Barack Obama’s Preacher
13 March 2008 10:15 am by Taylor Marsh
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Praise the Lord, and pass the
political ammunition. We’re in it now.
Every thing said and every Clinton supporter is now seen through the prism
of race. Obama supporters have been sending me You Are A Racist emails for months,
so this is nothing new to me. You can’t utter one word of criticism or commentary without the
Obama campaign calling you a racist; just ask Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania.
Even a national security ad had Orlando Patterson screaming racism, regardless
that the facts didn’t support his screed. Keith Olbermann has invoked South
Africa and David Duke to describe Clinton and her campaign. Supporting Clinton
while white is dangerous these days, thanks to the Obama campaign.
Sean Wilentz is having none of it:
… .. I described this pattern on February 27, accounting for how the Obama
campaign has cleverly played what I called the “race-baiter card”–and
yet blamed Hillary Clinton. These efforts, undertaken both by Obama’s own
campaign and its boosters in the press, escalated after Clinton’s surprising
win in New Hampshire and in the build-up to the South Carolina primary. To
recount the ugliness: Obama–through his national co-chair, Representative
Jesse Jackson, Jr.–accused Clinton of studied callousness toward the victims
of Hurricane Katrina; his press supporters falsely ascribed her victory to
racism among New Hampshire’s Democratic voters; the Obama campaign then went
on to seize upon non-controversial and historically accurate statements by
Bill and Hillary Clinton (as in the notorious Martin Luther King-Lyndon Johnson
episode, fully discredited by Bill Moyers and others) and called them inflammatory
race-baiting.Now, in anticipation of the Mississippi primary, it’s happening again. In
Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island on March 4, as earlier in New Hampshire, the
Obama campaign did not achieve the knock-out blow it expected and predicted.
Indeed, just before those primaries and since, Obama’s camp started to receive
serious criticism and scrutiny for the first time, over the candidate’s connections
to indicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, and over the amateurish and revealing
actions of senior advisers Austan Goolsbee, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power.
The campaign has turned to double-talk and to stonewalling the press. And
once again, it has lashed out by playing racial politics while accusing the
Clinton campaign of playing the very same game. … ..Hold
On–’3 A.M.’ Wasn’t Racist, by Sean Wilentz
Obama supporters cry wolf on race again.
This is a nightmare. A Democratic nightmare, especially since Obama and his
campaign are intent on making divisiveness the signature remembrance of his
primary campaign, extending through a part of culture that is always incendiary:
religion.
“I don’t think that my church is actually particularly controversial.”
– Senator
Barack Obama
Well, I’ve never heard any of my preachers talk about the “US of KKK.”
Then there’s this, complete
with video, of course:
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons,
passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’
No,
no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,”
he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens
as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God
and she is supreme.” – Reverend
Wright (more video)
Under fire as Wright gets more attention, this statement was released through
Obama’s spokesperson Bill Burton:
“Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have
no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a
platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of
the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family,
there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that
he is retired, that doesn’t detract from Sen. Obama’s affection for Rev. Wright
or his appreciation for the good works he has done.”
This statement from the Obama campaign is incredulous. I’ve listened to quite
a few of Reverend Wright’s sermons now. That Obama’s campaign is floating that
Rev. Wright not be seen in “political terms” is to deny the reverend’s
whole platform from the pulpit. Why do you think the IRS is investigating the
church? Wright certainly has the right to say whatever he wants, but anyone
trying to float that he’s not political is either ignorant or lying to the American
public. Nothing wrong with being political. Ministers and churches have been
engaged in politics forever. But don’t deny it.
Senator Obama may call Reverend Wright “an old uncle” with whom he doesn’t
always agree, but I doubt that once the wingnuts and talk radio gets through
blasting him across America that voters will feel the same. Hannity has been
on this for quite some time.
Rush started today. It’s only the beginning, which
Reverend Wright’s convenient retirement will not staunch.
UPDATE: The plot thickens:
