WTF is wrong with Rev. Wright?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Berzerker
aside from the AIDS being invented to kill blacks, I dont see much to disagree with. At least he didn't blame women who've had abortions or homosexuals for 9/11 or Katrina. We have committed terrorist acts, like mining Nicaraguan harbors and waterways, and we've supported terrorists. The Contras avoided direct conflict with the Sandinista army and instead raided villages killing off teachers and medical people and generally terrorizing the countryside to increase dis-satisfaction with the new government. And some of the Contras were indeed involved in drug trafficking and may have been using their connections to the CIA or Ollie North to protect or enhance their business.

Commie

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Will be interesting to see if Obama can remain as a bargainer in the terms of Shelby Steele or not as the race proceeds.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


It appears that Wright seems to agree with Farrakhan on his views on Zionism being a "gutter religion". Do you not disagree with that ideal?

Farrakhan said Judaism "as it is practiced in Israel" is a dirty and gutter religion. Zionism isn't a religion. It's just evil.

[Theben]

It should also be noted that Wright said that he thinks Farrakan is a leader of the black community. Wright himself never said Zionism or Judaism is a 'gutter' religion.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And Obama smacks Wright down royally!

So now he's rejecting the black community?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Theben
It's also quite likely he's attempting to use the situation to further his own interests- to leap into the category of a national leader.

Yea, that definitely seems to be what is going on here. I watched part of his NAACP speech. The part I saw didn't seem all that controversial, very "bombastic" though. He really worked the crowd well. He definitely seems to see himself as the next Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. During his NAACP speech he mentioned he has a book coming out in the fall.

No doubt just before the election. When he can get the most publicity from it, to hell with the harm it will do Obama.

[Agathon]

It's clear that Obama is an Oreo. How sad.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Whoever said check that man's bumper for Clinton stickers was channeling the NYT

Op-Ed Columnist
The Pastor Casts a Shadow

By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 29, 2008
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.

So there he was lecturing an audience at the National Press Club about everything from the black slave experience to the differences in sentencing for possession of crack and powdered cocaine.

All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come up with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.

This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

On Sunday night, in an appearance before the Detroit N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Wright mocked the regional dialects of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. I’m not sure how he felt that was helpful in his supposed quest to bring about a constructive discussion about race and reconciliation in the U.S.

What he is succeeding in doing is diminishing the stature of Senator Obama. A candidate who stands haplessly by as his former spiritual guide roams the country dropping one divisive bomb after another is in very little danger of being seen by most voters as the next J.F.K. or L.B.J.

The thing to keep in mind about Rev. Wright is that he is a smart fellow. He’s been a very savvy operator, politically and otherwise, for decades. He has built a thriving, politically connected congregation on the South Side of Chicago that has done some very good work over the years. Powerful people have turned to him for guidance and advice.

So it’s not like he’s naïve politically. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Forget the gibberish about responding to attacks on the black church. That is not what the reverend’s appearance before the press club was about. He was responding to what he perceives as an attack on him.

This whole story is about Senator Obama’s run for the White House and absolutely nothing else. Barack Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church as a young man and was blessed with the Christian bona fides that would be absolutely essential for a high-profile political career.

Faster than anyone could have imagined, the young Mr. Obama became Senator Obama and then the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Then came the videotaped sermons and the roof caved in on Rev. Wright’s reputation. Senator Obama had no choice but to distance himself, and he did it as gently as he felt he could.

My guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to his former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.

For Senator Obama, the re-emergence of Rev. Wright has been devastating. The senator has been trying desperately to bolster his standing with skeptical and even hostile white working-class voters. When the story line of the campaign shifts almost entirely to the race-in-your-face antics of someone like Mr. Wright, Mr. Obama’s chances can only suffer.

Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.

Hillary Clinton is taunting Mr. Obama about his unwillingness to participate in another debate. Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race.

Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Rev. Wright is absolutely the wrong medicine for those concerns.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
When he can get the most publicity from it, to hell with the harm it will do Obama.

What about what Obama is doing to the black community? It appears to me that he used this church for his political needs and now he's abandoning them.

I wonder what he was talking about in his speech where he talked about something new that Wright said that made him decided to totally denounce him. I don't know of anything that Wright has said recently that was much different from what he has already said, yet Obama claims that he did say something in particular which has caused Obama's reaction.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Whoever said check that man's bumper for Clinton stickers was channeling the NYT

Not that it's such an achievement...

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I wonder what he was talking about in his speech where he talked about something new that Wright said that made him decided to totally denounce him. I don't know of anything that Wright has said recently that was much different from what he has already said, yet Obama claims that he did say something in particular which has caused Obama's reaction.

No kidding, this stuff has been relatively more tame than what had previously come out.



[conspiracy theory] Wright came out now so that Barack could distance himself now rather than closer to the general. AIDS comment provides easy fodder and rationale. [/conspiracy theory]

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I wonder what he was talking about in his speech where he talked about something new that Wright said that made him decided to totally denounce him. I don't know of anything that Wright has said recently that was much different from what he has already said, yet Obama claims that he did say something in particular which has caused Obama's reaction.

It was the bolded part:

“What particularly angered me is his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks was somehow political posturing,” Mr. Obama said.

[Aeson]

As stupid as this issue was when it was people worrying about what Obama's preacher said... it just went to a whole new level of stupid now that people are worrying about how Obama "abandoned" the black community by not supporting what his preacher said.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Aeson
As stupid as this issue was when it was people worrying about what Obama's preacher said... it just went to a whole new level of stupid now that people are worrying about how Obama "abandoned" the black community by not supporting what his preacher said.

Really? People are actually saying that not just as mocking him over his earlier race speech?

[Aeson]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Really? People are actually saying that not just as mocking him over his earlier race speech?

Your's was probably a joke. Kid's...