Pained by Wright’s Comments, Suggestion of Pandering, Barack Obama Blasts Former Pastor

By: Jackie Jones and Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

In the strongest language to date, Sen. Barack Obama denounced the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying his former pastor’s recent statements “contradict everything I have been about.”

Obama’s remarks came a day after Wright delivered a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. In a question-and-answer session afterward, Wright said criticism of his previous remarks were not an attack on him, but the black church. He also criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities.

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

And perhaps even worse for Obama, Wright suggested that the church congregant secretly concurs.

"He was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for," Obama said at a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that I am about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people."

Wright’s speech was one of a series of public appearances, including an extensive interview on PBS with Bill Moyers aired Friday and a speech before the NAACP on Sunday, that the minister said were aimed to clarify remarks in his sermons that he said have been taken out of context.

At the Press Club, before reporters and a supportive audience of black church leaders beginning a two-day symposium, Wright said the black church tradition was not understood by the "dominant culture" in the United States.

Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which he formerly pastored, has a long history of liberating the oppressed by feeding the hungry, supporting recovery for the addicted and helping senior citizens in need, and some of its members have fought in the military, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, Wright said.

Wright also clearly enjoyed zinging some reporters whose questions, he said, showed the mainstream media understood neither the black church nor his positions about a variety of issues. Playing to a clearly supportive audience, Wright laughed, pointed to audience members and even slapped five with someone after getting off particularly good lines.

“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," said Obama, who noted that in the first news cycle following the release of excerpts seemed a “simplification” and a “caricature” of who Wright was, but that after his appearance at the Press Club, “yesterday I think he caricatured himself.”

The Illinois senator said of Wright's statements: "All it was was a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth."

"Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed," Obama said. "I don't think he showed much concern for me, more importantly I don't think he showed much concern for what we're trying to do in this campaign."

Obama said he heard that Wright had given "a performance" and when he watched news accounts, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.

"His comments were not only divisive and destructive, I believe they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate," Obama said. "I'll be honest with you, I hadn't seen it" when reacting initially on Monday, he said.

Obama tried to put controversial snippets of a Wright sermon, shown on a seemingly endless loop of sound bites, behind him in a major speech on race in March. The presidential candidate said Tuesday that he spoke to Wright afterwards, and “I was very clear that what he had said in those particular snippets I have found objectionable and offensive and that the purpose of the speech was to provide context for them, but not excuse them.”

Obama appeared to be personally pained by Wright's assertion that "politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls," a statement that raised eyebrows about Obama's authenticity as a candidate running on campaign of change.

He was saddened, he said, that Wright chose to portray his disagreement with the minister’s remarks as pandering.

“If Rev. Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it yesterday, then he doesn’t know me very well,” Obama said.

Obama said he has not spoken to Wright since the cleric began his public tour, but was speaking out yesterday to make clear that Wright did not speak for him or the Obama campaign.

“In some ways, what Rev. Wright said yesterday directly contradicts everything that I’ve done during my life. It contradicts how I was raised and the setting in which I was raised,” Obama said. “It contradicts my decisions to pursue a career of public service. It contradicts the issues that I’ve worked on politically. It contradicts what I’ve said in my books. It contradicts what I said in my convention speech in 2004. It contradicts my announcement. It contradicts everything that I’ve been saying on this campaign trail.”

Obama has been a member of Trinity UCC for about 20 years. Wright, as its senior pastor, performed the Obamas' marriage rites and baptized the couple's two daughters. The title of Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," came from a Wright sermon.

When young blacks move to Chicago to work, Trinity is one of the churches recommended by other professionals because of its ministries and opportunities to network, MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall said on "Hardball" Tuesday. She visited the church several times, she said, but maintained that she had not heard the kind of speech that has placed the Wright in a national spotlight.

Hall said following Wright’s Monday interview at the National Press Club, some of the members expressed their dismay to her, saying they thought Wright "was showing out.”

Receptionists at the 8,000 member church told BlackAmericaWeb.com that they were being flooded with calls on Tuesday. Still, they diligently took messages and promised to pass them on to the church spokeswoman, who was traveling back to Chicago from Washington, D.C. on Tuesday and could not respond immediately to questions.

Trinity has stood firmly behind Wright, a man who, for over more than three decades, led the church in becoming the largest in the predominately white denomination. He will be officially replaced in June by the Rev. Otis Moss III, 37, who is known for his ability to dialog with youths and attract them to church and ministry.

The flap has given the young minister an unfortunate inaugural challenge as Trinity's leader, observers say.

"Pastor Moss has inherited the repercussions of an attack he had nothing to do with," said Brenda Salter McNeil, president of an Oak Park-based company that works on diversity issues in Christian organizations. "He has to pastor a people through it."

Moss, an assistant pastor at Trinity for two years, is a Yale Divinity School graduate whose father also is a prominent preacher and a former adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His sermons often feature quotes and stories of the late civil rights leader, who officiated at his parents' wedding.

“What's amazing to me is the fact so many don't get why Wright is taking his time in the spotlight to defend himself in this Obama flap. Basically, it's about his ego,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane said in an online discussion of Obama’s remarks.

“He's done great work for 40 years, but nobody outside Chicago really knew who he was. NOW everybody does,” Kane said of Wright, who was well known in religious circles, but not many secular ones. “It's not a trait uncommon to preachers, politicians or even journalists who get a bit of national attention and suddenly they start to believe everybody needs to hear their opinions all the time. Frankly, Wright is just doing what everybody in America does when they experience fame; they strike while the iron is hot.”

Obama said he was distressed that controversy over Wright’s remarks has created a distraction from the real issues of the campaign.

“People want some help in stabilizing their lives and securing a better future for themselves and their children. And that’s what we should be talking about,” Obama said.

Fredrick C. Harris, a Columbia University professor and author of "Something Within: Religion in African American Political Activism," said the impact of Wright’s weekend speeches and Obama’s response will vary among voters.

“Wright has his legacy, and he has a right to defend it. But if, in any way, his performance is seen as diminishing the possibility of Barack Obama becoming America’s first black president, he will go down in history as one black man who dragged another black man down,” Harris told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

As for Obama’s response, Harris said, “In his speech in Philadelphia, Obama said he could not disown Wright. Now it seems like he is finally distancing himself.” But some in the black community may take issue with his choice, he said. “They may see this as Obama not showing loyalty to his pastor."

David Bositis, a senior analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank, told BlackAmericaWeb.com in an interview after Wright’s PBS appearance that the episode was a distraction, and voters were tired of it.

“Will there be people who take advantage of it, who would use that, including Clinton? Yes, but things are really bad right now, and I don’t think that this election is going to be about Rev. Wright,” Bositis said. “It’s going to be about people afraid of losing their jobs, losing their homes, with not enough money to pay their energy bills and put food on the table.”


Associated Press contributed to this story.