He painted himself into a corner by claiming that he had no idea Wright had those extreme opinions.
Too bad the Obama lovers in the media were enablers!!
As long as Reverend Wright continues to open his mouth, Obama will be sporting an albatross neck tie.
And, if Obama’s wife opens her mouth again, it’ll be her husband she’s choking.
MainStream Media.
For the longest time I thought people were mispellinh MSN and talking about the news network. 
Now that Obama has repudiated Wright’s rantings, I wonder when John McCain is going to forcefully denounce John Hagee, the nutcase preacher whose support McCain eagerly sought in order to help himself win the Texas primary.
It boggles the mind that McCain would think he can keep bringing up Wright, when Hagee is the guy who (among other things) called the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon” and predicted that it would be destroyed by the anti-Christ. That’s not an albatross - that’s a pterodactyl.
Nonsense. If Obama had ignored Wright’s latest spewings, you and other Clintonites would have tried to hammer him for “ducking” the issue.
What’s next up for good 'ol pol Hillary? Chewing tobacco at truckstops and challenging Obama to a spitting contest?
Rev. Wright has absolutely no influence on me when it comes to Barack Obama. He is his own entity. What he stands for or believes is completely irrelevant to me in my support for Obama.
On the other hand, I am an anomaly, (heh). The problem lies in the folks who allow Rev. Wright’s rhetoric to influence their opinions of Obama. This is why I support Obama’s rebuke of Wright. I understand and I think Wright, unknowingly, is sabotaging Obama’s run for the presidency. This is a groundbreaking time for African Americans, and I don’t want anything getting in the way of their progress. Lets face it, for America to vote for a Black man kind of goes against Wright’s preaching. We need to stay focused and progress without letting these minor obstacles get in our way.
For the record, I think Wright is charismatic, bright and quite something else. I’m just sorry that it all played out this way…
Maybe when Hagee starts giving interviews to the press.
This whole fiasco goes beyond Wright. This is exactly what Hillary was talking about when she said she was vetted and Obama wasn’t. I’m sure she’s out there asking what the next “scandal” is going to be. How many other skeletons are in that closet. This is all very sad…
You keep using this phrase and others like it to dismiss BO supporters. I’m not saying it’s totally inaccurate but from a interested outsiders perspective you seem to be the exact same as these people except you support another candidate.
I think there might be something to it…but on a more subconscious level. I.e., I think on a conscious level Wright more support Obama’s candidacy but on a subconscious level, it may be easier for him to live in an America where Blacks unambiguously continue to be oppressed rather than one where a Black occupies the highest nation in the land…and any sins that are committed by the nation can be attributed in part to him.
Never underestimate the power of the subconscious.
Actually, 2001 I believe (i.e., right after 9/11). But, I also think that you have to look at that whole sermon…or at least a good chunk of it…to actually arrive at an informed opinion of what it was actually about. I am not saying that some of the rhetoric in it was not somewhat extreme, but the context and the larger point that he was making at a time when people were screaming out for vengeance without particular concern of whether or not that vengeance really be directed against the right people is, are important and are missing unless you go back and watch a significant part of the sermon and look at it in its historical context.
I was/am unlikely to vote for Obama anyway, but I had several problems with it.
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He seems to imply, as have others, that Wright has only now started saying these sorts of things. I find this highly implausible, given for example that Wright was praising Farrakhan in the 1980s. He may have grown gradually kookier, but that’s not the same as “whoa, this guy never said anything at all like this before,” which is what he seemed to imply.
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His “he was never my spiritual advisor, just my pastor” bit is Clintonesque lawyerly bullshit. Obama has talked at length and in print about Wright’s importance to him.
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I was struck by the extent to which Obama seemed to say that what really pissed him off was not so much that Wright was saying vile things, but that he was saying them while he (Obama) was running for president, and that he was a poor victim here. e.g.: “I don’t think he showed much concern for me, more importantly I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign.”
