You’re excusing Obama ignoring his pastors racial and flat out insane statements because he was afraid he might not be considered black enough by his constituents? Read that again.
Not really.
I’m saying I believe the article CM posted (also on townhall.com today) is correct in their interpretation of why Obama chose that church.
It doesn’t bother me.
I also don’t really care that the paster is preaching that stuff from time to time. I don’t want to hear it but then I don’t go to church at all, or listen to racists.
I can see why a shrewd politician might go to that church, it doesn’t concern me that he did.
sl0re, you can laugh and rest all you like, but you can clearly see how your McCain comparison is neither here nor there.
I’ve heard enough from him to believe he’s not a racist and doesn’t hold Wrights views. I can’t prove it, no more than I can’t prove McCain’s not a KKK sympathizer, though I’m quite sure he’s not.
I’m more interested in how he handles this from a politician stand point, and I think he’s done a good job so far on what is a tough challenge for him.
That’s fine and good… but attending a racist church and hanging out with local radicals doesn’t really help push the image he wants… and shows poor judgement. And, they’re things you’d never accept from someone on ‘the other side’.
Like I say, I think I know why he did it (explained in the article). and I’m ok with it. In this case and in my opinion the ends justifying the means.
I’d certainly accept the same from an African American Republican candidate.
Well, I wouldn’t… Or from McCain were it all turned around (and I don’t believe you would either)....
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers
Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein are arguing about whether Jeremiah Wright’s statements are comparable to those of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee’s. To argue that they’re not comparable, Douthat—like most people commenting on this raging controversy—conflates two entirely separate analytical issues:
(1) Given their close and long-standing personal relationship, does Wright merit more scrutiny vis-a-vis Obama than white, radical evangelical ministers merit vis-a-vis Republican politicians? and,
(2) Are the statements of white evangelical ministers subjected to the same standards of judgment as those being applied to Wright’s statements?
Even if the answer to (1) is “yes,” that doesn’t change the fact that the answer to (2) is a resounding “no.”
The statement of Wright’s which seems to be causing the most upset—and it’s one of two singled out by Douthat—is his suggestion that there is a causal link between (a) America’s constant bombings of and other interference with Middle Eastern countries and (b) the willingness of some Middle Eastern fanatics to attack the U.S. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, we’ve been told that positing any such causal connection is a sign of vicious anti-Americanism and that all decent people find such questions despicable. This week we learned that no respectable person would subject his children to a pastor who espouses such hateful ideas.
But the idea that America deserves terrorist attacks and other horrendous disasters has long been a frequently expressed view among the faction of white evangelical ministers to whom the Republican Party is most inextricably linked. Neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson ever retracted or denounced their view that America provoked the 9/11 attacks by doing things to anger God. John Hagee continues to believe that the City of New Orleans got what it deserved when Katrina drowned its residents and devastated the lives of thousands of Americans. And James Inhofe—who happens to still be a Republican U.S. Senator—blamed America for the 9/11 attacks by arguing in a 2002 Senate floor speech that “the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America” because we pressured Israel to give away parts of the West Bank.
The phrases “anti-American” and “America-haters” are among the most barren and manipulative in our entire political lexicon, but whatever they happen to mean on any given day, they easily encompass people who believe that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks, devastating hurricanes and the like. Yet when are people like Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Inhofe and other white Christian radicals ever described as anti-American or America-hating extremists? Never—because white Christian evangelicals who tie themselves to the political Right are intrinsically patriotic. Does Douthat believe that those individuals are anti-American radicals and that people who allow their children to belong to their churches are exercising grave errors of judgment?
Those advancing the argument of Douthat’s are also wildly understating the magnitude of the association between “anti-American” white evangelicals and Republican leaders. By all accounts, George Bush had private conversations with Pat Robertson about matters as weighty as whether to invade Iraq. Isn’t that a big scandal—that the President is consulting with an American-hating minister—someone who believes God allowed the 9/11 attacks as punishment for our evil country—about vital foreign policy decisions? No, it wasn’t controversial at all.
John Hagee privately visits with the highest level Middle East officials in the White House and afterwards pronounces that they’re in agreement. John McCain shares a stage with Hagee and lavishes him with praise, as Rudy Giuliani did with Pat Robertson. James Inhofe remains a member in good standing in the GOP Senate Caucus. The Republican Party has tied itself at the hip to a whole slew of “anti-American extremists”—people who believe that the U.S. provoked the 9/11 attacks because God wants to punish us for the evil, wicked nation we’ve become—and yet there is virtual silence about these associations.
