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Obama dumps pastor
By Carl Strock
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
So Sen. Barack Obama has finally come around to my view that his long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a race-baiting blowhard. He didn’t put it in exactly those words, but that was the sum and substance of his reaction to the reverend’s lastest foray into public discourse – a foray in which the reverend confirmed his earlier declarations that caused such a furor on YouTube and cable television. The declarations included the statement that the United States government might have invented the AIDS virus as an act of genocide against people of color, that 9/11 was well-deserved retribution for American terrorism around the world, and that Louis Farrakhan is a major spokesman of our time. No, dear readers, those statements, which appeared in video snippets, were not “taken out of context,” as Obama’s liberal apologists claimed and no doubt hoped. They were accurate reflections of his paranoid beliefs. Now Obama has repudiated both the statements and the reverend, if I understand him correctly, but that still leaves hanging the question of how he kept his peace in the reverend’s church for 20 long years, coming to regard him, as recently as a month and half ago, as “like family.” He says he never heard statements like those from the pulpit, and you can believe that if you want. A lot of statements must emanate from any sacred pulpit that would tax the credulity of the most gullible, and maybe Sen. Obama just got in the habit of nodding along and not taking them very seriously, which is a habit that I suspect a lot of churchgoers get into. But now, late in the primary season, he could no longer gloss over them – not when the Rev. Wright was out in public making a spectacle of himself. So we have taken another little step in this curious affair. If you want to know if I stand by my earlier assessment that Obama revealed a disconnect in himself as unexpected as that revealed by Eliot Spitzer, you can turn to my column on page B1 of the Thursday Gazette, but the short answer is, yes, I do.
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September 6, 2008
9:24 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
I didn't watch all of the interviews of Rev. Wrong on TV, but I didn't see any of the interviewers ask him if he had preached similarly in the past, when Obama might have been attending, or if the recent U-tube expose is the result of a new revelation. I (and we should all) be most interested if the good Rev. has been preaching this trash for long enough to make it evident that Obama as a parishioner and regular churchgoer has accepted it previously, and is only now repudiating the Rev. because it has become inconvenient to stay with him (and what was it that made his wife proud to be an American for the first time in her life). How inconvenient is the truth?
9:46 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Carl --
If you're compelled to keep talking about Rev. Wright, I'd suggest keeping the focus on the substance rather than the style of his preaching. What does Rev. Wright "whooping" his sermons have to do with anything?
1:38 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Spot-on about Obama. And I, too, find the bemoaning of ancestral grievances a curiosity. I only hope it doesn't catch on with others. I mean, the last thing I'd need to see is someone like, say, Mayor Stratton, standing before an eager audience and crying out against Canadians or Hurons for attacking him and burning his city, while he slept, as did happen in Schenectady one cold night in 1690.
4:52 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Mr. Strock
Regarding your continued attacks on Wright/Obama:
A. You are acting as a devil's advocate to get reactions,
B. You are a Clinton supporter or racist just looking for an excuse to get rid of Obama, or
C. You are both obtuse and a careless palaverer.
I am 76, white irish female. I watched (on PC) Rev Wright's inerview with Bill Moyers and both the Press Club speech and interview - which I also just finished listening to on WAMC. I found Reverend Wright to intelligent, knowledgable and feisty. He has courage to speak truth to power (and we all know the power of the press). The Aids thing - hyperbole - something which I find you guilty of in many of your past columns.
You, Mr Spock, should be able to listen and watch the above mentioned speeches of Reverend Wright without pre-judgment all the way through. And then critique them. I do not think you did.
9:56 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
In response to faraday3's comment above I would like to add another choice: D. All of the above. If your concern is the separation of Church and State, Carl, which I fully support, then why don't you also take John McCain to task for seeking the endorsement of the rabble-rousing Reverend John Hagee? Your apparent bias against Senator Obama appears to go beyond his relationship with his former pastor. Barack Obama is a uniter, Hillary Clinton is a divider, and John McCain is a flip-flopper. What are you, Mr. Strock?
7:18 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Enough about the Barak Obama-Reverend Wright connection already. Whatever their relationship, being friends does not mean they share the same views about everything.
My late father, who lived with me for more than 25 years, was a self-proclaimed atheist, and expounded daily that there was no God. "If there was a God", he would say, "why are there so many wars? Why are there so many natural disasters?", and so on... I listened to Dad on a daily basis for all those years, but I still believe in God, and I still love Dad and miss him.
I have close friends who are fanatically religious and even have family members who are extremely racist and bigoted, and even though I've heard these people openly express their beliefs throughout my life, it doesn't mean I share their views (because I do not). Nor does it mean I would "dump" them or disown them. They are still family, or like family, and I love them. I just don't subscribe to the same beliefs, and I dont feel that their religious or political or personal belefs affect their ability to capably perform their various jobs.
And, just to let you know, I am a 57-year-old white female who recently retired after more than 31 years of service in the federal government. I've been a registered Republican for many years, but they've driven our country right into the ground. I believe it's time for drastic change in our government, and I don't trust Senator Clinton due to past and present behavior. Remember White Water? Her blatant lies about her Bosnian experience? Also, why does she have to keep riding her husband's coattails? If I hear her say, "... during my husband's administration..." one more time, I think I'll be violently ill.
I am going to vote for Senator Obama, because I believe he will put America first, and work hard to make life better for all Americans. I also believe that as a Democrat working with a predominantly Democratic congress, there might be some hope he and Congress will "play together nicely", a goal that President Bush grossly failed to accomplish.