The Wright controversy comes full circlhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife
"An insult to me, and a disrespect to what I'm trying to do in this campaign..."
You might say Barack Obama just couldn't take it anymore. The Democratic front runner just finished making a statement and taking questions on the subject of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who horrified the media and Obama supporters Sunday with a speech in which he made fun of the Kennedys, following by a talk at the National Press Club Monday in which, most pundits agree, he pitched his former parishioner directly under the bus -- the wheels, not the tall gap underneath. Well today, Barack isn't the only one feeling the wheels on his back.
I think this has been the single best thing to happen to Obama in weeks.
Why? Because after watching his pastor seize the spotlight for two days, after an absolutely wonderful interview on PBS that should have ended the matter, Barack Obama has a license to get mad. And in getting mad at Jeremiah Wright, he can finally give the teeming masses of the mainstream media what they are downright demanding -- a no-holds-barred, unambiguous denunciation and rejection of Jeremiah Wright. Like it or not, Obama had to do it, eventually. More importantly, it was pretty obvious from his tone of voice that at this point, he also wanted to do it, which was not true during that speech in Philadelphia. The very personal breach between the two men puts real, not artificial or political, distance between Obama and what clearly would be his biggest nemesis in the campaign. It still probably will be. The right will not be mollified by anything Barack does. they will still try to hang him with Wright's statements, right into November. But Obama has now gotten license to jettison Wright, and with him, the fear factor that had begun to cloud his campaign. And when I say fear, I mean middle America's fear of Barack Obama, and the possibility that he's not "one of us... he's one of them..."
So there we are. Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright have thrown each other overboard.
Can we please go back to politics now?
Update: Tamryn Hall, MSNBC's late morning anchor (who has the best haircut in the business, by the way,) just finished explaining the ABCs of church in Chicago to Andrea Mitchell.
Hall is from Chicago, and attended Trinity Church, just like Obama. She just backed up Obama's contention that he didn't see the side of Wright that we all saw on Monday. She also pointed out that for Blacks who move to Chicago, there are two major churches they are often told are the ones to attend, and one is Trinity. She made the common sense point that just because the minister marries you and performs the baptisms of your kids, doesn't make them your spiritual advisor. And no, it also doesn't mean you go to church every single Sunday. I can tell you that I have no relationship whatsoever with the minister who married Jason and me. Ditto with the Episcopalian priest who baptised my daughter. And while I am a member of one of those major, social center churches Tamryn spoke of, here in Miami, I couldn't tell you everything that my very prominent pastor believes, nor could I tell you what he preaches every week.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
