Posted on 03/29/2008 4:29:21 PM PDT by george76
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obamas presidential announcement.
After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obamas decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaigns apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wrights teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
Mr. Wrights church, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, is considered mainstream Oprah Winfrey has attended services...
Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington ...
In Mondays interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.
When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell. ...
Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what weve decided is that its best for you not to be out there in public.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oops.
” Obama said he didn’t know about those things until they were recently reported in the press...”
It’s an expression which would generally be taken (by a Jewish audience at least) to mean “at the very last minute” — either figuratively or literally.
It MAY have been used by the Rev. Wright because of the perceived ethnicity of the reporter and/or the fact that it WAS (we are told by others) Friday evening and, inasmuch as he was at an interfaith event, he MIGHT have been in a place where he could not have conveniently or appropriately received a telephone call during the Jewish Sabbath (”Shabbos”). (Sabbath-observant Jews do not use telephones from Friday before sundown until well after sunset Saturday night, and their guests would, if polite, follow that custom if in their home or in a synagogue or similar building.) In such a situation, the Rev. Wright might remember the conversation with such associations because of a need to finish up the call and make additional arrangments quickly before the telephone became off-limits, or perhaps before services started or dinner was served, etc.
What expression is that?
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