Tag: Jeremiah Wright

A new Rasmussen poll is out:

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 30% of the nation’s Likely Voters believe Barack Obama denounced his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, because he was outraged. Most—58%--say he denounced the Pastor for political convenience. The survey was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday night. Obama made his statements about Wright on Tuesday.

Comments now closed.

The last ten minutes of Rev. Wright's speech. The theme of the speech: "A change is going to come. We can do it if we try."

He is a powerful speaker, no doubt about it.

You can watch Parts One, Two and Three here.

Update: Comments now closed, new thread on Rev. Wright is here.

The LA Times says the good news for Barack Obama is the speech will take place five days after the PA primary. Via the AP:

The Detroit branch of the NAACP said Thursday it has selected the embattled former minister of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama as the keynote speaker at its 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner.

"Reverend Wright has challenged the nation, challenged our comfort zone and stimulated nationwide discussion on the issue of how we should move forward together as both a nation and a people," the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People branch said in a statement Thursday.

The dinner has been attended in years past by 10,000 people. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have also been keynote speakers at the dinner.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his first public appearance last night since the Obama embroglio. He got a thunderous welcome.

Barack Obama's former pastor, who canceled several public events after an uproar over his incendiary comments, surprised a Chicago congregation by attending an event to celebrate poet Maya Angelou's birthday.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright got a raucous standing ovation when he entered Saint Sabina church on the South Side on Friday night, video from WBBM-TV showed. Members yelled "Hallelujah!" as Wright embraced the Rev. Michael Pfleger, Saint Sabina's pastor.

Here's more on the "thunderous welcome" and some video from cbs2chicago.

Barack Obama will be on the daytime chat show "The View" tomorrow. Here's what he had to say about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (received by e-mail from ABC News, no link):

• "I'm not vetting my pastor," Obama told "The View", "I didn't have a research team during the course of 20 years to go pull every sermon he's given and see if there's something offensive that he's said."

• "Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people, and were inappropriate and mischaracterize what I believe is the greatness of this country," Obama explained, "Then I wouldn't have felt comfortable standing in the church."

• Obama described Wright as a "brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp."

• "It was a snippet of a man," Obama told ABC. "I don't purchase all the DVDs and I didn't read all the church bulletins." The candidate went on to explain, "Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don't normally listen to each other, to talk to each other, who crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other."

Update: Comments now closed.

Rev. Wright will not be speaking in Tampa this weekend after all.

The Rev. Earl Mason cited security concerns and said the three-night revival featuring Wright was turning into an "event" and media circus, rather than the celebration of the church's 10th anniversary that it was intended to be, so Mason asked him to stay in Chicago.

Good. Perhaps now we can get back to important issues like universal health care and ending the war in Iraq and how to count the votes of the 2.2 million voters in Florida and Michigan.

Rev. Wright is a distraction. Focusing on him puts us right in the midst of the Republican playbook. If he weren't Barack Obama's pastor, his remarks would be a blip on the radar screen.

Update: Comments mow closed.

Two threads on Barack Obama's speech are now full. Here's a third and final one, before we move on to other topics of the day.

Update: Thanks to all for your comments. There are over 600 of them on our three threads. I'm closing this one now as it's over 200.

Here's the text of Barack Obama's speech on Rev. Jeremiah Wright and race.

Our last thread is filled. Here'a a new one for more of your thoughts.

Update: I only caught the last 5 minutes live and will wait until the re-run to write more. I will say I was impressed by his calmness and his tone. I was expecting a sermon, and the portion I heard was not.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux says there were teleprompter problems for a while.

Update: I just watched the clip of him saying say he would not renounce Rev. Wright, and I thought he did that well. Here's the quotes:

The controversy over Barack Obama's pastor is not dying down yet. As I write this, Google News has more than 1,200 articles on it.

Conservative writer Bill Kristol got his facts wrong this morning.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church has issued a strong statement condemning the media's characterization of his entire career by using a few soundbites. It compares the media treatment of Wright to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. [More...]