Nor have the views of televangelist Rod Parsley, one of McCain’s self-proclaimed “spiritual advisers,” received a fraction of the attention generated by Wright. As both David Corn and Alan Colmes, among others, have documented, Parsley espouses views at least as extreme and radical as Wright, including his proclamation that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.” Unlike Wright and Obama—for whom the former’s controversial views are found nowhere near the latter’s public or private conduct—both George Bush and John McCain’s Middle Eastern militarism are perfectly consonant with the most maniacal and crazed views of Christian Rapture enthusiasts such as Hagee, Parsley, Inhofe, and Robertson. Yet the controversy created over their close ties is virtually non-existent.
The Republican Party long ago adopted as a central strategy aligning itself with, and granting great influence to, the most radical, “America-hating” white evangelical Christian ministers in the country. They’re given a complete pass on that because political orthodoxy mandates that white evangelical Christian ministers are inherently worthy of respect, no matter how extreme and noxious are their views. That orthodoxy stands in stark contrast to the universally enraged reaction to a few selected snippets from the angry rantings of a black Christian Minister. What accounts for that glaring disparity?
UPDATE: Steve M. notes that the Bush White House, in addition to consulting with Robertson, also consulted with the anti-American Jerry Falwell, including on the question of whom the administration should nominate to the Supreme Court. It even appointed a White House liaison for Falwell. When Falwell died, President Bush “said he was deeply saddened by Falwell’s death, calling him ‘a man who cherished faith, family and freedom.’”
Shouldn’t we be very concerned about American children hearing our President praise an American-hating radical who believes that our country is a sick and wicked land that God wanted to be victimized by the 9/11 attacks? Again, the issue here is number (2) above, not number (1).
UPDATE II: Frank Schaeffer, son of highly influential Religious Right figure Francis Schaeffer, writes (h/t FPL-Dan):
When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father—Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer—denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
He goes on to chronicle his father’s long history of extreme “America-hating” statements, ones which never caused Republicans to repudiate him, and says: “Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits.”
Yet Schaeffer, like hordes of similar, America-hating white Christian ministers, are celebrated as cherished figures among the very same right-wing faction feigning such outrage and offense over Wright’s far more mild statements. White, right-wing Christian evangelical rage against America is understandable, respectable, and noble. Liberal black Christian anger towards America is scary, subversive, and despicable.
Furthermore, I’m disappointed in those who still have double standards (in this case lower… for non whites) and are trying to make apologies for Obama.... for something we’d all be able to agree is repulsive if done by a white… say McCain.
What is so bad that it’s repulsive?
I don’t care who Bush has listened to and what they have told him. UNLESS he clearly believes it and acts on it. THEN it becomes about him.
Replace ‘Bush’ with anyone you like. The Prime Minister of NZ. Whoever.
I’ve always been a fan of keeping those people at arms length…
If they want to endorse say… me.. fine. But that does not mean I endorse them (let alone attend their church/s and proclaim them my spiritual guide/s)… I think they’re nutty nut nuts. and yes, any pandering done towards them, I find embarrassing.
sl0re, you can laugh and rest all you like, but you can clearly see how your McCain comparison is neither here nor there.
hahhahha, bs, shenanigans… whatever...hahhahah!
I guess now is as good a time as any to restate: having ‘an’ argument doesn’t mean you have a good, convincing, or compelling argument…
It’s a variation on ‘pulling a Chomsky’ as it’s his writing style to put forward a single fact that supports an argument and move on as if it proved the argument he made.
re: Having a lame argument, doesn’t prove your point…
(furthermore, your point is a strawman anyway… no one (but you) really thinks whether Obama is a racist is the issue.)
One of McCain’s self-proclaimed “spiritual guide” (Rod Parsley) proclaims that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.”
Is that where Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran comes from perhaps?
The grassroots organization he founded, the Center for Moral Clarity, called for prosecuting people who commit adultery. He compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis. In the past Parsley’s church has been accused of engaging in pro-Republican partisan activities in violation of its tax-exempt status.
McCain shares a stage with Hagee and lavishes him with praise and yet Hagee continues to believe that the City of New Orleans got what it deserved when Katrina drowned its residents and devastated the lives of thousands. Hagee also called the Roman Catholic Church a “the great whore” and called it a “false cult system” and “the apostate church”.
