Thomas Sowell on Obama’s Rev. Wright problem
As usual, he gets to the heart of the matter:
Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, “I chose my friends carefully,” he said in his first book, “Dreams From My Father.”
These friends included “Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets” — in Obama’s own words — as well as the “more politically active black students.” He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.
Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college — members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.
In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama — “A Bound Man” — it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were — and, like many converts, he went overboard.
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says.
The irony is that Obama’s sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together.
The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man’s talent and a warning about his reliability.
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That’s bringing us all together?
Is “divisiveness” defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright?
Read the whole thing.
And speaking of Obama’s “former” pastor, he had been scheduled to deliver a sermon in Florida tonight, but his appearance was cancelled:
TAMPA, Fla. – Church officials here canceled a scheduled appearance by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. this afternoon, citing the media attention his sermon had attracted.
Mr. Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s longtime pastor at the Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago, had been invited to speak at the Bible-Based Fellowship Church of Temple Terrace in Tampa on Tuesday evening in honor of the church’s 10th-anniversary celebration.
The sermon would have been Mr. Wright’s first public remarks since controversy erupted over inflammatory segments of his past sermons that were publicized.
[…]
Throughout the furor over his remarks, Mr. Wright has taken a low public profile. Through his daughter, Jeri L. Wright, he declined an interview request on Tuesday. “He will not be considering any interviews until further notice” she said in an e-mail message.
But he has a longstanding relationship with the Bible-Based Fellowship Church of Temple Terrace in Tampa, where he has addressed the congregation for many years. He was also scheduled to speak on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in honor of the church’s 10th-anniversary celebration, but a church official said those appearances had also been canceled.
Church officials had originally said they would allow reporters to observe Mr. Wright’s address, but reacted with visible irritation at the media attention that the revival had received, thanks to his presence. News organizations were told they would be prevented from taking photographs or using recording equipment inside the church.
Hillary Clinton, desperate to move beyond “misspeaking” about her late 1990’s trip to Bosnia, has broken her campaign’s unspoken vow of silence on the Jeremiah Wright issue:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor made.
“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”
The Obama campaign, desperate themselves to move on from the Wright controversy, accused Clinton of trying to “exploit” an issue they consider to be explained away.
Last but not least, the Washington Post piece I commented on yesterday that talked about how both Senator Clinton and Obama both have a penchant for embellishing their roles on various issues was only the tip of the iceberg as it relates to both candidates, in particular Obama, which Democrat and Hillary supporter Taylor Marsh documents at length here. If you’re compiling a list of Obama posts and articles to reference back to when necessary, that post should be considered a must-bookmark.
Isn’t it interesting how when the common man embellishes his resume and gets caught, he either steps down or is forced out, but in politics, padding your “accomplishments” is grounds for being compared in glowing terms to JFK, MLK, and RFK, and viewed as a “Messiah” of sorts. Amazing!