Under Pressure, Obama Prepares for Race and Unity Speech
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., speaks at a town hall meeting at the Community College of Beaver County, Monday, March 17, 2008, in Monaca, Pa. (AP Photo)
Barack Obama is preparing to deliver a major address Tuesday on race, politics and unifying the country after being hounded by questions about his relationship to a pastor whose sermons have been laced with anti-American invective.
In a speech whose religious significance could compare to one given in December by former GOP presidential hopeful and Mormon Mitt Romney, Obama may be forced to explain the philosophy of the 8,000-strong Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Democratic presidential candidate has been a congregant for 20 years.
In announcing the morning address, to be delivered in Philadelphia, Obama would not say specifically what he will discuss, but suggested he wants to cool down the atmosphere after incendiary remarks by his pastor, retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., blanketed the airwaves over the past week.
“I am going to be talking about, not just about Reverend Wright but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks,” Obama told reporters after a town-hall meeting. “Part of what I’ll do tomorrow is to talk a little about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently.”
Obama has been on defense regarding statements made during Wright’s sermons, including calling America the U.S. of KKK-A and saying the nation should be damned for its treatment of blacks. The Illinois senator has claimed repeatedly that he has never been present for any of the vitriolic speeches delivered by Wright, and does not approve of them.
“None of these statements were ones I had heard myself personally in the pews,” he told FOX News on Friday, saying that had he “heard them repeated I would have quit.”
Obama on Monday said he “strongly” condemns “the statements that were a source of controversy,” and called Wright’s remarks “wrong.” But he also attempted to lay blame at the feet of the media, suggesting those remarks, which have aired on the church’s own Web site as well as outlets like YouTube, are being mischaracterized.
“I think the caricature that’s being painted of him is not accurate,” he said, adopting language similar to a statement from his church issued Sunday.
With the constant attention on Wright, Obama’s strategists planned the speech, deciding they could no longer ignore the percolating issues that are distracting from the candidate’s message of hope and change.
“Given the events of the past few weeks, and some of the statements that have been made, Senator Obama felt it was an important moment to address the issue of race, politics and how we bring our country together,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday.
Not doing anything to deflate the importance of the speech, Obama adviser Jim Margolis said the speech has been written entirely by Obama, who has been up “very late” the last two nights rivising.
Margolis said the controversy over Wright is the entire driving force behind the speech, and the decision to deliver this speech is a reflection of Obama’s desire to explain his relationship with Wright, how much Obama disagrees with Wright, and also there is more to Wright than just the sound bites seen and heard across the country in the past week.
“This is his speech, his moment … , ” Margolis said. “People are really paying attention and in a way this an opportunity.”
Margolis said no one in the campaign tried to talk Obama out of giving the speech and that the campaign “will take questions” on the Wright story after the speech, but Obama considers the speech a rhetorical end-point to the Wright controversy.
But one Republican Obama critic says don’t expect too much from the speech in terms of mending racial divisions.
“It can’t be (about improving black-white relations) because not one black man or white man can speak to that issue. Communities have to rise up. So this is about how Barack Obama saves his campaign from the hemmorhaging that has been going on” as more light has been shed on Wright’s words, said Michael Steele, chairman of GOPAC, a fundraising organization to put Republicans in local and state offices.
“He’s going to come out I think with a lot of the typical Barack, flowery language on race and so forth,” said Steele, who was the first black lieutenant governor of Maryland. “But, you know, he’s not a racial messiah. This is not one individual solving this question or this crisis that may or may not exist in America.”
Meanwhile, Obama’s advisers have started talking in the past tense about Wright, who is now reverend emeritus at the church and at least since late Friday is no longer on Obama’s African American Religious Advisory Council. The Obama camp has also categorically denied an unconfirmed report that the candidate attended an anti-American sermon of Wright’s last July 22. On that day, Obama attended a conference on Hispanic issues in Miami, as did his rival Hillary Clinton.Critics say it matters less whether Obama attended the individual sermons. His long-standing relationship with the church, they say, raises questions about the legitimacy of a campaign that has tried to transcend racial divisions.
“Here’s a candidate who claims to be a unifier and yet he belongs to a church where they specialize in denouncing whites,” said Ronald Kessler, NewsMax.com political writer. “And the Web site of the church, you don’t have to listen to a sermon, the Web site describes the church as being unashamedly black and subscribing to the black value system.”
Had John McCain been caught up in a longterm relationship with a controversial pastor, “I don’t think that the media, the mainstream media, the dinosaur media, whatever you want to call it, would be engaged in ‘Well are we really fairly portraying this pastor?’” said conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, responding to Obama’s complaint of unfair treatment. “I think this is someone who is in the last refuge” of a story that is spiraling out from under him, she said.
Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said he’s been to TUCC and had only positive experiences there. He said he heard a “provocative” sermon while he was there, not like the “God damn America” speech delivered by Wright on the weekend after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“If I had a pastor like this I would go to church more often,” Page said, referring to his few visits there.
Obama said he knows people are curious about his outlook, and he will try to wrap it all up in his speech.
“This is why I’m giving a speech about this tomorrow, that will be a lot more wholesome than a press conference. Does that make sense?” Obama asked.
Why is Sean Hannity asking Obama to cenounce his pastor when he himself has been a tutored by a very famouse white supremisist?