Hagee condemns literature such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, calling it contemporary witchcraft. He has written that the persecution of Jews throughout history, and even the Holocaust, was caused by their own “disobedience”.
Has McCain denounced/renounced/rejected Hagee’s endorsement? Or Parsley’s? Why not? Where is the mainstream media coverage? How does McCain compartmentalize this? Why would anyone trust anyone who associated freely with someone who held those views?
Hagee on African-Americans
The San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to “meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a ‘slave sale,’ an East Side minister said Wednesday.” The Express-News reported:
“Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a ‘slave sale’ to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, ‘The Cluster.’
“The item was introduced with the sentence ‘Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and ended with “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]
Hagee on Women
“Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” [God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner]
Mr. Hagee is a leading figure in the so-called Christian-Zionist movement. This evangelical political philosophy is rooted in biblical prophecies and a belief that Israel’s struggles signal a prelude to Armageddon. Its followers staunchly support the Bush administration’s unequivocal backing of Israel in its current battle with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
President Bush sent a message to the gathering praising Mr. Hagee and his supporters for “spreading the hope of God’s love and the universal gift of freedom.”
Higgins’s article also documented other “close ties” Hagee maintained with Bush and DeLay. Higgins wrote that Hagee met President Bush “several times while he was Texas governor and solidly supported his push for the White House” but that Hagee “was closer” to DeLay, who delivered “the keynote speech at Mr. Hagee’s 2002 pro-Israel gathering in San Antonio.” Hagee’s website notes the attendance of several prominent Republicans and leaders of the Religious Right at the Christians United for Israel event, including Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX), Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer, who served as undersecretary of education and domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan before heading the Family Research Council from 1988 to 2000.
One of McCain’s self-proclaimed “spiritual guide” (Rod Parsley) proclaims that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed.”
Is that where Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran comes from perhaps?
The grassroots organization he founded, the Center for Moral Clarity, called for prosecuting people who commit adultery. He compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis. In the past Parsley’s church has been accused of engaging in pro-Republican partisan activities in violation of its tax-exempt status.
McCain shares a stage with Hagee and lavishes him with praise and yet Hagee continues to believe that the City of New Orleans got what it deserved when Katrina drowned its residents and devastated the lives of thousands. Hagee also called the Roman Catholic Church a “the great whore” and called it a “false cult system” and “the apostate church”.
Hagee condemns literature such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, calling it contemporary witchcraft. He has written that the persecution of Jews throughout history, and even the Holocaust, was caused by their own “disobedience”.
Has McCain denounced/renounced/rejected Hagee’s endorsement? Or Parsley’s? Why not? Where is the mainstream media coverage? How does McCain compartmentalize this? Why would anyone trust anyone who associated freely with someone who held those views?
Sounds like a legit thing to bring up.
Some of the complaints are kinda weak. Slave auction? yeah, okay. Sounds like a little manufactured outrage (media matters, natch). Planned Parenthood are not too popular with pro lifers and both sides call names (technically the nazi’s got ideas from them, not the other way round… so calling them the Nazis… yeah, maybe not right). Maybe adultery should be a crime.. maybe not, I’m open to hearing arguments… et cetera… but yeah, there is some nutty nut nuts stuff mixed in (like with the comment about Islam).
If he’s McCain’s ‘self proclaimed’ spiritual guide, I’d like to know how close they really are.
Hagee on African-Americans
The San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to “meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a ‘slave sale,’ an East Side minister said Wednesday.” The Express-News reported:
“Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a ‘slave sale’ to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, ‘The Cluster.’
“The item was introduced with the sentence ‘Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and ended with “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]
Hagee on Women
“Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” [God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner]
While I don’t really feel like defending a scum-bag like Hagee, these two items are beyond stupid. The “slave auction” is a type of event that is used as a fundraiser in quite a few places, people volunteer to be auctioned off and be a servant to the winner for a day. Were his choices of words in poor taste? Yeah sure. But then again he’s not proclaiming in a sermon that the death of thousands of people 5 days after it happened when we didn’t even have a definite body count is america’s chickens coming home to roost.
And for the Hagee on Women, well leave it to a liberal website like huffington post to be unable to recognize two common jokes. Here’s another one: Never trust anything that bleeds for 5 days and doesn’t die.
These are poor attempts to excuse Wright’s vitriol. And McCain did have to come out a day or two after and denounce Hagee’s views about the Catholic Church. That did get media attention.
