2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

Wright's latest remarks are indefensible. This probably will become a story soon.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:59 AM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

plz post 'indefensible' remarks

I met a guy at a cooking class a few weeks ago who told me he and his wife go to Obama's (Wright's) church.

-- jaymc, Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:59 AM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

my coworkers at my last job did

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"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."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

Sen. Obama told the New York Times he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright's 9/11 sermon. "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," Obama said in a recent interview. "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative," Obama told the paper.

Rev. Wright, who announced his retirement last month, has built a large and loyal following at his church with his mesmerizing sermons, mixing traditional spiritual content and his views on contemporary issues.

"I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America," said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.

err i just watched the video now. yea hillary's campaign is gonna be stirring up some shit about this.

internal numbers from the latest Rasmussen PA poll:

Comments by former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro have caused a stir nationally and 66% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters have been following the story at least somewhat closely. Ferraro recently told a newspaper that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Clinton voters are fairly evenly divided on Ferraro’s comment—39% agree and 47% disagree. Obama voters overwhelmingly reject Ferraro’s premise—93% disagree with her statement while only 4% agree.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Black voters believe Ferraro’s comments were racist. Just 23% of White voters agree.

Yes Alfred I've read the article

Clinton voters are fairly evenly divided on Ferraro’s comment—39% agree and 47% disagree.

these are better-than-expected numbers

You're welcome.

(xpost)

to some degree i even agree - i think that the historic nature of obama's candidacy clearly takes some of the shine off of the historic nature of hillary's candidacy.

Obama should just say he doesn't give a shit about God and get it over with.

xp Alfred what do you find particularly indefensible about those statements - obviously they are indefensible in the political realm for just being unpopular and divisive but do u have actual objections to what they say?

Constructing a parallel between Hiroshima and 9-11 is intellectually shallow, deej, even if, like me, you think dropping the bombs was a colossal waste of human life.

and since we live in a culture and ILX thread in which the sound bite, there's no way that Obama can parse this man's rhetoric with the subtlety required.

'constructing a parallel'? he's just talking about state-sponsored murder, and isn't he echoing MLK in this anyway?

*in which the sound bite rules,

and since we live in a culture and ILX thread in which the sound bite, there's no way that Obama can parse this man's rhetoric with the subtlety required.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:15 AM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

i agree w/ this; politically, its a problem for obama. but i don't think wright's arguments are indefensible on the facts

I'm generally fine with those ABC quotes, but obv they're trouble to a candidate for Imperial Manager.

I don't find any of it particularly objectionable. I'm not running for President though.

er what Morbs said

x-post

i hope the 'hes just my crazy uncle' defense is effective

God, I wish Obama was an atheist.

this is not the Rev with the gaybashing, correct?

I'm not one to throw around "state-sponsored terrorism," but if U.S. actions against Japan in WWII don't count, I don't know what does.

God, I wish Obama was an atheist.

So his candidacy could crash and burn? I don't get it.

Obama should give his next speech in whiteface

They may or mayn't have been defensible, but I don't think actions against Japan can be called 'terrorism'. They're called warfare.

To say that black people are the only people who feel this sort of anger and express it thusly is also intellectually shallow. You have to love America as an ideal a lot to express that much disappointment about how things actually are, and I don't recall Wright hating America, eh? It's not just Iraq that half of America has ambivalence about, it's seven years' worth of Bushista policy and the whipped cream and cherry on the top of that apple pie is the kneejerk patriotism.

They may or mayn't have been defensible, but I don't think actions against Japan can be called 'terrorism'. They're called warfare.

Exactly.

They may or mayn't have been defensible, but I don't think actions against Japan can be called 'terrorism'. They're called warfare.

-- Michael White, Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

The deliberate targetting of hundreds of thousands of civillians for direct attacks without even the pretense of a military target is terrorism.

Now I'd never suggest we sweep hundreds of years of slavery and racism under the rug, but haven't we reached a point now where ad hoc blaming of white America for every problem the poorer parts of the black community suffer from is just kind of nothing BUT inflammatory? The argument is more nuanced than that, and pretty much demands to be addressed at every occasion as such.

haven't we reached a point now where ad hoc blaming of white America for every problem the poorer parts of the black community suffer from is just kind of nothing BUT inflammatory?

A large part of Obama's candidacy is based on this premise; and, like I said, there's some facts bobbing in Wright's stew, but they're strung together into generalizations.

dropping the big bomb on civilans is not warfare by any stretch of the imagination

(I'm waiting for someone to quote Curtis Le May's war tribunal remark, made soon after dropping the bombs)

re: wright

if the clinton campaign really wants this to play -- and i maintain that it's not going to play a lot unless the clinton camp actually gets their hands in it, issues a statement about the "serious questions" it raises about obama's patriotism, bites on a pointed question from the press corp, whatever -- and then they run the risk of even more backlash and being perceived as being intentionally racially divisive. fox news will run with it, but i doubt clinton campaign is going to actively push this right now when ferarro's out there talkin' shit.

since 9/11 started the Terrah War, it musta been warfare

semantics, semantics

(re LeMay, I watched The Fog of War again last night -- is that we'd have been prosecuted if we'd lost?)

lotta people in this world would call 9/11 an act of "warfare"

This is a class issue, not a race issue. If you are flat-out poor you are more likely to be at the sharp end of the problems that Wright describes.

i guess i should add don't really care what it's called by the way-- warfare, terrorism, defending one's country, etc--it still was wrong

^^^ OTM

@suzy: Yeah, that's the argument I've always tried to make whenever someone says "I like all kinds of music...except for country and rap." Anyone who thinks the US doesn't have a class system is blind.

Mr Que has a good point. We are all usually ready to countenance rather vile stuff if we agree with the ends and we are usually ready to condemn other people's actions when we don't agree with their ends. But anyway, I'll not digress further since we have covered this topic at length in other threads.

It WILL be troublesome for Obama when he gets associated with it or asked to repudiate it later.

i hope the 'hes just my crazy uncle' defense is effective

Except that you don't choose your uncles, but you do choose which church to attend - presumably because something in the message appeals to you.

It is also good to hear what happens in 'segregated' space with a view to, y'know, addressing it and doing something positive to change 'the way things are'.

If you are part of what politicians condescendingly refer to as a 'community' you have traditionally gone to churches for the cohesion that is lacking elsewhere - and if you do not do so, there is a lot of pressure to join. Not all churches are conservative in their interpretation of belief. I'm glad Obama takes the values he does from his church but I consider his application and understanding are filtered through the mind of an intelligent person with free will and nuance.

McCain was the first person I ever heard refer to 9/11 as an act of war, and that was the moment when I realized everything was going to go really really wrong.

The Wright guy's a character, huh? Maybe he can join forces with Fred Phelps and Obama can sneak that evangelical vote right out from under John McCain's nose.

He really is not comparable to Fred Phelps.

I don't see what's so "indefensible" about his comments. Maybe they're a big misguided, and Obama should've told him to put a lid on it a while ago because I knew he would eventually say something to get him in trouble, but there are some valid arguments there. And to act as though race is not a factor and it's PURELY a class issue is just wrong and is just as ridiculous as saying it's purely racial. The fact of the matter black people have been systematically opessed for centuries, and still are in many ways.. it's far more subtle than it was a few decades ago, yes, but it STILL EXISTS.

the week after 9/11, I heard/read "act of war," "we're at war" CONSTANTLY in the media.

i'll go along with this, and i'll say it again: if the clinton camp pushes this, it'll play out like they're willing to go to any length to secure political advantage, even so far as to revise the racial history of the US.

xpost to brainwasher

are all churches this political in their sermons these days? i grew up catholic and they never talked about anything other than scripture then.

People in certain minorities do have to work twice as hard to get half as much, I'll agree, but in order to solve the problem without racially profiling its sufferers it's extremely important to have a discussion where class is at the wheel and race rides shotgun for a change. Obama's getting baited with this shit when he's perfectly capable of re-focusing discussion and turning it into a 'teaching moment'. Just sayin'.

ok why doesnt obama directly respond to ferraro by saying 'i didnt get where i am because i'm black, i got here because i'm AMERICAN' thus responding to both race baiting and patriot baiting w/ a cheap applause line that may actually be effective?