Sorry, I don’t want a victim for president; I want someone who acknowledges his mistakes, learns and moves forward (something that many progressives have rightly knocked Bush for not doing). There are a lot of things Obama could have done to indicate he’s learned a lesson and perhaps explain his thinking: Hell, he could have simply said that he missed a lot of this stuff because he skips church a lot and that doesn’t always pay attention to the sermon when he is there; the vast majority of Americans could relate.
Instead he acted like Wright’s sin was not so much inciting fear and hate, but damaging Barack Obama’s campaign. I was not impressed.
I’m sorry, but that argument still doesn’t hold any water with me. People knew about Reverend Wright before he even announced his candidacy, which is why some suggested he not introduce him at the event for same. And the “controversy” itself is retarded. It’s only a controversy because people are making it a controversy. Obama hasn’t lied (like NAFTA and Bosnia amongst others), he hasn’t participated in a whisper campaign (“that I know of”), hasn’t embarked on a campaign of personal denigration of either his opponent or his opponent’s supporters (we need to “get real”), he hasn’t puffed up his résumé to include madeup crap he never really did (SCHIP & Peace in Northern Ireland).
But OMG he’s got a loony pastor who’s said some controversial things, let’s hang him from the nearest tree!!!
For heaven’s sake, why should it make a difference that some of Hillary’s skeletons and dirty dealings are already known ammunition, when clearly it’s just as possible to find new ones in her closet, as well (see some of the things mentioned above)? Do you really think Hillary has no secrets to hide? And do you really think that because they’re known that they won’t be used? OMG, they’ll wipe the floor with her and her scandals. Not everybody who’s old enough to vote is old enough to remember the '90s. Ten years ago, 18 year olds were only 8. That crap would all be new to them! The negatives that the Republicans would use against her are endless and way dirtier than some whack job pastor.
The only thing sad about this is that so many people out there are buying into all this nonsense.
Some would say that’s what he did with this latest speech, acknowledging that Wright went too far after Obama tried to defend him before.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if this kills Obama I’ll be profoundly dismayed. It would mean that there’s no hope of seeing a Black man (or woman) get elected president for at least another twenty years.
I say this because I suspect there’s a lot of Wrights out there. More than there are “post-racial” people like Obama. I suspect that anyone who rises to political prominence in the Black community has a Wright or two in his history. How could there not be? You see injustice, you get angry, how could you not get a little *too *angry?
I don’t believe that Obama intended to give that speech about race at some point in his campaign. I believe it was damage control, as this was.
Is there a cite for the assertion that he intended to do that speech anyway?
Seems to me that his surrogates saying things that appear to contradict his public stance on NAFTA and ending the war in Iraq in 16 months are both lies.
To me, this is part of a pattern. He wants me to believe he didn’t know who Wright was until yesterday. He didn’t hear the AIDS comment until yesterday? Please.
She’s been “vetted”? Really? Beyond the most recent sleaze that Shayna has summarized and the past history that will continue to dog her, there’s still the matter of the Clinton foundation - the donors who’ll expect favors to be returned in a Clinton presidency, plus all the questions lurking about the donors the Clintons are refusing to reveal:
*Transparency is a popular word in this presidential election, with all three candidates finally having released their tax returns. Yet the public still hasn’t seen the records of an institution with some of the biggest potential for special-interest mischief: The William J. Clinton Foundation.
Bill Clinton established that body in 1997 while still President. It has since raised half-a-billion dollars, which has been spent on Mr. Clinton’s presidential library in Arkansas and global philanthropic initiatives. The mystery remains its donors…
That’s no small matter given the former first couple’s history. Yet Mr. Clinton says he won’t violate the “privacy” of donors by disclosing their names, even if his wife wins the Oval Office. What is already in the public record should make that secrecy untenable, however:
Chicago bankruptcy lawyer William Brandt Jr. pledged $1 million for the Clinton library in May 1999, at the same time the Justice Department was investigating whether he’d lied about a Clinton fundraising event. The Clinton DOJ cleared him a few months later.
Loral Space and Communications then-CEO, Bernard Schwartz, committed to $1 million in 2000, at the same time the firm was being investigated for improperly sending technology to China. Loral agreed to a $14 million fine during the Bush Administration.
