Late last month, Barrack Obama announced his decision to leave Trinity United Church of Christ, distancing himself from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who has so far been the most controversial figure in the Obama camp (barring the release of Michelle Obama’s rumored “whitey/why’d he” video).
On May 30, Barrack sent a resignation letter to the church “mak[ing] official [his] decision to end [his] memebership [sic] at trinity [sic]” (one hopes the typographical errors are not Obama’s own).
This raises a number of questions. For one, was the letter really necessary? I went to church for a period in my teens and just stopped going one day. Aside from some friendly telephone reminders of upcoming youth group activities and promises that I would be prayed for, there wasn’t really a big fuss. No handshake, no exit interview, no parting gift.
Wright seems like a pretty smart guy, so I would have thought that he got the message when Obama booted him from the 130-member African American Religious Leadership Committee (whatever that is), or when he said that Wright’s views “denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation [and] rightly offend white and black alike,” that his comments were “not only wrong but divisive” and “simply inexcusable,” and that he held a “profoundly distorted view of this country.” In a separate press conference, Obama said that he was “outraged” and “saddened” by Wright’s comments, which he characterized as “giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”
Had Obama even been to Wright’s church recently? It seems like he was out of town a lot campaigning and stuff.
Nevertheless, on March 18, Obama said, “I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother [Madelyn ‘Typical White Person' Dunham].”
Granny Dunham had better watch her back, then, because as primary season wraps up and Obama shifts into “appeal to moderates” mode, there’s a whole lotta disownin’ going on. Just over two months after delivering his aforequoted “More Perfect Union” speech, Obama dropped Wright faster than you can say “chickens coming home to roost.”
As far as I can tell, Wright is only the second person whose support Obama has refused, the first being famed calypso singer Louis “Hitler Was a Great Man” Farrakhan. (I could have also gone with “Louis ‘White People Are Potential Humans, They Haven’t Evolved Yet‘ Farrakhan.” Either way, you get the idea. The guy’s a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic hatemonger.)
I doubt anyone was surprised that Obama repudiated Farrakhan. He is sort of a lunatic, and it’s not like they were friends (although I guess Obama’s church newsletter gave Farrakhan some sort of award and Michelle Obama was in a photograph with Louis Farrakhan’s wife ). Wright, on the other hand, was pretty close to Obama. He had, after all, been his pastor for 20 years. Wright officiated Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, inspired the title of one of his books, and generally served as his “spiritual mentor.” For Obama to sever his 20-year ties with Wright, he must have said some really incendiary stuff, right? Stuff like “God damn America” or “[the] U.S. [is] to blame for 9/11,” right?
Well… kind of.
Wright’s two most frequently quoted sermons are “The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall” and “Confusing God and Government,” delivered on September 16, 2001 and April 13, 2003, respectively.
The “U.S. [is] to blame for 9/11″ quote that ABC News cites so prominently is, at best, a misleading paraphrase, and at worst, an outright fabrication. If I were to write a headline that more fairly reflects the actual content of the speech, it would be something like “Obama’s Pastor Says Violence Begets Violence,” which isn’t nearly as sensational.
As far as I can tell, Wright never said anything close to the phrase “U.S. [is] to blame for 9/11,” although I don’t think he would necessarily disagree. To put this in context, here is a much larger quote from the relevant part of his sermon:
“We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak, the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Granada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hardworking fathers. We bombed Qaddafi’s home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock. We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback [sic] for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hardworking people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they would never get back home. 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. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children from school, civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.”
“God damn America” is an exact quote from one of Wright’s sermons, but again, it makes more sense in context:
“The British government failed, the Russian government failed, the Japanese government failed, the German government failed, and the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. The government put them in chains. She put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. Not God bless America, God damn America. That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.”
May I also point out that after Hurricane Katrina, a bunch of right-wing Christians said pretty much the exact same thing, including John McCain supporter Pastor John Hagee?
I’m an atheist, but as far as Christians go, Wright seems like a pretty good guy. He’s certainly charismatic, and I respect that he’s unafraid to speak his mind. He also seems to support Roe v. Wade, which is better than 47 percent of Americans. According to at least one source, he also supports gay marriage, which puts him in the minority by all estimates.
[Note: It's hard to find much information about Wright's politics. The linked CNN transcript was the only source I could find that mentioned his position on gay marriage, so I'm not 100 percent sure on that point. As for abortion, however, Wright said in one sermon (also quoted by CNN), "The government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body. ... [T]hey are about to undo Roe v. Wade,” which to me seems pretty unequivocal.]
I don’t agree with everything Wright said (I always thought the whole “AIDS was created by the government to kill black people” theory was pretty far-fetched), and there are parts of his sermons where he’s all but incoherent (I still don’t understand what he meant by his comments about Tiger Woods’s “blazin’ hips” and “Condoskeeza [sic] Rice”), but nothing I’ve read strikes me as being particularly offensive.
I’ll conclude with a few more quotes from the Reverend Wright. As you read these, think about what it was that inspired Obama to say, “[Wright's] comments … certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. … What became clear to me is that he was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for.” Does Obama stand for the idea that violence perpetuated by America has no negative repercussions? Does he deny the historical injustices against women and minorities in the United States (or the injustices that are still going on)? Does the idea that the government lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or its connections to September 11 somehow “contradict” his world view?
Or could it be simply that Obama is a cowardly opportunist who holds no beliefs so dearly that he would not sacrifice them when he thinks it politically advantageous to do so?
Here’s Wright again:
“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that, y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people that we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”
“[The United States] government lied about their belief that all men were created equal. The truth is they believed that all white men were created equal. The truth is they did not even believe that white women were created equal, in creation nor civilization. The government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get white women the vote. Then the government had to pass an equal rights amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence [Thomas], who sexually harassed Anita Hill, and a closeted Klan court that is a throwback to the 19th century, handpicked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford-between Clarence and that stacked court, they are about to undo Roe v. Wade, just like they are about to undo affirmative action. The government lied in its founding documents and the government is still lying today. Governments lie.”
“The government lied about Pearl Harbor too. They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie. The government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin. They wanted that resolution to get us in the Vietnam War. Governments lie. The government lied about Nelson Mandela and our CIA helped put him in prison and keep him there for 27 years. The South African government lied on Nelson Mandela. Governments lie.”
“The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African American men with syphilis. Governments lie. The government lied about bombing Cambodia and Richard Nixon stood in front of the camera, ‘Let me make myself perfectly clear…’ Governments lie. The government lied about the drugs for arms Contra scheme orchestrated by Oliver North, and then the government pardoned all the perpetrators so they could get better jobs in the government. Governments lie. … The government lied about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between 9/11/01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Governments lie.”
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