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Wright in "Dreams of My Father" (Obama had to know)
NRO - The Corner ^ | March 14, 2008 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 03/14/2008 3:20:16 PM PDT by bahblahbah

Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we're getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign: 

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!” 

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…



TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: jeremiahwright; nobama; obama
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1 posted on 03/14/2008 3:20:18 PM PDT by bahblahbah
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To: bahblahbah

My library has both of Obama’s books and I have promised myself that I will read them IF he gets the nomination...one more reason for me to hope he doesn’t make the cut. :)


2 posted on 03/14/2008 3:26:13 PM PDT by goldfinch
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To: bahblahbah

Obama has been attending the equivalent to KKK rallies for the past 20 years.


3 posted on 03/14/2008 3:26:17 PM PDT by counterpunch (Kick McCain upstairs)
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To: bahblahbah

The man is a fool....black or white. He feeds off his followers and I would bet he retires with a large sum of money.....that he collected from his people.


4 posted on 03/14/2008 3:26:25 PM PDT by RC2
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To: bahblahbah
I have heard about all I need to hear from Mr. Wright. I have trouble calling him "reverend" because his message is opposed to the message of The Christ.

What I found very odd about Wright's statement about growing up black in a single parent home was that it was the senior Obama who abandoned his wife and child. Why not condemnation for that twit? Oh, yeah, I forgot, being black gives him a pass.

5 posted on 03/14/2008 3:27:39 PM PDT by MIchaelTArchangel
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To: RC2

This “pastor” already drives a Porche.


6 posted on 03/14/2008 3:27:54 PM PDT by roses of sharon (Who will be McCain's maverick?)
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To: bahblahbah

If Obama gets eliminated because of this current crisis, or for any other reason(s), it means Hildabeast is the nominee we have to face in November.

Is this better, or worse, for the GOP? IOW, who is the Dem more easier to beat, Clinton or Obama, and why? I’ve heard arguments on both sides. Any opinions on this?


7 posted on 03/14/2008 3:28:24 PM PDT by Signalman
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To: Bobkk47

Hillary is known and hated by half the nation.

Hussein is a stranger who has half the nation fainting at his speeches.


8 posted on 03/14/2008 3:30:49 PM PDT by roses of sharon (Who will be McCain's maverick?)
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To: counterpunch

Exactly!

The liberal media is going to have to work overtime to squelch this matter….

Obama’s position will have to be along the lines of:

I attended the Klan meetings regularly for 20 years

My wife and I were married in their clubhouse by the Grand Wizard

I have written glowingly of the Grand wizard in my book and appointed him to my current team

….But I am not a racist… and in no way approve of the Clan??????????


9 posted on 03/14/2008 3:31:04 PM PDT by DanielRedfoot ("Contrarianism" is Creativity for the Untalented)
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To: bahblahbah

go to The Corner - Lowry is all over this thing.


10 posted on 03/14/2008 3:31:17 PM PDT by Retired Greyhound
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To: bahblahbah
It never ceases to amaze me how many people at the top of their religious fields are actually insane.

I also don't understand why seemingly normal people follow these false prophets. It doesn't speak well to their judgement.

If your pastor spouts off hate toward another people then it's not a Christian religion. In this case, hate whites, Jews... And, the constant message that whites have done Blacks wrong --> Think Jim Jones... and what happened to all those people.

The Rev Jeremiah Wright needs to get off the cross --> somebody needs the wood...

11 posted on 03/14/2008 3:32:50 PM PDT by xtinct (I was the next door neighbor kid's imaginary friend.)
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To: xtinct
If your pastor spouts off hate toward another people then it's not a Christian religion.

You are absolutely right.

12 posted on 03/14/2008 3:45:56 PM PDT by Faith
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To: xtinct

I wonder how the good Reverend and his disciple think they would have fared if, without the bomb and drained by years of war, we had lost.

Perhaps they think the Japanese, as conquerors, would have ....just what...?


13 posted on 03/14/2008 3:51:38 PM PDT by From many - one.
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To: bahblahbah

The WSJ has one of Wright’s hate America, racist sermons listed on line.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1985856/posts

Wright and Obama: It Only Gets Worse
Confederate Yankee ^ | March 14, 2008 | Staff
Posted on 03/14/2008 3:15:38 PM PDT by jdm

The Wall Street Journal has published yet another damning sermon from Barack Obama’s retiring minister of two decades, Jeremiah Wright.

The displaced anger, bigotry, and hatred displayed is chilling:
“We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college,” he began. “Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”

Mr. Wright thundered on: “America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, “We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .”
Concluding, Mr. Wright said: “We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . .”

As the story of Wright’s forceful bigotry finally forced it’s way into the mainstream media yesterday at ABC News with the story Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11, the people Barack Obama has chosen to surround himself with has come under sharp focus.

