

The controversy over similarly repugnant comments by the evangelical pastors McCain's been brown-nosing have seemed to die down pretty quickly, so maybe the impact of all this won't be long-lived.

However, it won't be hard for the Republicans (or Hillary) to make a video connecting Wright's  'God damn America" comments to Michelle Obama's comment about this being the first time in her adult life that she's proud of America (even though what she meant was nowhere near as broad). So I think the Wright comments may prove quite damaging, at least in the short term.

Interesting. I'll bet all of us only live and socialize among those with whom we have absolute philosophical felicity.

I belong to a church where I've had ample opportunity to disagree with pastors, laymen, sisters and brothers. I have in the past felt it was an obligation of mine to persist despite of heartfelt disagreements. Oftimes to the chagrin of those who would have me somewhere more friendly to my disposition. I hope I picked my fights with discretion and large considerations. That said I hope that I have proven worthy of consideration in return. That can be a pretty big order but tough. Would it be better for me to withdraw from the engagement? Or should I put forth with a degree of faith and hope that my sterling arguments and sincere concern might be reciprocated?

I think we need an attitude adjustment on all of this gotcha going out at all of these candidates. This would include Hilary Clinton and John McCain.

Now I think that these are fair concerns being aired. I also think that Obama has spoken to the issue. The guy has had open doors to groups and experiences simply by virtue of his unique talents and status. I would hope this a strength rather than a weakness. Come what may.

Blackton, I hear you on the church issue. The problem is that Obama has made it clear the Wright is not just A spiritual advisor, but his KEY spiritual advisor. The title of his book "The Audacity of Hope" comes directly from the title of a sermon Wright gave. Bush doesn't have a philosophy and frankly lots of the people who voted for him probably dug the Robertson connection. Clinton herself has said that she thinks abortion is wrong (but should be legal). That is not the issue.

While just going to a church does not create an implicit or explicit acceptance or endorsement of the church or pastor's teachings, Obama did NOT just go to the Church. He identified Wright as one of his key philosophical mentors. I see two problems: 1) is that he has sold himself as above racial politics and this guy Wright is clearly not above racial politics. He spews the classic hateful bullshit that is nothing but destructive and all about racial politics (HIV is a man-made disease created to kill Black people).  Again, the relationship is not the problem; it is the quality of the relationship. It is not a simple case of going to a church. Obama has identified the guy as his spiritual guiding light. 2) Judgment. The problem for me is that this guy Wright, like him or not, has been known to be a time-bomb for years. Like I said in previous posts, there are countless stories about how unstable he is. Why is this Wright Obama’s main man? This is the classic country club story. When politicians run for high office they clean this stuff up. They quit the white’s only country club and create distance. I have seen no such distancing from Obama. Again, it is not about religion, it is about politics and to me reflects more about Obama’s political naiveté than anything else. The Republicans are drooling over this kind of stuff because it is just the stuff that will turn off swing voters. This is the exact kind of story that they have been waiting for and they will milk it for the duration. As to Obama and Clinton killing each other, I disagree. I also happen to think it is good for Obama that this comes out now. If he survives, you may be correct that it will be an old story come the fall. I am worried.

I've seen some clips now of the Reverend Wright in full dudgeon.  Now, maybe the man is like a secret alcoholic or the guy with three wives in three cities.

But, it is hard to credit that after years of Sundays in the pews, that Obama has not gotten a good does of Rev JW's controversial beliefs.

No doubt the Right Wing PACs are collect all the Rev JW footage they can find for September and October.  In fact, they can just buy them from Hillary.  She'll need a lot of money for campaign debts by late summer.

looks lie he finally distanced... www.politico.com/.../Wright_leaves_Obama_campaign.html

hope it is not too late.

no boxy, that won't suffice, you have to kill everyone who has ever said anything disagreeable. I am so perfect in every way I can freely cast stones at neighbors of alcoholics (why don't they move?) or parishoners of wayward priests (why didn't they become baptists?) I hope that Obama, McCain, and Hillary get together and put a stop to this but I ain't going to hold my breath.

Stick a fork in him, he's done!

Any bets on  how long before Obama drops out?

*sigh*

I think we should stage a duel to the death between Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee. Hopefully it's a draw.

No, seriously, though, this is the best time for it to come out. We're still not in the playoffs. Obama is still sitting pretty, this is just one less October surprise. And if it really is a huge bombshell that ruins Obama forever (which I truly, sincerely doubt) then of course the Clinton campaign will be happy to point out that he's not the nominee yet, and there are superdelegates. Everyone will have forgotten this six months from now, the media won't have anything else to report, there's no "investigation" to provide continual updates of consciousness throughout the campaign season, and Wright will vanish from the public consciousness when Obama and his congregation finally shut him up.

I'll put in my entry in jackson's contest.  I'll take January 20, 2016.

Follow-up: Is it possible to value someone's opinion and value them as a friend, but disagree with them profoundly?

My grandfather is a retired Methodist minister, and I'm an atheist. I think Christianity is insane, that its followers are sheep, and that the world would be a better place without it. But I love my grandfather, and I value what he says, even if it's completely contrary to what I think. There's no tension between the two. That's just how things are in the real world, unless you're the kind of person who can't love a person that disagrees with you. In which case, you have real problems.

jackson,

You may dislike Obama intensely, but your notion that he is going to "drop out" is the worst sort of nonsense.  He is going to be nominated by the Democratic party.  It is a lock already.  I'm putting my money with jfabermit.

Chan: can't the same be done with McCain?  He's allied himself with some pretty slimy "ministers" lately.

Obama is done. Assuming he gets trounced in PA, no superdelegate who has a choice or any political savvy will vote Obama knowing how this plays to the electorate. Can he win Missouri florida ohio etc with this kind of issue to deal with?  This makes Willy Horton look like a joke. No amount of distancing at this time will work. It is McCain Clinton in the fall.

I know that this may seem like a hopelessly naive question, but it must be posed nonetheless.  

Is there any evidence that Senator Obama has ever said anything even remotely close to the words and comments of Pastor Wright?  Anything?  Anything at all?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that Senator Obama believes Wright's knavery on the racial questions raised by folks on this list?

Do we not have a rather significant record of Obama's beliefs and ideas about race and diversity and all assorted whatnot?  Any evidence in these works that would lead you to believe that Obama believes and thinks in ways that are consonant with Wright's more incendiary foolishness?

I think it is time to stop arguing from inference, and actually begin to provide concrete evidence.

You won't get any disagreement from me regarding John Hagee's sliminess, but John McCain didn't list him as spiritual mentor.  This situation is a bad one for Obama, and while I may not go as far as jacksondyer on this deal (as of now), this is a major problem for Obama.   Political controversies are only problematic if they feed into existing preconceptions of political figures, and like it or not, a lot of Americans have some doubts about Obama's being a mainstream guy, because of his name and background.  That isn't fair and I don't buy into it, but the facts are what they are.  

jfeder,

You are completely delusional.  Just because O'Reilly and Limbaugh get orgasmic does not make it in issue in the Democratic party.  Particularly since McCain is nice and vulnerable on this and Hillary has buckets and buckets of extremely slimy friends.   Have you ever done anything in the political world?  Obama blew the guy off, it will be a complete zero in a few days.  My bet is that Obama actually gains from the whole thing by doing what none of the other candidates actually has the guts to do which is to firmly and unequivocally distance themselves from supporters of theirs who either are or drop off the deep end, including the criminals among them.

Get a life.  The Hillary spinning is not even spinning any longer.  It has become true crackpot stuff.  The nomination is over, the Fed is growing desperate trying to keep the economy from going into a recession in the run-up to the election AND IT ISN'T WORKING.  McCain is going to be toast.  IT"S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!  Hillary just wishes she could be the one there to catch these breaks, but it is too late for her.

Actually, the bet, jfabermit, should be that Obama drops out January 20, 2017, not 2016.

I heard some of Obama's defences today. He sounded ponderous, defensive and evasive--somewhat like he sounded in the early debates.. It also strains credibility, as someone above suggested, that in all of 20 years or so he did not know what Wright was about. I cannot measure the impact of this on his campaign. We'll see. But what a really, really bad turn for him.

I  posted this elsewhere on TNR's site, but I want to mention it here, since we are on the topic of Rev. Wright.

Wright stated that Jesus Christ was black.  While it's possible that was just a rhetorical flourish for the benefit of the congregation that most people find uninteresting or trivial, that got my attention.  Generally, when Christian ministers seek to deny or minimize the fact that Jesus Christ was a Jew (as opposed to a rather Nordic-looking man with long blonde hair or a member of some other species of man), it's for reasons that aren't very decent regarding the relationship between Christians and Jews.  While I'm not ready to call Wright an anti-Semite because of that one point, that coupled with his Farrakhan sympathies makes one wonder.  

A new game!  Guilt by association.

Senator Clinton has had a long-standing relationship, an intimate relationship one might say, with a known adulterer and liar - this very same person was disbarred!  What does this say about her character?  What does she believe about the sancitity of marriage?  

You can play, too.

All nominations welcome.

And yes, I know its absurd.  That's the point.

I am sure it is a strain being attacked both by Hillary and the Republicans at the same time, very had to punch back when you are getting it from both sides.  But Hillary will be gone soon.  The simple fact is that Obama is coming in for this only because he is the presumptive nominee.  If that should change even for a moment, then the guns will be on Hillary, and her dirty laundry goes on forever.  Tested?  Vetted?  Not hardly.  NOTHING about the Clintons since the pardons has come under any scrutiny.  

If I were Obama, I would respond and then get right back on my message with all the insouciance I could muster.  However, Obama needs to find some surrogates who can start smacking Hillary around good.  It is never good to be an unarmed target.

What, basman, you expect him to be joyous and eager to denounce someone he's trusted?  That is incredibly lame.  He had to pound on the guy, but I would be a little worried if he were really sounded excited or eager to be doing so.

Come on, this is not Willie Horton.  As bad as what Wright said, he didn't kill anybody.  Yes, Obama will have another thing to deal with, but it's only going to affect those that won't vote for him anyway.  Hey it might help him:  How can he be a muslim if his minister is Christian?

Yeah Itz. I think he blew it when he told the Fox news interviewer, Major(?) something or other, that had he known of such sermons and beliefs that he would have quit. It shut the door on his only out which was a conscious decision to persist despite disagreement that some good rub might be had by doing so. Personally I don't find it so outrageous that Obama's views have their own characteristics according to their own evolution which would undoubtedly include the influences and environment of his current church. But that is an awfully tough sell on sound bite time. I agree that this could be a real problem for him. He definitely has his work cut out for him and it will require a level of candid honesty to get square on these issues. Better trust those white folks to some of the more uncomfortable realities of this situation. Time to get very, very real....and trust. Otherwise he may well be toast.

myzaguirre, there may be a less nefarious reason for such a statement.  It seems that most folks who are Christian tend to want to 'see' Jesus as someone like themselves.  Look at art from around the world in their depicitions of Jesus; Jesus is depicted as Japanese, Chinese, African, South American, Mauri, Anglo, etc, etc.  Do they so depict Jesus because they are trying to deny Jesus' Jewishness?  No, they do so because they want to identify themselves with Jesus.

This is a fascinating discussion that relates art, theology, identity, and faith.  We do not do the discussion a great deal of service if we attempt to reduce it to its component parts without understanding that we may be missing something.