As for the rest of the claims, Republicans are constantly getting brow beat for the shit robertson says, that Falwell said, other moronic christian right “leaders” hell they are even getting attacked for shit from the westboro baptists sometimes and those retards are democrats. And really if whichever Republican was being called for meeting one of them whichever day it was, he likely could release a statement disagreeing with the controversial statements and you wouldn’t hear about it. That just wouldn’t allow them to continue showing the republicans as intolerant. Its part of the media’s continuous rhetoric, but Obama has it happen one time makes a speech and everything is now kosher...oops wrights not too fond of those jews either.
And for one last point. In these cases the republican in question did not voluntarily attend the church of these men for 20 years. Get married by them, have their daughters baptized by them. Use a line from their sermon as the title for a book. Obama has also been trying to run as the candidate of “hope” and “change.” Yet when you have all this coming out, it seems to be just more of the same. Nothing different. And how can we expect him to heal the racism in America when he can’t even heal it in his friend.
I don’t know if Obama’s a racist or just incredibly stoopid. It’s like he’s playing third base with bases loaded in the bottom of ninth. His team’s leading by a run and he boots an easy grounder into no man’s land in left field while the tying and winning runs cross the plate. I say this because he just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper, and if not for a positive MEdia alliance behind him, he’d be all but done (he probably is anyway):
In Philadelphia this morning, Barack Obama confronted the remains of the Jeremiah Wright brushfire, the smoldering embers of this anecdote of his grandmother using racial stereotypes that made him cringe… and promptly spilled gasoline on those embers.
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”
Tripper, CM and all other Barack Milhouse Obama apologists, you have to agree to the following:
A. For someone purported to be an erudite, intellectual orator, this is an incredibly idiotic and bigoted statement to make.
B. Many a whitey has been fired for saying the same or less.
C. This guy’s our best hope of bridging the racial divide? I’m laughing right now. Seriously…
By the way, I don’t own it, but apparently in his memoirs, Obama referred to the same racial incident he mentioned in THE speech a little differently. Apparently in his book he said that his grandmother was reacting to an “overly aggressive” black panhandler, not just a random black man walking down the street. Grandma Obama deserves much better than that.
I’ll give billary credit, they’ve been smart enough to sit back and let Milhouse dig himself deeper and deeper into a political grave site. He will get crushed in Pennsylvania. He was going to get beat, but now he’s going to get absolutely boot kicked because of the statements, lies and mistatements that he’s made this week. If George W. Bush is an idiot, Obama would have to elevate himself to get to Bush’s level of intellect. A lot…
Does anybody here actually believe that Obama holds the views that we don’t like hearing from Wright?
I understand that people have an issue with his judgement in attending that church and his relationship with Wright, but does anybody think Obama is a racist?
With absolute certainty? No. However past occurences can start putting it into the category of Obama believing the things Wright has said. There is also his wife, who I do think holds Wright’s views. Afterall just a few weeks ago was the first time in her adult life she was proud to be an American. I think her college thesis might hold some more evidene of this. Hmmmm. So we have arguably the two most influential people in Obama’s life holding resentment towards whitey/America. And then you have Obama not wearing the American flag pin, along with his improper display of respect during the national anthem that I was willing to just blow as a ‘whatever’ attempt to make a controversy before. Now it leaves you wondering if his reverend and wife provide an underlying reason for these acts. And what additional things does he hold in common with them?
I don’t know if Obama’s a racist or just incredibly stoopid. It’s like he’s playing third base with bases loaded in the bottom of ninth. His team’s leading by a run and he boots an easy grounder into no man’s land in left field while the tying and winning runs cross the plate. I say this because he just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper, and if not for a positive MEdia alliance behind him, he’d be all but done (he probably is anyway):
In Philadelphia this morning, Barack Obama confronted the remains of the Jeremiah Wright brushfire, the smoldering embers of this anecdote of his grandmother using racial stereotypes that made him cringe… and promptly spilled gasoline on those embers.
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”
Tripper, CM and all other Barack Milhouse Obama apologists, you have to agree to the following:
A. For someone purported to be an erudite, intellectual orator, this is an incredibly idiotic and bigoted statement to make.
B. Many a whitey has been fired for saying the same or less.
C. This guy’s our best hope of bridging the racial divide? I’m laughing right now. Seriously…
By the way, I don’t own it, but apparently in his memoirs, Obama referred to the same racial incident he mentioned in THE speech a little differently. Apparently in his book he said that his grandmother was reacting to an “overly aggressive” black panhandler, not just a random black man walking down the street. Grandma Obama deserves much better than that.
