It’s not what he said, it’s that he said anything at all.There was nothing in Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the Detroit NAACP’s Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner last night that was a tenth as controversial as in the videotaped sermons of him that started circulating a couple months ago. But that doesn’t mean his appearance won’t do more to damage Barack Obama. Simply the fact that Wright is defiantly unapologetic and that the cable news cameras are now trained on him–CNN and Fox News Channel carried Wright’s appearance live, and CNN rebroadcast it later in the evening–threaten to remind voters that they don’t like Wright in advance of the next round of primaries.Here’s a video excerpt of Wright’s appearance:And here’s the AP on Wright’s refusal to apologize for the sermons controversy:
The outspoken former pastor of Barack Obama told an audience of 10,000 at an NAACP dinner on Sunday that despite what his critics say, he is descriptive, not divisive, when he speaks about racial injustices.”I describe the conditions in this country,” the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. said during the 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner held by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”I’m not here for political reasons,” Wright said. “I’m not a politician. I know that fact will surprise many of you because many in the corporate-owned media made it seem like I am running for the Oval Office. I am not running for the Oval Office. I’ve been running for Jesus a long, long time, and I’m not tired yet.”….”I am not one of the most divisive” black spiritual leaders, he said. “I’m one of the most descriptive.”
It’s clips like that–and of Wright mocking JFK’s Boston accent by imitating his famous “Ask not what your country can do for you” lines–that will dredge up the negative feelings about the Wright-Obama relationship, particularly among the white working class voters that Obama is already having trouble with. Here’s another incendiary passage from last night’s speech, from ABC News:
“Please run and tell my stuck-on-stupid friends that Arabic is a language — is a language, it is not a religion,” he said. “Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator’s middle name dramatically, “Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it’s some disease.”
It seems that the threats of such rhetoric to Obama are readily apparent to everyone but Wright, who’s scheduled to speak again this morning at the National Press Club. He honestly doesn’t realize that his appearances are likely hurting the candidate he so desperately wants to help?9
posted April 28, 2008 at 12:04 pm
The issue for Wright is not Obama’s candidacy. The issue is his own self-respect. He can’t back down from what he has said or apologize because if he does he will not be able to show his face and if that means that Obama’s presidential hopes go under the pundit bus, so be it. The audience he speaks to will not listen to those who apologize, who repudiate their own words.
For Rev. Wright it is no longer a matter of him and Obama. It is him or Obama.
posted May 1, 2008 at 1:19 am
“Please run and tell my stuck-on-stupid friends that Arabic is a language — is a language, it is not a religion,” he said. “Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator’s middle name dramatically, “Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it’s some disease.”
Had Rev. Wright said this in a university classroom, no one would have given it a second thought other than to recognize it for the truth that it is.
The fact that it apparently is provoking the kind of outrage that it is in U.S. political circles merely serves to underscore the pathetically low level of intellectual accumen that sustains in the deathly interminable joke that passes for as the American primary circus.