None of this is to address the Obama/Wright conversation.  This is simply to address that the issue of the depiction of Christ is a rather complicated piece of the puzzle for the faithful.  Look at image after image of Jesus from around the world and you will see folks trying to make sense of the relationship between themselves and Jesus.  

When KO played the videos of Wright tonight, I really couldn't see what was so reprehensible that it's caused this firestorm. When he said 'God damn America,' for example, I had to admit that's exactly the way I felt when W was elected over Al Gore and then (especially) when he was re-elected. And when Wright talked about 9/11 in terms of the chickens coming home to roost because of the violence and suffering this country has caused in the world, I disagreed but I couldn't totally dismiss it. And it isn't anywhere near as divorced from reality as the assertions of some of the right-wing Christian preachers (Falwell among them?) that 9/11 was God's punishment for homosexuality!

kgrant 1054 - Fair point.  However, this issue is one that has a troublesome history, and it is always worth exploring and questioning when a Christian cleric makes any reference to Christ as anything other than a Jew.  There's been too much nastiness over the centuries on this point to let this issue pass without comment or analysis.

What if Obama had the guts to go beyond denouncing one racist moron of a preacher?  What if Obama challenged American blacks to quit whining and begging for money from the government and making excuses and instead take advantage of the enormous opportunities this country offers and make something of themselves?  What if Obama had the guts to point out that the crime rate among children of two parent families is minuscule? What if Obama had the honesty to say that 80% of black babies are born out of wedlock and that it is a human tragedy?  What if he said that given these sad facts it is no surprise that the black crime rate is seven times that of whites?  

What if Obama had the supreme courage to attack just one Democratic interest group and say that the teachers’ unions stand in the way of educational progress for black children?

If Obama had the stature to tell the speak truth to power and say how liberalism has deprived American blacks of their dignity and self-respect he could be the greatest emancipator since Abraham Lincoln.

A Politico reader helpfully provided this link to the audio of the actual "Audacity to Hope" sermon that inspired Obama.  

mp3.christianity.com/.../317_60682_JeremiahWright__TheAudacitytoHope82A.32.mp3

You would not recognize the ranting lunatic of the YouTube videos if you listened to this.  It's a sober, low-key well constructed meditation that weaves together, in an interesting way, an analysis of British painter George Fredrick Watts' painting "Hope" and a Biblical passage from Samuel.  For me, an important question is this:   If you walked into Trinity Baptist Church on a random Sunday in the early 1990s when Obama started attending or any random Sunday during the next decade, when Wright performed Obama's wedding ceremony and his children's baptisms, would it be far more likely that you would hear a sermon like the one linked to than the infamous rants?  

That may wind up being the key question, since Obama, in a series of interviews tonight, said that he did not see from the pews the types of vitriolic hate-filled remarks that comprise the videos we've all seen.  Many are doubting that claim, and I myself was skeptical, but listening to the "audacity" sermon, I now think the claim may be reasonable.  

I think Obama is smart enough that he was telling the truth to Major Garrett when he said that the tenor and tone of the vast majority of the sermons Obama remembers bore no resemblance to the incendiary stuff.  To lie about that, when Obama now knows the claim can be fact-checked, would seem remarkably stupid.  

Why on earth are Kgrant 1054 and myzaguirre suggesting that referring to Jesus as black is inconsistent with Jesus' being Jewish?  My understanding of the Afrocentric view is that the residents of Egypt and Palestine were dark skinned in Biblical times.  The Romans, in contrast, were fair skinned.

Oops, apologies to kgrant 1054; I had you confused with a different commenter.  Sorry.

LDuncan - I'm actually quite PC when it comes to a lot of historical and cultural analysis, but my main point is that when anyone starts talking about Jesus as being anything other than a Jew, both ethnically and religiously - first and foremost, everyone else should start getting suspicious and weigh that speaker's words carefully.  As I mentioned above, there's been a lot of nastiness on that point historically from those who seek to separate Christ from the Jewish people.  And I'm not even much of a Christian anymore, so I'm not trying to make some big point here for the purposes of proselytism.    

If this board is any indication (and it's a BIG if), the hardcore Ron Paul supporters have competition for a group willing to drink the Kool-Aid with Obama supporters.

I mean, c'mon folks! This isn't a case of Rev. Wright being like a grandfather to Obama, or as Barry himself said, "an uncle." As has been pointed out numerous times, you don't choose your family; you do choose your spiritual adviser.

And to somehow insist that Obama had no idea of Wright's venemous language is straining credulity. Or are to somehow believe that Obama skipped church on the days that Wright went loony?

bulbman1066 (will some people get a decent handle already!!):  Obama has said many times in his informal talks, in his set speeches, and in his book that he doesn't think a victim/oppressed demeanor is useful or justified for African-Americans in 2008.  His own life is, if anyone wants anything more, a fairly vibrant statement against that approach.

In fact, beyond that, Obama doesn't suffer from the morbid social interactions that dog black/white relations in America.  He fits an American norm -- he's a friendly and pragmatic sort of guy, and someone you'd like to have as your neighbor if e.g. you need some help to get a fence back up after the storm.  Clinton would give you a lecture on how you shouldn't have let it fall in the first place.

Perhaps upon careful examination of Wright's sermons, it'll become clear that most are like the Audacity to Hope (taking LDuncan's word for its content) and that there's really no reason to believe that Obama is somewhat sympathetic to Wright's wackier views.

However, it seems to me that that doesn't weigh very heavily next to the ability of Obama's opponents to truthfully point out that Obama was willing to put a very important part of his children's religious education into the hands of a pastor who believed these things and who made this clear in his sermons,  I admit to being uneasy about that myself.

Say what you will about crazy uncles, but if my uncle believed that the sun revolved around the earth I wouldn't trust him to teach my children astronomy, even if I valued his advice concerning other issues and greatly enjoyed his company.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about a witch hunt. We are talking about a religious litmus test that we thankfully rejected with it was applied to John F. Kennedy in 1960, to Joe Lieberman in 2000, and to Mitt Romney earlier this year. We are asking whether a man is qualified to become president of the United States, despite his 11 year history of holding public office (which should give us a clue as to his approach to government) because of some of the things that the minister of his church said.

Remember, in 1976 there was a brief flair-up over the fact that Jimmy Carter’s church did not allow African Americans to attend their services. The church didn’t change their rules until well after Carter was in the White House. Did that affect Carter’s ability to be a credible and fair public servant for all Americans, including the African American community? Obama’s church, in 2008, is no where near Carter’s segregated church of 1976. The majority of the members of his religious denomination are actually white, not black. And his church in the South Side of Chicago includes white members.

What are we talking about here?  We’ve fought this battle over the influence of religion on elected officials before. Hopefully we’ve learned that a candidate should not be judged by the words of his or her pastor, but by their performance in public office and their understanding of the relationship between church and state.

Obama said (my own paraphrase/gloss) on Keith Olbermann tonight that Wright represents an angry leftist attitude common to some older, black intellectuals who came out of the 60s and are still pissed off.  There was plenty to be pissed off about, and one of the things angry, leftist intellectual types were fighting to achieve was a society where Barack Obama could successfully run for president.  Obama isn't still fighting 60s battles as is Wright.  That's not who he is.  He's benefiting from the victories Wright doesn't want to recognize in his angrier moments.

Wright said God damn the America that incarcerates, what is it now?, a full one percent of the population?  He's wrong about damning America, but at least he's right about the underlying issue -- that is, right to be profoundly troubled by it.  Contrast that with the worldview that believes that God *did* damn America with 9/11 not because of its social inquality -- because of its failure to be Jesus-like in that regard -- but because it condones homosexuality.  John McCain called such people agents of intolerance and now embraces them.  Their views are a thousand times crazier and more toxic than Wright's.

Meanwhile, Wright, like all lefty types, is simple-minded and wrong about Israel (in a way Obama  clearly is not) and, it seems, simple-minded about the use of the bomb to end WWII.  (At the same time, I remember vividly an old documentary I saw in school in which the pilot who dropped the bomb was giving an interview afterwards and just glowing with pride and yee-haw enthusiasm -- this after killing so many innocent people.  It made me sick.)

Someone asked why Wright said these things now.  He didn't.  These are old sermons.  The new part is that they've just recently been disseminated in video form.  They've been gathered and cut to show Wright at his most outrageous, of course.

Some will say, in contrast to McCain, that Obama had a personal and longstanding association with Wright, and that this is much worse than being a whore to the nutso religious right.  I look at it differently.  This is a close friend -- can't hide that, nor has Obama tried to -- who has views that are simply more extreme than and clearly divergent from his own in some key respects.  That goes for any time in Obama's career by the way.  He has *never* said or written anything that echoes Wright in these clips.  Obama hasn't moved to the center from the fringe left.  He was never a leftist -- he's nothing like a leftist.  He's philosophically *opposed* to to the whole framework of leftist struggle.

Meanwhile, it's clear what attracted Obama to Wright -- his erudite, I've heard, marriage of spirituality and practical social issues.  I'm an atheist, but this is the only sort of religion, frankly, I can even begin to stomach, and we know that Obama feels it sincerely.   That doesn't mean he agrees with every angry word the man utters or every sentiment behind them.  That should go without saying, but, of course, it doesn't.

I doubt that this will "go nuclear" -- that is, blow up his campaign -- as some have suggested.  It's guilt by association, which doesn't usually have legs, or big legs.  The problem for Obama -- and why this is troublesome for him -- is that a lot of folks are still asking, or starting to ask, "Who is this guy?" and associations like this can help to fill in the blanks in a false and misleading way.  After all, in addition to attending this church, he taught law at the most conservative of top American law schools and earned the respect and admiration of his colleagues there.  He's got right-wing friends too!

One of those colleagues is the (non-conservative but non-leftist) Cass Sunstein, who had a brilliant op-ed about Obama in today's Tribune called "The Obama I know."  If anyone wants to know who Obama is, it's an excellent place to start.  It's not a meditation on his "coolness" nor on how his race will heal all wounds foreign and domestic.  It's not Kool Aid.  It's substantive and based on personal experience and describes perfectly the Obama *I* know from my years at the the University of Chicago Law School.  Go to chicagotribune.com.

Of course the Right is drooling over this (hypocrites that they are with their devotion to RR stalwarts who say things just as bad). It's just their kind of issue. The rest of America couldn't care less -- most voters don't pay attention to the ideology of the candidates' friends or even advisors. They took a look at the candidate himself and vote based on that. That's why liberals were astonished when Reagan was elected in '80 (but- but he's an ACTOR! He's old! Listen to the things he said! He opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss.!) and conservatives couldn't believe the public would back Clinton during the Lewinsky crisis (but he got blow jobs in the oval office!). This is the type of thing NR types love to think the American public cares about. Those who are already Republicans do. Those that are up for play mostly don't. I may be wrong, but that's how I see it (and it doesn't necessarily reflect the way I feel personally).

The political problem for Obama is that he's now got at least three occasions where he can be portrayed as anti-American.

1. He doesn't wear the American flag lapel pin

2. His wife was never proud of her country until people started fawning over her and her husband

3. His closest spiritual advisor is a demagogic hater of his country (at least some of the time)

Then his supporters go on web sites and say "His preacher said God damn America.  Well, I say that too!  And good for him!"

Yep, that's a great way to appeal to the potential crossover voters in this country.

