https://youtu.be/0sPeQ2mKRro
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright story just won’t die.
The North Carolina RNC last week released a Barack Obama attack ad featuring Wright’s legendary “God damn America” sermon. In addition to tearing down Barack Obama, who frequented Wright’s now infamous church, the commercial took aim at local Democratic Gubernatorial hopefuls. Well, now the pastor has found himself in yet another campaign commercial:
This new ad, like the last one, uses the Wright/Obama connection to attack a local Democrat. This time around, it’s House candidate Travis Childers of Mississippi, who, the ad notes, was “endorsed by liberal Barack Obama.”
“…when Obama’s pastor cursed America, blaming us for 9/11, Childers said nothing,” an announcer says in the spot. “When Obama ridiculed rural folks for clinging to guns and religion, Childers said nothing. Travis Childers – he took took Obama’s endorsement over our conservative values. Conservatives just can’t trust Travis Childers.”
Obviously the Republicans – the “religious party” – aren’t examining their own pastors very closely. Hey, DNC, why don’t you run an advert featuring John McCain’s unholy trinity: John Hagee, Rod Parsley and Dan Yeary?
Bob
Of course it’s not going to die! We’re going to see it over and over and over from now until election day.
Bitch Republic
As well it shouldn’t die. Obama is an asshat and so are his followers.
Tom
The reason you won’t see the DNC running ads like the RNC, where a person’s religion or comments/opinions made by their pastor are used is because, traditionally, democrats have not used social wedge issues to drive a campaign. Democrats have generally focused on real bread and butter issues, like education, economy, environment, equality, diplomacy, etc. That is until Hillary Clinton.
In my nearly 30 years of voting, I have never witnessed a democrat use mindless, emotional and irrational wedge issues such as guns and god to be a major theme in a campaign, especially to attack another democrat with such trivial nonsense. This is the reason why some people believe her strategy is doing damage to the party as a whole.
The use of wedge issues such as god and guns (and in the case of Obama, the subtle use of race) will not attract additional democratic votes. It only reinforces the already held bigoted and narrow-minded views of people who would agree with the “unholy trinity” of John Hagee, Rod Parsley and Dan Yeary?
Charley
It’s up to the superdelegates now. They probably will be persuaded by Clinton’s campaign that Obama is not electable due to the Rev. Wright Minstrel show.
Afroguapo
Charley,
Perhaps parsing the words, but Rev. Wright is far from a minstrel show (he’s actually quite a maverick — did you bother to watch the Bill Moyers interview). Rather the sad issue would be HRC’s invidious smear campaign to polarize voters (Tom’s thesis above, Clyburn NY article) in which some people allow themselves to be duped and manipulated (e.g., Michael Moore’s piece on Hillary using the F word for Farrakhan although irrelevant).
NYTIMES
April 29, 2008
Wright Says Criticism Is Attack on Black Church
By JOHN HOLUSHA
Attacks on him are really attacks on the black church, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. said in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, in which he mounted a spirited defense of views and sermons that have become an issue in the presidential campaign because Senator Barack Obama attended his church for many years.
Mr. Wright told the press club audience that the black church in America grew out of the oppression of black people, and that his sermons reflected that struggle.
Snippets from his sermons have been used in Republican commercials seeking to depict Senator Obama as unpatriotic, and the Democratic presidential candidate has given a carefully calibrated speech seeking to distance himself from Mr. Wright’s more inflammatory statements.
Speaking Monday, Mr. Wright said that political opponents of Senator Obama were exploiting the fact that the style of prayer and preaching in black churches was different from European church traditions — “Different, but not deficient,†he said.
In questions and answers after his prepared remarks, Mr. Wright bristled when it was suggested that some of his past statements seemed unpatriotic. He served six years in the military, he declared, adding a jibe at the vice president, “How many years did Cheney serve?â€
He rejected suggestions that his willingness to associate with Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, meant that he was anti-Semitic. He said Mr. Farrakhan was “not my enemy†and was too important a black leader to be ignored. When Mr. Farrakhan speaks, he said, “all black America listens — whether they agree with him or not, they listen.â€
Historically, he said, when black people were prohibited from meeting in groups, they did so anyway “out of the eyesight and earshot of those who defined them as less than human.â€
The result was that black churches, which have existed in America since the 1600s, were “invisible to the dominant culture.†Because of slavery and racial discrimination, he said, black churches focused on the themes of liberation and transformation.
“The black church’s role in the fight for equality and justice from the 1700s to 2008 has always had as its core the non-negotiable doctrine of reconciliation, children of God repenting for past sins against each other,†he said.
As a result of this background and the unfamiliarity of many white people with black preaching, he said, some might find his sermons unsettling. He also noted that the widely circulated clips of his remarks were only short snippets lifted out of the context of much longer, closely reasoned arguments.
