Obama's former pastor addresses Detroit NAACP dinner

[kinggovernor]

AP - The outspoken former pastor of Barack Obama told an audience of 10,000 at an NAACP dinner on Sunday that despite what his critics say, he is descriptive, not divisive, when he speaks about racial injustices.

"I describe the conditions in this country," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. said during the 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner held by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"I'm not here for political reasons," Wright said. "I'm not a politician. I know that fact will surprise many of you because many in the corporate-owned media made it seem like I am running for the Oval Office. I am not running for the Oval Office. I've been running for Jesus a long, long time, and I'm not tired yet."

By speaking at the event, Wright was following in the footsteps of Obama and the senator's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as former President Bill Clinton. It's a $150-a-plate fundraiser billed as America's largest sit-down dinner.

"I am not one of the most divisive" black spiritual leaders, he said. "I'm one of the most descriptive."

Wright received a long, loud standing ovation.

He became an issue in the presidential race in March after the circulation of videos of old sermons in which he accused the U.S. government of racism and accused it of flooding black neighborhoods with drugs.

In a sermon days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Wright said that "America's chickens are coming home to roost" after it dropped atomic bombs on Japan and that the United States "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans."

The videos, circulated widely on television and the Internet, knocked Obama's presidential campaign off stride. The Illinois senator distanced himself from the comments of Wright, whom he has known for 20 years.

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, said at a news conference before the dinner that he was excited to invite the "hottest brother in America right now."

"It just presented an opportunity for us to be able to set the record straight outside of any political consideration," Anthony said.

Wright, who is retiring as pastor of the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is scheduled to speak Monday to the National Press Club in Washington.

(This version CORRECTS the congregation size of Trinity United to 8,000 instead of 6,000; ADDS quote from Wright.)

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_el_pr/obama_wright [link]

AP - In a defiant appearance before the Washington media, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church and he rejected those who have labeled him unpatriotic.

"I served six years in the military," Barack Obama's longtime pastor said. "Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?"

Wright spoke at the National Press Club before reporters and a supportive audience of black church leaders beginning a two-day symposium. He said the black church tradition is not bombastic or controversial, but different and misunderstood by the "dominant culture" in the United States.

He said his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has a long history of liberating the oppressed by feeding the hungry, supporting recovery for the addicted and helping senior citizens in need. He said congregants have fought in the military, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"My goddaughter's unit just arrived in Iraq this week while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls to die over a lie," he said.

Wright seemed to relish the chance to speak out after weeks of being derided in the press. He reveled in his retorts, high-fiving an audience member, pointing and winking at his supporters and mocking descriptions of him as Obama's spiritual mentor.

"I'm a pastor, he's a member. I'm not a spiritual mentor. Voodoo," he said, leaning into the microphone and wiggling his fingers in the air like he was conducting a seance.

Wright has been Obama's pastor for more than 20 years. Wright brought Obama to Christianity, inspired the title of his book "The Audacity of Hope," officiated at his wedding and baptized his daughters. Wright also told reporters Monday that he prayed privately with the family right before Obama announced he was running for president, although he didn't appear with them publicly.

Obama has said he disagreed at times with Wright, but video clips of some of the preacher's most controversial remarks have widely been distributed on television and the Internet and been damaging to Obama's campaign.

In a sermon days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Wright said "America's chickens are coming home to roost" after the United States. Asked what he meant by that, Wright challenged the reporter questioning him.

"Have you heard the whole sermon?" he responded. "No. You haven't heard the whole sermon. That nullifies that question."

He said criticism comes from people who only have heard sound bites playing repeatedly on television and have never listened to his entire sermons.

Wright said he's told Obama that if he is elected in November and is inaugurated in January, "I'm coming after you." He said that's because his differences are not with the American people, but U.S. policies.

"Whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God on November 5 and January 21," Wright said. But he rejected the suggestion that Obama was denouncing him or distancing himself. "He had to distance himself because he's a politician," Wright said.

Wright said he hopes the controversy will spark an honest dialogue about race in America. Wright says black church traditions are unknown to many Americans, as they have been throughout the country's history. He said he hopes the controversy "just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible."

