[Marxism] The Swiftboating begins

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23634881/

Obama struggles to downplay fiery minister
Former pastor of Chicago church again creates headache for Democrat
By Alex Johnson

The racially charged exchanges between supporters of both Democratic 
presidential candidates continued Friday after videotape of 
inflammatory sermons by Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor ignited 
fierce debate in news accounts and political blogs.

The videotapes capture the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who Obama has said 
brought him to Christianity, thunderously denouncing the United 
States shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It also 
shows Wright using a harsh racial epithet to argue that Obama's 
opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, could not understand the struggles of 
African Americans.

The sermons, at least one of which was delivered long before Wright 
retired last month from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, 
revived questions about Obama's ties to the minister, whom 
conservative critics have accused of supporting black separatism.

"Barack knows what it means, living in a country and a culture that 
is controlled by rich white people," Wright says in one of the fiery 
sermons, delivered Christmas Day. "Hillary can never know that. 
Hillary ain't never been called a [N-word]!"

In another sermon, apparently delivered not long after the 9/11 
attacks, Wright seems to imply that the United States had brought the 
terrorist violence on itself.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than 
the thousands in New York, and we never batted an eye," Wright says. 
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black 
South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have 
done overseas is brought right back in our own front yards."

In a later sermon, Wright revisits the theme, declaring: "No, no, no, 
not God bless America ? God damn America!"

Obama took the title of his 2006 autobiography, "The Audacity of 
Hope," from a sermon by Wright, who also baptized the presidential 
candidate and officiated at his wedding. He has called Wright "a 
sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully 
about what I believe as possible."

Obama rejects comments

The firestorm was addressed by the candidate Friday afternoon in a 
posting under his name on the Huffington Post Web site.

"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," Obama wrote, adding that over the years, "Rev. Wright 
preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life.

"In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my 
pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our 
obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the 
poor, and to seek justice at every turn."

Obama wrote that he had known of similar statements by Wright over 
the years, which he strongly condemned. He wrote that he chose to 
remain in the church because "Rev. Wright was on the verge of 
retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community."

There was no official reaction from Clinton, but Lanny Davis, a 
senior adviser to the campaign, said he took Obama at his word.

"I give Senator Obama completely ? completely ? the benefit of the 
doubt that he has nothing to do with this bigotry that's being spewed 
forth by this man," Davis said in an interview on MSNBC's "Tucker." 
"For me, that's all he has to say.

"I think we should stop this guilt by association thing because some 
of our supporters say stupid things," Davis said.

But the videos created a firestorm among political observers and commentators.

"Mr. Obama obviously would not choose to belong to Mr. Wright's 
church and seek his advice unless he agreed with at least some of his 
views," Wall Street Journal columnist Ron Kessler, publisher of the 
conservative Web site NewsMax.com, wrote Friday.

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the Web site of the conservative 
magazine National Review, wrote Friday that "now we know he's 
contributed money to, voluntarily listened to, and publicly defended 
a cleric who peddles racial warfare."

Others saw an attempt to "smear" Obama.

"How come righteous Republicans are rarely asked about the views of 
their spiritual advisers? Or why wasn't George W. Bush (and the 
presidents preceding him) forced to distance himself from the 
anti-semitic comments of Billy Graham?" Ari Berman wrote Friday on 
the Web site of the liberal magazine The Nation.

Why are sermons an issue now?

The videotapes of Wright's sermons have long been available for sale 
on the church's Web site, raising questions about why they suddenly 
became an issue again late Thursday, NBC's Ron Allen reported.

Recent exchanges between supporters of Obama and Clinton that have 
focused on themes of race and sex.

Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats' 1984 vice presidential nominee, 
resigned as an adviser to Clinton's campaign Wednesday after she was 
quoted last week in a California newspaper suggesting that Obama owed 
his popularity to his race.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she 
said, according to the Daily Breeze of Torrance. "And if he was a 
woman (of any color) he would not be in this position."

Such attacks have been going back and forth for several weeks, even 
as they have been disavowed by the candidates themselves.

Last week, Obama's foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, a public 
policy professor at Harvard University, stepped down from the 
campaign after she was quoted in an interview with a Scottish 
newspaper calling Clinton a "monster [who] is stooping to anything."

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh,'" Power said, according to 
The Scotsman.

Last month, Adelfa Callejo, a longtime Latino activist in Texas who 
supports Clinton, suggested that Latino voters would never accept 
Obama because of his race. "They never really supported us, and 
there's a lot of hard feelings about that," Callejo said.

And after Obama won the South Carolina primary, Clinton's husband, 
the former president, dismissed the significance of his victory by 
saying it was to be expected because "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice."

Advisers said Obama and Clinton were distressed by the exchanges and 
had agreed in a brief conversation on the Senate floor Thursday to 
work together to put a stop to them.

"They approached one another and spoke about how supporters for both 
campaigns have said things they reject," said Phil Singer, a 
spokesman for the Clinton campaign. "They agreed that the contrasts 
between their respective records, qualifications and issues should be 
what drives this campaign, and nothing else."

The Associated Press reported that an adviser to Obama, speaking on 
condition of anonymity, gave a similar account of the conversation.

With Ron Allen of NBC News. NBC affiliates WMAQ of Chicago and KXAS 
of Dallas contributed to this report.


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