Can’t get it Wright

By David Limbaugh
The Washington Times
May 2, 2008

When it comes to the connection between Barack Obama and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — or to John McCain’s various positions on whether criticizing Obama for his relationship with Mr. Wright is fair game — my head is spinning.

At first, the Obama defenders said Jeremiah Wright doesn’t speak for Mr. Obama. Not only have Mr. Obama’s ill-wishers taken Mr. Wright’s statements out of context but they have unfairly imputed those statements to Mr. Obama.

Next, we witnessed the beginning of the Jeremiah Wright rehabilitation tour. He appeared on Bill Moyers’ show, endeavoring to present himself as a calm, reasonable person whose statements had been twisted against him.

Then he spoke at the Detroit NAACP dinner. Forgive me if I have a different take than most Wright critics, but I read the transcript of the Detroit speech in its entirety and did not detect too much, if any, incendiary language. Mr. Wright presented a rather innocuous talk about the differences in human beings and how our differences do not mean certain groups are deficient — “just different.” His theme seemed to be that we should strive to overlook people’s differences and work toward reconciliation because we are all made in God’s image. Bravo. Who could object to that?

That theme, which was fine as far as it went, continued in his National Press Club speech the next morning. But alas, he couldn’t help dipping his foot a little further into the waters of controversy.

He touched on black liberation theology, revealing, inadvertently or not, that his religious views are formed through a racially tinted prism. He strategically characterized the recent scrutiny of his sermons as “not an attack on Jeremiah Wright,” but “an attack on the black church.” He huffed that his congregation has sent dozens of kids to fight in this nation’s wars, while those who have called him unpatriotic sent “4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.

But these subjects were tame compared to his responses to the moderator’s questions following the speech, where Mr. Wright reverted — full bore — to the offensive themes to which we’ve been exposed recently.

In so doing, he undid the undoing of the damage he tried to undo with his two “reconciliation” speeches. In front of a large audience, he fatally undermined his recent protest that Mr. Obama’s opponents have taken his sermon utterances grossly out of context.

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080502/
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Wright-Obama Controversey Shows Divide of Black Churches

By ERIC GORSKI, AP Religion Writer 

Sen. Barack Obama’s break with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is putting black pastors and their congregations in a difficult position, their loyalties divided between a politician who could be the first black president and a celebrated preacher who many believe has been vilified.
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The situation is complicated, ministers say, because there’s a sense that both men have been treated unfairly — and that both have made mistakes.

Many black ministers defended Wright when his mo e incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in March, saying context was needed to understand the black church’s tradition of challenging injustice.

But Wright lost some of that support after his Monday appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, during which he claimed the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm’s length while privately agreeing with him.

The performance was enough for Obama to denounce Wright’s comments as “divisive and destructive.” That was just six weeks after he portrayed Wright, in a well-received speech on race, as a family member he couldn’t disown.

“What I am disappointed in is Rev. Wright’s continuing to be in the public eye,” said Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, senior pastor of 6,500-member Greater Grace Temple in Detroit. “If he has a point to get across, make your point. We as ministers have to be very careful about our timing.”

Another pastor in Detroit — where Wright received a standing ovation Sunday at a dinner for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — directed his anger at the Democratic senator….

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080502/ap_on_el_pr/obama_wright_3

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