Don’t you get it, RdV? The only reason they talk about this is because it’s all they have to talk about. It’s why Hillary isn’t going to win the nomination, and it’s why John McCain won’t win the presidency. Americans don’t want to have the same cell phone rings, and the sound bytes of Wright will grate on everyone’s nerves soon enough.

The die hard anti-Obama people will pound Wright, Farrakhan, “hard-left Liberal,” elitist and whatever intangible falsity they can get until it is dust. After which, Obama will just brush it off his sleeve as he has done with everything else thrown at him.

Neo-Conservatives are scared to death of Barack Obama.

Garbage.
Churches provide more than just the preacher’s sermons. The preacher is not the sum total of the church.
  Michael Moore remarked, as a Catholic, many times he has heard the priest make statements regarding the right to choose or abortion that he disagreed with, but he still goes to Mass. For that matter, so do many Catholics—in fact a majority of Cathlics polled believe the Church is going in the wrong direction. For that matter, if we are holding Obama to your standard, than why aren’t you asking every single Catholic in the country why they didn’t abandon the Church after it was revealed that there was an ongoing pattern of pedophile priests given cover by the vatican—specifically the present Pope?

Obama’s attempts to rationalize his relationship with Rev. Wright and not antagonize his supporters didn’t succeed.  Now he repudiates Rev. Wright and will have to take his chances that he will lose support of some of the African Americans.  Meanwhile, he has raised doubts among white voters as to his character and judgment by suggesting that he didn’t know the Reverend’s more radical views in spite of having a close relationship with him for 20 years. Obama allowed his political ambitions to supersede his character and judgment.  In short, he used his association with Rev. Wright and the Trinity church to gain a foothold in his political quest and now feels the necessity to disengage from them.  He has lost his credibility.

“...racism isn’t the only obstacle to a black president…”

it may not be, but it is all that is needed to put a cowardly, lying old Republican fart in the white house.

that is assuming of course that the idiot monkey is allowed to LEAVE the white house. I have serious doubts about that; they didn’t go to all that trouble just to let some Democrat undo all their good lies, covets, killings, and thievings, so I think they might keep the moron in place until perhaps 2015, also assuming the American people aren’t as brave and smart as the Yugoslavs were when Milosevic tried to keep his position after losing an election.

If Obama lose the nomination and the cause of that is found to be the damages done to him by Rev Wright, i will lay the blame squarely and totally on Wright and his supporters. And will say that the black community is not united, not only for its own good, but also for the good of the nation. And it will go down as a historic shame on the black community. I pray that this will not happen. Amen.

I watched the entire sermons which were used as propagnada, I watched the Interview, I listened to the speeches. I was Not Only NOT offended- I was inspired and in total agreement. Why are we not discussing Unfounded White Fear which is being manipulated by the media and their Corp & Political sponsors.Why is deception becoming acceptable?
Let US review the last 35 yrs shall we…Oil Crisis, Hostages, Highjacking ,Iran Contra, Keating(corp crimes),etc etc etc.
We demaded we get out of th eME and Off their oil LONG AGO!! but the Inc’s kept doing business with the Oppressive Oil REgimes of the region, while flying OUR FLAG outside their HQ’s. Granted we were Shocked by 9/11- but not Suprised. We have been used as camoflague for these Unethical and Immoral business Practices. Tehr ei sa reason the ‘terrosit’ targeted those buildings and NOT the local Malls! the Chicken did come ‘home’ to roost” - but they were NEVER OUR CHICKENS. And even if the Gov’t did not cause AIDS (can’t forget Tuskegee) The Reagan Admin did nothing to stop it until it moved out of the Black & Gay communities. NOTE NEVER WERE “REAGAN DEMOCRATS”!!! At the very least The admin Undermined the Unions! Obama’s response deflatd my view of him- he caved for a Charade thats been going on for Decades!

Joe did a very good job summarizing this situation. Wright’s issue isn’t his candidness, but his willingness to make the media circus a narrowly defined black vs white issue, which it is not. I’m happy Trinity church has helped thousands of people and takes on tough issues when needed, but a braggart is not free of sin.

It took about five viewings of the whole press conference he had before I really started to get an idea of why Obama was offended because there is an underlying context to all Wright’s outrage at the government’s attrocities, which all progressives feel. Claiming this issue isn’t about him or Obama, but an assault on the black church (as if Trinity is an archtype, or the only kind of black church), and then going on to claim Obama has to do political posturing and is accountable to other influences than God… is pretty offensive to my ears.

It’s the ultimate betrayal in my opinion. Someone who inspired you, and a community you were active in for twenty years suddenly saying you’re just another politician when the whole thing Obama has been trying to accomplish is a transcendental political campaign is offensive. I can only imagine how Barack Obama felt when he heard that bomb.

What a travesty, but if Obama is to be our candidate he will have to rise to this obstacle head-on and overcome. I believe he will.

