Wright warning signals were there–why didn’t Obama prepare?
by WonkoKevin
In the NBA playoffs this week my beloved Phoenix Suns lost to the hated San Antonio Spurs in part because the Spurs employed the “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy so successfully. Shaq was sent to the line again and again and couldn’t put in his free throws. Coach Mike D’Antoni almost appeared surprised, not knowing whether to leave Shaq in the game or not at the end of quarters. Yet, why should anyone be surprised? Hack-a-Shaq has existed for over a decade. The Suns and their fans blamed the Spurs for using a “non-competitive” (but legal) tactic, much in the same way that Obama supporters have claimed “foul” over the Reverend Wright issue. But isn’t it a matter of preparation? If you know it’s coming, don’t you prepare for the risk? Obama’s campaign, now in free fall due to Wright’s most recent comments, surely was aware of the Wright problem early on. Why didn’t they take action before it exploded? If Obama’s campaign says anything about Politics 2.0, it’s that you should listen to ALL the negative buzz and come up with defensive strategies, because you have to react quick when they emerge. Let’s take a look at the early warning sings of the Wright problem:
1-10-2007, This and That
“Obama’s pastor of the last 20 years has been the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. This church is very liberal, focused on welcoming gays and taking progressive positions on many social issues. Apparently Barack Obama has been listening well on Sunday Mornings….The Reverend Wright also tends to unapologetically dish out insults. In one interview, Wright called those of us who voted for Geroge Bush “stupid.”
“3-6-2007, New York Times
“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 Obama’s 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 Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation. “Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers. Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites. Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.”
3-21-2007, Assata Shakur Forums
“At a recent Sunday service, following media coverage of Obama’s last-minute decision not to have Wright speak at the senator’s presidential announcement last month, Wright warned his flock not to believe any reports of a rift between him and the church’s best-known member. “Barack and I are fine,” Wright, 65, on an out-of-state trip, said in a recorded message played to about 2,000 attendees. “The press is not to be trusted. … Don’t let somebody outside our camp divide us.” The erudite if blunt-speaking pastor also said Obama had apologized for withdrawing the invitation to speak at the Feb. 10 announcement in Springfield. Obama had taken “some bad advice from some of his own campaign people who thought it would not be a good idea for me to be in front of the cameras on the day he announced,” Wright said, adding that he and Obama had “moved on.” Wright attended the announcement, but he did not speak.”
3-21-2007, Skeptical Brotha
March 11, 2007
Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959Dear Jodi:
Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.
For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.
I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.
I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.
Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.
As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.
I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.
Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.
The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.
Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.
Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!
Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. ,
Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ”
4-2-2007, The Freedom Fighter’s Journal
“Obama’s connection to the Reverend Wright, as described in the New York Times report below, is more than just an incidental association. Obama resisted religious conversion for years, until he was moved by one of Rev. Wright’s sermons, and he has subsequently maintained a close, decades-long friendship—with a man who promotes conspiracy theories about white racism, blames September 11 on America’s foreign policy, has made pilgrimages to Cuba and Lybia, and who rails against the “selfish individualism” of the prosperous black middle class.
This is who Barack Obama really is, beneath the respectable cover, in his hidden soul. Some people are perhaps beginning to sense this fact, which may be why a new poll shows that voters say they favor Democrats in the abstract, but when they are asked about specific candidates, they favor the Republicans. “
5-8-2007, Atlas Shrugged
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A FEW WEEKS AGO ON MSNBC SHOW WITH TUCKER CARLSON:
CARLSON: But Jeremiah Wright is at least a mixed bag politically. His work to improve conditions in impoverished black neighborhoods may be laudable, but his rhetoric includes attacks against white people and against Israel. Should Obama distance himself from Dr. Wright, and if so, can he effectively do that?
We welcome back to discuss that MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan and nationally syndicated radio show host Bill Press. Now, I have kind of liked Barack Obama from the very beginning. He seems moderate in tone. I spent all morning reading Jeremiah Wright online. All the church newsletters are available. The guy is a full-blown hater, actually. This is just pulled at random.
Here is his attack on Natalee Holloway as a slut. “Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months.” In other words, she is a slut.
Nine-eleven, he says: “White America got their wake-up call after 9-11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.” So 9-11 was payback for white racism. I mean, it goes on, and I will read more. But your first thoughts on this, Bill.
PRESS: My first thought is –
CARLSON: It’s not mainstream, is it?
PRESS: I think it’s curious that not so long ago we were — people were criticizing Barack Obama for being too radical a Muslim. And now he seems to be maybe being criticized for being too radical a Christian, number one. And my second thought is –
CARLSON: There is nothing Christian about this stuff.
PRESS: — that — but he is a Christian, I’m saying. But second thought is, Jeremiah Wright is not running for president. Barack Obama is. I’m sure if he were sitting here and you read those quotes to Barack Obama, he would say — he would denounce every one of them as he has many things that Reverend Wright has said. […]
CARLSON: Here is the Israeli thing, we were talking about this at the commercial break. This is quoting now the Reverend Wright: “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”
He compares Israel to South Africa repeatedly. He attacks Israel as a racist state.
BUCHANAN: This is the Jimmy Carter — that Israel is Apartheid, and the disinvestment is this whole idea that is going around the campuses to cut off any university investments in Israel. I think Barack Obama is going to have to explain that.
PRESS: I was just going to say, let’s be clear that that is Reverend Wright talking, not Barack Obama.
CARLSON: Absolutely. None of this is Barack Obama. Though he has defended this guy. I criticized him on the air a couple of months ago. Got all this hate mail calling me a racist for criticizing this guy. And Barack Obama defended him. I don’t see how he can defend this guy.
