Letters to the Editor
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Trinity UCC
773-962-5650
Call the Church. Ask them what Wright is doing, and what Barack has done to make Wright hate him with such a passion.
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Keep flapping your gums, Wright
Your digging Obama's political grave with your mouth.
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SWEET!
This is some great stuff. I think that the Republicans have to just sit tight for a while. Never get in between your enemy and an angry press corps.
The more Wright goes, the more this turns into Obama's Sister Souljah moment. Either he has to disown Wright, or accept the (unacceptable) consequences. Of course if he disowns Wright, the far-left fringes will feel rejected, and the rest of the country will wonder if Wright was right; Obama does what all politicians do to get over.
Obama's only got a few more hours in this news cycle. Time's running out.
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Sabotage
"Is Rev. Wright trying to sabotage Barack Obama?"
No, that's Salon's job.
BTW, The Rude Pundit has an interesting take on the Rev. Wright 'scandal'.
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Why did Obama join
When Obama joined Trinity he wasn't looking for the "blackest" black church. First of all, Trinity is part of United Church of Christ (formerly Congregationalist) which quite literally came over on the Mayflower. Second, Trinity, and Rev. Wright preaches a liberal social gospel well in line with Obama's thinking. Rev. Wright, in fact has been very supportive of gay rights among the black religious community and has never spoken any bigotry about any group the way so many pastors who support the republicans have.
The fact is that Rev. Wright will continue being a preacher and that means not mincing words and speaking the truth. If you read the Bible you will see that the prophets and Jesus himself said things that got the powers that be very riled up.
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Meaningless
Whatever. No one cares about religion any more except about 20-30 percent of the population, who will never vote for a black man anyway, and the news media. This won't hurt Obama in the slightest.
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quite interesting
This affair may end up going any one of many directions, but it is interesting nonetheless to see how these things are panning out. It's interesting to me that Wright is said to be selling out Obama, when it seems to me in some ways Obama is the one selling out Wright. It seems Wright was suspicious of Obama's motives for joining the church from the get-go... the warning that the church was too radical or too "black" seems to demonstrate this. But now that Obama is trying to distance himself from his church and from radical black liberation theology in general in order to appeal to the white masses, it seems as though Wright has decided enough's enough... he's going to stick to his guns, even if Obama won't.
I don't agree with all of Wright's theology, and I think much of liberation theology has always been far too narrow focused to be a complete vision of God and reality, but I think he at least has the integrity to say, "This far, no farther." I think he has recognized Obama for being the ordinary, cynical, calculating politician that he is, and he's decided he's not going to be Barack's quiet stepping stone on the way to the most powerful station in the world. He is going to say what he believes, and if he must, use his fame and association with Obama to get his real message out.
I respect that more than I respect Obama's motives at this point.
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I'm just curious...
... how many of the people who are ticked off about Wright have actually taken the time to listen to the Moyers interview and the NPC speech (and Q&A following). I didn't have much of an opinion of the guy, listened to both, and have to say I don't see what the fuss is about. Yeah, he was a bit of a smart aleck during some of the Q&A at the NPC, but I can't see how that qualifies him as a millstone dragging down the Obama campaign.
Is this yet another case of obsessing over the talking heads and sound bites instead of the source material?
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Wright IS sabotaging Obama... why?
China, seriously... Wright has to know that he is doing Obama no favors at this point. I have a bone to pick with Salon's coverage, too, but the simple fact is that the Reverend is trashing Obama's chances right now... probably for his own career and fortune. And that is a damn shame -- Obama has the potential to be Kennedy or Lincoln-great.
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Removing my War Room bookmark
5 of the last 6 posts by Alex have all been about Obama, Obama's troubles, Obama's minister, etc. It's taken Alex less than a week to return to the shallows and completely drop the varied, in-depth analysis that Steve Benen brought to the table.
Good bye, War Room and Salon. Oh, how I once enjoyed this site.
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How Obama can play this
What originally attracted a number of people to Obama is how he'd work with Republican's -- people he didn't agree with. He'd speak about the toxicity in D.C. and the inability of people to work together because they'd made a profession of hating each other.
I hope that is exactly how Obama handles his pastor and their situation. You can disagree with someone in politics but not disown them as a human being. You can disagree with them on many things they say but still work with them on what you have in common. Obama should not disown his pastor any more than he should disown the half of America that votes Republican.
However there is the question of will the media allow him. I have doubt that Salon will give help to this line of reasoning, as Salon seems vested in polarizing politics. Nor will the "mainsteam media". However most people would actually understand. Most of us who don't work in politics understand that to get anything done, be it at work or with neighbors, you set aside differences for what you have in common. I only hope that this insight reaches our childish leaders who have built careers on polarizing their opponents.
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Thank god, a fresh story
And I was getting so sick and tired of Salon's relentless focus on Clinton threatening to incinerate civilians. Time to cover a real story -- how the most interesting and refreshing thing to happen to the Democratic Party needs to be dragged down because he knew this one black guy. Doing the lord's work, Alex.