Part Two- Reactions- Below:
The latest uproar over Obama's Pastor, Jeremiah Wright's controversial, "God Damn America", speech is widening Clinton's lead over Obama and we see that McCains favorable ratings are higher than both the Democratic candidates.
Obama's speech today, given in front of a crowd filled with his own supporters, isn't going to help as reactions are already mixed as I showed in an earlier post.
More analysis on Obama's failure to distance himself sufficiently from Wright can be found at The Corner, where John Derbyshire points out some glaring lies that Obama told during the speech.
One specific article caught my eye and it was something I touched on here myself.
Via the Politico, Obama first tried to deny ever hearing that type of rhetoric from Wright, then he said he didn't hear it much and in his latest speech, he admits he was aware of it the whole time.
After 20 years, that is something we all knew, but Obama directly lied about when Wright's comments first came to light.
Contrary to his earlier suggestion, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) acknowledged in his speech Tuesday that he had heard “controversial” remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
[...]
In his first detailed response to the firestorm over Wright’s remarks charging that the United States is a racist country, Obama said in a posting on The Huffington Post:
“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.”
A 37 minuite speech and Obama still has some 'splainin to do. He has shown that his original comments declaring he didn't know about Wright's controversial comments, to have been an outright lie.
He has shown that he is not willing to distance himself from a man that made it very clear in his own statements that he hates America.
Obama wants to be president of America and yet calls a man that says "God Damn America", family?
What is wrong with that picture?
For those that haven't actually listen to this man Obama considers family... here, listen closely.
If Barack cannot denounce a man that can say those things..... why on earth would anybody that loves America want him as our president?
[Update]- More very valid questions present from Power Line.
But here's the problem. If Reverend Wright was so profoundly mistaken about this key issue -- the "genius," of America and its capacity to change -- why did Obama embrace Wright's church? Why did Wright become his spiritual adviser and "uncle" figure? Why was it Wright who was able to lead Obama to Christ? Why not some other religious figure who understood the full vision Obama is now presenting -- America as "bound to a tragic past," but having already changed profoundly for the better and capable of furher positive change? Why not someone in the mold of Martin Luther King, who even prior to America's profound change for the better understood the country's greatness and capacity for redemption?
[...]
Many of us have been caught up in the powerful emotions this sort of moment can engender. But ordinarily they do not lead to a close 20-year association with someone as fundamentally misguided (as Obama would now have it) as Wright.This, then, is the evasion of Obama's speech. Why such a close and longstanding association with someone this "profoundly mistaken"? The answer, I have argued, is opportunism in part, but also a left-wing ideology that, whatever Obama may say now, is not so far removed from Wright's deplorable views.
Hot Air points out a major fallacy of Obama's rationalizations:
Here’s a blank check to white racists to join the restrictive country club of their choice because, after all, they can no more disown white racism than they can the entire white community:
The portion of Obama's speech that Hot Air is referring to is this:
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
OUCH.
The Weekly Standard points out the speech that Obama should have made has already been made... by Bill Cosby:
The controversial speech that would have saved Obama's campaign is here, and it was delivered on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education by a man who really has transcended race. On that day, Bill Cosby said, "Brown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem." He said "We cannot blame white people." And he spoke about a culture of accountability as the only path to success for Black America.
If Obama had said those things, perhaps he would have won 88 percent of the Black vote instead of 90 percent, but he would have laid this whole controversy to rest. Instead, he started the speech with "we the people." You can't go any further back in American history than those words. Obama just overturned the whole rationale for his campaign, and I don't think he solved any of the problems that his association with Reverend Wright has exposed.
ABC News offers a subtitle thatsays it all, "Obama Calls Pastor's Remarks 'Divisive' But Says Rev. Wright Is Like Family."
Yup, that is what he did!
More coming as I go through the reactions!
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