Latest Political Bump In The Road Has Obama Seeing RedRACE!
With the "alleged" incediary comments by Rev J-Wright, brotha Barack was not getting a ghetto pass simply by rebuking his longtime pastor for uttering words that critics find unpatriotic and racist. On Tuesday, he will deliver what the campaign says is a “major” speech on “Race, politics and unifying our country in Philadelphia.”
Until his retirement last month, Wright headed Trinity United Church of Christ for more than 30 years, counting Obama among his parishioners for nearly 20 of them. Over the years, Wright officiated at Obama’s wedding, baptized his two children and provided the quote that became the title of the senator’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope.” When Obama declared his run for the presidency, he brought Wright on board as an unpaid adviser.
What some of Obama’s closest supporters say is that the senator didn’t quite realize (on the record) until more recently – after scores of news accounts – that Wright’s sermons trend toward the radical at times. Over the years, he has suggested Washington has led a plot to destroy African Americans, he has invited God to damn the country for its racist tendencies and he has intimated that the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington were perhaps warranted. These are not the associations Obama wants voters to ponder when they stand in the voting booth.
Obama already has taken some steps to distance himself from Wright. Last week, he said his former pastor’s statements were “inflammatory and appalling,” and compared Wright to a doddering old uncle whose antique views are outside of the mainstream. Obama has said he has never heard Wright utter such statements, either in church or in meetings.
But Obama’s condemnation of Wright’s statements have done little to take the edge of what has become a shrill debate on conservative talk radio shows and blogs, where pundits such as Rush Limbaugh have pilloried both men. To be sure, such attacks often fail to mention that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain had a similar uncomfortable brush with controversy when he gratefully accepted the recent endorsement of Texas televangelist James Hagee, best known by some by some for referring to the Roman Catholic church as “the great whore,” and a cult. “I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” McCain said, during a recent stop in heavily Catholic New Orleans.
Will Obama get a similar pass? The Illinois senator clearly hopes Tuesday’s speech will help. An aide said it is specifically tailored to address the mess wrought by Wright. [WSJ]