# Vile, Filthy RACIST Remarks-by Obama's PASTOR? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 15, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421 "2008-03-15T00:15:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/381 "2008-03-26T06:41:34Z")
> [@](#): > > **9thFloor** : …invoking the dead MLK on your campaign’s behalf against someone who actually was in the country at the time, listened to his speeches, discussed and debated them, and went on to a lifetime of service alongside her husband’s political career that was so routinely and regularly praised by African Americans by someone who was 6 years old and in Indonesia at the time of his assassination is a bit ‘audacious.’ And my goodness! What would Dr. King think of audacious people! The horror! It’s too bad that Dr. King was only a teenager when Gandhi was assassinated on the other side of the world and it was too audacious for King to use the words of Gandhi for inspiration. (Well, actually, King didn’t mind being audacious in following Gandhi’s teachings on non-violent protest.) Come to think of it, Thoreau wrote his essay “Civil Disobedience” twenty years before Gandhi was even born – halfway around the world. How audacious of Gandhi to still be influenced by it enough to lead India to freedom a hundred years later. Do you think that in a campaign a candidate should not be allowed to quote from someone who lived before she or he was an adult or who lived in another country? That would rather restrict Christians, Jews, Muslims. Hmmm… No more quoting the patriots or Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt or JFK? The next generation can’t quote Vonnegut or Red Barber? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/382 "2008-03-26T06:44:32Z")
…or Jesus Christ. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/383 "2008-03-26T06:50:29Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] …or Jesus Christ. [/QUOTE] She said lived. Jesus is eternal. But you knew that. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/384 "2008-03-26T07:15:17Z")
I mentioned Christians. I thought that would cover Jesus Christ. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/385 "2008-03-26T07:47:03Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] … If you haven’t heard it, a quote in text isn’t going to convey the sound. [/QUOTE] Hey, its ok with me if you want to present your esthetic reaction as fact. So long as you know it _isn’t_ a fact. For my two bits, MLK spoke in the cadences and rythyms of the classic Black preacher, Obama speaks like a guy who’s been to Harvard Law. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/386 "2008-03-26T12:49:55Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] No, it is not. It is asserting that you have failed in an endeavor in which you believe you have succeeded. Stop trying to game the rules against calling posters liars and stick to the actual discussion. [/Moderating] [/QUOTE] Stop accusing me of trying to game the rules and understand that is simply my (apparently incorrect) understanding of them and stick to moderating without imputing nefarious motives. As for the issue itself: I linked to an article that included direct quotes. If that’s failing to provide direct quotes, then so be it. I already said I’d moved on, I have no idea what that poster wants beyond direct quotes from Obama. We’re left with what constitutes parsing and we obviously disagree on what does and doesn’t. Saying that I am “not entitled to my own facts” means less than nothing. Perhaps they should stick to the issues rather than going personal. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/387 "2008-03-26T12:51:55Z")
[QUOTE=Zoe] And my goodness! What would Dr. King think of audacious people! The horror! It’s too bad that Dr. King was only a teenager when Gandhi was assassinated on the other side of the world and it was too audacious for King to use the words of Gandhi for inspiration. (Well, actually, King didn’t mind being audacious in following Gandhi’s teachings on non-violent protest.) Come to think of it, Thoreau wrote his essay “Civil Disobedience” twenty years before Gandhi was even born – halfway around the world. How audacious of Gandhi to still be influenced by it enough to lead India to freedom a hundred years later. Do you think that in a campaign a candidate should not be allowed to quote from someone who lived before she or he was an adult or who lived in another country? That would rather restrict Christians, Jews, Muslims. Hmmm… No more quoting the patriots or Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt or JFK? The next generation can’t quote Vonnegut or Red Barber? [/QUOTE] None of which were running for office on the race card ticket. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/388 "2008-03-26T12:56:35Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Hey, its ok with me if you want to present your esthetic reaction as fact. So long as you know it _isn’t_ a fact. For my two bits, MLK spoke in the cadences and rythyms of the classic Black preacher, Obama speaks like a guy who’s been to Harvard Law. [/QUOTE] Yup, that’s how I (and many) hear what he’s attempted to do “acoustically.” LOL You don’t hear it that way, fair enough. So you’re saying I’m trying to present something as a fact that isn’t a fact. \ Look, this thing about asserting that I’m asserting facts: they’re both opinions. Yours and mine. One of us may be right and one of us may be wrong, but neither can likely be established as a fact. Just how I hear it. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/389 "2008-03-26T13:26:18Z")
So, now that this thread has gone on 8 pages, can someone finally point out the comments Wright made that were actually racist? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/390 "2008-03-26T21:37:30Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] Stop accusing me of trying to game the rules and understand that is simply my (apparently incorrect) understanding of them and stick to moderating without imputing nefarious motives. [/QUOTE] The rules prohibit attacking or insulting posters. They do not prohibit posters from challenging what other posters have said. _(Ever since we prohibited calling other posters “liar,” there has been a small group of posters who bombard the staff with claims of having been accused of lying at any challenge to their posts. I would hope that you would not join that crowd. They look silly and clutter up our mailboxes.)_ However, when you make your accusation of rule-breaking public instead of simply reporting the post, the presumption is that you want to tar your opponent with the label “rule-breaker” and my presumption is that you are gaming the system. Now, you stop trying to give orders to Moderators (outside the Pit) and stick to your endless back-and-forths. And as I have noted in several of these monotonous threads, I want everyone to stop making it personal. (I have little hope that my desire will be respected, of course.) [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/391 "2008-03-26T21:42:30Z")
