The hypocrites in the media are gloating. Obama did what he needed to do: denounce Wright to put an end to the controversy.
April 29, 2008, 5:35 pm
By Ariel Alexovich
Voices around the blogosphere say they’re tired of the media kerfuffle surrounding Barack Obama and his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but they certainly keep writing about it.
They also say they’re sick of the expression “thrown under the bus,” but they keep using it. And they said it repeatedly today after Senator Obama held a news conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., to
reject and denounce Reverend Wright, who made news yesterday when he defended his fiery sermons and dismissed Mr. Obama as just acting like a politician.
Mr. Obama said it was “appalling” that his pastor would seek out the media limelight to make such remarks, which led John Cole at Balloon Juice to write that Mr. Obama “
distanced” himself from Mr. Wright “because I refuse to say he threw him under the bus, which is now my least favorite expression in the English language.”
James Joyner of Outside the Beltway thought Senator Obama said exactly what needed to be said to
put this issue to rest.
I’m not sure what more Obama could say, to be honest. He’ll be tarred somewhat for having spent 20 years in Wright’s congregation and touting him so heavily as his mentor.
But this should stop the bleeding.
Andrew Sullivan, an Obama supporter, took that sentiment one step further, saying “skeptics may wonder whether Wright actually deliberately
did Obama a favor. I doubt it. But a favor it unintentionally is.”
Today, we found that he can fight back, and take a stand, without calculation and in what is clearly a great amount of personal difficulty and political pain. It’s what anyone should want in a president. It makes me want to see him succeed more than ever. It’s why this country needs to see him succeed more than ever.
Multiple left-wing bloggers toed the line that it was necessary for Mr. Obama to make these remarks to reign in the Reverend Wright storyline. The last thing Senator Obama needed was for this to run away from him and damage his presidential bid.
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Getting back to Balloon Juice’s John Cole (who is an Obama supporter), he said he doesn’t get why Reverend Wright is being derided so much for his words, when his actions are a testament to his big-hearted
devotion to the poor.
Regardless, he may be a flawed man, but that does not undo all the good he has done over the years. I don’t know of any bloggers with thirty years of service to the poor and the indigent. Get back to me when Chris Matthews feeds hungry people for three decades.
Looking toward the future, Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report wonders
how long all this Obama-Wright drama will last.
What will be interesting, of course, is whether Wright, in turn, feels the need to respond. Now that Obama has denounced him in rather personal ways, will Wright lash out at his former parishioner directly? And if so, will this become a yet another distracting, drawn-out feud? And would such a dispute help or hurt?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but in the meantime, Obama appears to have taken a major step towards distancing himself from a former pastor who Obama no longer wants anything to do with.
Let them gloat. A change is going to come despite them, and then they will claim to have supported it all along.
West: I mean, I think it's very important because you see a lot of chit-chat about Martin every year and Martin has been so domesticated and tamed and defamed, you know, what we call the Santa Clausification of the brother.
Tavis: Wait a minute. Hold the phone, hold the phone. The Santa Clausification of Dr. King, which means what, Dr. West?
West: He just becomes a nice little old man with a smile with toys in his bag, not a threat to anybody, as if his fundamental commitment to unconditional love and unarmed truth does not bring to bear certain kinds of pressure to a status quo.
So the status quo feels so comfortable as though it's a convenient thing to do rather than acknowledge him as to what he was, what the FBI said, "The most dangerous man in America." Why? Because of his fundamental commitment to love and to justice and trying to keep track of the humanity of each and every one of us.
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