Words Not Heard
Obama was in the pews, along with Newsmax, last July when beloved old crazy uncle Rev. Jeremiah Wright laid into the “United States of White America.”
If Obama’s claims are true that he was completely unaware that Wright’s trademark preaching style at the Trinity United Church of Christ has targeted “white” America and Israel, he would have been one of the few people in Chicago to be so uninformed. Wright’s reputation for spewing hate is well known.
In fact, Obama was present in the South Side Chicago church on July 22 last year when Jim Davis, a freelance correspondent for Newsmax, attended services along with Obama. [See: ”Obama’s Church: Cauldron of Division.”]
In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the “United States of White America” and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement.
Addressing the Iraq war, Wright thundered, “Young African-American men” were “dying for nothing.” The “illegal war,” he shouted, was “based on Bush’s lies” and is being “fought for oil money.”
That’s funny. I thought Obama deplores divisive statements. Maybe Obama was dozing in church. Maybe he was hoping the old codger would change.
Hold everything. Obama denies being there. OK, but …
The Reverend Wright’s anti-white theology that Senator Obama expressed surprise over is evident on the church’s website. The site says the congregation subscribes to what it calls the Black Value System, which is described as a disavowal of “our racist competitive society” and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” That is defined as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”
“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,” Wright wrote in the church-affiliated magazine Trumpet four years after the attacks. “White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”
Never mind the divisiveness. I thought Obama loves the middle class … though in fairness I don’t believe “middle-classness” is exactly what he’s pursuing anymore.
Speaking of transcending middle-classness, what Wright tapes was he listening to for inspiration when he was at Harvard?
It’s important that we get to the bottom of this. This Obama quote suggests Obama considers religious discourse an important matter. We should talk about whether Wright and Obama are good Christians or not, whether the views are insular or being used to justify partisan ends:
There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse—when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome—others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
BARACK OBAMA, Audacity of Hope
Here, same link as above, Obama wants his religion and his personal morality in the public square. The question is exactly what that is:
Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
BARACK OBAMA, Jun. 28, 2006
But this Obama quote makes it sound like he’s strayed from the fundamental teachings of his church:
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there’s the United States of America.
Here’s one that seems relevant. Obama at SNL on Halloween, dressed as himself:
I have nothing to hide, I enjoy being myself. I’m not going to change who I am just because it’s Halloween.
OK, this fun could go on all day. My big question is when the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to get on the Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Wright and Barack Obama for being, you know, a hate group.
Here’s Gateway with Jeremiah Wright’s Greatest Hits.
Malkin with a lot of rocking B sides.
Topics: pols, racism, religion
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:39 am on Monday, March 17, 2008
12 Responses to “Words Not Heard”
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March 17th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Except that he wasn’t. How long will it take you to retract your post based on this inaccuracy? I’m not holding my breath.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Whatsamatter, can’t you read?
March 17th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Heh. I guess old Ralphie-boy here couldn’t be bothered to read past the first sentence.
Guess you never heard of airplanes, neither, hey there Ralphie-boy?
I noticed that Newsmax is still standing by the report, though they have softened on the exact date. They now say the author attended several sermons that month, and that Obama was there (along with Secret Service) for the one mentioned in the original report. I don’t think an exact date for the sermon in question was given in the original report.
So, we’ll see. This is going to look pretty weak on Obama’s part if it turned out he was in attendance at the sermon after all, regardless of the date. If so, I’m sure the confusion will be blamed on staff error. Pesky campaign staffs, always erroring and stuff, hanging up Che posters, and the like.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Apparently you are right, Mr. Crittenden. I apologize. And if you remember correctly, Mr. Bolger, I’m a bus driver.
The original NewsMax report said Obama was in the pews July 22. Now they say “Mr. Davis stands by his story that during one of the services he attended during the month of July, Senator Obama was present”. But that wasn’t the original story, was it? This guy is a credible reporter?
March 17th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Ralph’s late for a union meeting me thinks.
So that’s what its down to. The meaning of “is”. No doubt Obama slept in for a couple of sermon’s the last 17 years or so. Serendipitously he missed the hate America stemwinders. His good luck I suppose. Thanks to fair minded individuals like Mr. Kramden to keep us wingnuts straight.