I’ll give billary credit, they’ve been smart enough to sit back and let Milhouse dig himself deeper and deeper into a political grave site. He will get crushed in Pennsylvania. He was going to get beat, but now he’s going to get absolutely boot kicked because of the statements, lies and mistatements that he’s made this week. If George W. Bush is an idiot, Obama would have to elevate himself to get to Bush’s level of intellect. A lot…
There’s also a link the the apparent origin is Gramma don’t like the blacks story too.
Basics: the entire claim of his grandmother being afraid of black people comes from (Obama claims) his grandfather’s belief she was afraid of an aggressive panhandler because he was black. And not just because she felt physically intimidated his persistent demands.
Making light of slavery is kinda weak? I can imagine there’s a whole lot of people that would find that legitimately offensive. I’m not sure how you could argue otherwise.
Adultery should be a crime? Are you serious??!
I can say the same things about much of what Wright has been criticised for saying - Hillary doesn’t know what it’s like to be black (good point, and true). Chickens coming home to roost (an accepted theory, even you agreed just the other day).
“The government gives them the drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair], builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people...God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme”.
OK that’s an opinion. He’s generally heavily critical of the United States Government. It’s not advocating warfare on whites, or even anything remotely similar. It’s not inciting anything. Just kinda complaining that black folks have had it bad. Wouldn’t offend me if I was a white American. If someone launched into white NZers and said God damn NZ I wouldn’t care.
The HIV thing - now THAT is bizarre.
“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.” Not racist, just an opinion. Nothing outrageous there really.
“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich, white people. Hillary would never know that.” Again not racist. And not untrue.
“Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college. … Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.” That’s not racist. It’s another opinion, and quite a strong one.
“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.
And … And … And! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this sh*t!” Again, not racist. He’s talking again about what he percieves to be the power structure, and what he believes the priorities of that structure are. Not sure what he’s referring to with the ‘radiation experiments on our own people’ though.
Point is, where are all the reports of the close Republican links to loony tune preachers in the mainstream media, and why have Republicans ‘gotten away’ with this for years?
While I don’t really feel like defending a scum-bag like Hagee, these two items are beyond stupid. The “slave auction” is a type of event that is used as a fundraiser in quite a few places, people volunteer to be auctioned off and be a servant to the winner for a day. Were his choices of words in poor taste? Yeah sure.
So it’s not racist, just in ‘poor taste’?
I’d love to see you explain that to some slave relatives.
But then again he’s not proclaiming in a sermon that the death of thousands of people 5 days after it happened when we didn’t even have a definite body count is america’s chickens coming home to roost.
He thinks the people of New Orleans deserved to die. Presumably their chickens were coming home to roost. What’s the difference?
At least Wright’s theory is a reasonably well grounded political belief.
On the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Hagee stated that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, punishing New Orleans for “a level of sin that was offensive to God”. He specifically referred to a “homosexual parade” that was held on the date the hurricane struck and that this was proof “of the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans” [1], even though the Southern Decadence parade was scheduled for the following week and the primary gay neighborhoods, the French Quarter and the Marigny, were spared the flooding and destruction.Another reason for God’s wrath, Hagee claims, was the Bush administration’s pressure on Israel to abandon settlements and the land associated with them. Therefore, God took American land in a “tit for tat” exchange during Hurricane Katrina.
Hagee’s was based religiously or insanity. Take your pick.
And for the Hagee on Women, well leave it to a liberal website like huffington post to be unable to recognize two common jokes. Here’s another one: Never trust anything that bleeds for 5 days and doesn’t die.
There are plenty of common race jokes out there. Most people realise they aren’t ones you tell publicly. Unless you don’t recognise why they are offensive. Or you just don’t care.
Classy. And again, people would support someone who associates with a guy that does that?
These are poor attempts to excuse Wright’s vitriol.
No, they are attempts to show double-standards.
And McCain did have to come out a day or two after and denounce Hagee’s views about the Catholic Church. That did get media attention.
We didn’t hear about it here. We’ve sure heard about Wright and Obama though. A lot.
And what good is McCain’s denouncements about the specific comments if he hasn’t denounced the guy as a person and rejected his endorsement. Why not? Presumably because he knows he needs some help getting the evangelical vote. Even if it means being associated with someone who is like that? Also, I thought compartmentalising was a no-no?
