After supporting "truth-tellers" for years, George McGovern, Eugene McCarthy, Dennis Kucinich, and being ridiculed for it, I'm supporting Barack Obama, not so much for what he says, but for who he is: intelligent, well-educated with a lot of experience outside US borders (consequently a better vision of our place in the world), and definitely outside the mainstream and the Washington "Good ole (white) boys club" that got us into this mess in the first place. I like to think that once elected, Barack will surround himself with intelligent, well-educated advisors - regardless of race or gender, and especially those outside the "club." We need to do some real work on this country, have some real discussions, and, although I don't disagree with anything the Rev. Wright has said, just the fact that he threatens Barack's campaign, well illustrates why a candidate can't afford to do too much "truth-telling." When the democrats began to blame the Iraqis for not rising to the cause, a clear case of blaming the victims for their lot in life, I just gave up. Personally, I hope the whole system implodes - as it looks like it might well be doing. Only with a fresh start and some strong collective memories of what has gone wrong, will we be able to pick ourselves up as a people and change to a more humane direction. Certainly the events of "now" have deep, deep roots in our history, and even the beginnings of the country.

Wright's rhetoric and his inflated ego are doing serious damage to Obama's campaign. Wright seems now mainly interested in his own newfound celebrity.

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he was tired of seeing his 30 years of good works being reduced to a 30 second video clip. Maybe he was tired of seeing his good name dragged through the mud. Unlike other notable Swiftboat-ees, who chose to cower and parse their words, he chose to come out swinging.

And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, "Art not thou also one of his disciples?" He denied it, and said, "I am not." (John 18:25)

I'm sick of hearing that Obama "had to do it". He did not. He could have had some integrity. He could have pointed out that much of what Wright said, while difficult to hear, is true, that God does indeed condemn (i.e. "damn") some actions.

But to my great disappointment (as an Obama supporter), he chose to cave to the likes of Chris Mathews and the Clucking Hens of the Media. Much better to have stood firm and let the chips fall where they may. In a week or two, the media would have found some new outrage and Wright would be forgotten.

Very sad.........

Sipsey, you wrote of Rev. Wright "Maybe he was tired of seeing his good name dragged through the mud." Maybe, but...

I watched Wright's interview with Moyers in its entirety; it was serious, interesting, and he didn't do the stand-up comedy routine he treated us to later, at the National Press Club (on C-Span). Clearly he has at least two sides.

The problem is, when he declares that the U.S. Government hatched a plot and infected Americans with AIDS, and that Rev. Farrakhan is "one of the great voices of the 20th and 21st century" -- and when he dismisses Barack Obama's criticisms of these outlandish claims on the grounds that Obama's just a politician -- well, he's lost me.

I'm glad Obama cut the cord.

The problem is, when he declares that the U.S. Government hatched a plot and infected Americans with AIDS, and that Rev. Farrakhan is "one of the great voices of the 20th and 21st century"

While I agree that those quotes weren't his finest moments, let's be accurate:

- as to the AIDs thing, he said he believed that a govt that was capable of the Tuskegee Experiement was capable of such a thing, not that they had actually done it;

- as to Farrakhan: Wright said that he was "important" voice, just as Hitler was an important voice. Not necessarily good, just important.

I agree with sipsey. Obama should have defended the First Amendment. The words spoken by Rev. Wright have to be part of any honest dialog about American society.
Hoa binh

There is a disconnect between mainstream propaganda (I won't call it news) and what the Black culture speaks about. We don't hear from other underground cultures or other ideas. We want to be washed clean by media propaganda. Rev.Wright made sense to me, and considering all the other nasty things that the CIA has done including openly selling drugs to Black to destroy their culture. http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/webb.html

Is it not a wonder that they suspect the US government of other such atrocities? I personally spoke with former nuns and priests who used to work in Central America. They testified to the fact that the CIA was involved in various assignations, drug-trafficking, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_conspiracy_theories

An excellent analysis of the Wright situation can be had here:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17509

As for me, I have been positively fuming over what Obama said regarding Wright:

"[Wright's] comments were not only divisive and destructive, but they give comfort to those who prey on hate."

You see, it works like this:

Raise your voice in indignation over US's methodical, unemotional (and quite businesslike) brutality and injustice around the world; and,

a. Get accused of promoting hate and divisiveness.

b. Or, at very least, not being a team-player.

I must admit, it is a brialliant strategy - straight out of the Israeli playbook for Palestine. Occupy a peoples land and murder them, then accuse them of being hateful ingrates when they fight back!

Come to think of it, the Israelis got their ideas from us - surviving first-nation people were, and still are are, a bunch of ingrates too, aren't they?