I don't doubt that Reverend Wright has delivered some excellent sermons.  And I have to also believe that there were occasions where Hagee, Robertson and Falwell gave brilliant, fully Christian sermons too.  But that doesn't excuse the other outrageous comments of the conservative wing nut preachers, nor does it excuse the outrageous comments of Wright either.

There's probably a hundred black preachers in this country that say worse things than what Wright has said, and given the demographics, probaly a thousand white preachers that say worse things than Falwell or Robertson have said.  Associating Obama with any of those other 100 other nutty black preachers would be completely unfair.  But associating him with the ONE preacher that he says is his closest spiritual advisor is quite fair.  

I've listened to Obama in the Olbermann interview, and I do believe he's sincere and reasonable in what he is saying (although I do find it very difficult to believe that he had no idea the guy talked like this until late 2007.  So the jury is still out on that one).  I've certainly never heard of anything to suggest that even in his unguarded moments Obama thinks anything close to what Wright has said in these videos.

But the vast majority of Americans don't devote the kind of time to evaluating the candidates that I do.  They'll see a bunch of commercials, maybe watch one debate, and then go vote.  It takes an hour of nuance and explanation to counter one video of a guy saying God damn America.  More videos?  More hours, more explanations.  Eventually, people say "I've seen enough" and don't want to hear any more explanations.

If all of this was on the table back in January, I would suspect that the current delegate count would still be very close, but Clinton would have the slight lead, not Obama.  He certainly would not have picked up as many crossover votes as he has up until now.  

Obama has a problem.  How he deals with the problem over the next several weeks will say a lot about how good of a candidate/president he would be if he makes it that far.  (This isn't an issue that will be decided simply by asking the guy to leave your campaign like was done with Powers and Ferraro, because Obama has a very close relationship with this guy over a lot of years). We'll see what Obama does as time goes on.

jhildner:

I don’t agree with your characterization of what Obama said on Olberman and other places where I saw him. Your paraphrase attributes a construction to Obama’s comments that they, to my ears, don’t bear. He did say Wright was a marine and a learned biblical scholar who has lectured at divinity schools throughout the land. But his remarks in essence were apposite Wright’s incendiary remarks about, inter alia, white America introducing the Aids virus to kill and suppress the black man, how America brought 9/11//911 onto itself by its foreign policies, how America in its policies was no better than Al Qaeda, how every calamity America has suffered from Pearl Harbour to the World Trade Centre and other things to 9/11//911 is matched and exceeded by what America has done to Black people domestically and around the world. And what Obama did was, as I heard him, to denounce and reject those other discrete utterances while not denouncing and rejecting the man himself—I’m not saying necessarily that he should have done the latter, I’m just noting that he did not. So, in sum, your characterization of Obama’s construction of Wright’s remarks make them more qualitatively benign than they actually were.

Also, while it is a fair to note that in his way Wright may be saying things no less offensive than what religious leaders on the right are saying, that does not help Obama’s particular problem with Wright, the extent of which I don’t know how to measure, save to say that he seems to have one and it is not insignificant.

And, further, it underplays Wright to say that he is “simple-minded and wrong about Israel”. He likens Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South African apartheid. He speaks of the Israel’s brutal, military, suppression and repression of the Palestinians in the most angry of words and tones and assimilates Israeli policy to his litany of White America’s mistreatment of African Americans, (who he says need to find particularistic meaning Black values rooted in and emanating from “Mother Africa”, which White America has inverted and poisoned.) When Wright’s views and place in Obama’s life first came to my attention as controversial in the context of being a Farrakhan fellow traveler, I was unwilling to call him an anti-Semite as some Jewish leaders were claiming. Now having heard more of his remarks, I have little doubt that the simmering anti-Semitism that tragically flows through too much of Black America--often in the form of Israel hating-- finds a fertile source in the views and preaching of Wright, whose connection to Farrakhan seems more vividly clear to me now.

I don’t ascribe any of these views to Obama. But I, as an objective observer, intellectually interested in American politics, but disinterested insofar as I am not an American, find Obama’s twenty year or year connection to Wright, his privileging of Wright as one of his great spiritual advisors and mentors, his letting his daughters, or one of them, as I understand it, give his church’s prize to Farrakhan and things like that troubling. I see a continuum between Wright’s world view and Michelle Obama’s anger, and I have questions about Obama’s judgment in his intimately close association with Wright. And I think Obama either outright lies or cravenly cavils--another mug in the mugs' game of politics-- when he claims that that he only now has he learned what Wright is about. I think that in openly staking out that position lies political vulnerability and fragility. (By the way some of the sermons that are being reprised are as recent as December 2007.)

I cannot speak to Obama’s leftism—and unlike Jonah Goldberg I do not assimilate liberal to left and I think that a liberal is a fine thing to be-- or past leftism. For myself if Obama  was for a time on the fiery left--many of us were in our younger years-- that would not affect my liking him. I would judge him by the positions he has now and recently staked out and acted on. (But I would be concerned if he tried to cover that up, was dishonest about it and so forth. I am not saying he has been any of that. But I would find that to be an offensive trait in him.)

Jhildner's observation about the University of Chicago is a helpful one.  Obama is his own person.  He thinks for himself.  People like that are far less paranoid of being "associated with" those sharing radically different points of view.  In some ways I see Obama as a liberal Buckley.  Many liberals, conservatives and in-betweeners were praising William F. Buckley last week.  On Buckley's show, which had more viewers than a lot of cable chat shows have now, Buckley gave a one-hour audience on at least one occasion -- and I believe more than one -- to the poisonously anti-American and erudite-but-profoundly-idiotic Noam Chomsky.   And Buckley gave Chomsky plenty of time to get his viewpoint out there; he did not bring him on to cut him off and shout at him repeatedly, a la Hannity,  Many of the "conservatives" today would be up in arms at the prospect that Buckley would give Chomsky a forum and treat him respectfully.  If Obama can pivot and use Wright's antiquated view of race relations as a foil, he might yet survive this crisis.

Speaking of Chomsky, here is another possibly helpful analogy.  Should a linguistics student who comes under Chomsky's sway, attends MIT, and then befriends him be charged with Chomsky's political views?  From all that appears, Obama was attracted to the Wright's theology, not his views about American foreign or domestic policy.

If John McCain had a personal, pastoral relationship with Pat Robertson or one of these other nutcases who  preaches that 9/11 was God's vengeance on homosexuality, I would actually find that much easier to accept than his political association with such types, as long as he made it clear that he did not share the pastor's "political views."  Where the association is much deeper and broader than mere political expedience, it is easier to excuse the fact that the person involved has some very disturbing views.  

I have a first cousin who is so far right that it literally shocks me to hear him.  No one in the family can figure out where he came from.  I sometimes discuss politics with him.  Often we don't.  But I have known him since I was old enough to know anyone, he has many fine and generous qualities, and his political views are only a small piece of him.  

Indeed, if Obama were choosing all of his associates in life based on his calculation about what would be to his political advantage, that would be the most disturbing thing about him.  Now, can we think of people who carefully choose all their associates in a manner that is calculated to advance them politically and drop those people the moment that they are no longer useful?  I can.

For the Obama-haters, this is a godsend because it gives them a nice bit of political cover.  They weren't going to vote for Obama anyway.  For the rest, this will soon be a non-issue.  But Obama better be ready with some nice commercials about McCain's new friends declaring that 9/11 was punishment for the wickedness of America to neutralize anything of the sort that McCain tries.  ("Is this what John McCain thinks about America?  That Moslem terrorists were sent by God to kill innocent Americans?  Or is John McCain's zeal to live in the White House so unprincipled that he is willing to court even those who hate America to get there? When will John McCain speak out to denounce and reject these hateful views of his political associates?  Call him.  Ask him yourself.")

The Carter episode of 1976 doesn't resemble this event because Carter and his minister were opposed to segregation of churches and the minister later resigned in protest over the issue.

I see many excuses and attacks on Hillary Clinton here, one red herring after another, in an effort to avoid examining the relationship between this ghastly hate mongering preacher and the man who claimed him as a "spiritual mentor."   It is difficult to believe that Obama was unaware of the beliefs of this man after 20 years in his cult like church, Wright officiating his marriage, baptizing his children, and giving his advice all these years.  This association is real, it was freely chosen and sustained by Obama and it is very legitimate to raise it.

So, life long Democrats such as myself will to have to assess the sincerity of his remarks but it certainly diminishes his status for some of us and makes it harder to support him in November with enthusiasm.

As a secular person who views the expression of religion in public political discourse with justified suspicion I am reminded of the remarks of Christopher Hitchens when he recently debated a professor from Emory University here in Atlanta. He noted how much you can get away with in our culture, how much evil and nonsense you can talk as long as you put "Reverend" in front of your name. Whether it  was the wretched Jerry Falwell, the "Reverend" Al Sharpton, the "ace bullshitter" as the TNR once accurately described him, or this latest religious bigot and fool who is close to Obama, it is the same nonsense.  In what way does this "Reverend" Wright deserve respect from anyone?  

Don't pretend this is a right wing plot or unimportant of just fodder for Hillary or anything else. Ask yourself does Obama, who clearly lacks the experience to be president, also lack the judgment?  The man he intended to conduct the invocation at his swearing in (another religious exercise we could do without) appears to think that we deserved to be attacked on 911, the government gives drugs to blacks, AIDs was intended for black people, and that the it is acceptable to personally savage Hillary Clinton in his church.   Great "mentor," great judgment.  And don't pretend it didn't happen or doesn't count, because this relationship did exist and it counts.  This is the not a pack of lies from a Swift Boat group this is Obama's minister and his church.  Disgraceful.  

But Wright isn't stupid, presumably.  Presumably, too, the man knows how close he is to Obama (at least in terms of a pastor/colleague relationship).  Therefore he knows  what potentially destructive effects these particular statements could have on the campaign and Obama's chances.  But he does it nevertheless.  Why?  And, also, why?

No resemblance?  Carter was a member of a segregated church.  Not a church where people said obnoxious things, but an actual segregated church.  That's okay according to mhollifield because Carter and the minister were actually opposed to segregation although the condoned it with their participation.  The minister ultimately resigned, but Carter did not.

That's not a double standard, mhollifield, it's just pure unadulterated BS.  Makes it difficult to take the rest of your post seriously.  But, oh, let me guess mhollifield.  Whom were you supporting before this episode?  Has this changed your views?

I'm asking myself whether Hillary Clinton, who clearly lacks the experience to be president, also lacks judgment.  Based on her judgments in the senate, from war, to taxes, to bankruptcy, to flag-burning, there seems to be no question that she does lack judgment, or is at the very least such a relentless panderer that who, including she, knows what she thinks about anything.

But it's okay, because she and Bill have all the right associations.  There are no ugly people that they associate with, let alone do favors for.  Shall we start with Mark Rich and go downhill from there?  Let's see, did he express obnoxious political opinions?  No, he stole a few tens of millions of dollars from the American people and then was rewarded by a Clinton pardon.  Was Hillary involved in that?  Can't say, she's hiding her papers.  But since she was, according to her, practically co-president, trotting the globe negotiating peace treaties, it stands to reason that she was.

The point is that Obama doesn't share his views, has never expressed anything like his views, and didn't hesitate to say so, openly and unequivocally.  Carter was not held responsible for the segregation of his church.  Once, the Hillaristas and Limbaughs (there's a fine alliance for you) stop foaming at the mouth, this will be a non-issue.  Yes, the relationship is real, but Americans do not hold people to account for views of others they do not share as long as they are not profiting from the relationship.  It is just un-American.  

