Obama’s Mentor, Rev. Wright, Charges Attacks Against Him Are Really Against the “Black Church”

Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s ex-pastor, has been on a tour going around America trying to defend his controversial statements that most Americans have heard and found very disturbing. He has, in the process, made some more incendiary statements, digging a hole for himself that is even deeper than it was just four short days ago.

At the National Press Club in Washington DC, he defended his “chickens come home to roost” statement about 9/11 saying, “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.” He defended his damnation of America and his accusation that the U.S. government had created AIDS to decimate the black population: “I believe our government is capable of doing anything.”

Asked about his comments on PBS’ “Bill Moyers’ Journal about Obama’s race speech in Philadelphia where he condemned some of Wrights remarks, Wright said, “He had to distance himself because he’s a politician…Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.” He also said: “If Obama had not said what he said he would never get elected.” Then Wright added, “I’m not running for office . . .I’m hoping to be V.P.”

Before a question and answer session Wright opened his less than 15 minute speech by referring to the media’s playing of the “out of context” sound bites saying, “It’s not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It is an attack on the Black Church.”

When asked about his relationship with Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, Wright said, “Farrakhan and I don’t agree on everything. Farrakhan is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries. I won’t put down Farrakhan any more than (Nelson) Mandela would put down Castro.”

Wright was asked the following question: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but through me.’ Do you believe this? And do you think Islam is a way to salvation?” Wright answered by saying, “Jesus also said, ‘Other sheep have I who are not of this fold.’”

When asked how the Black and White church could reconcile, he said that many have already “taken great steps to do so. To reconcile, whites must understand the injustice that was done.”

Several protesters, some from a Jewish group, were outside the event to criticize Wright’s longtime friendship with Farrakhan, who has made disparaging remarks about Israel.

“He said Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion,” Wright said referring to Farrakhan.

Obama, speaking in Wilmington, N.C., said his ex-pastor’s views “offend” many people and don’t reflect his own.

“I don’t know why he’s doing this to his friend … he’s seriously hurting Obama,” said Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst.

“I can only assume that Jeremiah Wright’s top agenda is helping Jeremiah Wright,” he said. “It’s already done the damage. It’s something for those older white working-class downscale people to latch onto in voting against Obama.”

But Marion Barry, the former mayor of Washington, D.C., loved Wright’s speech. “It was a brilliant speech,” he told Byron York, NR White House Correspondent after Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club Monday morning. “I’ve read his sermons, I’ve been to his church, so I know about him. It’s very clear most Americans only know Jeremiah Wright through those 15-second soundbites, which is ridiculous.”

But Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center reports in the latest National Review, Trinity United Church of Christ “is arguably the most radical black church in the country.”

Fred Barnes, executive editor of the ‘Weekly Standard’ on FOX News ‘Special Report’ said: “Bill Clinton isn’t going to do as much damage to Barack Obama as Reverend Jeremiah Wright is. With the pastor like this, you don’t need enemies. This guy — there is no way he can help Obama.”

Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist, said this: ” What is really hard for Obama is that he gave the speech after the furor erupted last month, and many in the press accepted the speech as the final word on this issue and have treated any reviving of the Wright issue as illegitimate and even racist.”

He added that “the problem for Obama is if Wright reappears and speaks, its now real news again. So you can no longer hide him under the rung.” Speaking about Wright’s stint on the Moyer’s show, he also found it “amazing” that “Wright explained his statements by saying they were taken out of context. I don’t know how Moyer responded, but what context exactly would you place the statement that white America, the government, has created the AIDS virus and used it to commit genocide on people of color?”

McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, told The Chronicle on Monday that McCain “has made his position clear on this; he isn’t going to be taking on this issue in speeches.”

“He’s not going to be running ads about how he’s offended by the comments - but he understands there’s tens of millions who are,” Schmidt said. “Those Americans will have questions for Sen. Obama … and the answers that he provides, or doesn’t provide, are between him and the American people.”

Bob Gardner, who heads San Francisco’s Advocacy Group, referred to Wright as a “bad penny” that keeps coming back and excalating Obama’s troubles.

“It puts Obamain a corner. He’s made some negative comments about (Wright), but not totally disassociated himself with him,” said Gardner.

“Now … there’s a tough decision ahead - he has to say he made a terrible mistake by staying in the congregation for 20 years, and he didn’t realize what a nutcase (Wright) was, or he’ll have to ignore it,” he said.

BTW, just days after 9/11 Wright said, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all — not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism.”

The problem with Wright’s assertion is that Ambassador Peck never said “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” — nor did he suggest America engages in terrorism. Peck also made not mention about Hiroshima or Nagasaki, as Wright claimed.

Here are some quotes from various venues that the Rev. Wright has spoken at in the last few days:

At the National Press Club in Washington:

“I stand before you to open up this two-day symposium with the hope that this most recent attack on the black church is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is an attack on the black church. … The most recent attack on the black church, it is our hope that this just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible.”

“Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors. They have a different person to whom they’re accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God November 5 and January 21. That’s what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do. I am not running for office. I am hoping to be vice president. …He didn’t distance himself. He had to distance himself because he’s a politician. From what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn’t offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it. I offered words of hope. I offered reconciliation, I offered restoration in that sermon, but nobody heard the sermon. They just heard this little sound bite of a sermon.”

“God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns some things. And dem, D-E-M, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices and there’s no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not like America or unpatriotic.”

“I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me. They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites and that which is looped over and over on certain channels. I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?”

From a speech at the NAACP:

“I’m not here for political reasons. I am not a politician. I know that fact will surprise many of you because many in the corporate-owned media have made it seem as if I have announced that I’m running to 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.”

“In the past, we were taught to see others who are different as being deficient. We establish arbitrary norm and then determine that anybody not like us was abnormal. But a change is coming because we no longer see others who are different as being deficient. We just see them as different.”

“I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and march on the picket line. I come from a religious tradition where we give god the glory and the devil the blues. The black religious tradition is different. We do it a different way.”

From an interview on PBS’ “Bill Moyers’ Journal”:

“When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government, a particular government and not to God, that you’re in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie.”

“The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly. What is not the failure to communicate is when something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That’s not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from The New York Times called me, a ‘wack-a-doodle.’”

“He’s a politician, I’m a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I’m a pastor.”
Go McCain-Romney 2008!