Black is white.

Freedom is slavery.

Obama should have leveraged Wright's comments about the US gov. infecting people with aids, etc. by emphasizing that the Bush regime's lack of transparency has resulted in bitterness among blacks, unemployed people, and others, and has nurtured the growth of many "theories" that would never have gotten very far if government was more transparent.

Pelosi missed a similar opportunity in 2006 when she called Hugo Chavez a thug when she had the opportunity to exemplify him as an extreme leftist whose success has been greatly enhanced by the extreme right Bush Regime. She should have emphasized that voters in other nations have historically been prone to elect extreme leftist governments when the US has an extreme right wing government.

The Democrats need to take advantage of these opportunities if they hope to win in November.

...

Let's be clear here, Wrights small AIDS remark is the only one where he is off base. The rest of his remarks should be absolutely uncontroversial.

It would be a wonderful thing for our country if we could even now nominate and then elect Obama----to rise above racism and to slap the corporate media that has fanned its ugly, ugly flames into our faces.

I'm not that hopeful as a matter of practicality, but I swear I will tear up with pride if I yet get to see Barack and Michelle and Melia and Sasha walking into that "white" house to be the First Family that WE, THE PEOPLE, elected. (Yes, a little "misty", just typing the words.)

And, Hugo Chavez was elected when Clinton, not Bush, was president.

And, Chavez could hardly be called an "extreme leftist". His policies are comparable to several european countries and to the right of Norway.

Judge Barack Obama by his responses to a very difficult situation. He began with a temperate response and an excellent speech laying out his reasons for the disassociation he was making between the rhetoric and the pastor. He has responded carefully since, in a way that I think reflects his concern for both his family and his country. We need such a person leading this country. His responses have not been divisive. Had President Kennedy had such a reaction from a Catholic minister in his own church, how do we think he would have responded? Precisely as Senator Obama has done.

Rev. Wright was Wright... The essence of Liberation theology is to speak truth to power. We are in this debacle in Iraq because good people failed to speakout, even when it was unpopular to do so. Rev. Wright does not have answer to anybody. The past one month, All the right-wing talking heads and some "socalled" progressive have been very unfair to him. Treating him like some kind of crazy-lunatic-cult leader. Rev. Wright is wright and too smart for the dumpdown Flagwaving-populace. What goes around does comes around and that is a biblica principle.

Obama was wrong to denounce Wright...What man is a man if he has to sell his soul for riches...
I guess that's what he has to do to get elected.

Rev. Wright represents what the "establishment" still views as the greatest threat to the status quo in the US: an intelligent and articulate person of colour who doesn't buy the official party line.

It's interesting that while Bill O'Reilly slags Wright and Moyers on air, he then sits down to interview Hillary Clinton. If he was anything other than a propagandist for FOX (the official news network of the GOP), Bill would be interviewing Rev. Wright or Mr. Moyers. Then again, after Phil Donahue kicked him in the butt during his interview, O'Reilly is probably afraid to have another articulate subject on his show.

I'm still wondering how Obama and his wife could sit and listen to Wright's sermons for 20 years (and probably were an audience of Wright's in other capacities), and suddenly Obama accuses Wright of being a hateful divider !!! I can't imagine that Wright suddenly changed character ! Obama's a control freak and a chameleon, he's white or black depending on his audience. I posted in another thread that he's racist, he thinks white people can't handle black so he carefully metes out his blackness as he deems appropriate.

Oh my gosh, doesn't Barack have anyone on his team that can write a sound-bite? Just say:

"Look, don't let the Right turn Wright's rhetoric against me. We are not the same person."

I listened to Wright's speeches and his answers to hard questions from the press and found little to fault, except as PJD noted, the one issue on AIDS. He presented no evidence for that charge. I thought pastor Wright was "telling it like it is" and I was dumb-founded when Obama turned on him.

All Obama had to say was, I don't agree with EVERYTHING my 20 year long GOOD friend, mentor, advisor and pastor says and leave it at that. The issue would have melted away when Paris Hilton or some other celebrity farted in chuch or sniffed glue.

Now some are actuallly blaming Hillary for the situation. __ Is she guilty? __ I have some questions and perhaps someone who doesn't hate me now for not supporting Obama could answer them.

1. What role did the Clintons play in Obama's 20 year long association with Pastor Wright?

2. What role did the Clintons play in any sermons pastor Wright EVER gave?

3. What role did the Clintons have in the speech Obama gave In Philadelphia, where he stated that his good friend and pastor for the past 20 years, was also a close advisor, and that he could NEVER turn his back on pastor Wright any more than he would turn his back on his grandmother? __ NEVER SAY NEVER.