From [Andrew Sullivan](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/martin-marty-on.html): > [@](#): > > This is simply must-reading for any fair-minded person interested in the full Jeremiah Wright story. There are very, very few people in American religious life as respected as Martin Marty, few scholars as learned, few Christians as sincere. He has been a professor of religious history at the University of Chicago for 35 years, one of the greatest universities in the world… > > Read his [full defense](http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i30/30b00101.htm) of Wright in the Chronicle of Higher Education. You will learn this: > > > [@](#): > > > > In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970. > > This is a man the Fox News right calls an anti-American, a former marine who volunteered to serve his country in a war he opposed. Marty does not excuse some of the indefensible comments of Wright that have now been bludgeoned into our consciousness to the exclusion of all else. And those comments should not be excused. And they have not been excused by Obama. But Marty does say this: > > > [@](#): > > > > The four S’s charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don’t stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home. > > > > Yes, while Trinity is “unapologetically Christian,” as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, “unashamedly black.” From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, “Africentric” should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be “Judeocentric” or that Chicago’s Irish parishes be “Celtic-centric.” Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace. > > Read the whole thing. It matters. Because the truth matters. Because in these complex, volatile areas, Martin Marty is a far more reliable guide to it than Sean Hannity. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/392 "2008-03-26T21:53:57Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] Bush is an example of an empty suit who is surrounded by all types of nefarious types – which he, presumably, “disagrees” with insofar as he tried to come off like an ‘average joe’ type of guy that voters famously would ‘want to get a beer with’, **spoke Spanish on the campaign trail** , etc. – that effectively control the government and the agenda through him. [/QUOTE] – bolding mine. Dude, that’s almost an insult to any native Spanish speaker. Dipshit can’t speak English if his life depended on it and you’re telling us he _speaks Spanish_?! 😛 😕 :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/393 "2008-03-28T15:22:47Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] – bolding mine. Dude, that’s almost an insult to any native Spanish speaker. Dipshit can’t speak English if his life depended on it and you’re telling us he _speaks Spanish_?! 😛 😕 :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] LOL True, true. I speak Spanish fluently and I’ve gotta say, it is painful when he chops the words out there. Then again, people speaking a foreign language poorly is sometimes seen as ‘charming.’ :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/394 "2008-03-28T15:23:54Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] From [Andrew Sullivan](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/martin-marty-on.html): [/QUOTE] Andrew Sullivan wrote what I thought was one of the best articles arguing for an Obama presidency in the Atlantic a few months ago. It’s a really good read. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/395 "2008-03-28T15:26:02Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] The rules prohibit attacking or insulting posters. They do not prohibit posters from challenging what other posters have said. _(Ever since we prohibited calling other posters “liar,” there has been a small group of posters who bombard the staff with claims of having been accused of lying at any challenge to their posts. I would hope that you would not join that crowd. They look silly and clutter up our mailboxes.)_ However, when you make your accusation of rule-breaking public instead of simply reporting the post, the presumption is that you want to tar your opponent with the label “rule-breaker” and my presumption is that you are gaming the system. Now, you stop trying to give orders to Moderators (outside the Pit) and stick to your endless back-and-forths. And as I have noted in several of these monotonous threads, I want everyone to stop making it personal. (I have little hope that my desire will be respected, of course.) [/Moderating] [/QUOTE] Ah, I see; it comes across as wanting to tar an opponent when a post is not reported but just challenged right there. Very well. I’d thought it was nicer NOT to report posts left and right and instead firmly ask not to continue to be personally attacked (whether it’s classified as rule-breaking or not), but I can play it either way. I think what I’ll do is just ignore personal attacks and not report them either. That way, it can just blow over on its own. Now here’s a direct order: go back to moderating. 😉 P.S. Slipping in your “go back to your endless back and forths” isn’t too nice either…sounds personal. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JohnnieEnigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dfb087/32.png) [@JohnnieEnigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnnieEnigma)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/396 "2008-03-28T15:29:09Z")
Unless we walked a mile in this minister’s shoes, we shouldn’t judge his entire life from a few soundbites. The guy grew up in a discriminated America where he had to put up with a lot of humiliations… The old white americans from the greatest generation have a tendency to be racist. This is what these revolutionary ministries like minister wright are holding on to… they’re living in the past and not allowing themselves to heal. But hey, maybe I would do the same thing if I was him… I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![JohnnieEnigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dfb087/32.png) [@JohnnieEnigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnnieEnigma)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/397 "2008-03-28T15:33:03Z")
