He sleeps with the fishes in the deep blue sea, and he didn’t speak for me.
The title of this post is the refrain from Paul Shanklin’s latest song regarding Obama’s Jeremiah Wright debacle. It’s also the basic response Obama’s had to this whole brouhaha.
This morning, Obama gave a speech regarding his relationship with Rev. Wright. He stated that he could no sooner disown Rev. Wright than his white grandmother who uttered racist slurs and said things he disagreed with. But his association with his grandmother is involuntary. He didn’t choose his grandmother. But his association with his pastor is completely voluntary. He could have left his church if he disagreed with the teaching. He could have confronted his pastor if he felt the teaching was faulty. Barack Obama did neither of those.
Obama’s strategy of talking without saying anything is about to backfire on him big time. He can’t sweet-talk his way out of this. He’s either willingly listened to Jeremiah Wright denounce America for 20 years or he really had no idea what his pastor was preaching. Neither of those options inspires a lot of confidence in a potential president.
This is a video of some of Obama’s (somewhat belated) denunciation of his pastor’s comments.
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Wright’s comments were taken out of context. Did you know he was a volunteer Marine? Did you know that he was a Navy medical specialist who was valedictorian at his Navy medical school and was so good that he was chosen to attend to LBJ in 1966? This is a special man. And as his recent interview with Moyers shows - he’s also a brilliant thoughtful man. Let us not play the “gotcha” games of politics any longer. Let us look at people more thoughtfully. It’s time to raise the level of discourse in this country.
Election Blog’s last blog post..Jeremiah Wright On Bill Moyers
Election Blog,
I did not know that Wright is a Marine, or that he was a Navy doctor. This does not change the fact that he has uttered hateful and demeaning words about my country from the pulpit of a church. In fact, if he served in the Marines and is now saying such things about America, I hold him in even lower esteem because he obviously does not understand the values of his branch. Thank you for helping to inform my opinion of Rev. Wright and in turn, Barack Obama.