A major investor in cellular firm NextWave – Bay Harbour Management – pledged $1 million in 1999, when NextWave was waiting to see if the Clinton FCC would allow it to keep its cellular licenses. NextWave didn’t immediately get its licenses, and Bay Harbour never made good on its pledge.
And let’s not forget the $450,000 contribution from Denise Rich, which was followed by Mr. Clinton’s pardon of her fugitive husband, Marc Rich.*
You don’t think John “Mr. Clean” McCain would gleefully dredge up all this (and the $130 million that the Clinton foundation got after helping a mining bigwig land a huge foreign contract) and demand transparency from the Clintons?
Sure, the Wright affair has caused Obama some damage. At least it’s in the open and he’s acted to spike it. Meanwhile, Democrats can only dread what would happen if the Clinton past and future skeletons come rattling out of their closets (Bill’s being possibly the noisiest) during the fall campaign.
Yes, it’s so sad. 
No, because to me he either is lying about already knowing Wright to be this kind of guy or he’s pretty unobservant, selectively observant, and shows poor judgment in aligning himself with this man by putting him on his board and then providing a tortured, superior explanation in Philly for him where he parsed the word ‘disown’ saying that he **couldn’t **“disown” Wright anymore than his (white) grandma.
Then in the debate he referred to Wright as a man “…**who **he disowned.” “Who” is a person, not a statement.
Stephanopolous called him on that and said “You disown him?” and then Obama danced: “His statements…I disown his statements…” Get your story straight, Barry.
This is part of a trend with an AP poll http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PRESIDENTIAL_RACE_AP_POLL?SITE=TNMEM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT now showing Hillary doing better than Obama does as compared to McCain even among independents and doing better against McCain than Obama overall by almost double digits. The Newsweek poll (that seems like an outlier to me in that it always is way different than others) that had Obama ahead by 19 points was now reduced to 7. That’s a stunning drop.
This is why god invented superdelegates, and I hope they’re listening: to switch their votes if need be when disaster is striking and there’s reason to believe that voters that already voted for Obama during the “infatuation” stage would change their mind now if they could which is what I believe you will start to see, as this guy said in sending in a comment to a CNN story:
“Warren from Virginia writes:
**I voted for Obama in the Virginia primary. This morning, I asked to be removed from his e-mail list. **Even if Obama gets the nomination, I believe that McCain will defeat him in the general election thanks to Rev. Wright. No matter what Obama says now, Wright created fear among whites about a black president. Wright has turned back the clock on race relations in this country.”
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/29/how-much-has-revwright-hurt-obamas-campaign/
Mr. Clean “Keating” McCain?
Please. HRC can withstand mudslinging until the cows come home. Obama buckles, hems and haws, gets defensive, interrupts, and gets all shook up (as he himself said about the Wright affair “It shook me up!”) at every little thing with 3 times as much money and the pop appeal of being “hip” due to his race, age, and postpartisan bullshit hype he still loses when the big state primaries are on the line.
The man is a shell and he always has been. He’s a blank screen onto which people project whatever they want (as, again, he himself said in his own book).
HRC can survive, Obama cannot. He shouldn’t be the nominee for that reason alone.
That’s what just kinda stuns me. I could give a fuck what Obama’s nutty pastor says, and I’m amazed that it is even an issue. If this is the best that Obama’s enemies can come up with, I’m pretty confident.
Hillary has been partially vetted… and is very much hated. She has tons more baggage, and even some new stuff. But I don’t care if she has any more secrets out there, her issues are much more damning than any I’ve heard about Obama. But I’m still left scratching my head over why the hell controversial comments made by a pastor is worth two months of news coverage.
And yet it’s being discussed more than Clinton’s shortcomings. Nobody really talks about how Bosnia is going to sink Clinton.
ETA: And that’s the problem. Perception becomes reality. Enough people talk about how Wright is a problem for Obama, the more people think that maybe there’s something to it and Obama really should be docked for it.