Barack Obama's Preacher Speaks
By Erick Posted in 2008 — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
No, no . . . not the softball interview from Bill Moyers. This is Reverend Wright fresh this morning at the National Press Club. It should be fun.
I'll be watching it.
By the way, I noticed that Obama told Chris Wallace that Wright was his "former" pastor. Who is Obama's current pastor? Or has he decided to get with the liberal program and go un-churched. I mean, it's not like he was actually going to church with Wright or else he surely would have heard enough stuff to realize his spiritual advisor is nuts.
UPDATE: Reverend Wright, by the way, says he is not running for the White House, he's running "for Jesus." That must be the black Jesus who was killed by the Romans, who were Italians, who were Europeans, who were white people, not actually the Jewish guy Reverend Wright's friends Calypso Louis Farrakhan and Moammar Kadafi would denounce for being a Jew.
My review of the speech is below the fold . . .
He's all about the "African American religious experience" and as he jokes "the unknown phenomenon of the black church." They laugh.
He's making the case that the black church has been around in this land since the 1600's, but is largely invisible. It is, mind you, the "black religious experience," and not the "black Christian religious experience."
Wright is largely, right now, going through the bullet points on the black church experience in its historic context.
Now, here we go: Reverend Wright calls what happened to him "the most recent attack on the Black Church." It did not happen to "Jeremiah Wright," he says, but the black church. Good grief. This guy really is incapable of taking personal blame. Now I know where Obama gets it from.
Wright also says, basically, that some of us are too ignorant to know what he's talking about because it takes years of education.
Now he's talking about imperialism and the upper classes and liberation theology formed in the sixties, mostly from South America. Wright says he doesn't like to use the phrase "black liberation theology," though he agrees with what it means. He says he calls it the "prophetic theology of the black church." He says he's suppose to say what he says based on scripture.
To sum up where we are now: black preaching and black culture are no deficient, they are just different. He says black preaching is not bombastic, just different.
After a long while, Rev. Wright points out that his congregation supported the communists in Latin America while "Ollie North was supporting the contras." Just great.
Now he says his congregation feeds the poor while the government cuts food stamps and fights an unjust war.
Then he plays the chicken hawk card saying people who are calling him unpatriotic are using their privilege to keep their kids out of war while his goddaughter is in Iraq.
Now he's playing the race card highlighting the discrepancy between black men going to jail with crack cocaine versus white men going to jail for powder cocaine.
He has shifted now to "prophetic black theology" requires reconciliation. He quotes lefty Jim Wallis.
He moves back to white versus black. That pretty much defines him. He says we need to recognize differences and that differences do not make us deficient. Yet I go back to his statements that the U.S. invented AIDS and God D**n America. He's nutty.
Now he asked to explain the whole "U.S. brought 9/11 on itself." He says he was quoting the Iraqi ambassador, but that you cannot do terrorism unto others without terrorism being done to you.
He says he served six years in the military. "Does that make me unpatriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?"
He's hurting himself in the questions. He says Louis Farrakhan is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries. He also pretty much signals him agreement with Mandela that Castro is not an enemy.
Wright says he says what he says because he is a preacher. Obama says what he says to get elected President. Wright implies pretty directly that Obama is saying what he's saying because otherwise he could never get elected.
He says the government "grinds under people." He says he is not condemning the American people, but the government. He says he told Obama that if Obama got elected he'd be coming after him too. He says this country's leaders have refused to apologize for slavery.
Wright says Obama has not distanced himself from Wright, but only did what he had to do in the media. He also says Obama never heard that particular sermon.
Wright strongly implies that Obama is not a regular church goer. Now he goes on about HIV. He says he read a number of books and after the Tuskegee experiments, he believes the government is capable of anything. "Yes, I believe we are capable."
On Israel, he says Israel and Israelis have a right to exist and they need to reconcile themselves to each other and their neighbors.
He stands by his comparison of the Roman Army and the Marines as forms of imperialism. He also says white Christians need to understand their history when they "raped the continent."
He totally, totally dodges the question of whether Islam is a path to salvation. His answer implies that it is.
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Barack Obama's Preacher Speaks 18 Comments (0 topical, 18 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Average white Americans keep hearing that:
- they need to accept Wright because whites just don't understand how it is
- Wright is getting thousands of black audience members erupting in applause
- 90-something percent of blacks will vote for Obama
- they should vote for Obama the uniter too
I have a hard time seeing how this strategy wins back Reagan Democrats.
I presume this refers to the fact that he retired. Trinity has a new pastor at this point and my understanding is that Sen. Obama is still a member there.
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From what I understand, Wright is still pastor for a few more months, then they get a new one.
"I ain't never votin' fo another Democrat so long as I can draw breath! I'll vote for a dog first!" - Leola Thomas
has at least preached once already - at the easter service. He had some BS about how the showcasing of Wright's messages were akin to crucifixion, etc.
Fred Thompson, 2008
is the new pastor at Trinity (or OM3, as he sometimes calls himself), though he's been on staff - - in waiting - - for a year or two. His father, Otis Moss, Jr, was (perhaps still is a long-standing preacher at a black church in Cleveland). Moss, Jr, was close friend with MLK, and I believe was married by him, so the roots are pretty deep in that storied tradition.