No component of that puzzle we call a man exists in isolation.

In the case of Obama, I've said for awhile that the emotional political problem he creates for voters is not his being black, but his "exoticness".

A father from Africa who abandoned him.

A mother with a "bohemian" bent and a seemingly hippy childhood.  But, offset, or in a way made more exotic by his attendance at the most expensive prep school in Honolulu.

His Indonesian stepfather replaces the African one, takes him to Indonesia where he attends not the American school, but the local Muslim madrassa.

His excellent intellect, hard work and ambition take him into the most privileged heart of the Ivy League and he marinates amongst the likely fairly Leftist intellectual class at Columbia (a school whose students have a habit of using Brown Shirt tactics against speakers who's views are disapproved of ) and then Harvard Law.

His wife, with as privileged an education as his and a $300,000 job states that she has never been proud of America until her husband started to win elections in the presidential primaries.  Her rise from poverty and Obama's previous election to the Illinois and U.S. senates were not sufficient evidence to her that America provides pretty nice opportunities to those who work hard.

Meanwhile, Obama has pursued the very worthy path of working in the Chicago projects to help the poor.

In Chicago, he attends a church for twenty years headed by a charismatic pastor.  This pastor he declares in his autobiography is his longtime spiritual guide.

Now, this week, America sees Obama's spiritual guide preaching "goddamn America, that 9-11 was the "chickens coming home to roost," that Hiroshima can only be seen in terms American genocide, that the slave trade is still not in any measure atoned for, (even though it was a worldwide practice, and we ended it at great cost in blood and treasure, America is the only guilty party.)

Now we keep hearing that "guilt by association" is forbidden in America.  And, yes it is, in a court of law.

But, is there any among us who is not judged by others, to some measure, even great measure, by the company we keep?

If Obama had merely sought Reverend Wright's political endorsement, say, it would have been easily understood in the context of politics in his Chicago district.

But, Obama has attended the Rev Wright's church for twenty years, married there, baptized his children there.  And declared the Rev Wright his guide.

Meanwhile, from all this "exoticness" emerges a pattern that can at least raise unspoken questions about Obama's true beliefs, his commitment to traditional American values, and the degree of his "Americanness".

Contrast these potential fears and misgivings to McCain's pattern.  A naval officer, aviatior, and war hero.  A man of independent reputation who did not slavishly hew the GOP line.  The son and grandson of two navy admirals, the grandfather who heroically served in the Pacific during WW2.  And McCain is a descendant of of American patriots going back to an ancestor who served on Washington's staff.

We're talking about the American presidency.  And we are seeing a contrast between a man who is young, has unusually light experience for a serious presidential candidate, who the public does not truly know very well nor for very long.  And, on top of that, he has this pattner of exoticness.

Using your intellect, you can answer every question raised.  But, following your gut, which is how the vast majority of people vote, the emotional quotient is much different.

And it isn't going to help that the video of Rev Wright fulminating against America has been widely dispersed on DVDs by the Rev himself.

We are likely to see quite a bit of it.

Oh, I left out one other pixel in the Obama pattern.  His association with two unrepentant white terrorists from the 60s and 70s.  His actively seeking their political support, visiting their home with some regularity.  And, I don't believe he has yet repudiated them.

ironyroad,

Maybe Wright doesn't care about Obama and actually believes what he says to be true.  Indeed, the fact that Wright is so willing to compromise Obama casts a lot of doubt on the thesis, or rather the presumption, that these two are exceptionally intimate.  Someone claimed, I don't recall who, that Oprah Winfrey belongs to the same church.  What could Oprah have been thinking?

Maybe it is different for me than a lot of people.  I typically ignore my rabbi's sermons and try not to fall asleep.  Half the time, I don't even know what he is talking about.  (I did have for a time an exceptional young Israeli as a rabbi.  He was erudite and fascinating.  I loved listening to him.)

that is the million dollar question: why did Wright not just shut up for a year?

chan,

I don't say that "guilt by association" as an admonishment, I just think that is not, as a matter of fact, where most people live.  It is a media problem that Obama must handle deftly, but I don't think the argument about what Obama's reverend said is going to have much resonance if he deals with it effectively.  You can try and stir the pot as much as you like.  I think Obama is smarter than you and that you will fail.

Having read many posts since my post last night, I stand by my conclusion that Obama is finished. First note how many of the posters are/were Obama fans who now are clearly worried either about his electability or the extent to which his worldview is reflected by his wife and mentor. my reference to wille horton being a joke compared to this was based on the notion that to impute a murder to a candidate because of a pardon, is far more tendentious than seriously questioning the influence of this wack job of a minister on a person who has honored him, cited him repeatedly as his mentor and continued the association with him for more than two decades.

No sane person running for president would acknowledge these sentiments so in the absence of a significant public record over a period of time on which to judge him, this mess has an inordinate influence on the way your average swing voter will view Obama. It doesn't matter whether it should; it is naive to think this is not horrifically damaging in the political sense.

I am a McCain supporter and have no dog in this hunt but i detest the pontificating hypocritical RR as much as most on this site. As far as I am concerned there should be no joy in Republican Mudville if this is the way he goes down; there are more than enough policy issues that would cause him to lose the swing vote in the general election. Those of you who are Obama supporters who dismiss this are making a tragic political error. And those who say they agree with the pastor are beyond political redemption in any event.

As a last note i am in fact very sympathetic to the anger felt by many minorities about their treatment particularly in the past. Many of us have laughed at Chris Rock when he joked about how racist the older black generation can be in their own way, But i understand their feelings and defend their right to express them. i can see however that some reasonable people don't  want to take the slightest chance the a person with those sentiments has to defend this country in dangerous times or shepherd us through a difficult economic time.

Here is what may be most damaging to Obama in the Reverend Wright affair.

Consider, one of the central pillar's in Obama's campaign is that he opposed the Iraq war from the outset and never waivered in that.

Previously we could see that as an act of patriotic dissent of a man concerned to keep America out of a disastrous adventure.

But, in the context of Rev Wright's America-despising speeches from the pulpit, some might now wonder about the true basis of what had previously interpreted as Obama's principled stance.

And just wait until McCain really starts to talk on the national stage -- something we never quite got to see after Bush kneecapped him.  The more he opens his mouth, the worse it will be, and mumbling about his granddaddy isn't going to help.  

The thing that must really be eating Hillary by now is that, with the economy going the way it is, even she, with her sky-high negatives, now has a decent chance to beat McCain, something I discounted completely before the economic news of the past week.  But she isn't going to get the chance.  Too bad, poor Hillary.  I will surely miss her paper thin resume (leaving aside her negotiation of peace in Ireland and her rescue of Bosnia of course) and her endless political pandering, not to mention her Republican roots.

irony, if your rabbi is putting you to sleep, I doubt he has said anything inflammatory that could compromise your career.

Well, chan,

Over the years, going back to Vietnam, there were always a few members of the congregation who found sermons inflammatory.  To my astonishment, I once saw a member of the congregation stand up and denounce the rabbi, in the middle of a Bat Mitzvah.  But the numbers who got all exercised, one way or the other, have always been a teeny-tiny minority.  Maybe that's because we don't imagine that the words come from God, they're only the rabbis opinions about one thing or another, persuasive if you find them persuasive.  Otherwise, not.

Keep working it, but a week or two will tell.  See how the polls are doing.

basman: Well said.

Obama's positions on Wright have been changing. In entirely

predictable ways as one might expect from politicians that have been

caught in similar crises. Question the messenger, disavow knowledge,

have supporters say it's all the opposing campaigns' fault etc. I'm

sure these will be followed with his supports cudgeling others on

Sunday morning talkshows, and he possibly has the mea culpa speech

prepared should it come to that. The right, compiling such changing

stances, is already comparing his words to Nixonian evasiveness (and

they should know). This matter calls into his question his judgement

-- as you so rightly point out. And that is ultimately damaging to his

candidacy -- since it has always hinged on his "superior judgement"

and "being right" about Iraq. How could one be so possibly right about

a matter one knows so little about (he did not have access to the

intelligence reports that informed/misled so many good patriots prior

to the Iraq resolution) and so wrong about associations and matters so

close to home?

Lost in the noise about Wright -- was also the item about his previous

fudging about Rezko campaign financing which his campaign sought to

correct. Much as the flap about the "monster" comment hid Samantha

Power's truly damaging evasions on Iraq being picked up by the media,

this item was buried in the furor over Wright. So, perhaps overall this

has been a good week for Obama.

And meanwhile oil goes above 110, the dollar continues to weaken,

asian countries appetites and growth have the potential to damage our

planet beyond repair, and we all struggle to stay afloat.

In the days ahead, it will be telling and interesting to see how the

media, the campaigns, the Democratic Party (esp. the Super delegates

who I hope are watching this closely), and the voting public respond

to this.  To me, his changing stances and dissembling -- says that he

is no different from other politicians. I find his evasiveness and

changing stances troubling, and personally speaking, his supporters'

treatment of the Clinton campaign unworthy of the Democratic party I

wish to belong to.

I'm sadly disappointed, demoralized and disillusioned with the

Democrats today.

Let us dispose of one minor absurdity: if Wright preaches  it like he feels it any way like the way I saw him preach it like he felt it in the video clips--and why wouldn't he?--then nobody but nobody-- except the narcoleptic--amongst the congregants is falling asleep.

roi's fourth post -- at 3:54 -- is really brilliant.  It's the most interesting -- and I think the soundest -- take on this controversy.  Precisely because Obama's relationship with Wright was not born in politics or political expediency, it is more excusable than those that are born in politics. Those thoughts were floating around the back of my head, but I couldn't articulate them.  Thanks again.

As for ChanRobt, you make one big factual error -- claiming that Obama attended a "madrassa."  That has been debunked over and over again, so please stop with that charge.  Also, you are wrong to say the Iraq opposition is rooted in any anti-Americanism.  Let me offer two reasons.  First, if you go back to the 2002 speech, Obama, knowing that the rally is billed as an "anti-war" rally, starts his speech by telling the crowd of activists that he wants to be clear in saying he does not oppose "all wars," and then explicitly endorses the war in Afghanistan, saying that if he were young enough he'd enlist.  That is not creeping Wright-ism by any stretch/

Second, I went back and reread certain passages in Dreams for My Father, which, recall was written in 1994.  There is one passage where Obama describes seeing a half-brother, whom he had not seen for years ,at his wedding.  The half-brother had been an alcoholic and was on a downward spiral the last time Obama saw him.  At the wedding, he appeared to have his act together -- and had converted to Islam.  Obama praises him for cleaning up his act but then notes that the half-brother's political views -- blaming "Europeans" [i.e., whites] for the world's ills --  strike Obama as pat and wrong.

There will be more analysis of this in coming days, but I think that, after answering the questions about him and Wright, which Obama did yesterday at length, Obama and his supporters will have the right to ask back a question:  In twenty years of writings and speeches and interactions with very prominent people from Harvard Law School to the Illinois Legislature, to the US Senate, has Obama -- in public or in private -- ever uttered a WORD that suggests he subscribes to any form of radical leftism?  

Obama can point out the newspaper reporters have spanned the globe to interview anyone who had anything to do with him and have found no signs that Obama's personal views about American foreign policy and race relations are anything other than the views reflected in Obama's speeches during this presidential campaign.