I don’t think anyone should hold Barack Obama accountable for belonging to a revolutionary ministry church… I KNOW he does not approve of the few offensive things the minister said. I have an italian-american “crazy” uncle too, you know one of those greatest generation members who drops the n-bomb occasionaly. I’m not going to disown him because of it. There’s nothing we can do about this kind of ignorance but wait for it to die out - and hope we are never like them. So why should Obama deny any of the many black people who have issues with whites due to their own personal experiences? Why should he? It’s a completely stupid notion to think he should… ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/398 "2008-03-28T15:35:31Z")
[QUOTE=JohnnieEnigma] Unless we walked a mile in this minister’s shoes, we shouldn’t judge his entire life from a few soundbites. The guy grew up in a discriminated America where he had to put up with a lot of humiliations… The old white americans from the greatest generation have a tendency to be racist. This is what these revolutionary ministries like minister wright are holding on to… they’re living in the past and not allowing themselves to heal. But hey, maybe I would do the same thing if I was him… I don’t know. [/QUOTE] True enough; actually, his viewpoints aren’t really that startling within the community of followers that see things that way more or less and everything out of context always comes off as more incendiary (that applies to both sides). I believe Wright was already going to an integrated school when he was 12 years old though, but I know what you mean and his approach and mentality about the subject is obviously different than Obama’s. I suspect Obama always had a different view about such matters than Wright and always knew Wright had those views, and vice versa perhaps. Funny, Obama referred to the Rezko deal as a ‘boneheaded move’ on his part but I think staying with Wright – when he’d been planning to run and continue to run in elective offices – was probably pretty boneheaded in retrospect. I do suspect he went there to get the street cred, so to speak, among that constituency that he lacked. Despite that, he failed in his first efforts against Bobby Rush in Chicago in 2000 due, as some have pointed out, to his ‘not black enough’ image problem and has been playing/earning (depending on your point of view) the support of both the ‘black’ and ‘not black (enough)’ sides of the electorate ever since. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/399 "2008-03-28T15:45:15Z")
[QUOTE=BlackKnight] So, now that this thread has gone on 8 pages, can someone finally point out the comments Wright made that were actually racist? [/QUOTE] I’d say they were more ‘racial’ than racist. Also, some would say that if you accuse someone else of being a racist…that makes YOU a racist (if it’s not true) as he did elsewhere when claiming that the racist government invented AIDS (a blatant accusation of racism). Saying Hillary was never called a ‘nigger’ is, to say the least, inflammatory. Racist? Probably not exactly. But this thing, as I said before, won’t die: \*\* Obama: Had Wright not retired, I’d have left church\*\* > **[Obama: Had Wright not retired, I'd have left church - CNN.com](https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/28/obama.pastor/index.html)** > > Sen. Barack Obama says in an interview that aired on TV Friday that he would have left his church if his pastor had not retired and had not acknowledged making comments that "deeply offended people." That’s a story that just came out minutes ago; it’s yet more parsing (or invocation of caveats, if some prefer) on the subject. Now he’s saying he would have left the church if the pastor hadn’t retired and(/or?) if he hadn’t admitted that “he’d offended” people. Something he had never said before today that I’ve seen anywhere: a firm statement that he would have left the church if Wright stayed. This, of course, comes the week after his ‘typical white person’ remark. He is definitely getting the magnifying glass on this issue, but then HRC is certainly getting it on her Bosnia statement and the Obama camp surely have their magnifying glasses out ready for her tax returns and have been going on a campaign over the last 2 weeks implying she’s a ‘deeply flawed’ person in that she’d be a deeply flawed candidate. I’d say that counts as going negative (which HRC has of course already done). ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421/400 "2008-03-28T19:26:52Z")
From [Bill Maher](http://www.236.com/blog/w/bill_maher/new_rule_catholics_must_get_up_5510.php): > [@](#): > > When Barack Obama didn’t hear Reverend Wright say those awful things about America, he still should have rushed the stage, smite Reverend Wright with the cross, and left the church. If there’s anything the right wing can agree on, it’s that. And that gays are going hell, right after they suck them off in the airport bathroom. > > But it raises an obvious question, one that I haven’t heard asked, which is strange because it’s so obvious: If you leave a church when the head of the church says bad things about America, what do you do when your church hierarchy is caught up in a systematic and decades-long sex abuse scandal? And did I mention the people being sexually abused were children? Hundreds of them? > > How about when the head of that church, or Pope, associated with and promoted members of the clergy who not only facilitated the sexual abuse and rape of hundreds and hundreds of children, but engaged in a decades-long cover-up of those crimes? > > Reverend Wright associated with Farrakhan. The Pope works with Cardinal Law. Which is worse? Isn’t it the man who shuffled “priests” like Shanley and Geoghan and many others from parish to parish with the full knowledge of their crimes, and then claimed he had no idea? > > Yes, by Sean Hannity’s own logic, Catholics like him, en masse, would be expected to abandon their church. Which shouldn’t be a problem, because they worship Reagan anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vile-filthy-racist-remarks-by-obamas-pastor/441421.md?page=21)