Letters to the Editor
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@RealityCounts cont.
Martin Marty, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, and teacher of Rev. Wright:
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i30/30b00101.htm
The Chronicle of Higher Education/The Chronicle Review
From the issue dated April 11, 2008
Prophet and Pastor
To his former professor, congregant, and friend, Jeremiah Wright has been both
Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.
Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.
In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.
Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago's Divinity School focuses on what it calls "public ministry," which includes both conventional pastoral roles and carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to serve then-struggling Trinity.
Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.
Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace... (please follow the link for more)
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Additional parts of Clinton's story appear to be lies
Check out this link:
Air Force pilot, Col. William "Goose" Changeose (sp?) who flew Clinton to Bosnia on the C-17 tells story
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/68124.html
According to the pilot who flew Clinton in, the following things were not true:
-- people were not directed to "sit on their flak jackets." The pilot says he's never heard of anybody doing this at any time during his entire career in the Air Force, although he does remember that it was a detail in "Apocalypse."
-- the pilot was not aware of any reports of sniper fire, and says if there had been sniper fire (or a mere threat of sniper fire), the plane would not have landed
The pilot: "Yeah, so, no evasive maneuver. I gotta tell ya, I will give it to the commander of Air Base Eagle. He had that place - you know, not only were there no bullets flying around, there wasn't a bumblebee flying around."
-- Clinton was not directed to run or duck upon exiting the plane
-- Clinton was not the first high-profile person to enter Bosnia after the peace agreements (Bill Clinton and the Sec. of Defense had already been there)
-- The plane did not perform an "evasive maneuver" to land, but rather it was a short, steep landing that all similar cargo planes (such as the armored C-17) approaching that runway had to make
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Honestly, I can't see how anybody can look at all this and walk away with any other conclusion besides "Hillary Clinton lied."
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@JackSparx on "misspeak"
JackSparx: "I think it's possible to misstate a fact or a misspeak, in the sense that you meant to tell the truth but you slipped up. Like, saying "red" if you mean "blue" just because red happened to be in your mind."
Kinda like when John McCain said "I'm a conservative liberal Republican," eh? I am pretty sure he misspoke on that one.
JackSparx: "But why do the MEDIA use the term misstate or misspoke when politicians speak falsely, particularly after they admit to speaking falsely. That's a corruption of the language."
Because half the people in the media are press-release transcribing knobs.
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Resume padding
The poor woman is up against the wall and she is firing randomly. If she had the brains to say she had some first class experience being a senator and has done it longer than Obama, she might get some traction. Right now, she reminds me of one of those steers Temple Grandin wrote about -- slipping and sliding on the way to the end of the road before someone shoots a merciful piece of metal into her and puts her out of her misery in the abbattoir.
She is a first class legislator and she ought to be able to say that she gave it her best shot rather than try to bring the party down with her.