For example, the Weekly Standard interviewed, under conditions of anonymity so that people could speak freely, Obama's Harvard Law classmates to find out if he was a closet lefty.  The Weekly Standard reporter concluded that Obama was an ordinary liberal, whom the conservatives on the law review as well as the liberals found to be intellectually honest and likable.

sudnar,

President Kennedy said, "Life is unfair."  This year it is going to be unfair to Republicans because, by September and October, the economic distress in the country will be so severe that the Republican party faces an insuperable task to retain the White House and not to lose big numbers in both the House and Senate.

No doubt, that disappoints you because Hillary is not going to get the shot to beat McCain.

Myself, I am neither sad nor disappointed.  I cannot be disappointed with Hillary because she has vindicated every negative thing I have ever thought about her.  They were inferences before.  Now I know that I was right about her.  And I don't attribute Hillary's failures to the Democratic party as a whole, or even to anyone else other than Hillary.  So I have no reason to be disappointed with Democrats.

LDuncan: This flap is not about whether or not Mr. Obama holds or subscribes to his pastor's political views. It is about a politician whose judgement, character and patriotism have now been called into question because of whom he has chosen to associate with and the way he has chosen to handle questions about such associations.

And your lingust analogy does NOT make sense entirely. While you are correct that Chomsky's politicial views should not reflect upon or affect his student's career in linguistics, I'd say that should the student applies for the job of the President of the United States, the fact that he is a linguist and studied under Chomsky DOES matter. Pastor Wright has been opining on political matters, and Obama has been donating money to him (20K in the past year alone).

Chan, it's roidubouloi with the sleep-inducing rabbi.  For my part, Father Lonigan's long instructional sermons to adolescent boys on maintaining one's purity had something of the same effect . . .

That said, I don't believe the next president is going to be called John McCain.

roidubouloi: Actually, I am not starry-eyed for Ms. Hillary Clinton. I was actually prepared to believe that Obama might just be the sort of candidate to expand, unify and inspire the Democratic party. The more he talks and behaves like just another politician -- the more fearful I am that regardless of your confidence about how the economic distress will evolve in a way favorable to Democrats, that we might just see a continuation of a divided Congress and the Presidency that we have now. The reason I'm disappointed with the Democratic party is after all these dollars spent, we have not been able to do better. I hope I'm wrong, and as you promise the campaign in the Fall will be a cake-walk and unifying, but I highly doubt it now.

LDuncan writes, "...Also, you are wrong to say the Iraq opposition is rooted in any anti-Americanism. "

I wasn't and didn't make a judgement on Obama's motives, Duncan.  

I said that previously it was easy to assume Obama's stance against the war was entirely principled dissent.

The Rev Wright's fulminations, however, may now change the context of Obama's stance, or at least raise questions in voters' minds not previously there.  

If Obama respects Rev Wright, characterizes him as a spiritual mentor or guide, have Obama's attitudes towards his country been influenced by the Rev Wright's.

I'm looking at this politically and saying that for uncommited voters, the ones both candidates are vying for, that for uncomitted voters the Rev Wright factor may change perceptions of Obama's worldview.

LDuncan writes, "...As for ChanRobt, you make one big factual error -- claiming that Obama attended a "madrassa."  That has been debunked over and over again, so please stop with that charge."

Again, Duncan, I'm not really speaking about facts here.  I'm talking about the thing that matters in politics--perceptions and patterns.  

People have heard that Obama attended a "madrassa" at a tender age while his character was developing.  Maybe it was more properly just a Muslim school, or just a local Indonesian school.

Whatever it was, by American lights it was "exotic".  And, historically, right up through Bill Clinton and the current president, Americans do not elect "exotic" candidates.

Once again, by exotic, I don't mean race.  Colin Powell would have been perceived as American as apple pie and G.Washington's cherry tree, even with recent Caribbean heritage.

Colin Powell, I am confident would have been elected handily in 2000 or 2004, or 1992 if First Bush had stepped aside.  Because his American credentials contain not a seed of doubt.

It's those seeds, especially cumulative ones, that change elections.

A few things after listening only to the clip that was on Fox News.

I have to ask, are people angered by the tone or the accuracy of the statements.?  I can think of only one that was inaccurate and even that one is easily explicable.

Is this Country controlled by rich white people?  Yes.  Demonstrably so.  I've learned that white people don't like to hear this, probably because most white people aren't rich.  Hence, their gut-level response, while very very complicated, boils down to "no WE don't."  Which misses the point.  No one said that poor, working-class or middle-class white people run the Country.  Face it people: rich white people control this Country and have done so from the beginning.

Does BO fit the mold - as we all understand it?  No.  Did HRC have to walk the tightrope of being called names for her whiteness by blacks and not white enough for whites?  Sounds absurd, but that is pretty typical for a black person.

And so on.

What's false?  Well, he does say that Jesus was "black."  Jesus was obviously Jewish, so one could latch on to this statement as inaccurate.  But I think most black people, lots of Jewish people and some white people who have been around black peope, understand that comparing the African-American plight to the Jewish experience has been and is very common in all black churches.  MLK said, "I have seen the promised land."  Famous black spirtual has the words, "Let my people go."  In fact, one reason Christianity is so popular in the black community is the similarities to the Jewish experience and Jesus' suffering to stand up for his beliefs when even his own people were against him.  So it is no suprise that he said "Jesus was black."   He's not talking about racial taxonomy, he means his experience of exclusion and marginalization was similar to  that of a black man.   It goes in reverse too.  Maybe this would surprise Jewish people, but I've been to sermons in which the preacher said, "Jews were the niggers of Europe" (and sometimes followed up by look what happened to them, so watch out) etc.  I've also heard Jewish people make the exact same comparison.

A lot of people in the black community buy this.  (As an atheist I don't buy any of it anymore).  It is not ant-semitism.  (As an aside, the idea that black people are more anti-semetic than other groups seems to percolate around here and other sites.  I think that is ridiculous.  Farrakhan is ridiculous and impotent.  Granted, he gets too much respect in the Black community - although much less that some anti-semetic whites get - for other reasons.  But he is part of a very vocal minority.   Unually when I hear Jewish people discussed by black people it is with see- they-did-it-so-can-we-sort-of attitude.)

Despite my understanding of the Wright sermon, I think all of this is difficult to explain and will hurt Obama.   Maybe irreperably.  Maybe something good will come of it and all religous views will be looked at with greater scrutiny.  I mean, is it really more ridiculous to believe that rich white people control the Country than it is to believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old?

A couple more points:  

Comparing one's (or someone else's) life and actions to Jesus is very common in the black community.  It doesn't mean you think you (or the other person) is god-like.

In that context, the Obama/Jesus analogy, while hyperbole, is not outrageous.  Both wanted to be leaders.  Both faced a power structure from which they were supposed to be excluded by accidents of birth.  Both faced questions from their own community.  Both worked to mobilize the poor.  Both faced the power structure inside and outside their community and sought to change it.     (The last part might be the weakest part of the analogy).   For religious Black people all of this will make perfect sense and has nothing to do with disliking America.

sundar,

It seems that you have perhaps been starry-eyed for Obama and are now disillusioned.  Don't be.  If you thought he was a morally superior human being, rather than a politician, then your disillusionment was just a matter of time.  But he is NOT an ordinary politician.  His rhetorical skills, bearing, biography, and ability to speak to the temper of the times are extraordinary.  Is he a magician who is going to make the political lions lie down with political lambs?  Of course not.  Political speech is not meant to be taken literally as a policy program; its intention is aspirational.  The great problem with the Democratic party is that it has completely lost track of the difference.  We are loaded down with policy-wonks who do think that laying out a policy agenda is a political speech and cannot fathom why it falls so flat.  "But my plan for protecting the underside of highway overpasses was clearly the superior plan. How can that guy possibly be winning?"  Indeed, Michael Dukakis even said out loud, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."

Barack Obama is a gift to the Democratic party.  He is politically experienced, although not a greyhead.  He has these enormous political and rhetorical gifts.  Tremendous poise.  He is plenty smart enough to understand the policy issues at a presidential level and has the credentials not to be snowed when the experts start yakking in his ear.  And he is unequivocally a man of the left who aspires to the kind of America that the Democratic party is supposed to be about.

What the hell more do we want?  Is he a surefire bet to be a successful president?  No.  But he has the political talent to get elected, the political talent to govern effectively, the right sensibilities, and more than enough brains.  Yet somehow, the fact that the guy isn't Jesus, doesn't walk on water, doesn't have, in addition to all his many gifts, 30 years in high office, a chest full of medals, a doctorate in economics, and a Nobel Prize makes him suspect.

The only reason to be disappointed in the Democratic party is that we are having such a hard time recognizing the political windfall that has come our way in Barack Obama and going with it.

Hey, Itzik, great post.

"Wright’s incendiary remarks about, inter alia, white America introducing the Aids virus to kill and suppress the black man..."

Wright errs:  It was Ed Meese who introduced the AIDS virus to kill off the gays.

Obama does have this terrible dilemma:  to establish his Christian (as far as we know) bona fides, he naturally points to his church he's attended "faithfully" for 20 years, which in-its-turn is scrutinized.  Well, it turns out that this church is run by some kind of militant pan-African friend of Farrakhan.  Uh oh...there go the bona fides.

Then, there's Michelle, who makes Theresa Kerry look like Mrs. Cleaver.  OK, Lady MacBeth she's not, but I wonder if she did the same number on Barack that Jeri Thompson did on Old Fred.

Michelle Obama, by all accounts (including in the current TNR issue), manages to connect with a younger generation of women in a way that can help Obama by humanizing the man and implicitly taking him down a notch or two from his pedestal.  She's the one who reassures voters that the candidate is a husband and father and a regular guy.  This is very traditional stuff in presidential elections, and the contrast with Theresa Kerry is startling.  Chan:  if you want American and not the exotic, Michelle is as American as PTA meetings and about as exotic as a gas station on the I-40 with a burger stand out front.

I'm hearing this rubbish about how Obama can call Wright his "mentor" and "spiritual advisor," then dissociate himself from the man's mentoring and spiritual advice.  One guy says about his minister-grandfather, after declaring Christianity "insane": "I value what he says, even if it's completely contrary to what I think"  I guess that's the kind of thinking Obama's explanation is meant to appeal to.

Wow, talk about classic Obamaphile spin...

"She's the one who reassures voters that the candidate is a husband and father and a regular guy."

How?  By henpecking him?  Yeah, that's American all right.

"This is very traditional stuff in presidential elections"

What's "traditional stuff" is for the wife to stay in the background.

Actually, it's the similarity to Theresa's assertiveness and belligerence that's startling.  Anyway, if you don't like Theresa, then I'm good with Lady MacBeth.

I'm not sure what your argument is, jmr.  Michelle Obama is distinctly close to the traditional candidate-spouse model than Hillary Clinton was in 1992.  That caused a lot of waves, but it didn't stop Bill from winning the White House.  Eleanor Roosevelt may even, in her own time, have been more challenging to the norms than HRC, but it didn't stop FDR winning four terms.  And Jacqueline Kennedy most certainly did not "stay in the background," which doesn't seem to have done any harm.

It's true that Republican candidate wives tend to be more conventional (not quite the same as traditional), but the Mamie Eisenhower/Pat Nixon/Barbara Bush model doesn't resonate much any more with anyone under 65.