“We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice,†he said. “And we recognize that for the first time in modern history, in the West, that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles and different dance moves; that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are.â€
Asked about remarks that some critics have called unpatriotic, Rev. Wright noted that men and women from his Chicago congregation had fought in all the country’s recent wars, “while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service.â€
Charley
Afrogrupo
Yes, I saw the Bill Moyer interview. It’s all about Wright, and not about the good things his church has done. He should have taken Moyer around to see the work of his church with AIDS, education, the poor, ect. Wright is an egotistical fool, and owes Obama an apology for screwing up his compaign.
He is competing with Obama, saying he is a “holy man” not political, but everything he comes out with is political.
Wright is trying to promote himself, his book, and he said he would want to be Vice President.
He should shut up. He has done enough damage to Obama and is stiring up the African American Jesus people.
Leland Frances
Thank you, Charley. You hit Rev. Wrong’s huge ego on its pointed head! In his weekend whirlwind on the Moyers’ show, at the NAACP gala, and the National Press Club, he is HELPING the Repugs by keeping the anger those clips generated in the news NATIONALLY. The only reason they have to be pissed is that they paid for the NC and MI commercials when he’s doing their dirty work for them for free.
Add to that his SHAMELESS, DISHONEST, DISINGENOUS defense of his decades long FRIENDSHIP with Louis “Hitler was a great man/the white man is the devil/Jews are promoting homosexuality” Farrakhan. Reverend: you do not counteract such antiSemitic, racist, homohating views by giving Farrakhan the “Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award” for lifetime achievement. Nor by calling such a bigot, “an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.” Nor by praising Farrakhan’s “depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation,” and “his integrity and honesty.”
SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn-ipVJcq1U
And, now, Rev. Wrong is blaming all the criticism of him on racism? In what candidate for President from Illinois’ campaign have we heard that excuse before?
Bill Perdue
Tom, when you say “democrats have not used social wedge issues to drive a campaign” you’re dead wrong. They do it quite often, as when Hillary Clinton makes repeated appearances on Pat Robertson’s misinformation outlet CBN to court bigot votes and when Obama hops into bed with gaybashers like Reverend Donnie and Mary Mary.
In 1996, in fear of losing because of his union busting support for NAFTA, Bill Clinton and the Democrats enthusiastically sponsored and voted for the bigot law DOMA. (It’s simply a lie to say they did it to stymie even worse laws – no Constitutional DOMA was submitted for several years.) They did because it was popular with bigots and they, especially Clinton, needed the bigot vote.
This wasn’t the first betrayal by Clinton and the Democrats. Clinton’s appointed known gay bashers to the US Circuit Court. When a fellow Dixiecrat bigot Georgia Democratic (sic) Senator Sam Nunn (now an Obama advisor) presented Clinton with another gaybashing law, DADT, he cheerfully signed it. Then we got the worst stab in the back, DOMA. And then it got, as it usually does with rightwing Republicans and sellout Democrats, even worse.
What came next was worse and very revealing about the nature of the Democratic Party. Immediately after signing the bigot law DOMA and with just weeks before the ’96 Presidential elections, Clinton hustled his Dixiecrat ass down to Dixie and bought time on southern religious stations owned by vermin like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. After so many stabs in the back Clinton then rubbed salt in them. In his official campaign ads Clinton’s voice was heard bragging about his signature on DOMA and boasting of his efforts to protect the “sanctity†of marriage. (This was before Monicagate and his “Believe me, I’d never lie, we didn’t have sex†relationship with her.)
So you see Tom, Democrats do use “social wedge issues†and like their Republicans cousins they’re most often aimed at us.
Leland Frances
At the National Press Club today, “[Wright] stood by his suggestion that the U.S. invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. ‘Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything’, he said.” – Associated Press
Further proof Rev. Wrong is a willfully stupid, willfully irresponsible man. Research shows that perpetuating such conspiracy theories actually contributes to the AIDS epidemic among African-Americans, as well as their disproportionate trust in doctors generally.
Further “the Tuskegee experiment” gets its name from the fact that the all-black Tuskegee Institute [founded by Booker T. Washington]. knowing fully the dishonesty it entailed, opened its doors and hospital to the study. Many black doctors participated in it, and the single person associated with it for its entire multi-decade history was a black female nurse, totally involved in perpetuating the lies its untreated patients with syphilis were told.
All of them were as guilty of the abuse of its black subjects as any Caucasian—a historical fact conveniently ignored by pious professional promoters of black victimology like Rev. Wrong. In fact, when a white epidemiologist tried to get the study stopped, the black equivalent of the American Medical Association objected. It was finally only terminated when he went to the press.
YankeeGirl
Leland Frances, you need to get over whatever issues you are having. If anything your comments validate some of the shit Wright said. Move the fuck on!
Leland Frances
Blow it out your ass, YankeeChurl.
Mr C
All of this so sad. And you talk about racism. The South will never change and if your mind is closed to certain things then you will not want to understand Rev Wright. But you love John Hagee, Pat Robertson. Rod Parsely. They’re such fine men of the cloth who have DAMNED this LGBTQ community at least Rev Wright has shown compassion to this community and has affirmed them. But then again I guess some of you are saying “Well who asked him to� Talk about Bias.
