http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=4671Friday March 21 2008
Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2005.
The words of Reverend Wright have many concerned about his influence on the senator
In the end it was not the lies about his religion, but the truth about his religious mentor that may have irrevocably splattered the image of Sen. Barack Obama.
The Democratic presidential frontrunner survived a malicious viral email campaign that he was a Muslim. But can Obama’s populist candidacy survive the truthful revelations about his 20-year relationship with spiritual advisor Jeremiah A. Wright, the “black separatist” Christian pastor?
It was Wright’s charismatic “in your face” African-American activism that first brought Obama into the Trinity Church as a practicing Christian and regular attendee. While away at Harvard studying law, Obama morally tutored himself with tapes of Wright’s fiery lectures.
Wright was a moving force in Obama’s family as well. The pastor married Obama and his wife Michelle and baptized their two children. The pastor’s provocative sermon, “The Audacity of Hope,” gave Obama the title for his bestselling book. Obama even huddled with his Pastor for spiritual guidance just before announcing his presidential bid and Wright was given a prominent advisory role in the campaign.
It seems too late to distance himself from or condemn the recently broadcast bigotry of Wright. The real question is how a man described by many as a leading anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white agitator became Obama’s closest mentor for two decades.
Exactly what is the objectionable conduct of Wright? To begin, Wright is a close confidant and supporter of Minister Louis Farrakhan. The leader of the Nation of Islam has called Jews “bloodsuckers” who practice a “gutter religion.” In 1984, Wright accompanied Farrakhan on his controversial visit with Libyan strongman Col. Muammar Khadafy.
In the Farrakhan mold, Wright is a firebrand anti-American, anti-white, anti-Zionist preacher. His pulpit statements, by now widely broadcast on cable TV and across the Internet, have histrionically asked followers to chant not “God Bless America” but “God Damn America,” to condemn Israel and Zionism for “state terrorism,” denounce Washington for creating the AIDS virus as a weapon against black people, and to recognize that America is controlled by “rich white people.” Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Wright waved his arms and almost danced, bellowing that America had brought the crime upon itself.
Despite his extremism, Wright is no fringe member of the African-American mainstream. He is a giant in the black Chicago community. The angry world of Pastor Wright is the embittered experience that most Americans either don’t know or would rather forget.
Yet, Trinity church is vastly more than a caldron of inspiration via rage. It is also a place of exhilaration for a better way, a new way. Obama says he represents that new way; he is the apostle of “change” and a torch of the new politics. Yet, revelations about his infusion with Pastor Wright represent his tie not to the new century but to the decades-old politics of bitterness and hate.
In a political defense that now ranks with Bill Clinton’s assertion that he “never inhaled” and “never had sex with that woman,” Obama claims he was never in the pews when Wright expressed his hateful sermons.
But more than a year ago in March 2007, Obama suddenly decided to uninvite Pastor Wright to offer the invocation at a major campaign event. “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell,” Wright said. He added that Obama advised, “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.”
For Obama, it seems like a “lose-lose” situation. Either he has repeatedly lied to the nation about his knowledge of Pastor Wright’s bigotry, or for 20 years he was ignorant of his own mentor’s views being broadcast worldwide every Sunday.
The Jewish community has long self-censored on Obama’s hate links. The Anti-Defamation League even recently issued a press release that it was satisfied that Obama had disavowed Wright’s race hatred and anti-Zionist fervor. But now, in a weekend interview, ADL national director Abraham Foxman says his view is different. “More is now known,” says Foxman. “It is not a casual, one-way way relationship with Pastor Wright.”
Foxman has joined the growing chorus of disbelief about Obama’s ignorance. “It is very difficult to believe that throughout these years, Obama has been unaware of the conspiracy, bigotry, and anti-Zionist views.”
While most in America are worried about playing the race card, Barack Obama has shown he is still carrying around a full deck.
Edwin Black is a Chicago-based journalist. This article is adapted from a longer piece from The Cutting Edge News at
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=393.
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