I don't quite get the Theresa Kerry assertiveness/belligerence thing either -- she always seemed to me to be kind of fey and feminine and rather earthy in a European/Mediterranean peasant way.  Not the breezy up-and-at-'em American dame.  But that's all by the way.

Where's the henpecking in the MO-BHO set-up?  Because she talks about household tasks?  Leaving aside the fact that nobody's used the word "henpecking" since the 1970s.

And what's the basis for your MO-Jeri Thompson comparison earlier?  As far as anyone knows, Michelle didn't even want him to run for the U.S. Senate, let alone the presidency.  It's worth checking stuff out before hitting "send."

And finally, wtf do you mean by "spin"?  I'm posting my comments the same as you, buddy.  Like your particular opinion came down engraved on tablets from the mountain, or what?

boxofrox:

"Time to get very, very real....and trust. Otherwise he may well be toast."

I think it will be trust that determines how far and successfully Obama runs here-forward. Whom the American electorate determines they can put their whole trust in will prevail in the fall. Obama has not yet even begun to scale that height.

Irrelevant reverend. Irrelevant Obama.

Another meaningless, contentless statement of Obama.

He is spineless, and so is the so called reverend.

The reverend represented his selfish interest all his life.

Obama can not see that churches like this hold down the black people.

This Baptist church is really the famous opium.

What the reverend says beyond it, is completely irrelevant.

This makes Obama's chances of getting a quicker nomination that much harder, but I don't think it will cost him the nomination.   Unless someone get's  footage of him cheering along with one of Wright's  more offensive  tirades.  The real issue here is the press is bored of waiting for PA, and  the right wing realizes  it needs to get a solid anti-Obama angle fast for the general election.

Because of this, Wright may also hurt Obama in the general election, but probably not enough to throw it to McCain.  We are in a recession and a war with no end in sight.  If people overlooked Bill Clinton's personal flaws to throw out a war hero in the 1992 recession, one who actually orchestrated  a SUCCESSFUL war against  Iraq, it's hard see this guilt-by-association meme having the legs to carry McCain over the top.  I suppose they'll tie it to a  more general Obama-hates-America theme (won't wear flag pins or put his hand  over his heart for the anthem, etc), but if that's the worst they come up with I'll be frankly relieved.  That said, I'm still not looking forward to riding out Pastor-gate.

Checking in...aaaaaaaand checking back out again.

...drdannyu said:

Checking in...aaaaaaaand checking back out again...

Take two aspirins and check here again in the morning.

Given what we know about Obama's church with its loud-mouthed moron of a preacher, and Obama's nasty racist wife the following is clear.  Anybody who votes for Obama is either ignorant, stupid, unpatriotic or some combination of the three,

A vote for Obama is a vote for Osama bin Laden. If you don't believe me see Obama’s remarks on national security on youtube.  For Obama and his followers cowardice is a virtual religion.

Please, please, Democrats and independents don't let Fox and the Republican Rove machine run your show! If you are Obama's friends you support him and His message with your logic and your faith. Do you have work friends or church friends that you are going to denounce because they spoke out in anger at the way they have been treated. They have my sympathy and admiration that they continue to be law abiding even when the law or society seems to disrespect them. We know they have been treated unfairly and have overreacted with their words, but not their actions. I think they have a right to be angry and use religious doctrine to make their point.

  Onward to a greater respect for every voter in the US, of all colors and genders and sexual preference. Obama is an true hybrid American and wants above all to repeat and repeat to those that don't know him, or haven't been subjected to the true American ideals of our past leaders like FDR and Lincoln, what it means to be an American in times when political distortion and divisivness are being used to keep the true American's from living and voting with a united purpose. They think they can control our minds by attempting to negate all that good American believe in and stand for. They attack anything that isn't Christian or of Caucasian background with an outpouring of sly innuendo to encourage you to mistrust what rings true within your soul. (let us not give into Fox's and Rove's ability to pander to our egos and our false sense of superiority, about others intentions and beliefs).

Please, please, to you Mr.Obama don't waste your time and energy being politically right for the media's sake. Repeat and repeat your message of true Americanism as you have taught in your Constitutional law classes and learned for yourself in the mainland, Hawaii and Malaysia as a child. Speak to each of us as your mother and your fathers and grandparents would have you do, and keep them mightily proud of their son as he speaks for the new America based on old ideals.

Here is what I hear when he talks about America and his vision for it, "You have to manage yourself and to put aside you prejudices as either a person who is yellow, white, brown, black., male, female, undetermined or a combination of two or more those traits". We have to keep reminding ourselves and each other that we LOVE each other as Americans and just people who are grateful everyday to be in a country whose soul is Constitutionally guided, and not government guided as it is now. We need to step back and look at what those people fought for at the time of our origination and later tried to right the wrongs of previous governmental philosophies. We have had major changes to that original Constitution to provide suffrage to women and Negroes and gained freedoms for people of all origins of which of course slavery was the most shameful. Let us see the dawn of a new old America as best portrayed by a President like Lincoln, who I believe Obama could masterfully and easily emulate.  Yes He Can!  Yes We Can!  

He needs our support against the too powerful and too rich.

Senator Obama' statement contains a classic example of a "negative pregnant" denial.  He denies "personally" hearing Wright's statements "while I sat in the pews" or hearing him "utter [them] in a private conversation."  A  former president of the Harvard Law Review, the Senator surely knew that he was inviting the press to find other avenues by which he came to possess this information, such as discussions with other members of the Trinity congregation or non-private remarks that Wright made within the Senator's hearing.  His words also challenged the media to do what they do best, find sources that dispute his absence from the pews or conversations at critical times.  This approach, tried and true though it may be by politicians in need of a denial, never works.

jm_rice...it must be nice to live in a world without nuance.

A bitterly sardonic take:

www.ocregister.com/.../america-obama-wright-1998925-rev-bless

"jm_rice...it must be nice to live in a world without nuance."

Gee, guy minus life, I'm not "nuanced" enough for you?  Pauvre moi !

Don't worry jmr -- what you lack in nuance, you make up for in spin!

...Don't worry jmr -- what you lack in nuance, you make up for in spin!...

The road to hell is paved with (good?) irony.

This is fascinating and something I picked up from someone's post/blog somewhere else:

________________________________________________________________________________

"This comes from a document explaining 'The Black Value System' on the website of the Obamas' Trinity Church:

'Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”

Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:

Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.

Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.

Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us”.

So, while it is permissible to chase “middle-incomeness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method-the psychological entrapment of Black“middleclassness”: If we avoid the snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary”

contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright, the leadership, resourcefulness, and example of their own talented persons."

And I cannot resist adding this from Steyn again: corner.nationalreview.com

Plus I saw Juan Willaims this weekend saying that Obama has a significant problem over Wright, but, more, the reason Obama joined Wright's church--this was Juan Williams talking--was to shore up black support for his entry into and career in state politics. True? I don't know--but a not uninteresting source.

Itzik. You're having a little too much fun.

Boxo: I'm babysitting  my three year old grandson Max who is happy that Nader is in: what else can I do?

basman

Here are two links to the Trinity UCC web site with the complete "Black Value System":

www.tucc.org/black_value_system.html

www.tucc.org/.../black%20value%20system.pdf

Certainly, what's at the top of this list is hardly controversial.  But the section on "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness" - wow, that's really nutty.  Do black people really view themselves as "captives" (of course, when they were enslaved, then captive was an accurate term, but now)?  That American society is encouraging "killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another."

Obama himself has said that one reason he joined this church was its disavowal of middleclassness.  This I assumed meant that now that you got ahead, you still had a responsibility to others to help them out, not leave them behind, and realize that in God's eyes, you really are no better than any of the less fortunate.  (You know, sort of the reverse of what Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker preached about how God wants you to be rich, and the richer you are the better you are, and the better you are the richer you are).  So if "disavowal of middleclassness" was a way to encourage successful blacks to help out those that were less successful so far, then I would certainly stand up and cheer for that.  

But this kind of stuff, "placing them into concentration camps" - "captors must be able to identify with the talented tenth" - "Pledge Allegiance to All Black Leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System" - these sound closer to a call to Arms than a call to Christianity.

Spin is nuance, nuance is spin, that's all ye need to know.

Itzik, I have no prob, in going into politics, with establishing one's church creds, along with one's married creds.  I just don't think Obama was a smart shopper, to say the least.  I mean, how could he possibly square the diatribes of this, er, reverend, with his political ambitions?  You'd think at some point Obama would have had his Sister Soulja moment.

I think for most of the 20 past years, Obama's ambitions -- and Lady...er, Michelle's ambitions for him -- were focused on becoming a member-in-good-standing of the Black Caucus, in which case membership in The South Sorehead Church of Christ would indeed be a boost.  I think this being swept into the presidential sweeps, because some talent scouts spotted him, is not what concerned him as he sat through Wright's vituperative demagoguery.

Speaking of cred, fraid someone like Steyn isn't gonna have much in these precincts, as brilliant his OC piece is.  But here's one whose creds here should be beyond cavil:

www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2008031501004.html

One other thing: does it seem to you that the MSM is down playing this?  In my hometown paper, in Saturday's paper the Obama story was on page A5, and I don't think I saw it anywhere in the Sunday paper.  Maybe since the Clinton camp is not commenting on it, there's no reason to keep it on the front burner, since it isn't a direct part of the typical campaign back-and-forth.  Clinton can't push it for a lot of reasons, Obama certainly isn't going to push it, so maybe this will reach the back burner a lot quicker than I thought possible.

By the way, here's one about McCain and The Times.  It's off-topic and ancient, being from 25 February, but Mike has this incomparable way of skewering the fatuous...

www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2008022501089.html

"Boxo: I'm babysitting  my three year old grandson Max who is happy that Nader is in: what else can I do?"

Hey. Good on you man. Have a good time and hope you don't find any diapers with a Nader in it. Perhaps we're past that? Anyway, live it up!

Buffaloboy, thanks for the links. Even at the top of the list, I have some problems: the emphasis on Blackness is one of them; another is what I infer from what encrusts the focus on Blackness, the racist idea that Blacks should not marry outside their skin colour. I abhor any group’s prescripton—including my own, the Mousketeers—as to whom one can marry; and the necessary implication of that prescription in the church’s mission statement is racist and offensive. The de-middleclass stuff is deranged: there is hardly any other word—unless it is a synonym—that does those diatribes justice. If someone can credibly link Obama up with that derangement, it will go terribly for him politically. I am resigned to him probably winning the Democratic nomination, though I hope he does not, but woe betide him in the general as the Republican attack machine gets on his ass about this and other things too. As to the media coverage, I am not the best person to ask as I am a Canadian, but my impression is that the story is not catching mainstream fire. I think Clinton’s calculation in not going on the offense with the story is that there is enough political self-destruction baked into it, that it will do its damage without a push from her, and she can seen not to be piling on, above this fray,  and not treading on what are inevitably sensitive and charged racial issues.

Jack as in Jim, I loved the Kinsley pieces and the hell with anyone who reflexively rejects Steyn without attending to the merits of what he or anyone reasonably credible has to say. I disagree with you some in one respect: politicians who get religion or married or whatever to better sell themselves as opposed to doing these things for their own principled, emotional or intellectual or whatever sakes are fakes and should be marked lousy to that extent. I don’t know the motivations of Obama joining that particular church with its racist agendas, but Williams wasn’t the first person I heard say it had to do with political opportunism. Anyway skewering fatuity: that’s Kinsley alright, and Steyn too, though not nearly as well, on his ideological days.

