Obama Admits Learning of Some Rev. Wright Comments in Feb. 2007

April 18, 2008 | Allan J. Favish

[AJFavish]

Here is what Obama definetly knew about Rev. Wright in February of 2007 because it was published in Rolling Stone:

[begin excerpt] The Trinity United Church of Christ, the church that Barack Obama attends in Chicago, is at once vast and unprepossessing, a big structure a couple of blocks from the projects, in the long open sore of a ghetto on the city's far South Side. The church is a leftover vision from the Sixties of what a black nationalist future might look like. There's the testifying fervor of the black church, the Afrocentric Bible readings, even the odd dashiki. And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."

[end excerpt]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/1

At the April 16, 2008 debate Obama admitted he was aware of the Rolling Stone article when it was published in February 2007:

[begin excerpt]

GIBSON: Senator Obama, since you last debated, you made a significant speech in this building on the subject of race and your former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And you said subsequent to giving that speech that you never heard him say from the pulpit the kinds of things that so have offended people.

But more than a year ago, you rescinded the invitation to him to attend the event when you announced your candidacy. He was to give the invocation. And according to the reverend, I'm quoting him, you said to him: "You can get kind of rough in sermons. So, what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public." I'm quoting the reverend.

But what did you know about his statements that caused you to rescind that invitation? And if you knew he got rough in sermons, why did it take you more than a year to publicly disassociate yourself from his remarks?

OBAMA: Well, understand that I hadn't seen the remarks that ended up playing on YouTube repeatedly. This was a set of remarks that had been quoted in Rolling Stone magazine and we looked at them. And I thought that they would be a distraction, since he had just put them forward.

But, Charlie, I've discussed this extensively. Reverend Wright is somebody who made controversial statements, but they were not of the sort that we saw that offended so many Americans. And that's why I specifically said that these comments were objectionable. They're not comments that I believe in. And I disassociated myself with them.

And what I also said was the church and the body of Reverend Wright's work over the course of 30 years were not represented in those snippets that were shown on television and that the church has done outstanding work in ministries, on HIV/AIDS, prison ministries, providing people with the kind of comfort that we expect in our churches.

And so, what I think I tried to do in the speech here at the Constitution Center was speak to a broader context, which is that there is anger in the African-American community that sometimes gets expressed, whether in the barbershop or in the church. That's true not just in the African-American community. That's true in other communities, as well.

But what we have the opportunity to do is to move beyond it. And that's what I think my candidacy represents. And Senator Clinton mentioned earlier, that we have to connect with people. That's exactly what we've done throughout this campaign.

The reason we've attracted new people into the process, the reason we've generated so much excitement, the reason that we have been so successful in so many states across the country, bridging racial lines, bridging some of the old divisions, is because people recognize that, unless we do, then we're not going to be able to deliver on the promises that people hear every 4 years, every 8 years, every 12 years.

And it's my job in this campaign to try to move beyond some of those divisions, because when we are unified there is nothing that we cannot tackle.

[end excerpt]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/story?id=4670271&page=1

So in February 2007 Obama learned that Wright said: "We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" . . . . "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

Obama's reaction is not to leave Wright's church or denounce Wright, but to think that the comments "would be a distraction [from Obama's presidential campaign], since he had just put them forward."

Obama's problem with the comments was not their substance, but that they would distract from his campaign. Also, according to Obama, the comments were a distraction because Wright "had just put them forward". Obama did not say that the comments were a distriaction because of their substance. For Obama, the problem was Wright's timing, not his message.

[Right Wing Assault]

I didn’t know Michelle could smile!

It must be photoshopped!

[TightyRighty]

Where was she? She had her ghetto talk on! And “allathat”.

[Miss Didi]

Classy First Lady material...right? It was a stump speech...in the Mid West?

[N. Theknow]

Wow!

As far as being a classy lady, she is right up there with Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.

Just imagine her greeting Queen Elizabeth.

* sigh *

And now... because I must...or someone...somewhere...will question my post....

< /sarcasm >

[TightyRighty]

I wonder if she would talk like that while making a speech in San Fran, D.C. or some other big city. “Me and Barack” and her “allathats”. She says all of that while talking about how great the public education system is?

[Miss Didi]

Ever since the White House Easter Egg Hunt and now this week's Papal visit, I keep trying to imagine Barry and Michelle hosting such events...and my heart just sinks.

[Miss Didi]

RUSH: Here's Michelle Obama yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania talking about elitism.

MICHELLE OBAMA: There's a lot of people talking about elitism and all of that. But let me tell you who me and Barack are so that you are not confused. Yeah, I went to Princeton and Harvard. But the lens through which I see the world is the lens that I grew up with. I am the product of a working-class upbringing. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a working-class community. I want people to know when they look at me, to be clear that they see what an investment in public education can look like.

RUSH: Oh, come on, give me a break, Michelle (My Belle). For crying out loud, you're out there encouraging people not to do what you did! She's out there, she's talking to poor women in Ohio and in Pennsylvania telling them, like Reverend Wright tells them, to avoid middle-classness. And now she's out there trying to portray herself as the middle class. She's not elite, no. She's public education: Harvard, Princeton, wherever she went, $300,000 working at a hospital after her husband gets a gig in the Senate. These people are so phony, pure elitists. Does she sound a little angry there, by the way? I think she sounded a little angry. These Democrats, they're either fully enraged or they're just on the precipice of it. "But I want people to know when they look at me to be clear that they see what an investment in public education can look like." Is Princeton public education? It's not. She had student loans, of course, because they've been complaining about how long it took to pay them off. Anyway, this, again, a confusing message from a nearly angry Michelle (My Belle) Obama, saying look at me and see what an investment in public education can do, I'm just middle class, while she's telling everybody else not to do what she has done.

[wildbill]

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

[manc]

EXACTLY

and we suffer , maybe even suffer by our lives due to his appeasment and what I see is a lack of love for this great country

[manc]

correct

we cannot reply on the media though I will admit to my surprise ABC and Fox haven’t done too bad but MSNBC AND CNN,NBC

They really are second rate outfits

[Grampa Dave]

Hopefully some of this may get traction. I don’t have a lot of hope re Ayers. America and Chicago have forgotten that Ayers and his wife were admitted terrorists.