"47 Wrongs Don't Make A Wright" (video)

moblogictv, video (01:38):

Did you know 47 American troops were killed in Iraq last month?

Howie P.S.: Lindsay Campbell comments. H/t to Darryl.

Ron Paul, Jeremiah Wright and The Corporate Media (with video)

You can view my latest post on the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog here.
Barack Obama

"Jeremiah Wright, Thomas Jefferson and the Wrath of God"

John Nichols (The Nation):

"Just maybe now as that dialogue begins the religious tradition that has kept hope alive for a people struggling to survive in countless hopeless situations will be understood."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, April 28, 2008

The right response to the controversy that has been generated with regard to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is not to run away from the United Church of Christ pastor, to condemn him, or to try to apologize for him.

Rather, it is to listen to him and to recognize that Wright's not the disease that afflicts our body politic.

Indeed, this former Marine who became an remarkably-successful and widely-respected religious leader is in possession of the balm that has frequently proven to be the cure for what ails America -- an eyes-wide-open faith in the prospect that this country can and will put aside the sins of the past and forge a future that is as just as it is righteous.

As Wright has illustrated over the past several days, in a remarkable appearance Friday on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal and in speeches to the Detroit NAACP and the National Press Club in Washington, he is the opposite of the caricature of an angry, America-hating false prophet that has been so crudely attached to him. Deeply grounded in biblical tradition, nuanced in his understanding of race relations and historically experienced in his assessments of America's strengths and weaknesses, he has much to say to this country at this time.

Not all of what Wright says is comforting.

Nor are his views universally appealing or entirely unassailable.

But they are very much within the mainstream of American religious and political discourse.

The problem is not Jeremiah Wright.

The problem is a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune -- and a media that willingly invites manipulation.

Let's not forget how Wright became an issue in the 2008 presidential race. Republican operatives, fretful about their party's political fortunes, decided that the only way to weaken the candidacy of Wright's longtime parishioner, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, was by suggesting the Democratic presidential front-runner was in the sway of an anti-American radical.

That end was achieved by separating out from long and thoughtful sermons regarding matters biblical and political seemingly offensive phrases and then inviting the Grand Old Party's media echo chamber to repeat the sound bites until they became conventional "wisdom."

This is a classic guilt-by-association maneuver, played out so aggressively in the current circumstance that it would make Joe McCarthy blush. But it has worked, at least in part because people of good faith have not taken the time to assess and appropriately answer the charge that Obama's connection to Wright confirms the candidate to be either a closet radical or, worse yet, a dupe of some free-floating, ill-defined but still frightful fringe.

The response of Obama -- most recently in an extended and at times painful press conference on Tuesday -- and of many of his supporters has been to try to put distance between the candidate and the preacher. "They offend me," the senator said of controversial comments by the minister who presided at his wedding and baptized his children. "They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced. And that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today."

That's strong stuff, to be sure. But it is not likely to end the wrangling over Wright.

While it is always good to maintain America's historic wall of separation between church and state, the Obama camp has not had a lot of success so far in separating this particular statesman from his church.

That's because the candidate and his backers have consistently come across as being embarrassed and ashamed by Wright.

That's the wrong response. It's perfectly fine to disagree with Wright. And Barack Obama should do so.

But there's little if anything about this pastor that should provoke embarrassment or invite apology.

Wright can be unsettling, thought-provoking, often right and sometimes wrong. But he is neither anti-American nor unpatriotic.

In more ways than Republican and now Democratic critics seem prepared to admit, Wright is the embodiment of an American religious and political tradition of challenging the country's sins while calling it to the higher ground that extends from the founding of the republic. No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson -- who constructed that wall of separation between church and state but who worried a good deal about questions of the divine -- worried openly about the retribution that would befall a nation that permitted slavery.

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other," wrote Jefferson in 1781's Notes on the State of Virginia, where he asked, "(Can) the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever."

The wrath of God brought down on a country that permits slavery? A nation damned by its original sin? God damn America?

America has been blessed from its beginnings by champions of liberty, by abolitionists and civil rights marchers, by suffragists and union organizers, by anti-imperialists like Mark Twain and challengers of the military-industrial complex like Dwight Eisenhower. Necessarily, these patriots have said some tough things about American leaders and policies. They have acknowledged flaws that are self-evident. Yet, they have not done so out of hatred. Rather, they have loved America sufficiently to believe it can be as good and as just as figures so diverse and yet in some very important ways so similar as Thomas Jefferson and Jeremiah Wright have taught us.