Jack as in Boxo, when I think about how I used to spend my Saturday nights and a few languorous Sunday afternoons on occasion as compared with trying to talk a 3 year old—who likes spelling “oxymoron” with his alphabet soup letters—down from his unstinting support for Ralph Nader, it is amazing to me how much has changed, even as I get no older, having been, as I now am, 39 for the last 21 years.

There are at least three possible ways to understand Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright, and all of them pose serious questions about the senator's fitness to be president:  (1) The senator knew about Wright's racist, incendiary views and agreed with him. (2) The senator knew about Wright's racist, incendiary views and chose to ignore them. (3) The senator did not know about Wright's racist, incendiary views.

The first possibility clearly disqualifies Obama as someone who can transcend the racial divide in America. If he knew of and agrees with Wright, the candidate is a deceitful hypocrite. The second possibility reveals that Obama is a politician who lacks political courage to stand up for what he believes. The third possibility demonstrates that Obama is a poor judge of character, not someone we can trust negotiating with our enemies, who he says he's willing to sit down with.

basman said:

Buffaloboy, thanks for the links.

No problem - I was a little concerned when I saw your link and quote above - I figured "no way, they didn't write that - must be some conservative distortion or something."  So it's important to see that it really is from the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

But I don't get this from their manifesto: "the racist idea that Blacks should not marry outside their skin colour" - it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of their congregation felt that way, but I don't see any statement on that web page that advocates directly for that.  They talk about "Commitment to the Black Family" - well, I'm all for that, same as commitment to the Polish Family or the Jewish Family or the Mutl-Ethnic Family.

Besides, since Obama himself has a white parent and a black parent, it would be even more weird if he hooked up with a church that argued that such a thing was inherently bad.  So unless there's some evidence of it elsewhere, we shouldn't assume they are against interracial marriage.

Look, blacks in America have a lot of legitimate grievances - they don't have to make stuff up about how America invented AIDS as a way to kill off black people.  And there's plenty of nutty stuff on their web page that we don't have to make stuff up about what they haven't said on their web page.

Itzik, Mike Kinsley is brilliant.  I was laughing all the way to the end of the McCain piece.  He's a rare exception to my "media bastards" stereotype -- one of the few whose cleverness is grounded in genuine wisdom.

Buffaloboy:

Not a big point but:

When I see this:

"Commitment to the Black Family.  The Black family circle must generate strength, stability and love, despite the uncertainty of externals, because these characteristics are required if the developing person is to withstand warping by our racist competitive society. "

in the context of that manifesto, with its thundering and exclusive emphasis on all things black, that was the inference I drew, (and I tried to be careful to that say that it was an inference I was drawing.) I am happy to be corrected by someone or soemthing authoritative to the contrary.

No question about the grievances though,  and seeing this church and its manifesto in that context.

buffaloboy:

I got a little intrigued by the intermarriage question and don't have the answer. But Wright is a disciple of of the black liberation theology of James Hal Cone who said, among other things:

Cone writes: "Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.' The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by demonic forces...Ironically, the man who enslaves another enslaves himself...To be free to do what I will in relation to another is to be in bondage to the law of least resistance. This is the bondage of racism. Racism is that bondage in which whites are free to beat, rape, or kill blacks. About thirty years ago it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from a tree; but today whites destroy him by crowding him into a ghetto and letting filth and despair put the final touches on death."

So I still can do better than draw inferences, but somebody somewhere must know something definitive.

rebml,

How about a fourth way:  A lot of people that Obama knew and liked belonged to this church, members of his community.  So, he joined too. He heard a lot of things about Jesus and loving acceptance of others that he liked.  He heard other things that he chose to ignore or didn't take seriously as they didn't speak to him or move him.  The church did a lot of worthy things in the community.  He enjoyed the fellowship of being a member.

Imagine!

Well, there's certainly a lot of stuff to mine in black liberation theology in general.  But since the real question before us is "What kind of man is Obama?", not "What kind of man is Wright?", I think it only makes sense to bring in stuff that is closely tied to Obama's own church, congregation, and pastor, and specifically the pastor who is his closest spiritual advisor.  So I think we should focus on the kind of leader the Reverend Wright was and is, since this is the one person that Obama has said he is spiritually close to and has a long relationship with, and how much is Obama shaped by this relaitonship.  

If it turns out that Obama has a long relationship with Cone, then it would be fair to bring his writings into the discussion, but for now I think it's best if we focus only on the goings on at Trinity UCC (and that should rightly include the good with the bad - the social outreach, the lifting up of others, etc).  If Reverend Wright is 99% saintly and 1% whacko, then it's a fair thing for Obama to stick around, and encourage the good and discourage the bad.  If the Reverend is 10% saintly and 90% whacko, then Obama's judgment has to be seriously called into question.

I think the truth will come out over time, one way or the other.

roidubouli,

The excuse you offer for Senator Obama is not only naive, but also demeaning to his intellectual and moral integrity. Though you claim to offer a fourth possibility, you're essentially adopting the second possibility I outlined; namely, Mr. Obama chose to ignore the racist comments.(You imagine he does so because he benefited from the community in more important ways.) Fair enough. But to believe your explanation, I have to believe that Senator Obama WOULD chose to opt out of a discussion on  one of the burning political and morall issues facing our country--race. I would have to believe that Obama COULD  sit idly by without condeming the racist views that came from the pulpit. If he did so, he lacks the intellectual and moral courage to be president. After all, don't  you agree that there are certain principles worth standing up for?  

roidubouli,

The excuse you offer for Senator Obama is not only naive, but also demeaning to his intellectual and moral integrity. Though you claim to offer a fourth possibility, you're essentially adopting the second possibility I outlined; namely, Mr. Obama chose to ignore the racist comments.(You imagine he does so because he benefited from the community in more important ways.) Fair enough. But to believe your explanation, I have to believe that Senator Obama WOULD chose to opt out of a discussion on  one of the burning political and morall issues facing our country--race. I would have to believe that Obama COULD  sit idly by without condeming the racist views that came from the pulpit. If he did so, he lacks the intellectual and moral courage to be president. After all, don't  you agree that there are certain principles worth standing up for?  

God forbid a black minister have an emphasis on blackness when discussing the prison situation in this country - horrors, hold our collective hands over our mouths and RUN. Angry black people!  RUN RUN RUN!!!!

I actually agree with what Wright said, better Gitmo me immediately.

The prison industrial complex is a disgusting disgrace, as shameful as it gets (needless to say the whole industry was conceptualized, started and financed by former RNC bigshots, including Cheneys son in law).  I know this is a complicated, multi-faceted situation, but I think Obama should have stuck up for what Wright said - made it more palatable I guess.  If America wants to claim some sort of divine mission from God, maybe they could consider acting like they deserve it.

I'm ready for my black hood and shackels now.  Just stay away from the genitles.

For pete's sake, of the many issues one can have with Wright, the inferred opposition to interracial relationships is not one. Several interracial couples attend the church, and as has been noted, Obama is the product of such a relationship himself. Several white people attend the church regularly, and the UCC division head (a white woman) has positive things to say about it.

I really think this is an issue of emphasis. Most of the critiques of America's current position on race are valid, if not the tone I would use. Obama's right to distance himself from the tone. But the notion that this country is controlled by rich white men is somehow a racist statement is just zany. It is.

This is more of that same tired canard (still knee jerk, still powerful) of "America, love it or leave it." It's still bullying, still lazy - only this time we have the added titillation of race being involved.

Attacking the prison industrial complex for the evil blight that it is, is precisely what Jesus would do. Obama should have stepped up more on this, caught his Reverand's back more - when will any of us learn that licking the boots of enemies only makes them loathe us more?  I'm disappointed in him.  The Trinity Church put out a perfect response this morning and I thanked them for it.  

Wandreycer1, you are being selective here.  Rev Wright wasn't merely criticizing America or even merely excoriating America.  

He was perpetuating canards of his own.  Including the really ugly one that the U.S. had created HIV as a WMD against black people.

He also, right after 9-11, was saying that the U.S. deserved what it got.  That the "chickens had come home to roost".  A Leftist perspective akin to the much attacked evangelical comments that America's immorality had caused God to punish her through the instrument of the terrorist attack.

If George Bush, or any politician, had declared as his mentor a pastor who said the United States was getting her just deserts from Al Qaeda becasue of our moral failings, do yo9u think that would have gone uncommented upon?  Should it have been, if that were the case?

fwiiw: more on wright, cone, obama and blacl liberation theology:

www.atimes.com/.../JC18Aa01.html

...If Reverend Wright is 99% saintly and 1% whacko, then it's a fair thing for Obama to stick around, and encourage the good and discourage the bad.  If the Reverend is 10% saintly and 90% whacko, then Obama's judgment has to be seriously called into question...

Allowing for some give in your parameters--how about 50/50-- I'd be inclined to your second possible conclusion.

rebml,

Believe whatever.  I think your argument is such garbage I cannot even respond to it.  But, by all means, jump up and denounce all the people in your life who say things you don't approve of.  

buffalobob, no boy, down, down.  The issue is not what Wright believes and the focus is not properly on what Wright believes.  This issue is what Obama believes and does.

We shall see how many Americans share the views of you two about guilt by association.  I think not many.  I sure you will be disappointed.

I've been to the Trinity Church website now.  It's astoundingly clear that Obama and his wife are major transgressors against one pillar of The Black Value system.

Under Number 8, Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.”, parishoners are warned that the oppressors work by, "...Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'us.'"

Senator Obama at $200k/yr and Michelle at $300k have gone astray into the upper middle class.  

Hate the sin.  Love the sinner.

rebml

I do agree there are certain principles worth standing up for.  Very high on my list would be not recklessly sending American young people to die and suffer grievous injury in the desert in order to protect my own political career.  Making sure my pastor doesn't say anything offensive isn't high on the list.

I have thought of a response to you:  The gross, no grotesque, disproportion between the level of your outrage and the nature of the purported offense makes it difficult to take your statements seriously as a conscientiously held view rather than an attempted smear.

Got anything to say about the Mark Rich pardon?  Got anything to say about all the documents Hillary won't disclose (no doubt because they are flattering)?  Got anything to say about her refusal to disclose her earmarks, her tax returns, her financial dealings?    

What I have noticed is that all the Hillaristas have persuaded all the other Hillaristas that Obama's association with Wright is a grievous offense.  I don't get the sense the much of anyone else is moved.  

Bottom line:  This isn't going to save Hillary, and then there will be no more Hillaristas.

Chan,

Your interpretation that Wright was saying the America deserved what it got is a smear, exactly what this tempest in a teapot has become.

When there is a financial meltdown in the US, I write that Bush's "chickens have come home to roost."  This means that actions have consequences and you may not like the consequences.  Because I believe, as I do, that Bush's fecklessness results in bad consequences for us does not mean that I think we "deserve it."  No, attaching moral opprobrium to disasters as a symbol of God's will is the sort of thing said by the right-wing preachers that Reagan and McCain like.

