I guess the snidbits I have seen total about 5 minutes.

 

50 sermons a year (we will give him 2 weeks vacation) and 20 years is 1,000 sermons, right. Each sermon is probably 30 minutes in length.

 

So, out of 30,000 minutes of messages, we are going to paint this guy in a certain image because of 5 minutes?

 

 

I may be wrong, but are we agreeing? :lol:

Obama's answer to why he didn't leave:

 

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. 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, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

 

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

 

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

 

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

 

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

 

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

 

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

 

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

And so the Swift-Boating of Obama begins...

I may be wrong, but are we agreeing? :lol:

 

To pull from our other discussion, you are saying it much better than me though and deserve more of the credit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We keep this up and we will make BF's brain explode with annoyance.:lol:

And so the Swift-Boating of Obama begins...

 

By the Clintons, I am guessing you mean. Because her and Bill were the ones that were calling for a closer inspection of Obama by the media?

Every person who runs for president should be expecting a complete vetting of every facet of their life because in this internet age everything is out there. Hillary is probably in the best position for this type of scrutiny as she's faced it for years. Obama and McCain better hang on.

Methinks you've tried to trivialize what Wright said. He didn't just say something that the congregation disagrees with, he espoused a message of hatred, racism and bigotry. How the black community can complain about racism when they support ministers and leaders that send their own messages of racism is simply beyond me.

 

I do not support nor do I tolerate the remarks made by the man. However, he grow up in an era were racism and bigotry ran rapid and was ACCEPTABLE. I can understand his deep divide feelings on injustice and pain during such a time. Walk in his shoes and I wonder if you would harbor some pain as he does first. I dont support his remarks but I do see his pain.

 

And here is the truth teller: If Falwell had been the minister of your church and preached messages of intolerance and hatred, would you have handled the situation the same way Obama did?

 

 

Former Pres. Reagan and BushI invited and welcome Falwell to the WH and all knew his views and stance on race. However, either former President was bias. The issue is simply and excuses should not be made. Because one would not vote for any black man does not make one a bigot. Race in America will be a problem in America, untill everyone both black and white over 35 are dead. It sad but it true.

Every person who runs for president should be expecting a complete vetting of every facet of their life because in this internet age everything is out there. Hillary is probably in the best position for this type of scrutiny as she's faced it for years. Obama and McCain better hang on.

 

You got THAT right!

That is a false rumor. You will see those types of rumors repeated right up until election day. There are some, including some on this site, that will continue to do things to cast doubt on Obama. Let's be very clear. Whether you agree with his politics or not, whether you will vote for him or not, Barak Obama is a patriotic and honorable American. He is a devout Christian. He loves his country. The same things are true of John McCain. I have great faith in the American people. They may or may not decide to elect Barak Obama President of the United States, but I believe that by election day the vast majority of decent Americans will know and believe that Barak Obama is a loyal and honorable American. There will be some that will choose to spread vile rumors. There will be some that will attempt to play on fears by emphasising Senator Obama's middle name. They can speak to their own motives and the rest of us can draw our own conclusions about their character and just how honorable they are. I think that the vast majority of Americans are decent people who will reject those tactics. Again, let me emphasize that that doesn't mean that people who don't vote for Senator Obama are not decent people. It just means that I do believe that most people will reject the vile rumors and insinuations and the equally vile people that start and spread them.

 

 

thank you.

Like many Americans I watched Sen. Barack Obama deliver his speech titled "A More Perfect Union."

 

I watched in a state of minor shock, not so much at the deftness with which he defused the sophomoric conflation of his call for national unity with the inflammatory rhetoric of the retired head pastor of his church -- a conflation that would imply that we must each swallow whole the entirety of views expressed by our friends and associates.

 

It was not his repudiation of small thinking that struck me. It was the fact that here we had an American politician speaking with both candor and compassion about the proverbial elephant in our national living room.

 

Race is an issue that continues to confound this country. It is an undercurrent that paints our description, understanding and valuation of people in American society whether spoken or not. It is the subtext that places NBA star LeBron James and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the cover of Vogue, in uncomfortable caricature of brute and ingénue.

 

It is in the minds of some the very reason a person of color would even be considered a serious candidate for the presidency of the nation -- never mind that three centuries into the American experiment there has been to date, only one such person.

 

I watched Obama's speech with a measure of disbelief that he had the gumption to come out and say what we all know -- that the problem of race remains one that we as a nation have yet to conquer. To be sure we have made strides towards reconciliation. But the hard conversations continue to be harder than most are willing to deal with.

 

Black America has yet to come to grips with its responsibility to tackle head on the problems that plague our communities. White America has yet to acknowledge the fact that here in the "home of the free," true liberty has evaded many for far too long.

Too often these conversations are ended before they've truly begun, due to the ignorance, intransigence or simple unwillingness of people to acknowledge the validity of what the other side has to say.

 

Who can honestly argue that black America is not today contributing mightily to its own social, cultural and economic decline?

 

Who can honestly argue that white America has not been willfully blind and too often complicit in the injustices that continue to be visited upon people born with darker hue or stranger accent?

 

Who will have both the courage and the commitment to the promise of universal justice and equity that undergirds our country, to call upon the nation to move beyond the divisive rhetoric of racial "one-upmanship" and to embrace the challenge of fulfilling that promise?

 

Apparently a junior senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama.

 

For days pundits have pondered whether Sen. Obama could weather the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racially polarizing comments. The question at this juncture is not whether the candidate will rise to the occasion, but rather, whether America will.

 

Derrick Ashong

From the NYTimes, which has endorsed Hillary over Obama:

 

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

 

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

 

Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.

 

...

 

Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

 

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.

 

He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

 

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.

 

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.

 

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

 

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.

 

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

We keep this up and we will make BF's brain explode with annoyance.:lol:

Ugh!!

What evidence is there that every sermon that Rev. Wright delivered was a "hate" sermon? There are a few dredged up sermons being circulated. Where are all of the other thousands of sermons he must have delivered?

 

Okay, maybe you may not call them hate, but if you check out some of the quotes from this man, that doesn't disturb you in the least bit that our possible next POTUS has looked to this man for spiritual guidance for 20 years? We're not talkign about someone he plays golf or poker with, we are talking about his minister whom he has admitted has had a large impact on his life.

From the NYTimes, which has endorsed Hillary over Obama:

 

 

I don't think anyone doubts that he is a great politician.:thumb:

Since we're posting people's opinions on the speech:

 

A Speech That Fell Short

By Michael Gerson

 

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.

 

Obama's Philadelphia speech made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's views in strong language -- and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and "shocking ignorance" of the African-American experience -- and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger -- and argued that the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda.

 

It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways.

 

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of the African-American community. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "dang" our country.

 

Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.

 

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront in Philadelphia. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

 

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes his charge is correct, he should urge the overthrow of the American government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

 

But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk, because the HIV virus spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.

 

The Philadelphia speech implied that these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" -- both are the foibles of family. But while Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.

 

But haven't George Bush and other Republican politicians accepted the support of Jerry Falwell, who spouted hate of his own? Yes, but they didn't financially support his ministry and sit directly under his teaching for decades.

 

The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church -- a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church's pastor attacked the American government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists interpret as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the Republican candidate attending this church lacked judgment, and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.

 

In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright's problem is exactly the opposite: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.

 

King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. ... Hate distorts the personality. ... The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."

 

Barack Obama is not a man who hates -- but he chose to walk with a man who does.

 

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