It just keeps getting better: Obama snaps his fingers and says “oh no you didn’t!”
This gets its own new post instead of a mere update on the last post, because people, this is some shock and awe going down! Obama just held a press conference and gave verbal karate to Rev. Wright, which would be great except it’s pretty clear he’s just pissed because Wright is messing up his campaign. Still, I admit I’m moderately impressed with him just for having the ‘nads to say some shit about this flaming racemonger because you know at least some portion of his supporters are going to call him Uncle Tom now.
Stolen from Malkin, here’s what he says about Wright’s idiotic speeches over the last few days:
“I’m outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate. I believe they do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray mine. If he considers this political posturing, then he doesn’t know me very well. And I don’t know him well either.”
…”There wasn’t anything constructive out of yesterday. All it was was a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth…It was a show of disrespect to me.”
…”I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he’s done enormous good. … But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. … There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced.”
…”It’s antithetical to our campaign. It’s antithetical to what I’m about. It’s not what America stands for. Rev. Wright does not speak for me. He doesn’t speak for our campaign. I can’t prevent him from making these outrageous remarks…When I say I find these statements appalling, I mean it…Makes me angry and saddens me.”
Heh. I need popcorn and some Junior Mints, stat. It was already way too much fun to watch the Democrats in general cage-fight each other, and now we’ve got a whole new element with the black-on-black kidney punches and it’s approaching the surreal.
Notice the iterative return to, “when I met him 20 years ago,” as if he hadn’t been hanging out at his church for two entire decades. I give Barry O’Bama no credit for cojones. It is all about him and his desire for the presidency. First grandma, now his old friend, the moonbat racist.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pmESTnice try asshat… Mr Hopechange is sinking to the bottom trying to get that anchor from around his neck.
I’m really starting to enjoy this.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:22 pmESTIt would have been nice if he’d said something like “he’s wrong”.
Wright’s behavior is pretty interesting, dontcha think? You shine a spotlight on somebody and suddenly they can’t stop yapping. He’s like Brittney flashing her clam; Look at me! Look at me!
April 29th, 2008 at 2:25 pmESTHey, I used to be in a band called The Nadz and I object to being compared to Obama’s testicles. Surely you could compare us to somebody else’s testicles instead?
April 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pmESTOuch. Wright has just been given a set-up in which, should he choose to do so, he can UTTERLY hamstring Obama.
What will the public reaction be if Wright comes back and basically says that Obama listened to him say EXACTLY the same things for 20 years. I think Obama may have just lost his career….
April 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pmESTI told a friend that it wasn’t rational to believe that Mister Hope-ity Change-ity hadn’t heard, over the course of 20 years, any of the vile things that Minister Batshit Crazy had spouted out. I guess that Mrs. Obama pulled out a 10-year old videotaped and refreshed Barry’s memory.
Anyone besides me skeptical about this conversion of BO’s? Does anyone else think that it’ll be time to MoveOn now that Barack has had his Sister Souljah moment? And it happened way before the general, which means it won’t be kosher for Maverick to bring it up. Ever.
This whole situation seems suspicious to me. Then again, I’m a cynical asshole, so YMMV.
Update: Seems like I’m not the only conspiracy-minded person out there.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:49 pmESTThis is beginning to look like a Kafka story in real time. I suspect this is not exactly the change Obama was hoping for, but it is audacious.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:52 pmESTThis is all calculated to give Obama a way to disown Wright with out out disavowing the last 20 years. Obama can now say “He’s really hateful bigot” etc… and then publiclly in the eyes of his supporters and MSM move away from Wright. All the while the MSM will just gloss over the fact he’s associated with the man for 20 yrs. Its all a convient show.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:52 pmESTPopcorn and Junior Mints? Blech.
Raisinets are much better….
April 29th, 2008 at 3:03 pmESTToo little, too late, you fucking jackass.
You could’ve diffused this entire controversy overnight if you had been saying this from day 1.
