On March 14, Sen. Barack Obama told CNN, regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments about 9/11 and white America, "Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them,” adding, "What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor."
But on March 18, in a speech in Philadelphia, he admitted he had sat in church and heard his former minister make controversial remarks.
"Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."
Obama has responded over and over again when accused by the Hillary Clinton campaign of having only inspirational speeches to offer the American public, “Just words?” going on to explain that words have shaped our nation. Indeed, pundits and scholars have backed him up, saying that FDR’s “All we have to fear is fear itself” speech and John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” speech were much more than “just words.” Obama is absolutely right—in government, words determine public policy.
So it’s doubly disturbing that a man who has insisted that words have the power to shape America insisted last week that the careless, inflammatory and injurious words of his minister, Jeremiah Wright, aren’t really to be considered a factor in this presidential race. Obama has considered Wright an advisor to such a degree that he appointed him to his campaign’s religious advisory council. Obama, a self-professed man of words, has tapped a minister—a position which relies upon words for its function—to guide the religious aspirations of his campaign and it just so happens that the minister’s words are words of vitriolic hatred, and we are all supposed to be okay with that?
I still have a great deal of admiration for Obama, and I don’t think that he hates this country at all, but I certainly think that his former appointee Wright hates America. Only someone absolutely rotten with hatred and insanity could say that the United States is to blame for Sept. 11, that the victims of that horrible murder brought it on themselves. What kind of a hypocrite says out of one side of his mouth that it’s not okay for conservatives to blame blacks themselves for their often disproportionately disadvantaged circumstances in this country while simultaneously saying that it’s okay for him to blame the victims of Sept. 11—the dead, the families and friends who lost the people they loved that day, and you and I, because we were victims, too—for themselves bringing on those mindboggling acts of murder?
According to Wright, if you are black you are only an object of other people’s plans for you, you are a victim—never mind that the black man standing next to him graduated from Harvard, became a member of the U.S. Senate, has authored a book, and is now running for president. Or is that the white half of Obama that’s managed to do all that? Is that what Wright meant?
My concern is Obama’s lack of judgment in appointing this man to anything—he shouldn’t be appointed as chief flea dipper at a dog pound. It would be one thing if he didn’t know him, but he knows him very well—Wright is the pastor of the church Obama attended for 20 years, he baptized Obama’s kids, he performed the marriage ceremony of Obama and his wife Michelle.
As president, it will be Obama’s job to appoint cabinet members, secretaries of defense, state, agriculture, commerce and other departments. He will have to appoint an attorney general and a surgeon general. He will appoint judges, too. And all of these will have tremendous bearing on the direction of this country.
He appointed Wright, and Wright clearly hates America: our country is 77 percent white, that’s why whites are called the “majority.” If you hate the majority of people in this country, then you hate most of this country. How does he feel about the white half of Obama? For that matter, how does Obama feel about his own white half, about his mother? His entire focus is on a father who abandoned him to return to Africa when Obama was very young. The danger for abandoned sons is that they desperately seek father figures even in unworthy men. Has Wright been a father figure to him? That’s a position of powerful influence.
I don’t want my country run by people who hate it. If you were Swedish, you wouldn’t want Sweden run by people who hate Sweden. If you were Ugandan, you wouldn’t want Uganda run by people who hate Uganda. And as an American, I don’t want America run by people who hate America. I don’t think Obama hates America, but can we count on him not to appoint people who hate America? With most presidential candidates, that’s a gamble—the people they appoint to their campaigns are seldom as outspoken in their prejudices as Wright has been, but with Obama we already know the answer to that question. Obama claims that he cares about blacks and whites, but he appointed a man who hates me, who hates my 11 year old son, my 83 year-old mother, my best friend, my neighbors, in short, many of the people I love—and the vast majority of people in this country, based on the color of our skin.
Maybe Obama is right to say that Wright’s words have no bearing on his plans for the presidency, but maybe the bigger concern is that Obama’s own words have no bearing on his plans for the presidency. SP