When we have the likes of that beady-eyed weasel, Joe Scarborough, the pontificating old racist anti-semite, Buchannon, the sputtering manic white, white very white Matthews, that Bush-clone Beck and the Fox cult dominating and the craven Clinton DLC, directing and shaping consensus around the clock, demonizing African American culture and views that have been marginalized is a piece of cake. It should’ve never been an issue—and you know if it wasn’t that it would’ve been something else just as trivial inflated and sensationalized.
  Notice that none of these creeps are ever attacked for their “ego”, but as soon as you get someone who might be speaking truth to power, they are immediately denounced for inappropriate “ego”.
  Actually, I voted for Obama, I think his ascendency would be good for our country and the world—but what motivates me more is anti-Clinton intent. I think the stale, corrupted Clintons continued domination of the Democratic party wouldn’t be a good thing, but perhaps if the Clintons were to take their rightful place on the Republican side—and pushed to the center from there—rather from here, it would be a very good thing. It would be doing the right thing.

Hey, cyrena, I know just a little about the ‘beginning’ of the panthers in LA, and Stokely, and Angela, et.al., and I was involved, even though I’m not black, and I can speak from experience of years in LA, and if you ever need it, I will happily attest that you speak truth. Keep on keepin’...

Does anyone remember Dick Nixon?

The president who declared that ‘Drugs is the nation’s number one problem’, while his CIA’s Air America was busily transporting opium from the Golden Triangle around ‘Nam to Marseilles to be made into heroin and shipped to the States to be sold in the ‘ghettos’ and stuff the coffers of the CIA’s clandestine funds to be used for murderous programs around the world?

Reverend Wright is not crazy.

Part 1 of 3

Joe writes some really good stuff, and I even get his points in this piece, and I mostly agree with him, EXCEPT here, because this is not necessarily the reality…

•  “So long as a religious or political leader sounds sufficiently “militant” and seems to outrage white people, he (or she) must be not only accepted and excused but celebrated.”

NO! Nobody has suggested that these sufficiently ‘militant’ sounding people are to be accepted, excused, OR celebrated! It’s more of that ‘either/or’ mentality again, which even Obama has addressed and dismissed, in the speech that Joe recognizes as brilliant.

And that’s the point, nobody is excusing or celebrating the stupid shit that Wright has recently come up with, and anybody in their right mind rejects this as well…

•  “That is why Minister Louis Farrakhan—the Nation of Islam leader who shares responsibility for the conspiracy to murder Malcolm X and whose theology of hovering spaceships and evil big-headed scientists is highly eccentric, to be polite—enjoys fulsome admiration from the likes of Wright.”

See this is what I mean. For one thing, how do we KNOW that Louis Farrakhan ‘enjoys this fulsome admiration from the likes of Wright’, or that EITHER ONE of them actually believe this bat-shit crazy stuff about the hovering spaceships and evil big-headed scientists? For Christ’s sake…I was damn near 50 years old before I even heard that drivel, and I was born and raised BLACK in Los Angeles, where there were always groups of Black Muslims (always neatly dressed in the hottest days of summer) handing out newspapers, or selling pies or great tasting fish. I never read the papers, and I loved the pies and the fish, and I never heard of these spaceships or the “White Devil” until I returned to academia after 30 years. And that was in a Black Studies course on…you guessed it, Black Radicals.

And when I DID hear/read this stuff, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. Because…that’s how stupid it is. On the other hand, there is more to the ideology of the Black Muslims than this crazy stuff that came down from “WHO KNOWS”…except that it wasn’t Louis Farrakhan. The initial founder (they think) was a guy named Wallace Farad Muhammad, except that he had a bunch of other names as well. And then came Elijah Muhammad, (who started out with a different name too) and then eventually Louis Farrakhan.

My point is that we don’t know where this spaceship stuff actually originated, and I don’t believe that members of the NOI (today) believe this stuff either. So we don’t even KNOW what ideology Wright and Farrakhan might share, but it’s obvious ENOUGH, that they DO NOT share the same religious establishment. The NOI is NOT the United Church of Christ, which happens to be a mostly ANGLO Church. (like 97% or something..somebody can check it), though Trinity may be mostly black, just because of where it’s located. Other than that, there are no ‘ideological’ connections between Wright’s church and the NOI that Farrakhan now heads up. (actually, he stepped down over a year ago because he’s got some kind of cancer). The only ‘connections’ between Farrakhan and Wright are that they’re both ministers/religious leaders, they’re both black, (and from roughly the same era/generation) and they’re both located in Chicago. And yeah, they obviously KNOW each other well. So, what is the big deal here?

Part 2 of 3

Then there’s this:

•  “ That is why the Rev. Al Sharpton—who was paid and financed by Republican dirty tricksters in 2004—still somehow wields influence in the media and politics.”