4. What role did the Clintons have in Obama condemming and turning his back on his good friend, advisor and pastor?

Now some are blaming the Clintons for having Wright invited to the press Club, because one member is a Hillary supporter. That member didn't invite Wright, and he didn't have to accept the invitation. And when he did accept it he did very well, Wright kicked ass on their hard an doften leading questions.

So why blame the Clintons if Obama shits in his mess kit? __ If Hillary shits in hers, that's her problem and she's done it more than once. ___ Obama really dumped a load in his this time and that's his shit, not Hillarys'.

Actually, Obama has displayed a serious character flaw, that till now was barely visible, but it was there all of the time. And when unprepared for a speech, he don't look so great when attempting to clean up his mess kit. ___ Presidential? ___ If he's the Demo nominee, the Repugs will have a field day.

If Obama is the nomionee, I'll send him a nice check, support him fully and vote for him. Because whatever flaws, we just cannot afford another four years of Bush. And those who claim Hillary and Obama are the same as Bush are just saying it. It just ain't so, not even close.

I don't want any of them, but we're gonna have one of them, and the third party guys and gals are not going to get elected, everyone knows it and my or you saying so isn't why they won't win.

They won't win because we're now a fascist state and the press and media are controlled by a few neo-cons. And that's us Americans own damn falult for not voting, for not being well aware of the issues. We've shit in our mess-kits too.

When will this country finally wake up and smell the coffee? "Obama should say this/he shouldn't have said that." "Rev. Wright should keep his mouth shut" "Wright is hurting Obama's campaign." My god is there a lot of Chicken Littles out there.

First, whether Obama had or didn't have to make any repudiations is moot because the media shills would not let the issue go. Anything he would have said positive or negative would never had been enough. Period.

Second, why does this country see anyone who doesn't toe the status quo line as crazy, nutty, looney or half-heartedly gives props? "Wright has done some good things but this AIDS thing negates everything!" The same was doen to Ralph Nader someone who helped make this country safer yet when he really started pissing off the Status Quo he is now an egotist. This country loves to dwell in fantasyland. Is it any wonder why most don't know the entire history of this country? (Looking at you, Mr. Hannity). It seems like even while defending what Wright says, the pundits and bloggers and columnists can't wait to get on the bandwagon of denegrating him. As if this somehow makes they better.

This issue will continue to stay alive only as it inflates the egos of the ones reporting on it as if it was the ONLY issue. If you do want to get to the heart of this matter then dig, I mean DIG out the truth instead of glancing at the surface and casting judgement. Hell I would be exasperated as Obama seems if everytime I got taken off message as many times as he has been. Isn't there a world out there that needs reporting on?

I'm still wondering how Obama and his wife could sit and listen to Wright's sermons for 20 years (and probably were an audience of Wright's in other capacities), and suddenly Obama accuses Wright of being a hateful divider !!!

That assumes that Wright was as strident every week as he was in that 30 second video. This is highly doubtful.

When I was in the 8th grade in 1968, our Presbyterian minister was an anti-war activist. Does that mean that my dreams of occupying the Oval Office are dashed?!!? Oh noes!??!

"Pelosi missed a similar opportunity in 2006 when she called Hugo Chavez a thug when she had the opportunity to exemplify him as an extreme leftist whose success has been greatly enhanced by the extreme right Bush Regime. She should have emphasized that voters in other nations have historically been prone to elect extreme leftist governments when the US has an extreme right wing government."

As far as the economic policies we've FORCED on the rest on most of the world (countries just like Venezuela) we've had an extreme rightwing government for decades now, hell, since we've been a country. Chavez was elected in a country decimated by the failed economic policies that BOTH parties (including Clinton's "centrist" Democratic Party) forced on them, the results were horrific poverty, lack of access to healthcare and education for the vast majority of the country and a democracy gap wider than the Grand Canyon. Venezuelans have seen their happiness in their democracy increase more than any country in the entire region since he took over according to a poll done across the region recently. He's an "extreme leftist" why? Because he's doing what his country wants him to do? Because he, unlike either party, actually enacts policies that the people want? Because he gives the people direct power, which is fundamentally different than our outdated liberal democracy, which gives all the power to elite, out of touch politicians & cares about their concerns more than multi national corporations and local collaborators? Honestly, I think Pelosi had a chance to pay respect to democracy by accepting the fact that people in other countries don't necessarily think like her (a rich politician) or the brain dead citizens of this country and, in a democracy, you have to accept when people decide on policies that you might not agree with. Stalin was fine with democracy as long as the people agreed with him.

