Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?

Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?
Tuesday, April 29th 2008, 4:00 AM


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The Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club event Monday, which was organized by Reynolds.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.

Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.

A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).

It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.

The same post criticized Obama's "Audacity of Hope" theme: "Hope by definition is not based on facts," wrote Reynolds. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time."

In another blog entry, Reynolds gives an ever-sharper critique of Obama: "It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement."

I don't know if Reynolds' eagerness to help Wright stage a disastrous news conference with the national media was a way of trying to help Clinton - my queries to Reynolds by phone and e-mail weren't returned yesterday - but it's safe to say she didn't see any conflict between promoting Wright and supporting Clinton.

It's hard to exaggerate how bad the actual news conference was. Wright, steeped in an honorable, fiery tradition of Bible-based social criticism, cheapened his arguments and his movement by mugging for the cameras, rolling his eyes, heaping scorn on his critics and acting as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question.

Wright has, unquestionably, been caricatured and vilified unfairly. The feeding programs, prison outreach and other social services he has built over more than 30 years are commendable, and his reading of the Judeo-Christian tradition as an epic story of people trying to escape slavery is far more right than wrong - and not something to be caricatured or compressed into a 10-second sound bite.

But Wright should have known - and his friend and ally Reynolds, a media professional, surely knew - that bickering with the press can only harm Wright and, by extension, Obama.

I hope that wasn't their goal.

I understand why Obama said what he said(he had not choice but to do it, politically), but anybody who buys it, is naive. First of all, very few people(hard core right wing conservatives, MAYBE) think that Obama shares Wrights views in any major way. They think he had other motivations for turning a blind eye, so to speak, which in some ways is worse. 2nd of all, Wright wasn't acting any differently during yesterday's speech, then he acted in some of the excerpts from speeches he gave YEARS ago, that are all over youtube. Simulating sex when taking shots at the Clintons/Monica Lewinsky scandal, etc. He like most preachers, and definitely most Black preachers have a quite a bit of ham in them. Obama knew what type of stuff WRight was saying and what kind of views he had. He stuck around for 20 years, cause it was politically expedient to belong to that particular church, and to have WRight as an ally, at that time in his political life. Obama got mad because WRight characterized him as a "typical politician" saying and doing what politians do. THAT'S what broke the camel's back, not any shock or outrage or surprise about what the views Wright expressed yesterday......

I will direct you all back to my post from last thursday where I stated that I picked up on some tension/passive aggressiveness from WRight towards Obama, just in the one snippet I had seen from the Moyers interview and wRight was totally calm and serious during that interview, but it still came through . I saw this coming......

Very true @gmhaogany, you did call it

Also true about the politician remark. Obama is cultivating this 'no more business as usual' attitude to Washington and to be labelled as a 'typical politician' is not a good look for him

I wonder what the hell Wright is playing at though

She sure as shit did call it! In fact whenever I watch or read any of this campaign coverage there is a Gmahogany narrative going on in my head,like some sort of bizarre point-counter point.........and quite frankly it's hurting my brain,lol.

But you know what?? I'm greatful to her,coz whilst I may not agree with everything, she's made me think and analyze ish in a way that I hadn't previously,so it's ALL good.

And the G narrative continues......................................lol



Indiana Black Voters Feeling Ignored - Yahoo! News

Thanks for posting this article JB. I hadn't heard anyone mention the less than phenomenonal support Obama got in Philly and how he didn't spend as much time there among the Black population as he did among whites, and how the lack of over the top enthusiasm cost him in the PA primary. So many Blacks and whites are just assuming that Obama lost in PA (and Ohio for that matter)because of white racism. Believe it or not there ARE white people who are voting FOR Hillary, not just against Obama. There are BLack people who are doing that(few in number), or just not voting at all like what happened in Philly to some degree.It's very arrogant to assume that the only reason someone would choose not to vote for Obama is if they are a racist(if white) and a Tom if they're Black. I call it it the "If you weren't a racist or a self hating Tom, you would realize how wonderful I am" logic of Obama's campaign and his supporters to some degree..........Sometimes people just arent' buying what you are selling. Nothing more, nothing less.

On the one hand I'm glad about what happened in Philly, cause it shows we're not all idiots or desperate and still have some concept of a mofo needing to WORK for our vote. On the other hand, the fact that Obama felt he could do that in Philly and is doing it in INdiana is a RESULT of the fact that Negroes have been giving up 90% of their vote to him, WITHOUT him really courting their vote, if not out and out DUCKING them. Why should he feel compelled to address you/your concerns /be seen with you? And why should the other candidates who are resigned to the fact that you are going to vote for him no matter what court you either? That is the point Tavis was trying to make all along, and he got burned at the stake for it. That is the point I've been making all along. It's not anti Obama it's just COMMON SENSE AND SELF PRESEVATORY/SELF PROTECTIVE/POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE/SAVVY.

Some bizarre point-counter point. I LIKES,lol. I don't mean to impose my interpretation of things on you all...well, yes I do, but I had to comment on the WRight thing, cause if there is one thing i'm intimately aquainted with it's simmering resentment and just under the surface hostility,lol. I can zero in on that type of thing with ease, even when someone is otherwise saying very positive things about another person.