Barack Obama

"The Wright Speech" (video)

Video (06:58):

Barack Obama, April 29, 2008.

Barack Obama

"Politics: The Wright stuff"

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's defense of himself ought to be welcomed as an exercise of his rights. We have no idea how it will actually play into the campaign. But as pundits suggest, any mention of Sen. Barack Obama's pastor leads to the media's Pavlovian response: Run sensational video loops, check ratings, charge advertisers. Repeat.

As predictable as that may be, it's up to voters to decide how to respond, especially in deciding what, if any, significance the whole overhyped subject has to the Democrats' primary battle. Most will never like the excerpts but many already view them in a wider context of African-American history, religious and civic. A wider acquaintance with Wright and his work may neutralize the discussion.

We're certainly no experts on Wright, his congregation or Chicago. But the narrative of a wild, angry anti-American extremist doesn't ring true. As some have noted, Wright volunteered to join the Marines in the early 1960s, went on to become a Navy cardiopulmonary technician and earned letters of commendation for his White House service. A white congregant recently wrote about how Wright took hours to talk his African-American fiancée out of breaking their engagement over concerns about marrying outside her race. They've been married 25 some years.

Over the course of a long public career, Wright has misspoken a time or two. Americans can listen to him directly address the criticisms and go on to have a presidential election that revolves around greater matters.

Barack Obama

"Reverend Jeremiah Wright National Press Club pt.1" (video) (Updated)

UPDATE: Part 5 is here and Part 6 is here.
UPDATE: Part 2 of the video is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here.
UPDATE: Here's the transcript.

CSPANJUNKIEdotORG, video (10:42):

April 28, 2008 C-SPAN 2

Howie P.S.: I'm still looking for parts 2, etc. and I will post them here if I locate them. If you want to watch Jeremiah Wright speaking last night at the NAACP in Detroit, go here.
Barack Obama

"Why Is It So Quiet After the Moyers-Wright Interview?"

Dave Winer:

I expected a roaring debate in the political blogosphere this morning, and on cable news after the Friday night Bill Moyers interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Instead, there's eerie quiet.

The most I could find was this post on Protein Wisdom saying that Moyers didn't play hardball with Wright. It's true, he didn't. Instead he did what I wish more journalists would, he interviewed him in a way that helped us get to know the person. He let him speak his piece, so we could listen.

There's so much to admire about Rev. Wright, but first, the shame of the professional media, who hounded not only Wright, but members of his congregation, including a woman in a hospice, to try to uncover more dirt about Wright and thereby embarrass Barack Obama.

Wright isn't running for office, he points out, it isn't his job to get our vote, it's his job to help his congregation, to help them understand the world they live in, to help them do better in that world, and to prepare them for what they believe comes in the afterlife.

Watching Wright, I wondered if Sean Hannity's preacher could stand up to the kind of objectification this man has withstood. What about Tim Russert's? How about the people who are close to Charlie Gibson and Andrea Mitchell? And how about the CEOs of Time-Warner, GE, the Sulzbergers and the Murdochs? These people have never run for office, they've never been vetted or elected. Could they come out so well after being put through the wringer that Wright has been through.

I think the silence comes from the fact that there still is some humanity in the press and in the blogosphere, and those who watched Moyers and really listened to Wright, realized that he's not a liability to Obama, he's an asset. At least some of the polish, the quiet confidence, self-respect, intelligence and grace we see in Obama must have rubbed off this man.

Watching Wright gave me pride in being an American, and shame at the same time, for coming from a country so willing to objectify and villify this person before checking out whether the characterization was accurate. Even the supposedly courageous and thorough NY Times calls his oratory "racist" in an editorial in today's paper. Based on what? I've watched the sermons that have been excerpted; if these are racist, then every other preacher in the US is racist too.

Wright says the religion of the people on the deck of a slave ship must be different from the religion from the people under the deck. On the deck, god is justifying the practice of slavery, and below -- god gives them hope that someday they will be free. My people, the Jews, understand this very well, it's part of our tradition. We've just celebrated the holiday of Passover, a feast that's all about the pride of an enslaved people. If we're still telling the story, passing it down from generation to generation, after 3000 years, why should we be critical of the African-Americans who are telling the story of their enslavement, which ended only 145 years ago, and whose manifestations are still with us today.