But noooooooo. You had to go on and on about hopiness and changitude until we all nearly had a collective brain aneurysm. And now that the shit’s really hit the fan you want to take it all back and pretend like you rejected Wright all along?
No can do libtard.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pmESTThat’s damn good entertainment right there. I’m drowning in awesome. This is so much better than I ever expected.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pmEST“Digger, please!” Wright’s comments aren’t antithetical to Barack Obama, they’re just “antithetical to (his) campaign.”
April 29th, 2008 at 3:14 pmEST…”It’s antithetical to our campaign. It’s antithetical to what I’m about. It’s not what America stands for. Rev. Wright does not speak for me. He doesn’t speak for our campaign. I can’t prevent him from making these outrageous remarks…When I say I find these statements appalling, I mean it…Makes me angry and saddens me.”
Well, yeah…you might as well just say:
“It’s antithetical to our campaign and to what I am about RIGHT NOW. I’m trying to become president, yo, which means I’m gonna need a lot of White folks to LIKE me. Wright’s words do not reflect what White America stands for. He doesn’t speak for our campaign…When I say I find these statements appalling, I mean it - ’cause he’s gonna wreck my chances at changing my address to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He’ll ruin Michelle’s chances to redecorate the White House! What are we gonna do with all these leopard-skin rugs??!!
“Just shut up for now ya old fool! Dang!”
April 29th, 2008 at 3:16 pmESTI wish SO HARD that I had something more insightful to say about this than “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! HAHAHAHAHAA! AHAHA! ……BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA…”
Then I’d have blogfodder instead of a reason to Windex my monitor.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pmESTDearRachel,
This is simply Obama’s “Sister Souljah moment.” He denounces Wright and gets to put the whole thing behind him.
yr obdnt srvnt
April 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pmESTmike
“they should be denounced”
notice he doesn’t denounce them outright
get back to me when he says “i denounce…jeremiah wright”
normally i wouldn’t be so nit-picky, but he’s a lawyer, and these nit-picky technicalities are how lawyers operate. i’m not satisfied that he’s “denounced” jeremiah wright, because, well, he hasn’t explicitly denounced jeremiah wright. but that’s just me.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pmEST[giggle]
April 29th, 2008 at 3:59 pmESTYou just cain’t make this stuff up!
Ya’d think all this gun-control woulda kept’em all from shooting themselves in tha foot!?
Don’t like popcorn but I’ll take some corny-dogs and cornchips with jalapenos. Pleeze!
[/giggle]
Would somebody pass the Red Vines and Hot Tamales?
As action this is only so-so, but I have to give it two thumbs up for hilarity.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pmESTI’ve been checking the ol’ blogosphere about this for the past couple of days… this is pretty much exactly what a lot of people thought would happen; Wright would say something inflammatory, Obama would use it as a way to firmly distance himself from it, and that would be that. The question, of course, is who benefits from this…
1. Obama for having a firm Sistah Souljah moment?
2. Rev. Wright for selling out Obama so he can claim the “white man” is still oppressing the “black man”? It’s kind of hard to be oppressed when your group is running the country, after all.
#1 will hold true if enough blacks aren’t disgusted by Obama’s distancing from Rev. Wright. #2 will hold true if Obama loses due to white backlash.
Basically, it’s a sick game of chicken where Obama and Rev. Wright get to decide who gets to remain employed - a shallow politician from Chicago, or a race-baiting “pastor” from Chicago? If one of them loses, the other one wins.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:18 pmESTheh. That’s funny right there.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:19 pmESTWTF?!? I thought Wright and the Obamessiah belonged to a ‘Christian’ church.
Do Blacks worship a different Messiah than me?
Is their Messiah better than my Messiah?
DING DING DING!
April 29th, 2008 at 4:24 pmESTJW hasn’t changed his message in 20 years. And up until Obama’s dream-team was convinced that JW wasn’t being heard by anyone but right-wing bloggers, it was all wink-wink-nod-nod. Didn’t BO just say a few weeks ago that he didn’t think JW had said anything all that inflammatory?