As for the rest of the claims, Republicans are constantly getting brow beat for the shit robertson says, that Falwell said, other moronic christian right “leaders”
That’s because they have these people as advisors. Or at least they meet with them often, get them to make keynote speeches. Basically go to lengths to make sure they’re on-side. If there’s no compartmentalising, then we must assume they think/believe the same things.
And really if whichever Republican was being called for meeting one of them whichever day it was, he likely could release a statement disagreeing with the controversial statements and you wouldn’t hear about it.
Doesn’t matter if he DID release a statement disagreeing, apparently. Can’t compartmentalise.
That just wouldn’t allow them to continue showing the republicans as intolerant.
The evidence would suggest they spend a lot of time in the company of influential intolerent people. Which is what Obama is being accused of. Obama even has a stronger case for spending time with a single guy.
Its part of the media’s continuous rhetoric, but Obama has it happen one time makes a speech and everything is now kosher…
Sounds like something you’ve read on a right-wing blog you mean. And no, clearly Obama is going to be harmed by this. McCain wasn’t though.
oops wrights not too fond of those jews either.
Wright:
Wright once stated that Zionism has an element of “white racism”, but the Anti-Defamation League says it has no evidence of any anti-Semitism by Wright.[11] In a peace mission that resulted in the freeing of United States Navy pilot, Lt. Robert Goodman who was shot down over Lebanon,[14] [15] Wright traveled to Libya and Syria with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan. Twenty three years later, Wright was quoted as saying that “When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Colonel Gadaffi with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” He added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
Hagee has been accused of antisemitism, because he has written that the persecution of Jews throughout history, and even the Holocaust, was caused by their own “disobedience”
In these cases the republican in question did not voluntarily attend the church of these men for 20 years.
So it’s the length of time that’s the important issue?
Get married by them, have their daughters baptized by them. Use a line from their sermon as the title for a book. Obama has also been trying to run as the candidate of “hope” and “change.” Yet when you have all this coming out, it seems to be just more of the same. Nothing different. And how can we expect him to heal the racism in America when he can’t even heal it in his friend.
You should read his speech. It doesn’t sound like you have.
I don’t know if Obama’s a racist or just incredibly stoopid. It’s like he’s playing third base with bases loaded in the bottom of ninth. His team’s leading by a run and he boots an easy grounder into no man’s land in left field while the tying and winning runs cross the plate. I say this because he just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper, and if not for a positive MEdia alliance behind him, he’d be all but done (he probably is anyway):
In Philadelphia this morning, Barack Obama confronted the remains of the Jeremiah Wright brushfire, the smoldering embers of this anecdote of his grandmother using racial stereotypes that made him cringe… and promptly spilled gasoline on those embers.
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”
Tripper, CM and all other Barack Milhouse Obama apologists, you have to agree to the following:
A. For someone purported to be an erudite, intellectual orator, this is an incredibly idiotic and bigoted statement to make.
B. Many a whitey has been fired for saying the same or less.
C. This guy’s our best hope of bridging the racial divide? I’m laughing right now. Seriously…
By the way, I don’t own it, but apparently in his memoirs, Obama referred to the same racial incident he mentioned in THE speech a little differently. Apparently in his book he said that his grandmother was reacting to an “overly aggressive” black panhandler, not just a random black man walking down the street. Grandma Obama deserves much better than that.
I’ll give billary credit, they’ve been smart enough to sit back and let Milhouse dig himself deeper and deeper into a political grave site. He will get crushed in Pennsylvania. He was going to get beat, but now he’s going to get absolutely boot kicked because of the statements, lies and mistatements that he’s made this week. If George W. Bush is an idiot, Obama would have to elevate himself to get to Bush’s level of intellect. A lot…
I dunno, the more this goes on, the further away America feels. Maybe you guys are quote different from the rest of us after all.*
I don’t really have a problem with what he said. Sounds a lot more honest than the usual politically correct horseshit that flies around.
As for me being an apologist - good grief. It’s that all-or-nothing obsession again. Leave it alone already.
As for Bush being dumber than GWB - that’s definitely funniest thing I’ve seen all week. Can you imagine Bush being able to deliver a speech like that, much less write it? I’m sorry but that’s just plain lunacy.
* I get the feeling I’d have to be a conservative white American to make sense of this.
Does anybody here actually believe that Obama holds the views that we don’t like hearing from Wright?
I understand that people have an issue with his judgement in attending that church and his relationship with Wright, but does anybody think Obama is a racist?
