Letters to the Editor
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Joan Missed it too...
"...to Wright, a public figure who's built his career around a particularly divisive analysis of American racial politics. It is easily the most tin-eared thing I've ever heard Obama say."
Obama directly addressed that in his speech:
"Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators [like Joan], there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way...,"
Obama goes on to describe the man behind the lazy descriptions we find in the media - a guy who's been out in his community (for more than 30 years), working to help the poor and disadvantaged - who heads a church of 8000 hard working African Americans from one of our great cities - who are now being smeared as implicit racist Anti-Americans - all because lazy journalists are measuring the black experience through the prism of their own fears and ignorance. Can YOU blame a black man born in the 40's for singing God Damn America?
I can't. (I sing it all the time, and I'm white.)
Anyway, Joan - Obama takes issue with your description of Wright - and so do I. And I think a lot of other people will as well.