Why, if the Democratic Party so much better, are there endless ties between the "liberals" in government here and the murderous right wing government in Colombia, run by a president who has a decades long connection to drug runners and death squads? Why did Clinton only allow Aristide to return to Haiti (a man removed with the support of the US, before Clinton took over, that had support from about 80% of the country) on if he accepted failed economic policies that the vast majority of the country opposed, and voted him in office to oppose in the first place?

This mindset is why I appreciate what Wright has said publicly. Yes, his AIDS comments are controversial, but why has the press focused on them? They have because the rest of what he's said is dangerous to the owners of the press and they can't defend the policies he's critiquing, so like usual they focus on the controversial comments and ignore the substantive issue. I'm confused though why the left, who says many of the same things Wright has, is running from the opportunity of having these issues out in the national dialogue. The media will not bring up these issues themselves, they attempt at all times to narrow the debate as much as possible, always to the point that it doesn't harm the interests of the owners, and what is the left doing? Running from that opportunity. In poorer countries the left sticks up for people like Wright, here, the liberals run away from him because many of them really aren't left of center to begin with, the ones who are and criticize Wright are cowards. Let's see how long it takes for the media to discuss WHY 9/11 happened, or the un-just economic and judicial system in this country. The next time it's brought up it will be a part of a campaign to discredit someone like Wright and I'm guessing the same people will run for cover then. It's always wait until tomorrow to fight.

As some one who agreed with just about everything Wright said, it is time for him to put a fucking sock in it.

AdeleTheCzech May 1st, 2008 1:30 pm & Sipsey,

Read Wrights sermons, read Black Liberation Theology and tell me what you think of Wright then.

Hitler had two sides too, loved dogs and children also.....the point is you generally judge by how they treat others. He says I'm the enemy, I did this or I did that to him/them.

Horsefeathers!

"Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all ... we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States."
Harold Pinter

"In dictatorships we are more fortunate than you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know its propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West. We've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive."
dissident Czech novelist Zdener Urbanek

"Intolerance of dissent is a well-noted feature of the American national character."
Senator J. William Fulbright

The people will believe what the media tells them they believe."
George Orwell

"Politicians and the media have conspired to infantilize, to dumb down, the American public. At heart, politicians don't believe that Americans can handle complex truths, and the news media, especially television news, basically agrees."
Tom Fenton, CBS foreign correspondent

"We weren't raised to protest. We weren't raised to question. We were raised to wave the flag. To pledge allegiance. "My country, right or wrong." It's a terrible, terrible trap."
Phil Donahue

"Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition."
Cornel West

"To criticize one's country is to do it a service .... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation."
J. William Fulbright

"Humanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the nonconformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress indeed."
Josiah Gitt

The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being."
Ashley Montagu

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary."
George Orwell

"How far have we gone where people don't want to air their views for fear of ending up on some kind of terrorist watch list?"
David Rowell, editor of The Travel Insider magazine about air travel watchlists and dissent

"To understand free speech means freedom to speak what others do not like and even cannot stand to hear? ... Tolerating what you like is hardly a major achievement. Hitler tolerated what he liked. So did Stalin. Idi Amin did too. So did Genghis Khan, the Shah, and Henry Kissinger. Free speech only becomes an issue when someone says what others don't want to hear."
Michael Albert

There is a hard core of people in the United States who will not be moved, whatever facts you present, from their conviction that this nation means only to do good, and almost always does good, in the world, that it is the beacon of liberty and freedom."
Howard Zinn

"We live in a nation hated abroad and frightened at home. A place in which we can reasonably refer to the American Republic in the past tense. A country that has moved into a post-constitutional era, no longer a nation of laws but an autotocracy run by law breakers, law evaders and law ignorers. A nation governed by a culture of impunity ... a culture in which corruption is no longer a form of deviance but the norm. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now."
Sam Smith

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
Alex Carey

"Maybe this time the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive war, order not justice, "safety" through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway President."
Katha Pollitt on the results of the 2004 election

"The biggest political joke in America is that we have a liberal press. It's a joke taken seriously by a surprisingly large number of people... The myth of the liberal press has served as a political weapon for conservative and right-wing forces eager to discourage critical coverage of government and corporate power ... Americans now have the worst of both worlds: a press that, at best, parrots the pronouncements of the powerful and, at worst, encourages people to be stupid with pseudo-news that illuminates nothing but the bottom line."
Mark Hertzgaard

" The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder."
Arundhati Roy

"Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing."
Neil Postman

"We're not in the business of providing news and information, We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products. "
Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays

"Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them."
Mark Hertzgaard

"Media criticism does exist in America. But by and large, it is not citizen-based criticism designed to make media a better source of information in a democracy. Instead, it is a cynical manipulation of the discourse designed to silence even the mildest dissent from the conservative, militantly pro-corporate dogma that has come to pass for news in an era when "reporters" brag about the size of their American-flag lapel pins."
Robert McChesney and John Nichols

"Cuba has ... been condemned for not allowing its people to flee the island. That so many want to leave Cuba is treated as proof that Cuban socialism is a harshly repressive system, rather than that the U.S. embargo has made life difficult in Cuba. That so many millions more want to leave capitalist countries like Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, El Salvador, Philippines, South Korea, Macedonia, and others too numerous to list is never treated as grounds for questioning the free-market system that inflicts such misery on the Third World."
Michael Parenti

The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag."
Norman Mailer

"In a media universe where you're likely to find right-wing conservatives on ABC, Fox, or NPR, the facts don't matter; only the framing. And in the hands of biased pundits posing as objective journalists, the framing is always going to be the same: promilitary, pro-government, and pro-war."
David Potorti

"This is not about oil, and anyone who thinks that is badly misunderstanding the situation."
Donald Rumsfeld

"The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization."
William Greider

"[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy."
Michael Parenti

The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly."
Noam Chomsky

This country is in the grip of a President who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth... The so-called war on terrorism is not only a war on innocent people in other countries, but it is also a war on the people of the United States: a war on our liberties, a war on our standard of living. The wealth of the country is being stolen from the people and handed over to the superrich. The lives of our young are being stolen. And the thieves are in the White House."
Howard Zinn

"George Bush and corporate America are intent on eliminating taxes on all capital incomes. Nor do they care if record budget deficits are the result. Many of their more right-wing friends, including those in Congress, actually want larger deficits. They see chronic, record deficits as producing the budget crisis necessary to use as an excuse to privatize Social Security and dismantle what remains of the Roosevelt New Deal programs of the 1930s."
Jack Rasmus

Somebody stop me...

I'm disappointed in Obama for dumping Wright so completely, goaded by a pundit-driven witch hunt. After hearing Wright's interview with Moyers, his speech to the NAACP in Detroit, and most of his speech to the National Press Club, the thrust of Wright's points — better education, 'different but not deficient,' improved racial understanding and fewer divisions caused by religious orthodoxy — most Americans wouldn't find extreme in the least.

Wright's only problem was that he didn't kiss the Corporate Big Media hindquarters sufficiently — as they put it, he wasn't 'humble enough,' meaning he wasn't Uncle-Tom contrite for speaking the truth as he sees it, the one thing the Punditrocracy abhors above all else, especially when visiting the Media Massah's Big House of the National Press Club. They feel comfortable with their politicians and pastors lying to the sheeple as frequently and consistently as they do.

Tacitly, they say 'God Damn America' every day, as they turn a blind eye to corporate pirates fleecing the taxpayers and destroying the economy, and the Bush Administration's forked-tongued pronouncements and blatant violations of the law, and they don't like a proud black minister from the Windy City throwing it their faces what contemptible shills they are for the domestic enemies of our country. Jesus wasn't fondly thought of by the Moneychangers in the temple either.

Of course, the Corporate Punditrocracy reacted hysterically to Wright as if he wanted to boil white babies in the name of a black Christ — they're in the business of tearing down Obama now before he meets their damaged War Hero McCain next fall. It's worth remembering that if the Big Media were correct in their temporary obsessions, the Iraq War would have been an inexpensive success -- remember how they embarrassingly gushed over 'Mission Accomplished' Bush five years ago? -- the economy would be booming, and Giuliani would be the GOP nominee.

The thing that's troubling here is Obama's campaign devolving into the Gore 2000 and Kerry 2004 debacles wherein the BM Pundits called the tune and the Dem candidate danced to it. You notice on the rare occasions when Republicans are slapped for sticking with a campaign strategy, they don't change their ways, flustered that some David Brooks-clone might complain.

I was proud that Obama, in his famous Philadelphia speech, stuck by Wright while disagreeing with some of his words; he should have continued to do so, as well as defend Wright's freedom of speech and those things his pastor said that he agrees with — he should have turned the tables on the BM and, in the process, showed them that he wasn't going to cooperate with their guff and received the approbation of those who think he might not be 'strong' enough to be president.

Instead, in what I think is a tactical, but not fatal, error, he caved. If Obama thinks this is going to end the Wright media-created 'controversy' he's wrong — now we'll hear the right-wing talking points that's he's a craven politician consumed with ambition who dumped his friend of 20 years just to cater to the media. Obama should realize that he's not going to win with the Corporate Media so he might as well take them on and score some points with the majority of Americans who don't like them either.

