Regarding the now hourly replays of Jeremiah Wright’s “preaching”, it sounds to me like hateful, divisive, incidiary, vile, rhetoric and should be completely denounced by Sen. Obama, a member of his flock.
I am impressed with Sen. Obama’s composure and forthrightness in dealing with this issue (see below), but I am also disappointed with the tepid, detached tone of his response. I think it falls short. We either need more information and resources to get a better context of Wright’s inexcuseable statements, or we need more deonouncement of them.
To mostly rely on the “I wasn’t there when he said it, and if I were…” approach is to open himself up to a HUGE vulnerability; the almost sure bet that he was there at some point when Wright spewed something vile. And there will be someone with cell-phone imagery or video that proves he was there. It will happen; ask Roger Clemens, ask Elliot Spitzer.
And when it does, he becomes another in a long line of public figures who says one thing but does another.
Sigh.
I don’t believe he is staying true to the ideal that he wants to represent. In becoming an icon for a movement of equality and peace, he does not seem ready to even confront the controversial statements of his own pastor.
(…and note that Pastor Wright has been nowhere to be found. Apparently he’s in deeper seclusion than Hillary had assigned Bill a couple months ago.)
Therefore I personally believe this issue will be more than enough to prevent any Obama presidency.
The now often played video showing Wright spewing his vitriol is the opposite message that had attracted me and many others to the Obama campaign (the “Obama ideal”). To realize that this is the Pastor of the church he has attended for twenty years is disturbing. To see this man shouting from the pulpit is not unlike how many of us imagine fanatical jihadists in mosques.
Any hope for independant voters swinging Obama’s way now are out the window- especially after FOX, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS (and Rush) wear out their “experts” analyzing this issue.
“Men of the Cloth” have a higher standard to meet. Whether they are imams, priests, pastors or rabbis, the bar should be somewhere up around “The Golden Rule”.
I am saddend by this whole ugly incident. It will only lead to more arguments and more hate. I am no longer filled with the hope I once had that things can change while I am still around to witness it.
Too many people relish this. Too many people will use this to justify their own hate of others, to justify their own prejudice and bigotry and to fan the flame of their own fears.
Maybe we’re just not ready.