can’t watch H&C
kids watching a movie...
PC bound...
please keep me informed...I hear Sean has done his somework on this issue and should be able to skewer Barry....
Obama issues statement repudiating Wright, may appear on Hannity & Colmes; Update: Wright leaves Obama’s campaign; Update: “You can get kind of rough in the sermons”posted at 5:34 pm on March 14, 2008 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend | printer-friendly Not sure about the H&C rumor but DU looks to have picked it up from Hannity’s radio show. Gateway Pundit says Major Garrett’s going to do the interview, which makes me wonder when it’ll be on. I’ll update once I know.
Here’s his statement, posted appropriately enough at HuffPo. A three-pronged defense: (a) he didn’t know, (b) he condemns what Wright said without reservation, and (c) the guy’s retiring anyway.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue…
Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
That’s a nice, lawyerly dodge. Is he suggesting that in 20 years’ time he never heard Wright say anything along these lines? Or is he merely suggesting that he was never personally in attendance when Wright said it, as if that would matter remotely to his decision to stay with the church once he heard about it secondhand? Note how he limits the scope of the matter, too, to only the statements Fox and ABC discovered in going through tapes of Wright’s sermons. That’s not the issue; the issue is whether Wright has a habit of spitting poison like this and whether Obama was happy enough to let him do it so long as there weren’t political consequences. If the media starts going through old sermons week by week, with new and ever more nuanced conspiracy theories emerging periodically, is he going to roll out weekly statements to the effect of, “Nope, never personally heard him say that, or that, or that either”?
Oh, and is he saying that he would have quit the church over this rhetoric if not for the fact that Wright was retiring? The media’s task is simple, then: Go through his old sermons systematically, pick out the ones that were especially, ahem, “fiery,” and check them against Obama’s old schedules to see if he was there. Or, failing that, interview some parishioners and find the earliest sermon you can where Wright said something nutty so that we have some gauge of just how recent this purportedly recent habit of crackpot remarks is. Who wants to hold their breath with me?
Update: Johnny Dollar says in the comments that the Major Garrett interview will be on H&C and Greta, in separate parts. We’ll have video later, I’m sure.
Update: Like Geraghty, I question the timing
Ridin Dirty :)...new video posted today