Some of you getting mad at him about 911. Why aren’t any of you so seriously angry at Hagee for his statements about 911 and Katrina? And Rod Parsley for his horrific casting the gay community to HELL, And Pat Robertson for God was going to destroy America because of sin. Oh no that’s cool they’re white and he understands……funny isn’t it?
People need to really look deep down inside and just ask “Why do I Feel this way�
Now I don’t think this is the time that Rev Wright should be speaking but he has chosen to and so be it. Unfortunately the only thing this is doing is scaring white America from voting for Barack Obama because of closed minds and it may work in favor for your beloved Hillary Clinton.
The super delegates may be feared and overturn it and give it to her. Then all the gays that are supporting Hillary will be glad. She has won the Battle.
Now time for the war. What the FUCK can she come and say to disenfranchised Black voters who will not be very happy and regardless of this shit about only being between 10 and 14 % of the voting block…TRUST TO A DEMOCRAT that’s a lot. And come Nov 4 she will know “2 can play that gameâ€.
So at this point I digress and wait until the super delegates makes up their mind. Because either way it’s LOSS for this party.
Welcome John McCain and lay fire on these queens that would rather be annihilated by your policies and your preachers. I am Gay, Black and proud. But this is going to be so exciting to see people eat their words because of their pride and you deserve it!
None of you are still not getting the BIG picture AT ALL.
Mr C
But I must say this Leland if you’re African American. That is SUCH A PITY.
Because you never answer my question about who you are? I have asked you on many occasions on here.
Has any Blacks inspired you? With folks like you any racist person that is against Blacks can sit back and let you speak for them.
WOW!
Charley
Mr C
I can’t understand the reason you are sticking up for Wright. He does not represent the African American Church. He is a small branch of the United Church of Christ, a predominately white Christian cult.
Wright says he is a friend of Farrakhan. Farrakhan did not welcome you “Gay, Black and proud” at his Million man march. The Nation of Islam would kill you for being gay if they had a chance.
Obama is your hope, and you are sticking up for an egomaniacal afrocentric joker who is destroying his chances.
Your words don’t make sense to me. Hagee apologized by the way for his statements about New Orleans.
Mr C
I don’t tell you how to feel about John Hagee so don’t tell me how to feel about Jeremiah Wright.
And speaking of being killed for being Gay.
Every church I know ran by WHITES DEMONIZES GAYS and your point is????
Oh and by the way Charley you said: Obama is your hope, and you are sticking up for an egomaniacal afro centric joker who is destroying his chances.
Your words don’t make sense to me
He is not my hope. He is only the candidate who I choose to support. However if he doesn’t win so be it! I will not vote at all come Nov.
I will not support Hillary Clinton. You all act like things in America is fucking fair and balanced. If it was then why the fuck America shits on its Gay Population??????
Stop talking out the side of your mouth and keep it real. I don’t care how many Blacks you worked with, kissed and or fucked, you’re not them and don’t understand the struggle even in today’s society. Yes in our communities we have issues just like Caucasians…i.e. Warren Jeffs and his polymorous crazies. I didn’t see anyone Black in that sect.
Mr C
REPEAT,
Charley,
You are lying. Last week John Hagee stood affirm about New Orleans and NEVER APOLOGIZED and said he would not!
The bottom line is this SOME white folks are angry and looking for a reason to not vote for Barack Obama.
LISTEN UP! If Jeremiah Wright is that much a grudge to you then DON’T VOTE FOR OBAMA.
According to the Greenville News:
The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C.
Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.
It reads: “Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?”
HMMMMMMMMMMM But that is okay, right? I’m sick and tired of mutherfuckers getting angry at Blacks discussing things that have happened in this country and expect Blacks to forget about it? Why? Do you tell Jewish Americans to forget about Anne Frank and the Holocaust HELL NO and you won’t!
Because if this was a White candidate and their Pastor did this. There would not be all this uproar about this shit.
Same here with the gays some of you on both sides exposing all types of feelings for whatever reason..
Mr C
I don’t tell you how to feel about John Hagee so don’t tell me how to feel about Jeremiah Wright.
And speaking of being killed for being Gay.
Every church I know ran by WHITES DEMONIZES GAYS and your point is????
Oh and by the way Charley you said: Obama is your hope, and you are sticking up for an egomaniacal afro centric joker who is destroying his chances.
Your words don’t make sense to me
He is not my hope. He is only the candidate who I choose to support. However if he doesn’t win so be it! I will not vote at all come Nov.
I will not support Hillary Clinton. You all act like things in America is fucking fair and balanced. If it was then why the fuck America shits on its Gay Population??????
Stop talking out the side of your mouth and keep it real. I don’t care how many Blacks you worked with, kissed and or fucked, you’re not them and don’t understand the struggle even in today’s society. Yes in our communities we have issues just like Caucasians…i.e. Warren Jeffs and his polymorous crazies. I didn’t see anyone Black in that sect.
No one is better than the other. But when you seem to think so that is what brings supreme feelings (SUPREMACY). Exposing our dirt while covering up your own. No one is better than no one. And once we all can seriously understand that maybe some real
Mr C
dialogue can occur.