I gotta say, something somebody’s pastor said once is probably the worst reason I can think of to discredit a guy.
I agree with you that “black” and “white” are not equal terms, but I think it is useful to think about the existance and bounderies of white American culture.
After living in Africa for two years, I began to start classifying all Latin Americans, Indians, and Arabs are pure lily white. Whenever I watch a Bollywood movie, I see a bunch of white people dancing. Whenver I see the Egyptian football team, I see a bunch of white people playing football.
Now, in America I generally wouldn’t have generally classified these groups as white, even though their skin is plenty white. Whats the difference?
So yeah, there is some idea of a shared hertiage when it comes to white America. Indeed, I think if we paid more attention to the “white” things we are doing, we’d discover there is a lot more ethnic-cultural influence in our day to day lives than we ever thought. I think one of the problems white people have with understanding racism is that we act like we live in some sort of race-neuatral “default” culture, and not in a culture with it’s own (largely unspoken) racial landscape.
In a clip I herad, where Wright tals about ex.-president Clinton, he says something like “…he was riding dirty!”-what was Wright referring to here? Anyone hear the clip and know the reference?
The sound bites followed by media spin and analysis do not fairly reflect Moyers’ interview or Wright’s responses. Wright did not say anything in the interview that undermines Obama. He said Obama is a politician, a true statement. He didn’t make the statement to cast Obama in a negative light. Obama is a politician like every other candidate running for office. In fact, we are all politicians to some extent. The interview can be seen in its entirety at PBS.org
Wright did not make any comments about the Clintons and only a few about Obama which were responses to direct questions. The interview focused mainly on Wright and his ministry.
I disagree. Obama is basing a large part of his campaign on the idea that he’s not “politics as usual”, so whenever he is shown to be politics as usual, that undermines his message. I’m sure the Reverend didn’t intend to undermine Obama, but he did nonetheless. And remember, sound bites (with or without so-called media spin) is all the vast majority of voters is going to hear. The Reverend should take that into account when and if he decides to do more interviews.
I agree with John Mace. This guy is not helping Obama when he makes an insinuation like that. That answer means “Obama agrees with me, but he has to say that he doesn’t or he’ll get his ass kicked”. Not terribly helpful for the candidate.
I like Wright, but he is ornery and it’s probably not great for Obama that he continues to be out there.
This interview may have served the purpose of proving that he is not a ranting loonybird all the live long day, and helped the man to redeem his reputation a bit, and maybe he should quit while he is ahead.
I am watching it again now- I realize that I am parsing- but it is the impression that I get. It would be fairly simple to say something like “I don’t speak for Barack Obama. He has his own opinions and he doesn’t necessarily share mine.”
That’s free and clear and avoids the statement that Obama disowned Wright’s remarks because he had to, because he is a politician, and they were politically incorrect. The impression that Obama would not disown these remarks if he was not running for office. I think it’s unavoidably the impression of that soundbite.
This situation is somewhat complicated for me by the fact that I happen to agree with most of what Wright said, even (especially?) in his most overplayed soundbites. I think Wright is like Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. I think he wants to shout to the rooftops that he said it, and he’d say it again, dammit. To the extent that he does feel that way, he is really doing a good job of taking one for the team. But I can see him bristling that he has to address it at all.
It doesn’t have to be interpreted that way, but that sure is a reasonable way to do so. “He says what he has to say as a politician” sure sounds like: well, he says one thing to appease potential voters even if he doesn’t fully believe it. And if you not completely on Obama’s band wagon, I think that’s the way most people would interpret it. I sure did, and I’m on the band wagon. ( although not as much as most of his supporters around here).
No it sure isn’t. It’s one possible way to interpret the sound bite and I don’t see any additional evidence or sound bites to lend that interpretation any weight.
I watched extended versions of the sermons the offending clips were taken from.
Even within the very sermons it’s easy to see that those clips were selected and misrepresented to paint a false picture of Wright and by association, Obama. That’s not even considering the entire career and misnistry of Wright. It pure political bullshit and it’s a crying shame we’ve spent so much time on it or that a Wright has to defend himself against such purposely misleading and dishonest character assassination.
The political thing Obama did was to strongly denounce those specific phrases rather than try to explain or defend them and to get Wright to leave his campaign.
Even at that I give Obama credit for still defending Wright as a person and refusing to denounce him or the congregation and saying several times that those phrases are not a reflection of who Wright is as a person or the overall nature of his work.
If Obama wasn’t running for office it would have never come up or if it had for any reason he could have called mean spirited self serving bullshit what it is a little more clearly. Running for president he had to be a bit more diplomatic.
I think he’s addressing those reasonable people who might be interested in the truth of who he is. I can understand him not wanting this dishonest characterization of him to be a lasting impression of his work as he retires so he’s taking the time to talk about it.
I think he also said pretty clearly that he has a difference audience. Sermons based on black liberation theology preached at a predominantly black church might not be for everybody. So What? I can understand people being surprised, shocked or offended by those sound bites. It’s harder to understand why they should somehow find fault with Obama for a few sound bites his pastor said. I’d hope that more people can see what a bs political ploy this is and reject those who keep hammering on it.