________________STOP!!!!!__________________

Adele the Czech said:

"The problem is, when he declares that the U.S. Government hatched a plot and infected Americans with AIDS, and that Rev. Farrakhan is "one of the great voices of the 20th and 21st century" — and when he dismisses Barack Obama's criticisms of these outlandish claims on the grounds that Obama's just a politician — well, he's lost me."

2 problems here:

First Farrakhan is not a Rev.. That title is reserved for Christian ministers.

Second, when did Dr. Wright say that "the government hatched a plot and infected Americans with Aids"?

He simply stated that the government is capable of something like that. He referenced the anthrax mystery that took place shortly after 9/11 (which by the way was never solved). He referenced a book written by Dr. Len Horowitz, M.D. that suggests some very interesting ideas about the origin of HIV.

And remember Wright is filtering his beliefs about HIV through the lens of The Tuskegee Syphillis Experiments. You remember the Tuskegee Experiments don't you? If not, please do some research on them so that you may understand Dr. Wright's questioning of these things. See this site:

http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/Story.asp?s=1207586

or maybe this one:

www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/tuskegee/

And to Thomas More:

Are you stooping down to the ground to equate J. Wright with Hitler. If so, please pull yourself together. How many people has J. Wright gassed? put in internment camps? And when did he name any individual as enemies? You really think very highly of yourself to suggest that a very busy Jeremiah Wright has the time or inclination to think of YOU as enemy.

RSJ said: Obama should realize that he's not going to win with the Corporate Media so he might as well take them on and score some points with the majority of Americans who don't like them either.

Nicely done, RSJ. I commented on another blog that Obama is selling his soul to try to win over people who will never, never vote for him. And yes, I'd love for him to have "taken them on." Otherwise, what we're really saying is that Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity and their ilk are the most powerful men in the world.

Howard Beale has been much on my mind these days:This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation.

This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers.

This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world.

And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

I have just begun to put my run for President together for 2012 and lo and behold I remembered that while serving on the Board of Trustees for my Public Library in the 1970's a fellow member was a Catholic priest.

So I have to forget it cause for damn sure I going to be called a child molester of little boys because I did not get up and leave the meetings or just plain quit.

By the way how many of of you have talked to someone who holds views that the Ruling Class does not accept and of course the Main Stream Media jumps on to protect their half-ass jobs.

If someone asked me a question as Wright was, "Do I love my country?" and he answers, "I served 6 years in the military. How many did Slick Dick Chaney serve" then I'd hear the OH from the press corp, I'd laugh at them too.

It seems it O.K. to insult, lie, and make fun of a person and he has to be a nice quite guy. Bull Shit. Not Wright way.

And has anyone heard of GUILT BY ASSOCIATION? It seems not. This crap that Wright is hurting Obama is foolish and stupid, it really means that the Powers to BE have won and their stenos have kept us in line.

By the way on the AIDs matter read the book, "The River" by Edward Hooper if you get a copy it will clue you in on what AIDS is really about and how it happened. If you can't find the book try Google.

The authors of this article end with an upbeat hope that Barack Obama "will be a transformative leader and make a lasting contribution if he moves to resurrect the authentic peace talk of Martin Luther King Jr."

When dealing with the candidate of "hope" and "change," one must often, I think, "hope" that HE will "change" in a more progressive direction. Miracles happen, and one can certainly hope for this one, but...how realistic is the hope that Obama will be able to (or even interested in) reviving MLK's peace talk; or maybe whether he can lead the nation beyond the talk that is the currency of campaigns to the action that is the hallmark of a presidential administration? It is not encouraging that Obama, having once merely "talked" of negotiating with Hamas, and having had AIPAC come down over him like a wet blanket, quickly moved to declare the obligatory feasance to the security interests of our "staunch ally" Israel, a country where the IDF is the hallmark institution of the society. It is not encouraging when one looks at some of his foreign policy advisers, many of them hawks from administrations of Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush; some mentioned in an Amy Goodman broadcast at ttp://prorev.com/2008/02/meet-obamas-foreign-policy-advisors.html

It's great to hope Barack Obama will change, but there's a difference between vanilla optimism and the cock-eyed variety, and I'm still waiting for the "inspiring" leader to say or do something that will make me think he will be the "transformative leader" for which these authors and so many Obama supporters hope.

In a week when :
1, your president and his cabinet are confirmed to be war criminals by having been witnessed to having signed off on torture.

2, your Pentagon has been exposed for its perpetration of coordinated media propaganda in support for a war of aggression, considered a crime against humanity.

3, one of your presidential candidates talking about "inhalation" of a country that poses no threat to you.

