Reply #2: It wasn't "as though he had spoken the words himself" though. That isn't the real issue. [View All]

[MADem]

If he regularly attended a lecture series by this Reverend Wright on "race issues," fine. But this is the kind of stuff the Reverend tossed from the pulpit of a house of worship on a Sunday...with kids in the pews.

The problem is that this sort of "sermonizing" doesn't square with the flyover states' image of "Jesus loves me" pastoral guidance from the pulpit. THAT's what the problem is. That Obama has been going to CHURCH for twenty years, and listening to this stuff.

If he attended a lecture series at the U of Chicago every week and heard the same stuff, it wouldn't be the same issue.

The third rail here isn't just RACE...it's the intersection of RACE and FAITH.

I also think the toss-away remark about his grandmother was ill-advised. It came across as though he was willing to sacrifice the reputation of the woman who, for all intents and purposes, raised him, for his own political ambition. Reverend Wright may be "like" a crazy old uncle, but Reverend Wright didn't give him his fucking lunch money in high school and pay for his food and school clothes. That bit about Granny in his little speech was a total clunker--it smacked of "anything to win." I wonder how that poor old lady feels, to be called a racist by the kid she raised?

I don't think the "chewing over" process with regard to the Rev. Wright and the Obama speech is done. I think it's going to bubble up, over and over again, in the months ahead. The congregants of Trinity UCC certainly seem interested in keeping the issue alive, for whatever reason...