What I find most amazing about the whole WRight thing is that so many AA's are defending WRight and are upset with Obama for finally distancing himself,yesterday. Some folks who were ready to tear Tavis or Dr. West or any other AA a new one, as they say, for having the temerity to imply that Obama should have shown up at the SOTBU or the King commemoration because it indicated a certain degree of selling out for political gain are MAD at Obama for denouncing WRight. I'm thinking ok, You dont' object to dude not showing up to BENIGN/MAINSTREAM(that Crackers should NOT have a problem with and if they do, PHUCK EM), BLack events in an obvious effort to distance himself from Black folks but you have a problem when he finally denounces an off the chain preacher like WRight(who I dig and think was on the money about most of what he said, but certainly don't expect his views to sit well with most white folks, or even some NEGROES and can totally understand why Obama would have to distance himself from the views), who it can be said threw Obama under the bus, FIRST. Ok, You all are OFFICIALLY retarded,now,lol.

Ya'll are willing to accept "duck down in the backseat", 'back alley hooker status" over just being who we are, or harmless non offensive 'Black stuff" that we have NO reason to feel ashamed about/apologize for/feel compelled to explain or kow tow to Crackers over,including throwing folks who have had our back for years,under the bus but wanna get all Nat Turnerish over something that any fool knows Obama would have to distance himself from. It's not even totally about race. He had to distance himself from that Ayers dude from Chicago TOO, the white domestic terrorist guy. You can't be running for President of AMerica(and expect to win) and be perceived to be bosom buddies with people who have bombed the Pentagon and other places in AMerica(LIKE Ayers) or have speeches yelling GODDAMN AMERICA(like my man Rev. Wright),lol. God broke the mold when he made ya'll....true story.

But G, we have been dyslexic like this for decades. I think we have become this way because we parrot the behavior of "Whites".

We are American Africans afterall. Some of that insanity has rubbed off. We let "White" people dictate which issues should really matter to us.

What can I say?

Weird stuff.

This is a interesting article by John Tilove...I think this is a must read or black Obama supporters..

Renewed Wright Imbroglio Exposes Fissures Among Black Voters

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's presidential campaign, until now, has benefited from a strong undercurrent of black nationalism among African-American voters, a racial pride and solidarity that have swelled support and muffled criticism.

But his repudiation this week of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., may unleash a more open debate in the black community, where even some who back Obama worry that he is vague or evasive in his approach to race matters.

"In some ways it's a cathartic moment for African-Americans whose voices had been silenced," said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University.

There is no reason to think Obama won't continue to roll up huge margins among blacks in the remaining Democratic primary contests -- beginning with Tuesday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. And most attention to the renewed Wright imbroglio will focus on its impact among whites. But this time, the controversy plainly exposes fissures that the black community had papered over with the common purpose of Obama's historic candidacy.

To many, Gillespie among them, Obama's problem is that he has never made explicit what, beyond symbolism, his election would do for black America. Now, he is rejecting Wright's racial agenda without having clearly articulated his own.

"The whole thing with Barack's campaign is making all the other black leadership be on mute," said Kevin Alexander Gray, an activist and writer in South Carolina. "The idea is that black people should just shut up and accept him as the prize of racial advancement with nothing given in return except him being the president."

In an essay on TheRoot.com back in February, University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson wrote, "It is supremely ironic that Barack Obama, the candidate who seeks to bury race as an issue in this campaign season, owes his overwhelming support among blacks to the continued power of black nationalism."

Black nationalism, Dawson explained, refers to a way of thinking that "takes race as the fundamental dividing line in the U.S." and the "primary determinant for making political judgments."

It is a collective identity that can hold the most pessimistic view of the prospects for full equality. That pessimism can tumble into what -- to whites at any rate -- appears paranoid, as in Wright's avowal that the American government is not beyond intentionally inflicting AIDS on the black community.

Black nationalism can manifest itself in attending the Million Man March or in cheering the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a reaction that Obama, in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" in March, said made him "ashamed for my own community."

Black nationalism can also find expression in places like Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, where Wright built a huge congregation, including Obama, that identified itself as African-centered and "Unashamedly Black."

And, to borrow from Dawson, there is no small irony that Obama came to national prominence with a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that took as its theme the denial of the core black nationalist understanding of the world.

"There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America." Obama declared in the line that, more than any, came to embody his appeal.

Nonetheless, Dawson said, blacks rallied to Obama at the polls by margins the Rev. Jesse Jackson didn't achieve until his second run for president in 1988.

The sense of black solidarity around Obama was evident when, prodded by Hillary Clinton and Tim Russert in the Feb. 26 debate, Obama said he would both "reject and denounce" Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

Farrakhan turned the other cheek, issuing a simple statement in the Nation's newspaper, The Final Call: "Those who have been supporting Sen. Barack Obama should not allow what was said during the Feb. 26 presidential debate to lessen their support for his campaign. This is simply mischief making intended to hurt Mr. Obama politically."

More recently, commentator and activist Tavis Smiley, who criticized Obama for not attending the annual State of the Black Union Conference he organizes, quit his long-time spot on radio's popular "Tom Joyner Morning Show." As Joyner explained it, Smiley couldn't endure "the hate he's taking over this whole Barack Obama thing. People are really upset with him. He's always busting Barack Obama's chops. They call. They e-mail. They joke. They threaten."

When the Wright controversy first broke in a big way in March, Obama actually enhanced his standing in more race-conscious black circles by delivering a major address on race. Speaking at Philadelphia's Constitution Hall, the candidate disassociated himself from Wright's more inflammatory words, but said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

Then Wright had a second coming.
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