I happen to believe that our foreign policies, including our unstinting support for every oppressive regime we can find when it protects our own supply of oil, does stimulate attacks on us.  What a surprise!  That doesn't mean I think they are deserved, but it does mean we ought to consider whether we do bad things in the world that others might consider attacks on them.  We do.  Pointing it out does not mean you hate America.   Wright has indeed become the latest cudgel for the "America love it or leave it" crowd to bludgeon anyone with the brains to notice that the actions of America in the world are neither pure of motive nor without bad effects.  

They hypocrisy of all of this is becoming utterly unsufferable.

Chan - Bush's minister DID blame America for 9/11, lesbians wasn't it?  Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have had their fat, bigoted, ignorant asses kissed by the right wing power structure for 25 years, give me a break. Wright used chickens come home to roost and Falwell blamed lesbians.  It's only interesting because Wright is black.

Did you know that the American government injected LSD and sexually transmitted diseases into black servicemen over the course of ten years and did research on them as the either freaked out or died?  I used to try and imagine people with clipboards taking notes.  This isn't even debated, I read the research myself in grad school and used to have a few books on it too. It's not out of the question that a man Wright's age would believe the government is capable of drugging black people - they did it for years.

Oh lord/Lord, don't tell me we're in for a repeat of the first two years of the Clinton admin. Identity Politics Gone Wild.

What issue will be Obama's gays-in-the-military-style  debacle? Who will be Obama's Lani Guinier?

Guys, I understand Obama's straddle, he's a good guy, smart etc, but I really have had enough of presidential identity politics for one life. It took Clinton YEARS plus a GOP Congress to get his act together and focus on serious, major issues. Maybe this is hoping against hope, but I wish to god that Obama could veer out of the identity politics morass and start talking up, and offering real solutions to, the hellacious f-p and financial problems that are IMO about 1000x more important than debates over "middleclassness" and the like.

roidubouloi said:

"The issue is not what Wright believes and the focus is not properly on what Wright believes.  This issue is what Obama believes and does."

Yes, absolutely, the issue that matters to the election is what Obama believes and does, not Wright.  But if Obama truly disagrees with what this guy says, then why is this guy his "closest spiritual advisor"?  I know one of the signs of intelligence is the ability to hold two contrary ideas in mind at the same time, but a lot of Obama's speeches sound like he is the anti-Wright.  And if he really is the anti-Wright, then great - but why is he so close to the guy that isn't the anti-Wright - he's Wright himself?

I heard Obama himself say that one thing that attracted him to this church was their emphasis on "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness".  Go to the church's web site here, read what they have to say about the "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness", and tell me how this is helping to move us to a post-racial society.

www.tucc.org/black_value_system.html

Pity Andrew Sullivan. The Excitable One told himself, and us, that Obama would lay to rest all the boomer controversies about race, war, dueling PC visions (Politically C. vs Patriotically C.).

And yet here we are going back and forth about "middleclassness", America's guilt etc.

I don't envy Obama. Maybe it's the lot of any afr-amer major candidate, but really, these pissfests are a HUGE distraction from more important stuff. If he's going to be our next president-- and I'd put good money on it as the economy continues its nosedive this summer and oil prices spike again with the onset of cold weather in the fall-- then he really needs to figure out how to at least mute, if not shut down, the identity politics sideshow. For the nation's sake, anyway.

ChanRobt says, "It's astoundingly clear that Obama and his wife are major transgressors against one pillar of The Black Value system." Because they earned about $500k per year together.

But do you see any sign that they have been ", hypnotize[d] ... into believing they are better than others" or that the have come to "think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'us.'""? The message is not that it is bad to earn money, but that it is bad to view a higher income as a sign of being better than others.

After reading many of the posts in this thread and the article about Michelle Obama, its pretty clear that we still have plenty of problems with race in America. Prejudice loves to find an excuse -- to find something to "confirm" what you have always felt in your gut.

But I don't recall reading any posts here from people who were Obama supporters, and have now changed their mind. Maybe I missed one. Will this cause him a real loss of votes, or just lose people he wasn't likely to win anyway?

My guess is that most of the people who will be swayed by this were looking for an excuse to oppose Obama anyway. The big question about him was always how many people would not vote for the black guy no matter what, and is that number high enough to make him a loser in the general? With Hillary, I think I know the answer to that question -- she will inspire high turnout on the right, because she makes millions of Americans foam at the mouth, and although she seems OK to me, she is really not very inspiring. I see Hillary being a likely loser in the general due to her astoundingly high negatives, although maybe she could out-nasty McCain.

I have been (positively) surprised through most of the campaign, and have come to the conclusion that Omaba won't lose too many votes for race-related reasons, and will probably cancel that out with high black turnout. This certainly doesn't help him, but I think it will be largely forgotten in a few months unless he screws up. He can deal with the damage by speaking out positively about his own views about race. If he does, I think he'll come out of this OK.

Jeff Frey - I like Obama. I agree that the nation has not gotten beyond race, and that it's a problem. I wish him well, fully expect him to win the nomination and then defeat McCain in the fall. (No party ever wins reelection during a financial-economic collapse, esp with gas prices north of $4/gal.)

My issue with Obama and his movement is about race's _relative importance_  in their view of America's situation and the challenges we now face. I believe that, _relative to the massive crises we now face on the financial and war fronts_, race is of at best secondary importance.

If Obama agrees with me, and can demonstrate such agreement by devoting a far higher % of his rhetoric and advertising messages and personal attention to the economic and f-p crises we face, than I will have greater confidence that he will succeed as president and avoid the fate of Jimmy Carter in 1977-80 and Bill Clinton in 1993-94.

For me, the jury's out on this. Saying so doesn't make me a racist or race-obsessive. Quite the reverse, actually.

rgds,

t

teplukhin, I agree with you that race is not the #1 issue we face, but Obama has not been claiming that either. It has been his opponents who have brought up the issue of race, for the most part. Because of HIS race, yes.

I fully agree with you that the financial situation, the war, and foreign policy in general are the biggest issues we face. But I don't expect any candidate will address them in a substantive way. Partly because the issues are complex, and partly because the solutions will be painful. You can campaign on, "are you better off than you were 4(8) years ago?", or "It's the economy, stupid", but I don't see any evidence that the electorate in general is prepared to listen to a candidate lay out a program of painful solutions to our real problems. Which, of course, is one of the reasons that those problems get more painful over time. But I think history shows that a candidate who claims he will lower your taxes, make the price of gas go down, and so on will beat a candidate who tells the truth about our economic situation.

Great thread Tep, well said - I totally agree with everything you wrote. Not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe Obama is just screwed.  His message is to get out of that quicksand - yet somehow without him personally seeming to abandon all of African American cultural history.  It's not just white people who won't let him out of the quicksand.  

Chan - the invisibility of the African American middle/upper class - a huge chunk of people - has been an on-going socio-political dialouge for years.  

Shrewd observation, Wandrey, I'm beginning to think he is indeed screwed (for the Dem nomination). This is probably why the first [truly] black president will likely be a conservative.

...This is probably why the first [truly] black president will likely be a conservative...

I think Obama can ride out this imbroglio. If, as is likely, he gets the nod, he will have a lot of time to manage this issue. Right now dire predictions are being made in the heat of the immediiacy of the issue. Let a little light shine on it.

But I reject the premise that perforce a liberal black candidate "probably" cannot win the presidency. Obama's problems are of his own making insofar as Wright is concerned, and are unique to him and his specific circumstances.

make that: "...cannot be the first to win..."

Wandrey, you write, "...Chan - the invisibility of the African American middle/upper class - a huge chunk of people - has been an on-going socio-political dialouge for years."

One of the reasons they are invisible, Wandrey, is because the black middle class is, in effect, not politically correct.  It gives the lie to the claims that America is unjust to blacks--that the fix is in-- which is essential to major segments of the Democratic party and the grievance pimps like Jesse Jackson.

It's why Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas don't count as blacks to the media, the Democratic Party, the Jackson-Sharptons, and certainly the Left.

The black middle class has been non-personed because it does not serve the agenda of the MSM and the Democratic Party.

buffalobob,

I don't much care for the rhetorical style of the TUCC's statement, but if you actually read it, what it argues against is the pursuit of middleclassness for its own sake even at the cost of the loss of solidarity with one's people.

That is actually a pretty glorious sentiment and one that could serve as a lesson for all of America -- that the pursuit of self-interest at the cost of the sense of solidarity with one's community is not worth it.

chan,

your last post is crappier than usual  The existence of a black middle class proves only that the terrible burdens of racism and slavery are abating.  It does not prove at all that they do not continue to exist and present real obstacles to the success of African Americans, obstacles that they have to overcome and the rest of us do not.  The idea that Rice, Powell, and Thomas are not "counted as black" by the Democrats or the MSM is completely ridiculous.  At the time that they ascended to their high offices, a great deal was made of their race and the racial progress this represented for the nation.  It was not the thesis of the Democrats that these individuals were not black or not black enough.  If you keep on making up stuff like this, you are going to start sounding like pccostello.  Try to keep your posts loosely connected to the real world.  

Basman,

You have your response on the Wehner article over on the "Making Obama Unelectable" thread.

roid, you are either in denial or you do not watch and read the media perceptively.  Otherwise you would realize that the only authentic black through the MSM prism is the aggrieved, downtrodden ones.  Or the aggrieved ones in angry rebellion.

The highly successful blacks who deign to champion the Right whether through writing or participation  in government one way or the other have their "blackness" discounted.  It's done with various degrees of subtly, of course.  But, it's done.

And roid, I thought were one of the respectable debaters here.  They being the ones who find duels with sharpened rapiers bracing, but don't run out of words and simply say the other guys swaths are "crappier than usual".

When arguments fail, dear roid, pick up a lump of offal and throw it.

MISSING WORD

"And roid, I thought YOU were one of the respectable debaters here."

My apologies Chan, you are quite right.  It was too late and I got tired and lazy. No reason to get hissy.

The media are attracted to things that are sensational.  They do not bring their cameras and recorders to interview beatific women who have just given birth, children skipping home from school, and reasonably satisfied middle-class professionals who have nothing more to complain about than the fact that the poor feel aggrieved.  What you claim is a media bias toward "aggrieved blacks" is indistinguishable from the general media bias towards stories with conflict.  I don't see lots of interviews with white investment bankers and plastic surgeons just talking about how happy they are to be making a lot of money.  Oddly, your complaint echoes that of black nationalists of the 70s who thought the media images of blacks were all too negative.  They had a point then, and probably still do.  But you might consider that our complaint is as or more likely to be evidence of a continuing racist bias against blacks rather than a liberal conspiracy.

roidubouloi said:

"I don't much care for the rhetorical style of the TUCC's statement, but if you actually read it, what it argues against is the pursuit of middleclassness for its own sake even at the cost of the loss of solidarity with one's people.

That is actually a pretty glorious sentiment and one that could serve as a lesson for all of America -- that the pursuit of self-interest at the cost of the sense of solidarity with one's community is not worth it."

two points

1. I really don't think you are reading what they wrote, you are reading what you assumed or wished that they meant.  When I first heard the term "disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness", my assumption was exactly the same as yours - don't pursure self-interest at the cost of solidarity with your own community.  If you get ahead, try to help out others so they get ahead too.  God doesn't love you any more than the next guy just because your bank account is bigger.  If that's what they meant, I would stand up and applaud it.  Then I read what their web site says they mean about the term - I came away with a very different conclusion.

2. How do you get anything "glorious" out of rhetoric like this:

"Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.

2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.

3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.” "