We, the United States, have made mistakes, and those mistakes are as much who we are as our triumphs. The failures leave behind people and their culture, their music, their legends, their religion and their hopes. Sure it seems strange when you hear it for the first time, but that's good! Because the second time it's not so strange, and eventually it becomes part of our melting pot, and enriches all our lives.

If you haven't watched the Wright interview, make the time to do so. You won't be sorry.

Barack Obama

South Side Priest Sticks Up For Jeremiah Wright (video)

You can view my latest guest post on the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog here.

Barack Obama

"Shadow of Wright Still Hangs over Obama Campaign"

James Joyner (Outside the Beltway):

A piece in today’s WSJ argues that “there is evidence of lingering damage” to Barack Obama from the controversy over pastor Jeremiah Wright’s videotaped tirades. The evidence is, to put it mildly, thin.

“It has not been defused,” says David Parker, a North Carolina Democratic Party official and unpledged superdelegate. He says his worries about Republicans questioning Sen. Obama’s patriotism prompted him to raise the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s remarks in conversations with both the Obama and Clinton campaigns. “I’m concerned about seeing Willie Horton ads during the general election,” Mr. Parker says, referring to campaign ads that Republicans widely credited for helping defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988.

So, one guy nobody’s ever heard of is worried about some ads that might run? And then there’s this:

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Clinton had a 48% to 40% lead against Sen. McCain while Sen. Obama was ahead 43% to 39%. The polls credit Sen. Clinton’s advantage to her strength among white voters. No Democrat has won the presidency with a majority of white voters since 1964, and no president from either party has been elected without winning two of the three swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida since 1960. In those three states, some 23% of white Democrats would defect to Sen. McCain in a matchup with Sen. Obama, compared with 11% who would abandon Sen. Clinton, according to the Quinnipiac polls.

“It’s a reasonable assumption that … part of that drop-off among white voters would result from his pastor’s notoriety,” says Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown.

Or that Wright’s remarks give credence to reluctance to vote for a black guy? But, again, that’s pretty weak. Despite polls showing that most people aren’t even aware of the controversy — and Obama’s national lead over Clinton continuing to grow — the story won’t die.

Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss had an interesting op-ed last week in the Chicago Tribune which tells, as Paul Harvey might say, the rest of the story:

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy’s premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief’s medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

As they reveal by and by — and you’ve likely guessed given the context — they’re talking about Wright. Korb and Moss contrast his service with the avoidance of same by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney and ask, “Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?”

That strikes me as a silly conclusion, as there are all manner of ways to serve. And, surely, eight years as commander-in-chief (in the cases of Clinton and Bush) and four years as SECDEF and another eight at VP (in the case of Cheney) counts as national service. But the smaller point — that Wright’s story is a more complicated than a few moments of video would lead you to believe — is worth factoring into the equation.

I find the Wright story interesting. And the fact that Obama has seen him as a mentor all these years probably means that he, too, is more complicated than his well crafted public image. But I don’t see this brouhaha being a decisive factor in who becomes our next president.

Barack Obama

"That's Not Wright"

Josh Marshall:

You can always tell when a scandal story has peaked and is ebbing, almost down to the minute: when your political opponents start to raise it explicitly against you.

That was the minute I knew Bill Clinton was going to weather the Monica story -- the moment when Republicans first started hitting him over it. It took a few days. And I remember rejoicing about it at the time. Same thing here with Wright. The Clinton camp can see that it's drifting. So they're deciding to stoke it. Also useful to get the Tuzla stuff off the front page.

Here's one other point I want to raise about Wright. Having watched the full sermons that his sound bites were grabbed out of, it's pretty clear to me that the snippets running on Youtube were taken out of context and heavily distorted. (But that's life, to a degree -- political hits don't usually come packaged with extenuating context) I'm also not going to get into the business of full-scale defenses of someone who has apparently suggested that the US government had some role in "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

But in the debate about Wright, which Sen. Clinton has just reignited, it seems to be spoken of now as an unquestioned assumption that Wright traffics in racist rhetoric or hate speech. But is that really true? I've seen some stuff that strikes me as whacky. I've heard soundbites that critics would not have much trouble spinning as anti-American. But are there really quotes that justify the charge of racism? I'm not saying that purely as a rhetorical question. I have not made myself a full Wrightologist.

But I do get the sense that a lot of people believe he's so radioactive that it makes no sense to point (that) out when others are treating as granted claims that appear demonstrably false.