I have personally been warming up to Obama as a candidate over the last couple of weeks. However, having heard some of the things said by his spiritual guide has changed my mind. While it is unfair to hold someone accountable for what someone else has asaid, being closely associated with a man that said we deserved the 9/11 tragedy the Sunday after it happened and talking about the “spoon-fed” white people, is not something I would want my president to be. There is a good possibility that all those quotes and parts of Wright’s speeches were taken out of context, or it wasn’t supposed to be taken that literally, or that it is a valid point of view that American foreign policy of butting-in and making everything that is going on overseas (as long as it can potentially benefit us, of course) our business, was bound to have some sort of an effect on the people, but it seems that in trying to be inspirational, Wright only made the sermon controversial and potentially very harmful for Omaba’s campaign, for there were better ways to explain his point of view, ways that would come across as less racist and anti-American.
After decades and centuries of explicit racism, we are now at the point where in order to prevent racism and any sort of inequality towards black people, we have a double standard of what people of the race can and cannot say - any white presidential candidate associated with potentially racist remarks would never even be given an opportunity to make a speech to say whether he actually agrees or not with said remarks and try to explain what the other person might have meant to that. So, although it is important to try to understand what was really meant by the Wright’s contravercial sermons, it is also equally important to hold someone accountable for their words and not blame “the U.S. of KKK-A” for their own prejudices against the people of the other race.
As Obama speaks of Change in Washington, how do we know that the change he plans to make is not making Washington the new headquarters for this civil rights committee and the NAACP. We have had the wool pulled over our eyes by black people it seems. Over the years we the white people have be convinced as we should be to treat everyone by their actions and not by their color. But as we see now, the black people have not been doing this. As we see by Wrights sermen,blacks,Still teach their people to be anti-white and anti-American. And that came through as Michelle Obama stated that she has not been proud to be American until now. And Obama has been taking his children to Wrights church where anti-white and anti-American sermens are given. So this continues this radical racial behavior that we see in black people. And as Obama and so many other black people who have been interviewed about the Wright sermen, this is common in black churches. I am outraged as a white person, that these black people are doing the exact opposite that they want us to do.
Why didn’t you stream the full video? When you don’t, you allow the editing and propagandizing
that is so typical of this foreign run network.
As your mentor has stated:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
FIRST OF ALL…I DON’T THINK FOR ONE MINUTE THAT OBAMA HAS NEVER HEARD WRIGHT’S HATE AMERICA SPEACHES OR THAT HE HAS NOT AGREED WITH HIM ON SOME…. SECOND OF ALL….IF OBAMA GOES TO THE OVAL OFFICE, YOU CAN BE SURE HIS MENTOR, AND ADOPTED UNCLE…WRIGHT….WILL BE AT HIS RIGHT HAND….AND THAT BRINGS ALONG WITH IT ALL OF WRIGHT’S RACIAL AND HATE AMERICA VIEWS….HIS BUDDY FARRAKHAN, OBAMA’S FRIEND FROM THE WEATHERMAN GROUP WILL BE THERE TOO…AND SOME COZY TRIPS TO LIBIA THAT WRIGHT CAN CHARGE TO OUR COUNTRY….WHEW I HAVE THAT SICK FEELING LIKE I DID WHEN I HEARD WE WERE UNDER ATTACK ON SEPTEMBER 11,2001
AFTER THINKING OF ALL OF THE ABOVE….IT SEEMS TRIVIAL THAT OBAMA SPOUTED ABOUT HILLARY BRING BILL TO THE WHITE HOUSE…
I WOULD NEVER DOUBT THAT THEY LOVE OUR COUNTRY AND WISH GOD’S BLESSING ON US ALL, NO MATTER RACE OR REGEGION.
PEOPLE WORRIED ABOUT MITT AND BRINGING HIS MORMON REGEGION TO THE WHITE HOUSE…..THEY ARE AFRAID OF DONNIE AND MARIE’S RELEGION, BUT NOT FARRAKHAN?!!
AND AS FOR PEOPLE WHO WORRY ABOUT ROMNEY…I KNOW A LITTLE ABOUT THE MORMON RELEGION OF TODAY AND THEY TRULY HAVE GOOD MORALS AND VALUES AND HONOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND THE TEACHINGS OF CHRIST…….I WOULD NOT WORRY FOR ONE MINUTE IF ROMNEY WAS HELPING TO LEAD OUR COUNTRY OR WHO HE WOULD BRING TO THE WHITE HOUSE…
Do I have a comment?
If Obama’s speech today is about “race” it’s off the mark. What we have been listening to over the last week or so from his pastor goes much farther than just race. And Obama has been a member of that church for 20 years? And he never heard one of these sermons “from the pews”? Maybe not these, but how about others?
I have never trusted this man because I don’t know him. He has no background from which to form an opinion. With this latest flap over Rev. Wright, I don’t think I could ever trust him. From Obama’s own lips, it is clear that Rev. Wright is far more than just the man who speaks from the pulpit each Sunday. He is Obama’s spiritual guide, his mentor, his pastor, and his friend.
I have friends I don’t always agree with on every subject. Not agreeing is one thing. This kind of slanderous talk about America is quite another. Frankly, if Rev. Wright thinks it’s so awful here why doesn’t he go to Africa for an extended stay (like for the rest of his life).
a speech is a cop out he needs to answer questions at a press conferance
If senator Obama has condoned the pastor’s philosphy in any way, shape, or form, his legitimacy as a presidential candidate should be questioned. Divisive issues on race should not be tolerated by a potential presidential candidate.
He will escape all of this - the teflon man continues
Does anyone know who is paying for his air time?