The problem is that the guy said numerous controversial things and Obama didn’t stomp out in the middle of church and never look back, but instead stayed for 20 years.
It is a legitimate question for a curious person to have, and I think it was smart of Obama to answer it basically head on and without guile in this speech.
Classy response from Hillary, btw:
That would be demanding a standard that nobody holds for themselves and that they certainly don’t hold for white politicians.
If his numbers don’t go up over the next coupl of weeks I’ll be shocked.
I don’t think I’ll have to worry too much about being shocked…
If you think that the clips of Wright on TV don’t make some right-thinking people wonder what Obama is doing at that church, and if you don’t think that’s a legitimate question for them to have given limited information, you’re probably not the target of his speech today anyway.
My imagination is having the best time it’s had since I quit smoking on Sunday trying to picture Clinton singing “I Know A Girl”…
I think that right thinking people know better than to assume the sum total of a religious leader can be reduced down to a few particularly incindiary sound bites. I also think that right thinking people understand that they can better understand what a candidate thinks and believes by what he says himself, not by what a pastor at his church once said.
And I am positive that no right thinking person could possibly believe that Barack Obama hates America or that he wants to kill whitey.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a thinking person who agrees with every canonical tenet of their religion, let alone every opinion held by their clergy. I’m really failing to see the big honkin’ deal here.
There’s a slight difference between “agreeing with every canonical tenet of their religion” and actively agreeing to listen to this God Damn American and KKKA nonsense. I hope everyone noticed that bit of false moral equivalence that Obama tried to slip into his speech, and wasn’t taken in by it.
The only acceptable response to Rev. Wright’s hate-speech, besides walking out of that church as soon as he heard about it, would be to outright denounce him, and that didn’t happen today. By refusing to take that step (and compounded by the Ferraro flap, and so on), Obama has fallen into the Clinton trap, painting himself as “the black candidate.” I won’t say that he’s through, since he currently still has a commanding popular lead, but this failure significantly weakens his candidacy.
So why give a speech? It seems that Obama acknowledges that there is a problem of appearance with Wright, and I happen to think that anyone who wonders about the clips they saw is not automatically an idiot or a racist. And I think it was an excellent act of political aikido to steer his reaction to this controversy into a positive extension of the discussion of race in america.
But we obviously disagree on this.
If, hypothetically, Obama had already denounced him you would be totally satisfied?
He’s done that repeatedly over the last few days.
But did he denounce AND reject?
Obama said just what he needed to say, and said it well. Good on him. Generally, I wouldn’t attribute the views of any rabbi, priest, minister or imam to a politician who attended that religious leader’s house of worship, and Obama properly distinguished his own views from those of his pastor.
Haven’t seen the speech yet, but I read the transcript online and I had to weigh in, even though I shy away from discussions around current events in politics.
I am a white man, but I’ve had a glimpse of the challenges black people face - before I met my wife, I lived with a black girlfriend for about 6 months. In that time, in the very liberal town of Eugene, OR, I saw examples of both overt and subtle racism (from both whites and blacks), from being called a n****r-lover by complete strangers, to being asked by a “friend” if she was a jungle-woman in bed, to being accosted by a black acquaintance of hers who didn’t approve of my skin tone.
Even so, I freely admit I still have slightly less than an inkling of the issues that black people (or any minority) face every day. I only had to live with it for 6 months, somewhat peripherally - once she left me (for another, richer, guy), the racism just wasn’t there anymore, like something that had crawled up from the ground, only to burrow itself under again.
But I’ve known since then that the racial problems facing our country cannot be solved through simple legislation or litigation, nor can they be solved by simple declaring racism dead and wishing it were true. But I’ve never really been able to articulate what the underlying problems are, and how we might go about solving them.
When I read this speech, however, it felt absolutely right to me. This guy gets it. And you know what? I could care less what his specific plan is for the economy, foreign policy, or defense. This man shows an innate understanding, to the core, of our country’s brightest virtues and our darkest dilemmas. If - as I’m confident he will - he surrounds himself with policy experts who aren’t afraid to challenge him, or to be challenged themselves, to help begin to set right the mistakes made over the last 10 years, he is capable of leading this great but troubled country through to the next era of our existence. An era when we finally begin to really heal the wounds at the core of our nation’s unique but troubled legacy.