"It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright — it's an attack on the black church," he said to applause.

Wright's appearance was his third in four days, keeping alive a story that continues to dog Obama's campaign and at points creating further controversy.

At the press club, he jokingly offered himself as Obama's running mate and embraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan even though he said he doesn't always agree with him. He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the U.S. invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

"God damns some practices and there's no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done," he said. "That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_el_pr/obama_wright [link]

Is it me, or is Rev. Wright using Obama to further his own personal agenda? He claims he not a politican, but he is going all over the country giving policy speeches at political organizations. I am sure Obama would wish the Rev. would silence himself, because this is really going to hurt Obama when he tries to connect with blue collar democrats

[SoFlaJDM]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

Is it me, or is Rev. Wright using Obama to further his own personal agenda? He claims he not a politican, but he is going all over the country giving policy speeches at political organizations. I am sure Obama would wish the Rev. would silence himself, because this is really going to hurt Obama when he tries to connect with blue collar democrats

did you ever stop to think that his "agenda" is simply to get obama elected? and i'd really like to see any kind of evidence pointing to obama being potentially hurt by this by blue collar dems. all i've been hearing from dems is that the more they hear him, the more they like him.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

did you ever stop to think that his "agenda" is simply to get obama elected? and i'd really like to see any kind of evidence pointing to obama being potentially hurt by this by blue collar dems. all i've been hearing from dems is that the more they hear him, the more they like him.

Has Barack Obama been hurt by his association, now revealed to most American voters, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Has the pope been hurt by his association, among people who don't like Catholics, with the Roman Catholic Church? The numbers from Rasmussen Reports supply some answers—mostly in the direction of yes.

The key dates here are March 13, when ABC News ran its report of Wright's rantings, and March 18, when Obama made his speech in Philadelphia in which he condemned some of Wright's remarks but refused to renounce him. Keep in mind that Rasmussen's numbers represent those on, typically, the last three nights (or the last night) before the date of the release.

Before the Wright revelations, Rasmussen in its nightly tracking showed Obama ahead of Clinton nationally 48 percent to 41 percent, a statistically significant 7 percentage point lead. On March 18, the day of Obama's Philadelphia speech, that was reduced to a 45 percent to 44 percent lead. The most recent results, reported March 24, showed Clinton ahead 46 percent to 44 percent. In other words, over two weeks, Obama was down 4 percentage points, Clinton up 5 percentage points—major movement, given the usually glacially show movement in Rasmussen numbers.

You can see something similar in Rasmussen's favorable and unfavorable numbers for the three surviving candidates. The table below shows the appropriate numbers for favorable and unfavorable:

Obama Clinton McCain
March 13 51%-46% 48%-50% 51%-45%
March 18 52%-44% 47%-50% 53%-43%
March 24 46%-52% 42%-55% 55%-42%
Polls Show Obama Damaged by Reverend Wright - Michael Barone (usnews.com)

There is more poll data there, the tables don't format well. On a more macro level, look at Hillary's big win in Penn. Obama outspent here something like 3-1, had most of the momentum but still lost by 10%.

If Obama thought that Rev. Wright was helping then why would he say this:
WILSON, N.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama wants everyone to know that he is not the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the talkative Rev. Wright does not speak for him.

On a day when his longtime pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ seemed to pop up every five minutes in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, Obama emphasized the distance between them.

"I have said before and I will repeat again that some of the comments that Rev. Wright have made offend me and I understand why they've offended the American people," Obama said in a brief airport tarmac press conference in Wilmington, N.C.

"He does not speak for me," Obama said. "He does not speak for the campaign. He may make statements in the future that don't reflect my values or concerns."

Obama was asked if he felt betrayed by Wright, who played a significant role in Obama's spiritual life for 20 years, performed his wedding and inspired the title of Obama's most recent book, "The Audacity of Hope."

"I just want to emphasize that this is my former pastor," Obama said. "Any of the statements that he's made both to trigger this controversy and that he's made over the last several days are not statements that I've heard him make previously. They don't represent my views. And they don't represent what this campaign's about."