This has been discussed before, and right here on this thread. Al Sharpton does NOT represent the greater ‘body politic’ of African-Americans, and he doesn’t wield any more influence in media and politics than the MAINSTREAM MEDIA GIVES HIM! You guys are the ones that keep covering him, and making him some sort of ‘spokesperson’ for the black community. He does bring attention to issues that bring attention to himself, but if those issues weren’t happening, he wouldn’t have a reason to be bringing attention to them. It’s only the (mostly white) media that make it seem like he’s got ‘influence’ that he doesn’t really have. And he wouldn’t have ANY notice at all, if he didn’t respond to and put himself in the limelight of controversies that exist anyway. (he doesn’t CREATE things like the atrocities in Jena, LA, he just manages to show up and bring attention to them. Hell, anybody could do that, and somebody SHOULD)

And then this:

•  “ And that is why Wright himself can insinuate that the government purposely invented AIDS, and claim that the brains of white and black children function differently (a notion that would rightly be dismissed as racist idiocy coming from a white academic or preacher).

First of all, Jeremiah Wright is NOT the first person to ‘insinuate’ this thing with the govn’t inventing AIDS, because that’s been a ‘urban myth/legend’ since the mid-80’s, when all of those celebs starting dying from it. There was even a movie about suggesting the same at the time. (I can’t remember the name/title). But, that’s ALL it was… a ‘theory’.  More importantly, nobody takes that seriously coming from Wright, so we can easily dismiss it as the more whacky end of his rhetoric.

He is MORE correct in the suggestion that the government has been directly or indirectly responsible for intentionally flooding black communities with addictive drugs and mind damaging drugs, and nobody can deny what the US government did over an extended period of time in the Tuskegee Experiment. Of COURSE these are not ‘the same’ but the point is that most reasonable people know the difference.

Now I’ve completely missed this part about Wright supposedly claiming that the brains of black and white children function differently, because obviously that IS totally ridiculous, and would be considered racist if a white academic or preacher said it, because we’ve heard these similar theories from white people for over a century.

Now that is NOT to say that black and white children don’t develop different psyches, or socio-psychologies, and that’s a result of the ingrained institution of racism in this country. So, what did he REALLY say? Did he say that their ‘brains’ were different, or that their psychological make-up might develop differently? And, why are we making an issue out of this obvious error, instead of just blowing it off?

Here’s an example of a similar myth; a black doctor in Texas once told me that black people have different gastrointestinal systems than white people. (I knew this guy only socially, and immediately made a quick reminder to myself to never see HIM for any medical issues.) I mean really, how ignorant is that?  He even went on to explain that was why BLACK people often had trouble digesting milk and other dairy products. Well, don’t most people know, (EVEN lay people), that LOTS of folks are lactose intolerant, and it’s not restricted to black people?!

Part 3 of 3

Anyway, this is how so many things get so twisted around. If Wright said some of this crazy stuff, he said it (according to the article) at an NAACP meeting in Michigan. How many white people were there? And if they were; WHY? Does the MSM NORMALLY show up for chapter meetings of the NAACP? And what makes anybody who WASN’T there, believe that everyone who WAS there, believed any of this, let alone ‘celebrate’ it? Reasonable people don’t ‘celebrate’ ignorance just because it’s attached to a larger ideology that does have some basis in the truth. Besides that, far too much gets lost/reframed, or twisted around in the interpretation. Remember the poster who made the ‘big connection’ between Wright’s “chickens come home to roost” euphemism and the fact that Obama said he’d eaten a lot of chicken dinners on the campaign trail? Come on folks.

More to the point, (which Obama already made clear in his own speech) is that the ministry of Jeremiah Wright has NOT been ‘defined’ by tales of hovering spaceships, or allegations that the US government intentionally created and perpetrated AIDS, (though their spread of addictive and deadly drugs through the ghettos of America DOES HAS created it’s own sort of genocide) or any of these seemingly crazy rhetoric from Jeremiah Wright.

Nobody is ‘excusing it’ or ‘celebrating’ it, and I would like to believe that the average American will one day be smart enough to employ a greater filter system on these sorts of comments and rhetoric, and give the weight to that which makes reasonable sense. What Jeremiah Wright has accomplished in his community is Chicago is the good work that marks his career, as well as his other service to the country.

If anybody is ‘celebrating’ this “radical” stuff, it is the media that chooses to sensationalize these petty details, and ignore the greater picture. The MEDIA is who helped stir this all up to begin with, by blasting these sound bytes across every wire in the country, every 30 seconds, and intentionally missing the point of what the man was saying, all of which had SOME BASIS in the truth. Then Wright decides to exercise his right to defend himself, (no pun intended there) and ends up messing things up more than he fixed them. Again…in part, because it’s all been so over-analyzed by the media.

Meantime, Dick Bush has managed to destroy this country and several others in the space of 7 years, and nobody is even looking at that. (or at least it sure doesn’t seem like it).

So, can we just FOCUS here? Can we maybe try to connect the RELEVANT dots?

Look, historically, Americans love a good, funny, Amos n’ Andy vaudeville act. But it’s no longer PC to have a ‘darkie’ tap-dancing all over the stage to Lawrence Welk’s ‘band’.

So, for a little while, ‘Reverend’ Wright will fulfill that purpose.