It all boils down to this - I had a gut reaction upon finishing reading this speech: “If I can’t vote for him, I’m not voting for anyone.” I refuse to vote for another candidate whom I feel does not understand the core of the American experience - I’ve thrown away my votes since Bill Clinton’s second term (I don’t feel the first vote for Bill was wasted, but I voted for Nader in '96). And in my opinion, Hillary seems to me to be indistinguishable from any of the other seasoned Democratic professional politicians, in that she plays “the game” well, but doesn’t really inspire greatness.
Obama DIDN’T LISTEN to his G-d Damn America sermon. DIDN’T. There was no false moral equivalence in his speech.
I guess all the religious right Republicans ought to be excoriated for being associated with anti-America churches, too, huh? How about this lovely church choir singing “Why Should G-d Bless America” at one of the Republican debates? Lovely. But not media fodder. Hmmmmmm.
Nonsense. One does not have to denounce a human being who is more than 5 minutes of spliced together sound bites just because one disagrees with the content of those 5 minutes over a lifetime of good words and good works. That’s just patently absurd.
Whilst I on the other hand
Try to say that he stole a speech
And I’ll look as pretty as Stacy Keach
I, on the other hand
Make a qualified White House pitch
And look like a middle aged rich white bitch
Of course she’s already sung But I Can’t Do it Alone (“Do you know that you would fit into my husband’s old suits just perfectly?”)
What is a church nowadays. ? It it a pastor telling sheepish people how and what to think? Does the church community just receive marching orders from the pastor. ? Is the pastor the church?
I think not. People attend church for many reasons. It is not to get political instructions. I have left church and heard parrishoners arguing about the sermon. Disagreements are common. My church had 6 priests giving masses. What was the official church view ,4 out of 6?
To say that attending a church means you agree with everything a pastor says is stupid.
Jeez, I never really believed the stories about people fainting in his presence until reading this thread.
Comparable to the “I Have A Dream” speech? Really? He’s a politician delivering a planned and scripted CYA, not a civil rights leader fighting for the betterment of the nation.
Yes, I was unimpressed. “But my Gramma was a racist, too!”… Nice.
Compared to Dubya, of course, it was a sterling example of eloquence and honesty, and Hillary would have blamed Rush for the whole thing, but comparing Obama to those two is setting the bar pretty darn low, IMHO.
It was a good speech, but I don’t know if it will do much to sway people one way or the other. The vast majority of people giving a thumbs up are Obama supporters. Has anyone changed their feelings about his candidacy because of this speech?
This was a speech made out of political expediency. Had it come at a time before a crisis came forth it would have meant a lot more. There were some odd statements - I thought it was strange to paint Wright and his grandmother as holding views he finds abhorrent, but somehow he was above it all. The admission of being in the pews when incendiary sermons were delivered by Wright is way too lawyerly to be parsed as it is here. People will understand him saying that he said he didn’t hear Wright’s sermons, but today he did.
The question that this whole issue has raised for Obama is not, as Diogenes keeps saying that Obama “hates America and wants to kill Whitey.” It’s that his judgment isn’t quite as sound as he claimed it was. I haven’t heard anyone credible saying that they believe Obama shares the beliefs of Wright. What they have said is that Wright has some upsetting and disturbing views of America and government, and Obama, as a person with good judgment, should have exercised it by a) critiquing these views well before they came to light in the manner they did, b) appealing to his close mentor to tone down his rhetoric, or c) dissociating himself, at least politically, from such a polarizing figure. With Obama, like with McClurkin before and now Wright, these folks were perfectly fine until someone else noted that their words were problematic. That, I feel is the issue that needs to be addressed.
(Yes, I know he’s saying he didn’t hear the specific sermons that were broadcast on YouTube, etc. But most people haven’t been paying anywhere near the attention that most of us here have on this issue. And isn’t that parsing a lot like what people disliked about Bill Clinton?)