I've seen OM3 preach at least 10 times. He has great skill and charisma, and orthodox Christians should find nothing in his message not to like. While I'm a a loyal Red-state reader and supporter of most of its positions, I must finally say that I do think Trinity had been unfairly maligned. In my judgment, it preaches the Gospel faithfully, encourages the AA community to build itself up, and does a lot of uplifting and positive work for the City of Chicago.
I've never seen Dr. Wright preach, but it is clear that he enjoys overwhelming support from the congregants at Trinity.
There are plenty of things to disagree with Sen. Obama on -- ranging from his economic policies to the war/foreign policy to social issues. I was originally a Mitt supporter, and didn't like it when his Mormon faith became a recurring issue in the GOP primary. I don't especially like it any better that Obama's church is "fair game".
Just one man's opinion.
Kenilworth, IL
comparing the Wright saga (treatment of Rev Wrgiht) to lynching blacks just fine and acceptable.....? This was in a speech by Otis shorlty after the story broke.....
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
Antonio Gramsci:
“It was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a “counter-hegemony” (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered. Moreover, because hegemonic values permeate all spheres of civil society — schools, churches, the media, voluntary associations — civil society itself, is the great battleground in the struggle for hegemony, the “war of position.” — all life is “political.” Thus, private life, the work place, religion, philosophy, art, and literature, and civil society, in general, are contested battlegrounds in the struggle to achieve societal transformation.”
John Fonte:
“The primary resistance to the advance of cultural Marxism in the USA comes from an opposing quarter, “contemporary Tocquevillianism. Its representatives take Alexis de Tocqueville’s essentially empirical description of American exceptionalism and celebrate the traits of this exceptionalism as normative values to be embraced. Americans are much more individualistic, religious, and patriotic than the people of any other comparably advanced nation. Unlike other modernists, Americans combined strong religious and patriotic beliefs with dynamic, restless entrepreneurial energy that emphasized equality of individual opportunity and eschewed hierarchical and ascriptive group affiliations.”
“Tocquevillians and Gramscians clash on almost everything that matters. Tocquevillians believe that there are objective moral truths applicable to all people at all times. Gramscians believe that moral ‘truths’ are subjective and depend upon historical circumstances. Tocquevillians believe in personal responsibility. Gramscians believe that ‘the personal is political.’ In the final analysis, Tocquevillians favor the transmission of the American regime; Gramscians, its transformation.”
James Cone:
"Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."
"Together, black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."
You're a persistent cuss, pilgrim. John Wayne to James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
A society that I suspect not even its proponents would want to live in --- except of course that they plan to be "a little more equal than others."
John
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Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the w
Because that's exactly what he and his ilk are driving us towards. Boy will they be upset if they ever get it.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
a Roman soldier couldn't reliably kill a man at 1/4 mile, or be transported halfway across the globe in under 24 hours. Rome had no air force that could establish air supremacy and then establish a kill zone for anything that moved inside of it. They didn't have nukes so they could blow up the world if they wanted to.
Yes the mores about what one person could do to another, based solely on position in society would be the same, and we could expect the same sorts of treachery that was rife within the Roman Empire after Augustus. And the wholesale enslavement of people based on race (perhaps this time blacks over whites, but then again probably not, more likely some whites over the rest of whites and all blacks) would once again rear its ugly head. But it would be a whole new world, because so few people can cause so much more damage in so short a time. The magnitude changes it completely.
The Rev. Wright's speech ... was like a bad stand-up routine. It was every hack comic who resorts to, white people do it like this, but
Shecky Wright even resorted to mocking the way white people dance and did the standard nerdy white voice. This is Obama's spiritual mentor?! Who else does Obama turn to for spiritual guidance, Martin Lawrence?
Sure, it bothers me that Obama's mentor is clearly a racist and an America-hater. But if he's gonna be racist, at least find some new material. Entertain me! Stop stealing old Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor material.
I want the dear Rev. Wright to use his oratorical gifts to discover new and exciting ways to be racist! I have faith in him. I believe Rev. Wright can create entirely new ways of racially mocking white people.
Wright's resorting to hackneyed racial cliches shows us the problem -- no innovation in our racism! We've been stuck with the same nerdy-white-guy voice for over 30 years. We don't drive the same cars from the 70s, and we shouldn't have the same racism. We need new and better racism!
I believe Obama, with the loving, bigoted help of Rev. Wright, is just the man to unveil to the world this new racism. A 21st century racism. A racism of hope and change. A racism of progress.
Obama will launch a new Manhattan Project of racism. He will put racism on the moon within ten years. He will invent forms of racism we can only dream about now.
Some say it can't be done. I say it can. I say it must. Right now the Chinese are secretly building new racism technologies. We must act now to prevent a racism-gap. Obama is the right racist at the right time. Only Obama has the true heart of a racist to lead the way.
I believe in the Obama because his racism is pure and clean and bright and healing. I believe in a racism of love. I believe in the Obama.
...right about now. I honestly think those two have done more for her candidacy against Obama than almost anyone else. The MSM picked up on Rev Wright mostly because it was pushed by the conservative/alternative media, and it got widespread play on Rush and Hannity's respective shows.
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”
For actually sitting through the spectacle and reporting back to us. I doubt I could have done it. I even flipped right by the segment Fox was doing yesterday because I've already had my fill of the idiot.
or is it an inside joke I'm not aware of?
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.”
-Ronald Reagan