Posted March 18 2008 by Tzioni
What Did Obama Know And When Did He Know It?
“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.” (Barack Obama’s Speech on Race 3/18/08).
***
“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.” (Barack Obama, “On My Faith and My Church,” Huffington Post, 3/14/08).
***
“When I saw these statements, many of which I had heard for the first time, then I thought it was important to make a very clear and unequivocal statement. None of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews. One of them I had heard about after I had started running for president, and I put out a statement at that time condemning them. The other statements were ones that that I just heard about while we were — when they started being run on FOX and some of the other stations. And so they weren’t things that I was familiar with.“
(Barack Obama on “Hannity & Colmes,” Fox News, 3/14/08).
***
“The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama’s presidential announcement. After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
“Fifteen minutes before Shabbat I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” he said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers.
Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afro-centric, to the point of excluding whites.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did, however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.
In Monday’s interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection. “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.” (Jodi Kantor, “Disinvitation By Obama Is Criticized,” The New York Times, 3/6/07)
Add This Blog to Your Technorati Favorites
Jewish Blog, Jewish, Jewish Leadership, Jewish News, Jewish Values, Jewish Events