BadPenny has it exactly, though. Put a spotlight on an idiot and they can’t shut up. paging Bill Clinton!
April 29th, 2008 at 4:34 pmESTmhuete Says:
“This is simply Obama’s “Sister Souljah moment.” He denounces Wright and gets to put the whole thing behind him.”
Not if Wright does not cooperate it ain’t. If he comes back firing, Obama is so far beyond screwed that he cannot even see screwed through a telescope.
Assuming this was not a complete setup between the two of them to make the problem go away, I suspect we are in for a big pissing match.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:35 pmESTInterestingly enough, they do. Or at least the ones that buy into Black Liberation Theology do.
Anyone who believes in a God that is for their people but against all others is not worshipping the Christian God. They are worshipping their own false deity, not Jesus Christ. Jesus came to save all of us, not some of us. But according to James Cone (and by extension Rev. Jeremiah Wright):
“If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”
To this “God” that Rev. Wright claims to worship, I say this:
I know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Jesus Christ.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:39 pmESTThis is a truly great day. I get my CCW license and the Democrats lose the election even before they choose their nominee! AWESOME!
April 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pmESTAll of BO’s supporters were saying that his March 18 speech in Philly had put this behind him. Er…no. And neither will today’s speech.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pmESTMmm… Junior Mints.
To the Dems and lefties who are now complaining about guilt by association, I have 2 words for you:
Trent Lott.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pmESTAnd I’m outraged because you’re outraged at teh outrage!
BECASUE OF THE HOPITUDE!
BCASUE OF THE CHANGINESS!
April 29th, 2008 at 6:32 pmESTBarack Obama:
Except for the fact that the Reverend Wright already took the thunder out of that ‘denouncement’ and planted the seeds of doubt with his answer to the following yesterday at the National Press Club.
I agree with mightysamurai: it’s too little, too late — and now it smacks of desperate political opportunism.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pmESTanonymous,
Nice point. Lawyers can be masters at parsing language, ad nauseum. No offense intended to those of you who are members of the Bar.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:34 pmESTI’m going out on a limb here with offering my opinion because I’m British and can’t vote anyway but hey, I sort of have one foot in the US anyway so here’s my two-pennies worth…I mean, two-cents worth, or whatever…gah!
I really don’t think Obama will be able to come back from this. Hint to future presidential candidates - if you’re going to try to establish your Christian Credentials (TM) in order to win votes, don’t have as a pastor someone who’s a raving, racist lunatic.
Maybe he does disagree with Wright’s beliefs, but why did he stay at his church? He could have
April 29th, 2008 at 9:31 pmESTI gotta applaud MightySamurai in this thread. Well done.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:32 pmESTRob F -
there are no limbs here - thanks for your input. There are quite a few seppos in our country (and quite a few limeys in yours, sadly enough) behind the curve in ancient Imperial wisdom.
So you can’t vote? Are ya sure? Many people in this country “can’t vote” but that doesn’t stop ‘em.
I’m a Christian, but there are far far too many phonies out there trying to ride the coattails of a man who they ain’t fit to stand in his shadow. Pastor Wright ain’t no reverend.
Sorry for the horrible slaughter of the Queen’s English, but sometimes it says it just right.
Don’t ya think?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:41 pmESTHe should have listened to us. He should have let the dogs bark. He should have let his fellow demagogue do his thing. But nooooooo…he had to be everything to everyone. And soon, he will be nothing to everyone.
But maybe this will help poor blacks to see the hypocrisy in black liberation theology AND the democratic party. For so long, it has been “the less they know, the better.” It’s the way of Al Sharp-tongue, Jesse Jack-ass, and Rev. Wrong in that oh-so-charming cult of personality. They do the same thing that the Chinese government does now to its citizens, and the Soviets have done in the past- filter out content that they know could help these people rise out of their poverty, and put the demagogues out of business. And I’m not saying blacks don’t think for themselves- it’s all about the information they get and the sources they get it from.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pmESTNo, he doesn’t get to do that. Wright hasn’t changed his rhetoric a bit. He is saying the same things he was saying a month ago, a year ago, and a decade ago . . . when Obama had absolutely no problem with any of it. Yet Obama suddenly gets all outraged today about Wright’s vile hate-spewing.