Obama on Rev. Wright: "He Does Not Speak for Me" | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

[kinggovernor]

Where Wright Goes Wrong

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; A17



We all have our crosses to bear. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has become Barack Obama's.

I'm sorry, but I've had it with Wright. I would never try to diminish the service he performed as pastor of his Chicago megachurch, and it's obvious that he's a man of great charisma and faith. But this media tour he's conducting is doing a disservice that goes beyond any impact it might have on Obama's presidential campaign.

The problem is that Wright insists on being seen as something he's not: an archetypal representative of the African American church. In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree.

It's understandable, given how Wright has been treated, that he would want to attempt to set the record straight. No one would enjoy seeing his 36-year career reduced to a couple of radioactive sound bites. No preacher would want his entire philosophy to be assessed on the basis of a few rhetorical excesses committed in the heat of a passionate sermon. No former Marine would stomach having his love of country questioned by armchair patriots who have done far less to protect the United States from its enemies.

Given Wright's long silence, I thought he had taken to heart Jesus's admonition to turn the other cheek. Obviously, I was wrong.

I'm through with Wright not because he responded -- in similar circumstances, I certainly couldn't have kept silent -- but because his response was so egocentric. We get it, Rev. Wright: You're ready for your close-up.

He made some good points yesterday when he entered the lion's den of the National Press Club. I especially liked this one: "My goddaughter's unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service while sending . . . over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie."

But his basic point -- that any attack on him is an attack on the African American church and its traditions -- is just wrong. In making that argument, he buys into the fraudulent idea of a monolithic, monocultural black America -- one with his philosophy and theology at its center.

In his speech Sunday at the NAACP dinner in Detroit, Wright spoke at length about how "different" does not mean "deficient." He talked of how European and African musical and rhetorical traditions are different, and how that doesn't mean that one is better than the other. The point was that there is no one way to preach the Gospel. In this, Wright is right.

Where he overreaches is in claiming, as he did at the Press Club, that the criticism he has suffered "is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church" -- and in claiming that this episode "just might mean that the reality of the African American church will no longer be invisible."

The reality of the African American church, of course, is as diverse as the African American community. I grew up in the Methodist church with pastors -- often active on the front lines of the civil rights movement -- whose sermons were rarely exciting enough to elicit more than a muttered "Amen." They were excitement itself, however, compared with the dry lectures delivered by the priest at the Catholic church around the corner. And what I heard every Sunday was nothing at all like the Bible-thumping, hellfire-and-damnation perorations that filled my Baptist friends with the Holy Ghost -- and even less like the spellbinding, singsong, jump-and-shout sermonizing that raised the roofs of Pentecostal sanctuaries across town.

Wright claims to represent all these traditions and more, but he does not. He also claims universality for the political aspect of his ministry. It is true that the black church, writ large, has been an instrument of social and political change. But most black churches are far less political than Wright's -- and many concern themselves exclusively with salvation.

I point all this out not to say that one tradition is better than another; as Wright said, different doesn't mean deficient. But what Wright did was to try to frame the issue in such a way that to question him or anything he has ever said was to question the long, storied tradition of African American religion.

Historically and theologically, he was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus.

Sadly, it's time for Obama to return the favor.

Eugene Robinson, a big time Obama supporter, is more eloquently stating what I am referring to. Rev. Wright is using Obama to further himself and it is an attempt to turn himself into a national figure. Obama cannot be happy with this, but what can he really do about it?

[kinggovernor]

Washington Sketch: How to Sabotage a Presidential Campaign - washingtonpost.com

How to Sabotage a Presidential Campaign

[motivez]

There's no way his agenda can be to get Obama elected, he has to know how much damage his remarks are causing..

[TankRizzo]

Originally Posted by motivez

There's no way his agenda can be to get Obama elected, he has to know how much damage his remarks are causing..

He's just speaking the truth Isn't that what people have been saying about the sermons? Well, the same is now true of what he's saying about Obama. Obama is speaking as a politician and he's speaking as a reverend who answers to a higher power than Obama.