Wright also, in that interview, pretty effectively refutes the idea that he is a racist or his church is a racist organization (one of Martin Hyde’s charges noted in the OP).
Honestly, I don’t see any reason for *most *people to assume that Wright is indicating Obama is lying to his supporters and the public in general and secretly agrees with Wright’s controversial statements.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Wright had said before the controversy that Obama might have to distance himself from Wright. Obama has clearly said that he worshiped God at church and didn’t have to agree with every word his pastor said to do so. A pretty reasonable and understandable concept. He also said that although he heard some controversial things he heard much more about being a good citizen, taking care and loving your family and helping society in general. Also pretty reasonable and believable.
I repeat, I think the political thing Obama did was to denounce the specific phrases and have Wright leave the campaign rather than try to explain it which he knew would be seen as defending the offensive words. He remained honest but did what was politically expedient in that situation.
Oh, come on. He says what he has to say as a politician. WTF does that mean if not, well he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, but he’s a politician and so he has to say something to placate the voters. Whether he believes Wright’s pronouncements or not isn’t really the issue-- he is saying what he has to say as a politician. You tell me what that means if it doesn’t mean that he’s not being totally honest.
n.b.: Even if Obama isn’t playing the politician, Wright is insinuating that he is.
I took the statement to mean that Obama is a politician running for office and therefore had to respond to the video loops. The responses Obama gave are not because he is duplicitous. Rather, it is because Obama is in a position that requires diplomacy and careful communication to bridge misunderstandings. He has to connect to a constituency. Earlier in the interview Wright said that the video loops did result in something positive: Obama’s speech on race.
I do agree that the video clips aired on cable news are all that most people will see of Wright’s interview. Unfortunately, those video clips will be followed by commentary, so people will have their opinions shaped for them. I also agree that the word politician can have a negative connotation.
I hoped that all the publicity would serve as a nice plug for Moyers, and people would actually tune in to watch the interview.
That statement wasn’t made alone. He was explaining that Obama is a politician and he is a preacher and they speak to different audiences so it’s expected and obvious that the content and manner of delivery of their words would be different.
I can’t know Wright’s personal intent behind the comment. I’m saying that the assumption that he meant Obama was being dishonest and secretly agreed with him is not the obvious meaning.
As I’ve already explained , I think he meant that Obama couldn’t spend time explaining black liberation theology and defending Wright without looking like he did secretly agree with the* false * implications of those sound bites.
It would have been honest for Obama to come out and call it a bunch of divisive dishonest political bullshit but it wouldn’t have been the a helpful choice.
Instead, because he’s a politician in the middle of a race he denounced the specific phrases in strong terms without trying to explain them, and he got Wright to leave his campaign without explanation or condemnation. It’s better that he not be associated with the campaign period. That’s a fact and there’s nothing dishonest about it. He also remained honest enough to explain that Wright was his pastor and that doesn’t mean they agree on everything while he refused to personally denounce him. He defended Wright’s career and service explaining that a few sound bites carefully selected for political reasons do not capture the man’s 30 years of service.
I don’t realistically expect Obama to be 100% honest all the time but it seems he continually strives for honesty while carefully selecting which words work politically. As we’ve seen, sometimes he fails and a bad phrase slips out and the media jumps all over it. It’s shameful for the media to adopt and embrace this national enquirer type of journalism.
In this case I think he did an intelligent job of remaining honest and handling an unfortunate situation that was bullshit to begin with.
I think John Mace is right on the money here. It’s difficult to not take Wright’s words in his interview with Moyers to mean, “Well, he’s a politician, so he has to go say whatever it takes to help his candidacy, even if he doesn’t believe it.” As someone not in Obama’s camp, I’m all for the good reverend, or anyone else, casting Obama as, “he’s just a politician”. And what is one of the first things people ascribe to politicians? The ease with which they will lie. I think Wright’s interview helped Wright more than it helped Obama.
I can see that the popular meme of “all politicians lie a lot” is why people might read that meaning into it but IMO it’s adding something that isn’t there and it’s a pretty lazy and superficial way to read it. It’s also assuming that Wright feels Obama is just a politician but note that he didn’t use the word just. The paragraph,
He’s recognizing two different types of communication and different audiences. I don’t think Wright did the interview to help Obama. He wanted to have his say in correcting a purposely deceitful characterization of him and his work. It’s pretty understandable that he’d be a bit pissed. In a much more articulate way he called the perps a self serving dishonest bunch of jackasses.
We’ve accepted a high level of dishonesty and called it political spin for too long. We should be rejecting that as an acceptable political tool and judging those that use it accordingly. In the Wright controversy I respect Obama’s choices in dealing with it much more than any of the dishonest jerks that continue to hammer the issue.
Wright said he had never heard Obama express or agree with any of the kind of stuff that was getting played in the Fox News mash-up video, so how could he have been trying to imply that Obama was being dishonest in his disavowal of those statements?
How? By saying it. I can’t alter the words that he used.
But look, just because he never heard Obama agree with him doesn’t mean that he might not think that Obama does agree with him. Had he said that Obama explicitly told him that he disagreed with him, you might have a point. But he didn’t, and so you don’t.