From a self-isolated, self-pitying wife, to a bombastic, bigoted minister, to an unreformed terrorist, Barack Obama has surrounded himself with very questionable ideological company, associations from which he has no defense. He wasn’t forced to chose to spend time with this cadre of believers on the radical fringe, he embraced them willingly.
Predictably, as the media has come to focus on Obama’s two-decade relationship with Wright, Obama supporters have been quick to attempt to minimize the damage. Unable to do it with a forceful denunciation of Wright’s bigotry by Obama (Obama has only uttered the lamest of excuses), they have instead attempted to tar Republican candidate John McCain as being equally bad, for the support he has garnered from controversial evangelists Rod Parsley and John Hagee.

For those of you unfamiliar with these men, Parsley’s most famous controversial statements include calling Islam a “false religion” that must be destroyed, opposition same-sex marriage, partial-birth abortion, hate-crimes legislation, and the separation of church and state. Hagee has been ripped an an anti-Catholic bigot, stated that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God against New Orleans for the city’s “level of sin,” and for claiming that the Qur’an has “a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.”
There, of course, is a difference between John McCain’s political endorsements by Parsley and Hagee, and Barack Obama’s 20 years of willfully absorbing Wright’s hatred, a toxicity to which he has willfully exposed family.

I addressed this attempt to equivilate Obama and McCain in a comment to the ABC News blog story Obama camp: ‘Deplores divisive statements’, which featured yet another inflammatory speech by Wright.

My comment read:
I see that some are already attempting to trot out a comparative argument, that Wright’s offensive, bigoted, and paranoid rants are somehow lessened by invoking John McCain’s support from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, two prominent evangelists who have also made provocative statements.

But here is the huge gaping difference between these attempts: Barack Obama has spent the better part of the past 20 years of his life listening to, absorbing, and yes, agreeing with Wright’s sermons. If he did not agree with the bulk of those sermons, he would have of course left Trinity for another church—finding a church in Chicago that closely fits your own personal beliefs is not at all difficult, and Obama obviously agrees with Wright far more than he disagrees.

That Obama has spent 20 years listening to Wright, thought enough of him to use one of those sermons as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” that he was married by Wright, had both of his children baptized by Wright and brought up in this church, listening to these paranoid and racist rants that differ little in substance from the words of a much more famous racist, Louis Farakkan, means that Obama AGREES with Wright far more often than he disagrees with him.

From that, what are we to make of Obama? Actions, indeed, do speak louder than flaccid conciliatory words that have only just now been uttered.

I say again the obvious: no American would spend 20 years listening to a minister with which he vehemently disagreed.

McCain, by comparison, is guilty of pandering to Haggee and Parsley because of the (unfortunate) influence they have over a powerful voting demographic.

I can find scant evidence that McCain has sat though one sermon from Hagee or Parsley, much less 20 years of them.

Which is worse?

The politician that panders for votes, or the man who has listened to and internalized anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-white messages for 20 years before ever once publicly disagreeing with them, and who is raising his children in this same toxic environment?
Not only am I certain Barack Obama is unfit to run this nation, I now question his ability to raise his own children, for the hatred he has willingly exposed them to since their births.

Yes, I went there. Read again Wright’s rant in the WSJ article featured above, or some of his other hate speech (for that is what it is), and try to explain to me that a good parent exposes his children to an environment that exudes such naked anger, resentment, defeatism, and conspiratorial paranoia.

Perhaps some of you are comfortable having your children raised in such an environment, but I am not, and I do not think that someone who willingly exposes himself and his family to internalizing such vitriol for 20 years is the kind of person we need or want to lead this nation.


14 posted on 03/14/2008 3:57:24 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (Obama's Pastor, Jeremiah Wright: "God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11")
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To: roses of sharon

‘Hussein is a stranger who has half the nation fainting at his speeches.’

Watching some of Obama’s supporters, it occurred to me how easy it would be for some conservative wag in mole mode to lead a group of these historyless youths in singing an inspiring little ditty about hope for tomorrow entitled “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”.

For those unfamiliar with the song, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVql9RLP34#


15 posted on 03/14/2008 4:00:31 PM PDT by a_different_conservative
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To: bahblahbah

Obama’s toast.


16 posted on 03/14/2008 4:24:15 PM PDT by Captain Pike
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To: Bobkk47

If the Hildabeast gets the nomination for ANY reason, a significant portion of the black electorate (I estimate up to 30%) will either stay home, not vote for a presidential nomineee, or even vote for McCain. The DemocRATS CANNOT WIN a national election without 90% of their expected black turn out.

You simply have no idea as to the emotional investment that the black community has in an Obama presidency. It is post-rational.


17 posted on 03/14/2008 5:06:38 PM PDT by DMZFrank
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To: Captain Pike

>> Obama’s toast.

He sure is in a bad way, yes?

He can’t even really, thoroughly denounce the good Rev’rnds BS without pissing off his base, now can he?


18 posted on 03/14/2008 5:13:39 PM PDT by Nervous Tick (I'm not voting FOR John McCain -- I'm voting AGAINST Hillary/Obama)
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To: bahblahbah

You should send this to Hillary. Better for us all that she screw him.


19 posted on 03/14/2008 7:02:23 PM PDT by skiddle_deboppop
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To: bahblahbah

He has a quarrel with Sharpsville? He thinks the North should have surrendered at Antietam?


20 posted on 03/14/2008 7:51:36 PM PDT by scrabblehack
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