What Did Obama Know About His Pastor’s Hateful Sermons?
Posted on March 16, 2008
Obama’s lead sinks seven points overnight! I think we all know he can thank his pastor for this.
This isn’t going away either. In his “denunciation” of the racist remarks screamed by his pastor of 20 years, Obama said he never heard any of these remarks while he attended. Investigative bloggers and media will dig around to see if that statement holds water. They already are.
Rocco DiPippo finds an old Newsmax article that claims an eye witness account of Obama nodding in agreement with a statement made by his pastor about the “United States of White America.”
Wright laced into America’s establishment, blaming the “white arrogance” of
America’s Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the
oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country
as the “United States of White America.” Many in the congregation, including
Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made.
Cuffy Meigs says Obama didn’t have to attend to know about the racist rhetoric: Via the NY Times:
It [Trinity United Church of Christ] also helped give him spiritual bona fides and a new assurance. Services at Trinity were a weekly master class in how to move an audience. When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church.
Then we have this from the NY Times a year ago.
“When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli†to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.†Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.â€
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.â€
Or how about this quote from the NY Times?
“If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,†Mr. Wright said with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.â€
The closest thing to a smoking yet? Obama’s own book, in which he named after one of Wright’s sermons:
The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.†He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.
“The painting depicts a harpist,†Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.
“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!â€
And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…
This is only the beginning Barack. Enjoy the ride down from on high.
» Filed Under Bigotry, Elections, News
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4 Responses to “What Did Obama Know About His Pastor’s Hateful Sermons?”
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The truth is finally starting to come out and “the truth will set you free”. America, wake up and smell the coffee. Obama doesn’t want his records out anymore than he wants Rezco, his pastor, earmarks, or anything else to come out for that matter. Doesn’t he know by now if, it’s negative information, all he has to do is look sweet and repute, denounce or deny it and the media won’t bring it up again. What a plague on all of us, the mainstream media. FOX is turning out to be more fair in this election than nearly all the rest. Come on media, OB’s not on the level on the Rev. Wright issue or anything else it now seems. He only speaks the truth when he gets caught in a lie or half truth. How much more is lingering out there for Republicans to mo-up the floor with him if, and that’s a big “IF”, he gets the nomination. God help us if he does! Our country needs “US” to stand-up for her now. Our future lingers in the balance of the impending primaries & general election. We need a President to restore our standing at home and abroad. We need Hillary, not inexperience and a very questionable past, and certainly not Senator more of the same, McCain.
What about the hateful sermons of right wing Republican pastors? At leasat Wright has reason to be bitter.
Don’t be hypocrites.
Mr Lewis…please list or detail some of the hateful sermons of Republican pastors please.
Sure, Wright has reason to be bitter. I mean, he is obviously destitute, and being oppressed. As are sooooooo many people in America today.
For real, drive down any road, and you will see the privation suffered by the oppressed masses. You will surely see a land in which even the most enterprising minority has no chance, I mean no chance, to *ever* improve his or her circumstances.
Surely, you will also see these minorities being actively run from communities, chased through swamps and/or beaten right before your eyes. This is America, after all, the root of all evil in the world today.
Just, you know, don’t look at Wright’s actual congregation. There, you might see, sitting in the front row and nodding along as the Theater of Grievance gets into full swing, a certain Harvard educated lawyer who is a few primary victories away from running for President. You might also see his lovely wife, who, while she actively dissuades students of color from going into corporate life, pulls down a $300K a year salary from those evil corporate patriarchs.
BTW, rather than focus on the unfairness of the media for telling the truth in this case, or this blogger, why not think about what you are reading and deciding if you might agree, or not, that electing a man who claps at someone screaming, frothy mouthed: God Damn the USA might not be a good idea.
Because, if you say you do think this sounds like a fine idea, I am curious as to why. And then I ask this: had this story been about a Republican candidate, and that candidate’s personal spiritual guide said the same thing (said pastor being angry, perhaps, about the dilution of white blood through interracial marriages, or, say, homosexuality), I somehow doubt you would be so sanguine about this.
Personally, if a Republican candidate were in this same position, I wouldn’t vote for him or her either. Just doesn’t sound like a good idea.
So, question right back at you: does this sound like a good idea to you?