Barack Obama

"Obama Tells Smerconish That He Confronted Wright On Statements"

Jason Linkins (Huffingotn Post):

The Politico highlights a snippet of transcript from a tomorrow's edition of Michael Smerconish's radio show, in which he interviews Senator Barack Obama. Smerconish, who's been an Obama defender, apparently questioned the presidential candidate on his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church, which Obama insisted was "not a crackpot church."

Obama also told Smerconish that he had previously confronted Wright on his controversial statements:

SMERCONISH: Would the speech have come as a surprise to Wright?

OBAMA: No, I think he recognizes. When some these remarks first came to light were a year ago, and I actually called him and it created some tensions that were reported in the newspapers. He understood that his perspective on some of these issues were very different from mine and hopefully we could agree to disagree on some of these issues. I wasn't familiar with some of the most offensive remarks that had come up otherwise we probably would have a more intense conversation.

Obama also suggested that the whole flap only proved "the danger of the YouTube era," which is some perplexing perspective from the guy whose own message is currently being carried far and wide by YouTube.

Howie P.S.: I don't think Linkins "got" Obama's point. With YouTube media, partial sequences can be sent far and wide while editing out other messages from the same appearance that change the meaning of the speech. Those who have watched the unedited footage of Wright say his remarks come across quite differently when viewed inside his complete remarks.

Barack Obama

"Huckabee Defends Rev. Jeremiah Wright" (with video)

Ben Smith:

An assist from an unexpected quarter:

"[Y]ou can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do," Huckabee says. "It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what ... Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say 'Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.'"

Later, he defended Wright's anger, too:

"As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names..."

Watch the video:

Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union' (video)

BarackObamadotcom, video (37:39):

Barack Obama speaks in Philadelphia, PA at Constitution Center, on matters not just of race and recent remarks but of the fundamental path by which America can work together to pursue a better future.

Barack Obama

"Barack Obama Speech on Race (Tuesday, March 18, 2008)" (video)

dawgtowncity, video (09:11):

Small clip from FOX News(Local Ch 11) on Barack Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia.

Barack Obama

"Obama tackles race anger in major speech" (with video)

AP with video, (02:45):

Senator confronts issue triggered by his pastor's inflamatory comments--PHILADELPHIA - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday tried to stem damage from divisive comments delivered by his pastor, while bluntly addressing anger between blacks and whites in the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign.

Obama confronted America's legacy of racial division head on, tackling black grievance, white resentment and the uproar over his former pastor's incendiary statements. Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots as no other presidential hopeful could, Obama asserted: "This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected."

Obama expressed understanding of the passions on both sides in what he called "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years."

"But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races," he said in a speech at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

Obama rarely talks so openly about his race in such a prominent way, but his speech covered divisions from slavery to the O.J. Simpson trial to the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. He also recognized his race has been a major issue in the campaign that has taken a "particularly divisive turn" in the last few weeks as video of his longtime pastor spread on the Internet and on television.

Obama said the sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright "rightly offend white and black alike." Those sermons from years ago suggested the United States brought the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on itself and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.

Spiritual guide
While Obama rejected what Wright said, he also embraced the man who inspired his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding, baptized his daughters and has been his spiritual guide for nearly 20 years.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said, speaking in front of eight American flags. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother _ a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Obama said he knew Wright to occasionally be a fierce critic of U.S. policy and that the pastor sometimes made controversially remarks in church that he disagreed with, but he said he never heard Wright talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms. The comments that have become a source of debate recently "were not only wrong but divisive" and have raised questions among voters, he said.

"I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way," he said. "But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man."

He said he came to Wright's church because he was inspired by Wright's message of hope and his inspiration to rebuild the black community.

Obama said Wright's comments have sparked a discussion that reflect complexities of race in the United States that its people have never really resolved.

"We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," Obama said. "But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."

Obama said anger over those injustices often find voice in black churches on Sunday mornings. "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning," he said.

Obama argued that the anger often distracts from solving real problems and bringing change. But he said it also exists in some segments of the white community that feels blacks are often given an unfair advantage through affirmative action.

"If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American," Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a somber address.

Obama said one of the tasks of his campaign to be the first black president is "to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."

Barack Obama

"Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero"

Frank Schaeffer(Huffington Post):

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.

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. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.

And this:

In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....

Then this:

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.'

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

Howie P.S.: "Wanted: Uncontroversial Church for Barack Obama and Family (and Me) to Attend" on Think On These Things makes a similar point from another perspective.

Barack Obama

"Religion and Race" (video)

Video (07:09) from ABC News on the flap over Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama adviser Professor Shaun Casey comments on the issue.

Barack Obama