4, your country bombed a house in Somalia, in an act of war, in a targeted assassination of a man, allegedly and without warrant related to terrorism, an act in violation of all national and international law. While the self same bombs killed an estimated 17 other innocent people including women and children.

And while all this is happening the latest side show the MSM has their audience concerned about is how much and how often and how far they can make that "uppity half black guy" squirm to criticise his pastor, who dared to cast a shadow on the "great" US of A, and so successfully avoiding anything important and bring the whole thing back to something even the simpletons understand, "race".

America kicks ass, alright. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/84139

The Rev. Write does not have to invoke the damnation of the almighty on your country, by every account of the list above, and by the fact that most of the people effected by these facts apparently cannot even see or care about their implications or the relative importance, means that they and their country are already damned to face the consequences.

I mean, is the Rev. Write, or his suggested "influence" on Obama really the problem?

Them chickens will sure be flocking home to roost! Karma for the people who want to poke out their own eyes rather than open them is what it is.

If Barack Obama loses the race to Hillary Clinton, it will be fault of Reverend Wright. Ok? Some may say something along the lines of "well voters should know better." Well voters in general do not know better. The majority of American voters are apathetic and are absorbed with watching news media on TV rather than receiving the news via the internet (way better than MSM).

Reverend Wright - you are the epitome of irony. In fact, you have irony written all over you. No one will dare say it here on CD or anywhere else...but I will! :-) You need to relax and take a break. You need to be quiet...ok? Yes you have freedom of speech and the press over there in the USA; but you need to shut up. Ok?

~CAMUS 13~ Obama wasn't just a casual aquaintance of Reverand Wright, or someone who was also on the committee board of his library. His Advisor,-- his pastor,-- a very good friend,-- like a father to him. And Obama kicked him in the nuts because Wright told the truth and made one error doing that.

In forcefully distancing himself from Rev. Wright, Obama did what he had to do as a politician to prevent further alienating racially sensitive white voters (Wright stated as much). In fact, Wright had told Obama that he might have to distance himself should he decide to run for president.

Obama has never been as conscious as Wright, and Obama has been thoroughly excoriated on sites like blackagendareport.com for seeming to cater too much to white voters and not being Black enough for their tastes. Those who've criticized Obama for not being Black enough know very well that Obama has never been radically conscious, so it is ironic that HRC and right-wingers are attacking him for being too Black. I think Obama has a good heart, and that he genuinely and sincerely disagrees with Wright's worldview.

That said, my personal views are directly in line with those of Wright. Wright is speaking truth, and those who feel visceral anger at Wright's words are revealing that this truth is painful and damaging to their self-perception. There is a vast gap in perception between what many white Americans see in themselves and their past and what many people of color see. Wright's sermons and speeches make those differences of perception evident. The fact that many Black Americans think that the US government is even willing to experiment with racially-specific biological weapons says much about how differently we view our past and interpret our present and future.

As a scholar and teacher of the Constitution l wish Obama reminded everyone that the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech no matter how outrageous and even if he did not agree with Wright he should be defended for the right to express and make fool of himself; end of subject...-

Too late to shut up ~Ahuramazda~, but why should anyone shut up for speaking the truth?

The point is, Obama screwed up by his actions. There was nothing wrong with being a friend of Pastor Wright. In fact, with the exception of a couple of remarks, Obama should have applauded Wright for what he said and how he answered questions. I did and I'm as white as any other white and that should not make anydifference either. Truth is truth. It cannot be altered except by lies.

I do not not like the opinion of the African American community being the be all end all litmus test of positive morality. In fact, and I should remind Reverend Wright about this whether or not he deems this inconvenient truth about his ethnicity irrelevent, is that people who lived on the northeastern continent of Africa were once slave holders. The people of what is present day Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia once upon a time had the Hebrew people as slaves.

Obam has demonstrated his lack of spine this past week. What his supporters have said of Clinton, Obama himself has done to his very own pastor. Unfortunately, this very Democratic trait infects his entire career, whether it it be in caving into the nuclear lobby, continuing to vote to fund the war, or cozying up to AIPAC, while throwing the Palestinian cause to the wolves. Obama has demonstrated exactly what he is -- a Democratic politician who would betray the progressive grassroots and his own adopted community at the drop of the hat.

It was Obama who threw his own pastor under the bus first. People willfully ignored this, because they thought his speech on race was oh so fine. It wasn't. It was just an ok speech, laced with insults directed towards Wright so he could cover his bases.

Sadly, amongst the top three candidates, he is still the least of evils, but anyone expecting miracles won't find it. He may even set back the causes he ostensibly supports, by tossing them under the bus to assuage the military-industrial elite and Reagan Democratic voters.