PRESS: I think you raise a legitimate question about his relationship and what part of this guy he agrees with and what part he doesn’t agree with. And that’s for Barack Obama to answer. But I wouldn’t automatically say that any piece of hate that you find spewing out of Jeremiah Wright’s mouth is necessarily the point of view of Barack Obama. He has to explain it.
BUCHANAN: As a former candidate, they take these guys, they say, here is Buchanan, here is his friend, and here is what his friend said. And then you have got to spend the rest of the day or the week trying to explain it or defend it or renounce it.
CARLSON: That’s right. I want Barack Obama to be as reasonable as he seems. I really do. I have nothing against Barack Obama at all. I like him. And I just want him to distance himself from this stuff because it is so –
BUCHANAN: It’s going to be tough to distance himself from somebody.
PRESS: And you also said, very quickly, that this preacher has done a lot of good in Chicago for a lot of –
CARLSON: I don’t know that he has. I’m just being nice. He sounds like a total hater to me.
The Times report was mentioned on the April 30 Hannity & Colmes, but not Obama’s specific disagreement with Wright’s 9-11 comments:
COLMES: Now, Kate, I get a sense that certain conservatives would love it if Wright’s views got in the way of Barack Obama’s chances or somehow infringed on his ability to be a good candidate, so let me get this straight. If you’re a member of a congregation, you have to agree with everything your pastor says or rabbi says, for example, or you’re besmirched if you don’t go along and dovetail with everything that leader of the congregation believes in?
GRIFFIN: Alan, Reverend Wright has said some shocking things, saying that 9-11 is the result of America’s violent policies –
COLMES: What does that have to do with Barack Obama?
GRIFFIN: — comparing — it has a lot to do with him. This is not a minister who’s just talking about vague differences in theology. This is a man who calls America the United States of white America, the Great White West.
COLMES: And is that what Barack Obama believes?
GRIFFIN: You know what? Barack Obama credits his conversion to Christianity to this man. He studied his speeches while he was at Harvard. He is a student of his pastor.
COLMES: You want to smear Barack Obama with whatever this man says that you don’t agree with.
GRIFFIN: Obviously, there’s a very close relationship. And what the American people are going to want to hear is where Barack Obama stands on some of these more flagrant anti-white comments.
COLMES: Well, why don’t ask you him or find out before you choose to smear Barack Obama with things that he may not agree with that his pastor says?
GRIFFIN: I believe he has been asked. He has been asked many times, and what he does is he avoids the question. He says, “Oh, I wasn’t at church when he said that about 9-11,” or, “That’s between my pastor and me.” Or the best was when he said, “He’s a child of the ’60s. He uses the language of concern.” That is not distancing himself from these extremely radical statements.
COLMES: Laura Schwartz, this smear piece on Barack Obama, trying to smear him because of controversial positions his pastor may have.
GRIFFIN: From The New York Times.
COLMES: Yes, the Times reporting the story. Laura Schwartz, he says he respects Wright’s work for the poor, the fight against injustice. He says they don’t agree on everything, is what Barack said, and they never had a thorough conversation on all aspects of politics. I don’t know why Barack’s detractors can’t accept that.
SCHWARTZ: You know, the church does a lot of great things in the community here in Chicago. I know many of its members and those that just attend on a regular basis, because I believe your faith is just that. It’s your faith. It’s not your church leader’s. And we don’t practice everything that we’re preached to about.
HANNITY: Laura, we don’t have a lot of time. I want to get into something here.
SCHWARTZ: And I think he’s made that distinction. Sure.
HANNITY: First of all, Barack says that this pastor, this minister was the inspiration for his book, The Audacity of Hope. That’s number one. Barack made the decision to disinvite him when he announced that he was running for president here.
This is hardly, you know, a smear, unless Alan is claiming The New York Times is smearing Barack Obama. But after the 9-11 attacks, the Sunday after the terrorist attacks, he blamed America. He blamed our country. And, you know, for you to say that there’s not a connection here is a little bit absurd to me. You don’t think there’s any connection?
SCHWARTZ: Well, you know, to your two points. First, “Audacity of Hope,” which was a sermon, I believe, he gave in 1988 that Barack Obama credits to a great part of his conversion and to the book that he wrote, The Audacity of Hope, that was a beautiful sermon. That was invigorating. It was spiritual. It opened his eyes to many things.
HANNITY: He blames the United States for the attacks on 9-11.
SCHWARTZ: I’m talking about the 1988 sermon called “The Audacity of Hope.” It’s wonderful. I encourage people to read it.
HANNITY: I understand that.
SCHWARTZ: Now, to your second point, on the invocation, Obama did the right thing by not having him give that, because you know what? That puts on a national stage, and it puts your connection with things that have come up since that sermon.
HANNITY: What does it say — if there was a Republican candidate, Laura, who had as their church premise on their website “commitment to the white community, commitment to the white family, adherence to the white work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of developing acquired skills available to the white community,” wouldn’t that be deemed as racist? And wouldn’t that –
SCHWARTZ: And offensive.
HANNITY: — candidate have to disavow themselves from that church?
SCHWARTZ: I think so, to a certain extent, whereas, in our country, when we talk about racial differences, the African-American essence has a different place in the community from what they’ve come up through than the white Americans.
HANNITY: Does it sound racist to you?
SCHWARTZ: To talk about the black community? No, because he preaches what the essence of the African-American experience that –
GRIFFIN: It’s anti-white and anti-American.
COLMES: We’ve got to run. Kate, we’re just out of time. We thank you both very much.”
