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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The toxic Jeremiah Wright
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No question Jeremiah Wright is toxic. His view of America, as expressed in the National Press Club speech, is so vile that Barack Obama finally did something he could no longer avoid. He threw him under the bus, just as he’d done to his white grandmother last month in Philadelphia.
Said Obama Tuesday of Wright’s Monday morning press club speech:
“When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister [Louis] Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”
Obama’s sweeping denunciation of the crackpot uncle he’d protected in Philadelphia came after Wright hinted that Obama agreed with his bizarre and jaundiced views of America, but couldn’t acknowledge it right now. “If Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected,” said Wright Monday. “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.” Obama is, thus,in Wright’s mind, just another hack politician playing games. Toxic — especially to Obama’s candidacy.
One poll Tuesday shows Hillary is within 5 points of Obama in North Carolina, 44-49, and solidly in command in Indiana, both with primaries next Tuesday. If Obama manages to blow it in North Carolina, the pressure shifts to him to hang it up. Can’t win the big states and now momentum’s shifting to Hillary.
The real mystery is not why Obama finally felt compelled to act, but Wright himself. The guy must have an ego the size of California to continue a string of public appearances —- especially one before the press club — where he surely must know that he harms Obama’s chances of being elected President.
And even when Wright believes he’s sanitizing his message for a national audience, or at least presenting it in a way that gives context to the oft-rerun clips from previous sermons, the result is the press club speech that Obama denounced.
“What we saw yesterday out of Reverend Wright was a resurfacing and, I believe, an exploitation of those old divisions,” he said referring to “divisive politics of the past.” Continuing: ” Whatever his intentions, that was the result. It is antithetical to our campaign, it is antithetical to what I am about, it is not what I think America stands for, and I want to be very clear that moving forward Reverend Wright does not speak for me, he does not speak for our campaign. I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks, but what I do want him to be very clear about, as well as all of you and the American people, is that when I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I’m about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign’s about, I think will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.”
Is the Wright saga behind him? No. The question won’t go away. If the sanitized version prompted this outrage from Obama now, why did he sit in Wright’s congregation for 20 years?
And Wright. What could possibly lead him to do his dead-level best to destroy Obama’s candidacy. It’s either ego or the man really does so hate America that he’d work to prevent it from getting what he should see as the more enlightened leadership in the White House that could “change” the practices and policies he hates. Toxic.