What’s with Democrats now and this Jesus thing anyway? Is it OK if its Black Jesus? Or Hate America Jesus? I thought Jesus worship was the domain of anti-tax, homeschooling, gun owning, sister marrying, minority hating, pickup driving rednecks?
Four years ago veterans were all the rage on the Left (unless you were proud to have served of course), even thought they otherwise can’t stand the sight of ‘em.. This year its the Jesus brigade. Man they are tough to keep up with.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Barack was at a La Raza Convention in Miami on July 22 last year
i.e. with another group of rabble rousers. Maybe that was after church :-)
The claims of Black Liberation Theology have quite a bit in common with Radical Islam. God thinks this and God thinks that, and anybody not on board for that version of reality isn’t work spit. In BLT, Caucasians have no authenticity inside Christianity with the Black Jesus.
It would be difficult to believe that Barack hadn’t picked up the message over 20 years in the church.
Black Liberation Theology
March 17th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
NYT issued a retraction today. Obama was NOT in the pew on July 22:
“In this column, I cite a report that Sen. Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama campaign has provided information showing that Senator Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/opinion/17kristol.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Kristol had based his column on the Newsmax reporting. While it might be true that Obama was present for other curious sermons by the firebrand preacher, he wasn’t there on July 22.
On July 22 he was in Florida courting Latino voters (so much for Florida, so much for Latinos).
At this point, I don’t believe Newsmax should continue on the July 22 line and just say that Obama was at other homilies that were equally as goofy and be done with it.
In the future, Newsmax reporters should carry with them a high-tech device we term a “notebook,” and coordinate the date recorded with another gadget we call a “calendar.”
It will help avoid mistakes.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
“Black women are being raped daily in Darfur, Sudan, in the Congo and in Sub-Saharan Africa. That doesn’t make news,” Wright said in the August 2005 edition of Trumpet Magazine, a publication of his Trinity United Church of Christ.’
‘But, “One 18-year-old white girl from Alabama gets drunk on a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and ‘gives it up’ while in a foreign country, and that stays in the news for months!” he added. “Maybe I am missing something!”‘–Jeremiah “I hate Whitey” Wright
Wright is an ultra-rascist demagogue, and a liar to boot. The horrible events in the Sudan make the newspapers all the time because of the magnitude of the carnage there. Individual cases of rape in the Sudan don’t usually make the news, not because most people in the Sudan are black, but because the Sudan is a long ways from America…same thing for individual cases of rape in Norway, where most people are white.
Wright manages to find a place in his heart to despise, and publicly vilify a young American girl, whose only known offense is is that she has vanished and apparently been murdered, in order to justify his own obvious racism against Whitey.
Wright is, to put it bluntly, the scum of the earth. A racist sack of garbage, every bit as bad as David Duke.
And, Obama is one of Wright’s best pals.
Nobody could possibly miss all this, unless they deliberately have their eyes closed.
Nobody.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
“Black women are being raped daily in Darfur, Sudan, in the Congo and in Sub-Saharan Africa. That doesn’t make news,”
And since nothing short of the US Marine Corps is ever going to stop that, lets just shut up about it Reverend, because your friends on the left simply will not allow it.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
“Black women are being raped daily in Darfur, Sudan, in the Congo and in Sub-Saharan Africa. That doesn’t make news,”
This was happening largely at the hands of the Muslim janjaweed in the interests of making lighter skinned babies.
Did the good Reverend J make note of who was doing the raping ?
March 17th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I tried to link the video of Barack at a La Raza rally in Miami on July 22. 2007.
(maybe it will show up later)
Maybe he went down there after church that day :-)
La Raza identifies with the Hispanic world with the same exclusivity and intensity that Black Liberation Theology identifies with Africa.
So much for unity.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
“Unity is the great need of the hour — the great need of this hour,”–Obama
My ass. Keeping socialist scum who associate with America-hating racists from ever attaining political power is the great need of this hour, and every hour.
And, I’ll unify with you and your racist pal, Jeremiah Wright on the same day they start serving cool drinks in hell.
That means never.