Why? Think about it. Obama has finally realized that Wright is torpedoing his chances of being the next President, and he’s trying to control the damage. But it’s too late for that. It’s obvious to everyone that Obama is denouncing Wright only in an attempt to save his campaign. It’s a purely self-serving move. And it’s not going to work.
Obama would like to claim the moral high ground in this crisis, but the truth is that he meekly followed Wright down into a deep valley, and now there’s a flash flood bearing down on him. Obama is doomed — and Wright is laughing his ass off.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:53 pmESTDid someone ask for an Uncle Tom denunciation?
April 30th, 2008 at 12:38 amESTThe whole thing is staged to make Obama look independent and more presidential. It’s a farce.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:48 amESTWhat’s scary, actually, as that these moonbats consider this kind of bullcrang as being normal!
April 30th, 2008 at 2:17 amESTI read this and tried to get in a good response but my brain wasn’t at peak function so all i could come up with was “Wachel Lucas is pretty” even if she is 10 years my senior. I also completely support wachel and wupurt and am glad this country has couples like them.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:33 amESTI seriously doubt that anyone that actually wants to be president would stage anything like this.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:33 amESTDaveW, you win “facetious comment of the month”
April 30th, 2008 at 5:40 amESTOne of two things. Either Obama took this step simply to polish his image with the gun totin’, bible huggin’ small town crackers he’s alienated - in which case he’s lying, or he really didn’t attend the good Rev. Wright’s church as often as he originally claimed when he was trying to establish his church going bonafides with the gun totin’, bible huggin’ small town crackers - in which case he’s lying.
Either way he’s lying. Jeepers, he’s acting more and more like a Clinton every day. Maybe there is something to the rumors of a Clinton - Obama ticket!
April 30th, 2008 at 5:44 amESTI think it’s going to be a bitter pill for the Obamatons to swallow when they realize their messiah is just a Chicago Democrat Machine hack who is not ready for prime time.
There is going to be an awful lot of buyer’s remorse among O supporters between now and the steelcage deathmatch with Hillary at the convention.
Personally, I think O’s denunciation of Rev. Wright stinks on ice. He claims he has never heard the Rev say hateful things like this despite attending his church for twenty years. If you would believe that, then you’d believe the check is in the mail, I’ll respect you in the morning, and Bill Clinton didn’t “inhale”.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:29 amESTI keep having this mental image of Hillary and Obama in a dual with Bill and J.W. as their seconds — only the candidates keep shooting themselves in the foot and their seconds are helping them do it!
April 30th, 2008 at 7:35 amESTWhat if we used Man
April 30th, 2008 at 7:47 amESTBerriesBarrys.The fact is that the sort of people who support Obama dont care a fig about Wright or Tony Rezko or any other baggage of corruption. Most black voters and lefty whites will vote for him regardless of his lack of qualifications or highly questionable associations.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:27 amESTYou’re absolutely right, barsinister - love the handle! - but the important thing to remember is that there aren’t enough black voters (12% of population) and lefty whites (20%? 25%, tops) to elect him.
With hardened 20%-30% bases at each end, each party needs to capture more of the undecided middle than the other in order to win.
These days, national elections are all about swing voters. And swing voters run screaming from this sh*t.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:57 amESTI deleted my earlier comment. I posted it hastily after initially misreading a passage.
Ray
April 30th, 2008 at 12:30 pmESTI have to share something I heard on the radio yesterday. Credit for this goes to Bill Gross of KGO San Francisco. The gist of what he said is that he thinks the Democratic Party leadership’s fantasy might be Bill Clinton and Jeremiah Wright in a car together doing a Thelma and Louise — the last scene, of course.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pmEST