I’m getting fed up with the racism that is flying over the airwaves and online in response to The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and comments in recent days. I strongly, passionately, and vehemently encourage anyone who has questions about Rev. Wright to read this transcript (via Fox News) of his presentation and Q&A at the National Press Club. I found very little in his remarks to be objectionable.
And as for Obama . . . nice move, bucko, throwing your pastor under the bus. Whatever happened to your different kind of politics? Argh.
The Lutheran Zephyr 
Wright is a grown man, and needs to take some responsibility for what he says and does. He refuses, as far as I can tell, to do that; he insists it isn’t an attack on him – it’s an attack on the black church. In the next breath he says that nobody in America knows anything about the black church (something I happen to think is absolutely true). So which is it, then?
He also seems vastly confused about exactly what his role is. He keeps calling himself a “pastor” – but since when did pastors give press conferences like that one? He also seems to like to think of himself as a “prophet”; again, which is it? And since when did prophets endorse Presidential candidates? Anyway, a pastor is a shepherd; a prophet is something entirely different.
Obama got ticked off, I’m sure, when Wright slyly insinuated that he (Obama) really believed something other than what he was saying. Wouldn’t you get ticked off if somebody insinuated that about you?
Here’s a quote from Farrakhan, BTW, the “great mind”: “These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood. It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality, [and] Zionists have manipulated Bush and the American government [on the war in Iraq].” Here’s another: “Murder and lying comes easy for white people.”
You’re right that what Wright said in his prepared speech was really pretty good; it was the ad hoc Q&A stuff that Obama and others have problems with. It’s the open admiration for Farrakhan, and the crackpot AIDS theories. A person can say they believe in “reconciliation” and “racial equality” – but when they express admiration for someone like Louis Farrakhan, how should people understand that?
I’m sick of “pastor” Wright, to be honest. He looks like nothing so much as a self-absorbed publicity hound. It’s really too bad, too, because it sounds as if he and his church have done many very good things.
I haven’t read the comments yet, but the speech itself was excellent. Obama threw him overboard for that?
I read the transcript and I watched the presentation at the press club via C-Span. I agree with you that most of what Wright had to say seemed reasonable. Obama had no choice, however. As Wright said, Obama is a politician and has to do what a politician does. Obama wasn’t throwing anybody under a bus; Wright isn’t running for anything. Wright has every right to state his opinions, beliefs, reactions to the way he (and as he stated, the black church) was vilified by the sound bite mania. But speaking very personally, I wish that the pastor had taken on just a little bit of the politician and had thought through the possible consequences to the first candidate in my lifetime that actually makes sense to me.
I’m not so upset with the content of Rev. Wright’s speech as I am with the idea that he made it in the first place. Why is it so important to him to be in the limelight? Shouldn’t he be thinking about the effect that will have on someone who is supposedly dear to him, whose candidacy (and presidency) could have such an effect on so many lives if only he would gracefully step out of the way?
Why should Wright necessarily time his public comments to coincide with what would be helpful or hurtful for a political candidate?
Is that how the prophets would operate? Is that how Jesus, or Paul, or Martin Luther would operate?
Maybe–just maybe–Wright is trying to be more loyal to the gospel and to the church than he is to the political ambitions of one of his former friends.