Again...I think that Reverend Wright needs to be quiet as, again I use the word "ironic" here, he may just cause Obama to lose the chance to be President.

Sure in the USA people can speak their minds (oh but can they?). Wright does need to be quiet. He is vulgar...

Someone needs to assassinate him.

Ahuramazda----ah, your last post speaks your real truth. You are sad and scary. If the last is your real message, get the hell off this thread. There is no place for such hate! I will not in the interest of free speech, tolerate such vile and hateful language!

LUCITANIA: I agree with your wisdom in expanding the dialog to encompass a TRUE perspective with respect to the larger things going on, policies being shaped and executed, etc. rather than this "He said/she said/we said" circular nonsense.

Reverend Wright was right on. US history includes a serial string of atrocities against US citizens often targeted at minorities though not exclusively. Tuskegee, MK-Ultra, Project Monarch, feeding soldiers and prisoners uranium to see what would happen, massive exposure of soldiers in at least on nuclear test, failure warn the 9/11 first responders about the toxic conditions at ground zero, Kent State, The Ludlow massacre where striking miners were burned alive in their tents along with their wives and children, training South American death squads, operation northwoods, forced sterilization of native american women, inventing the "science" of eugenics that Hitler would later bring into disrepute, experimental releases of toxic chemicals in, populated areas, medical experiments on children in foster care, poisoning our own troops with DU and denying the problem. Yet you find it rediculous that the US invented the AIDS virus and used it? Your assertion that this is not a very real possibility is not born out by the historical record.

The government doesn't do things like that.
It's rediculous, ludicrous eeeeven.
The government loves you.
The government is only killing you for your own good.
Eat a bowl of DU, salute the flag, and go back to sleep.

Again, we are hearing virtually nothing of the fact that the Clintons brought Wright in as a spiritual advisor during Monica-gate. Why?

As many have said, Obama didn't have to do it. This was a teachable moment for the nation-- a teachable moment about how mature thoughtful people respond to friends, family and colleagues who have different opinions. We do not respond by denouncing them or by publicly denouncing their comments.

Surely Obama, as an individual person, would welcome, into his own home, friends and family and colleagues whose views differ from his own far more than do the views of Rev Wright. Why not let us hear the dinner conversation that they might have?

America needs to hear rational people debating propositions like "Zionism is a racist political philosophy" or "US foreign policy is imperialist" or "Al Qaeda targets America (rather than Finland) because of our middle east policy, not our standard of living, our freedoms, or our culture". If such a discussion were offered on a pay-per-view basis, millions of Americans would pay good money to hear it, and it could change the public debate. What prevents this from happening is FEAR of precisely this kind of change. Instead we get pundits like Dana Milbank of the Washington Post (and I'm sure there were dozens of other articles just like his article on Monday) telling us that Wright's views are absurd WITHOUT spilling a drop of ink to explain why they are absurd, on the principle that THERE MUST BE NO RATIONAL DEBATE OF WRIGHT's VIEWS.

Virtually everything Wright said was true, and it's not even beyond the realm of possibility that AIDS was invented as an antiBlack germ. Unlikely, but not impossible.
But realistically, could Obama have continued to defend him? Perhaps, given the platform that a serious presidential candidate gets, he could have used the situation to educate the American people. But the media would have been determined to deny that platform--and as Chmocsky once said, there is a false paradigm so well built up that if he were to say "The CIA is the biggest terrorist society in the world," he could prove it--but he'd need at least 20 minutes to do so, filling in background information that most people don't have. Whereas Cheney can say "Iran is killing our troops," and it may be false but everyone has been filled with the background information to support such a statement, so Cheney only needs a few seconds to get his point across. The media will never give Chomsky 20 minutes to make his point--if Cheney ever needs more they'll happily give it to him, wagging their tails the while.
I would rather Obama didn't cave so completely, but I do understand that he can do his part to heal this country only if he gets into office--and that requires the votes of nearly all people of color (which he'll likely get) and us left-wingers, but most white youths and a fair amount of older whites. Part of what has gotten him this far is his refusal to go negative. But he could have been a little stronger on this, and in his responses during the Fox grilling.

I cant vote for obahma till he disavows his grandmother.
"I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my government."Mccain who not only attended a memorial but personally eulogized this person in memphis needs to disavow.

I do not live in the USA - so perhaps I may not have the whole story here. But many people "on this thread" are praising Reverend Wright when he is nothing but a bombastic kafir dirtbag nigger!

"I will not in the interest of free speech tolerate such hateful and vile language."

Then you must be against free speech in and of itself. If not, than you must be semi-hypocritical in this regard. I do not like the man. Ok?