Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Obama: the Wright Stuff?

Senator Barack Obama has disavowed ever hearing his pastor, Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, utter the vitriolic anti-American, anti-white spewings that have been presented over and over on the TV/radio networks and printed extensively in the media for a number of days now. Obama has denounced Wright's pronouncements, as expected, but one wonders whether or not he's been telling the truth about what he hasn't heard.

This appeared in a New York Times article of 06 March 2007 by Jodi Kantor and referenced the canceled invitation by Obama to Wright to pronounce an invocation during Obama's announcement of his run for the presidency on 10 February 2007, after the preacher had been scheduled in January: "According to the pastor [Jeremiah Wright], Mr. Obama then told him, 'You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public.'"

In other words, Obama was very much aware of Wright's hateful rhetoric; otherwise, he wouldn't have referred to it personally. This was Obama talking, not one of his gofers, and by then he knew he didn't need for Wright to be unduly noticed in connection with his campaign. This is from Kantor's article, also: "'When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli' to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, 'with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.'"

It stretches the imagination much too far to believe that in his 20-year association with Pastor Wright the president wannabe didn't know about Wright's trip to hang out with this country's premier anti-Semite and one of the most notorious terrorists in the world, the dictator of a nation fostering terrorism, responsible, for instance, for the downing of PanAm flight 103, in which 270 people were killed over/in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Coincidentally, that was just 20 years ago, about the time that Obama's relationship with Wright began.

Nor does it help that Wright was obviously pals with Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, and Obama has certainly been aware of this. Farrakhan stated that the U.S Government sabotaged the levees on Lake Pontchartrain so that black folk would be killed by a levee-break, such as the failure of the levee during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He claimed to have the proof, but he never produced it. Indirectly therefore, Obama is linked with Farrakhan, but, in all fairness, shouldn't be saddled directly or even remotely with Calypso Louie.

Or should he? The Trumpet newsmagazine, begun by Wright and/or his church in 1982 and whose editor and publisher are Jeremiah Wright's daughters, awarded Farrakhan its Empowerment Award in 2007, something Obama had to know about…but has he said anything about it – approval or disapproval? After all, Farrakhan has accused the country of which Obama is a senator of the worst sort of perfidy, not to mention his flagrant consorting with a known enemy in 1984. In a Nov.-Dec. Trumpet article, Wright is quoted: "Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th- and 21st-century giants of the African American religious experience."

Giant, indeed? Perhaps Obama should inquire of Farrakhan as to whether or not or how much money the trip to Libya meant to him and/or the Nation of Islam…or even the Trinity United Church of Christ/Jeremiah Wright. Perhaps Obama – in the interest of establishing Farrakhan's "giant-hood" – will demand that Wright, his friend of 20 years, demand that Farrakhan produce the proof that the U.S Government plotted the levee-failure.

What price credibility? Obama may discover, albeit obviously in desperation, that some strong statements by him are in order now, as well as seeing the need to put some big-time distance between him and Wright and, by inference, Farrakhan. This country is not about to be handed over to someone who can credibly be accused of consorting directly or indirectly with subversives, well-documented in the personages of Wright and Farrakhan.

According to Fox News of 14 March, Wright stated: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied." As in the case of Farrakhan and the levees, Wright should come forth with proof that the government (1) invented AIDS and (2) covered it up and (3) used it to produce a holocaust of billions of people. If he can't do this, Obama should call him out publicly, denounce him publicly, and separate himself from the church if it or its current pastor still holds that view.

Wright is time-warped like fading black-leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the past and preaches victim-theology for his people, notwithstanding all the civil rights legislation passed since the 60s, with its reverse quota-systems, the mangled school-systems under the same sort of quota nonsense, fueled by such catastrophes as school-busing (hated for decades by blacks and whites alike), and affirmative-action programs designed to help people who in many cases didn't want any help.

Notwithstanding all the good things Trinity Church does and for which it should be commended, Wright has been for years an anti-American apostle of hate, perhaps the highest profile "reverse racist" in the country. If Mitt Romney in 2007 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 were compelled to explain their faith to the voters, Obama should do no less, since the faith as interpreted by Jeremiah Wright, who has been highly endorsed by his denomination, the United Church of Christ, is under the darkest cloud, both Wright and the denomination.

The Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, in a statement on the UCC Web-site March 17 said, "Is Pastor Wright to be ridiculed and condemned for refusing to play the court prophet, blessing land and sovereign while pledging allegiance to our preoccupation with wealth and our fascination with weapons?" So…where does that leave the UCC, especially considering Wright's claims regarding things such as the invention of AIDS for the purpose of killing people?

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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